Psst psst...please check out this new original piece I wrote in the newest (and entirely free!) issue of The Worm Presents, Volume 3: Abuse of Power. My short story "Trippingly on the Tongue" and the absolutely stunning accompanying illustration by Y. Guo are located at pages 60-69 of the anthology. Preview of my story:
Really, Bertie was old enough to behave himself. He was going into his last year at school, an upper-sixth only months away from matriculation. Surely he could get his measurements taken without flinching? Surely he could have a man’s hands on him without tenting his trousers like an oversexed teen at the first stiff breeze? The measuring tape crept its way up his calf, wrapping around the minimal meat of his thigh as tightly as a garter. He bit his lip, searching for something, anything to distract him. Though he was centered in the room, he wasn’t at liberty to spin round and gawk, nor was he permitted to fidget. But the modesty curtain, hung for shyer patrons or younger boys, had been drawn back, at Father’s insistence; Bertie could observe his enclosure. Casting his gaze about, he took in the dark paneling, the rich, deep green of the wallpaper, the total masculinity of the décor, all hardwoods and metallic accents—appropriate, of course, as the clientele was exclusively male—but it was all so like his father’s preferred interior design that it left Bertie hot with guilt, and so he looked, instead, at the thing he’d been avoiding: his own reflection in the mirror. An immediate mistake. The tableau reflected in the glass carried the salty tang of something Bertie could have dreamed up, boiling in his bed, a pillow clenched between his thighs and his teeth biting down hard on his knuckles to keep from moaning. Behold: the girlish grace of Bertram Barrett, all long limbs and stuttering virginity, the cream and gold of his aristocratic coloring swirling into strawberry reds, there, at the cheeks, and peachy pinks at the ears and the temples, blond curls stuck to his forehead with perspiration—a naughty cherub too gangly now to continue inhabiting his fresco, booted from Heaven to Earth to be measured and groped and touched by the bare hands of some man, any man, it doesn’t matter who, but oh, this one was rather good-looking, kneeling at Bertie’s feet, strong-shouldered and dutiful; see how Bertie squirms for more; see how he fights his instinct to spread his thighs and beg. See how his father watches him. Bertie jerked back. The assistant lurched forward, off-kilter, his fingers coming sinfully close to a perilous area, not quite touching but not not touching, and at this phantom sensation there was a sort of whine, a kind of animal bleating, which Bertie realized, belatedly, had come from him.
