The old hospital housed the chamber where the boys became demons. It was past the security gates and the warning signs and the fragile buildings whose foundations sobbed in the night. Thick trees surrounded the grounds, but they were fenced off and labelled as private and led eventually to the manor house that had once formed a political centrepiece of the apolitical town. People didn’t venture into the trees, despite how appealing they looked, though they didn’t know why. The chamber was underneath the perpetual shade of the foliage, it was damp and full of rubbish and birds, who cooed oddly like a strange choir, and from the constancy of the animal sounds would occasionally burst a frenzied flap of wings, started by one but then mirrored by all the birds who nested around the ceiling, an avian Mexican wave in the darkness. There were piles of furniture but it was all broken or burnt in some historical time, relics of a former comfort. One pane of glass remained in the rotting wooden window frames – a final semblance of a civilization left behind but almost worshipped, the glass had been cleaned, cared for, yet all it looked at was a moss-stricken fence panel that somehow still stood – the others all smashed through and piled in dirty shards amongst the empty bottles of flammable liquid.
In the chamber the boys changed, their legs bare amongst the splintered wood and the stench of waste, their breaths deep and heavy in the stifling density of the summer air. In perfect silence they stood, not wanting the vulgarity of their voices to infringe upon their explorations, and with trembling hands t-shirts were removed, with a bottle of blue ink from a parent’s desk they fingered meaningless symbols onto each other’s chests, and noticed how soft all of their skin was and hoped it would never be any different.
They still felt young, and they each of them lit a candle and in the flickering light they smiled and felt illicit and excited and odd unfamiliar feelings that tingled in their bodies in strange new ways. In the candles glare they cautiously pulled down their shorts, which was such a private act but so perfect to share now it wouldn’t have made sense not to. Little penises, some nervous, some brazen, and they bent over to see better the cocks of the others, to compare, to reassure, to giggle, some longer, some shorter, with tufts of hair beginning to creep around the edges, as if in time for a new school and a new life.
Hands reached out, impulsively, instinctively, unavoidably, and touched the others as if they were expensive glassware, slowly at first, with a poke of the finger, and then firmly, but still always gentle, pulling at the boy next to him or pulling at himself, learning, with surprised gasps of something like pleasure.
The magic of it. To grow in their hands, lengthening, hardening, they felt like wizards conjuring alterations and manipulations to the very flesh. It was dark and the air felt so wonderfully sticky on bare bottoms and chests and they felt a part of the world. At the first they panicked when it came out, just the tiniest amount. The boy looked around, reeling, he wanted to sit down, to lay down, to feel it again, but he was afraid of what might happen, of what he saw on his fingers, the fluid sticky like a snails slow path. He looked at his friends and held his hand up for them to see, and in a collective release they all emitted the same, a trophy for their efforts.
It was a perfect moment, and conversation would have spoiled it. They watched in silence as the magic left their penises, and sank back tubular like monsters to the deep. It felt like something had shifted, that the world had changed irrevocably. What had happened to them in there?
They dressed quietly and could hear a breeze in the trees outside. The sun was still beating down, and they felt a sudden embarrassment, an awkwardness as they left the chamber. They didn’t look at each other, but they could still feel the life in their shorts, that had possessed their bodies, that had opened their eyes.
