W. M. Gee is a writer who specialises in teen, horror, fantasy and sci-fi stories. His works often explore real world problems from adolescent perspectives, because — hey — we’ve all been there, right? In his free time, he loves writing poetry, reading sci-fi and painting minis. In 2021 he was awarded the people’s choice Golden Comma Award for his teen novella, "The List." He published his first teen-horror novella (ebook and print), "The Woodcutter's Daughter" in 2023. He lives in London but longs to own a lighthouse and listen to the sounds of the sea.
Read more by W.M. Gee right HERE.
THE OBELISK
by
W.M. Gee
Hiding away at the root of southern Europe an ancient beach twists and rises into the granite of the Las Dunas mountains. It was where Kyle spent his summer vacations. But it wasn’t the warm waters that Kyle came to see; nor the ancient ruins crawling along the beach that some said were Roman (and some said were older); nor even the strange, free-standing obelisk at the top of the hill, though that certainly had its draw since last summer. Kyle came to this place every year to see Jac Piège.
The two were playmates since they were little. They still were now, in their teenage years. But ‘play’ and ‘mate’ had grown when adolescence and hormones and desire had taken hold. It was last summer when they found their first kiss, taken by the more confident Jac in the shadow of that imposing hilltop obelisk. It was this summer — when they returned to the protruding structure — that they found what neither could say with any certainty was there before. A crack in the landward-facing side of the stonework. A way down and inside to darkness.
Kyle bit his lip and waited nervously. The opening up of the obelisk broke uncertainties upon him, like the wind-whipped waves on the twisting sands below. What if Jac didn’t turn up? What if he did? What nerve-shredding firsts might take place in the seclusion of a place few visited and even fewer knew to enter? The thought quickened Kyle. His foot began to jiggle up and down. He felt like he needed the bathroom. It might not be a bad idea anyway, if —
He forced the thought out of his head, but others came crashing in, sucked up by the vacuum of lust denied. What if this was a trick? What if Jac had made the opening himself? Burgled his way inside to engineer a place where they could be out of sight. Where they could —
Because Jac was more experienced, Kyle knew. The way he kissed. The way he held the firmness of his body against the doughy frame of Kyle’s. Or — worse — what if this had been set-up by Jac’s disapproving father? Or his own?! Once the paranoia took root, it would not let go its clutch of him. His mind ran. And tripped. And fell. And screamed.
“Fuck!” Kyle cried out before he realized his mouth was open. His words were met with a inviting reply, from deep within the structure.
“Come inside, Kyle. It’s peaceful and I found something…”
It was Jac’s voice. The way Jac said his name — Kyeeeel — was what Kyle fell in love with when love was sandcastles and soccer on the beach.
Stepping inside that towering monolith meant pushing through a thick, curtained jungle of air. It wasn’t just the pervasive warmth, but the humidity that embraced Kyle. A still yet disarming relief that made him forget the seizing fear of getting caught.
“Over here.” Jac’s voice drifted through the air. The inside of the obelisk was impossibly wide. Several meters separated Kyle from shadow-riddled recesses, where pools of water lapped invitingly against the mossy stones. Above them, vines or creepers arched like a yonic bower over milky-blue water. And inside the water, naked from at least the waist up, Jac reclined, his arms across two stones, his fingers playing on the tips of the roots that dove down deep into the water.
“I found something,” Jac repeated, his voice a beckoning finger. Kyle’s eyes passed across the discarded pile of clothes even as his feet passed across the ancient stones. Were the clothes his or Jac’s? He didn’t remember stripping naked, but when he lowered himself into that milky-blue pool, he felt the warm liquid slide across the skin of his legs, his hips, his naked buttocks. It was like descending into oil. A rich and warm and welcoming ooze that slipped and slid and slithered across his body.
“It feels —” Kyle’s words were lost in the draw of it. The feel of Jac’s bony arms sliding around his torso, the warmth of their touching beneath that opaque pool, the brush of something that definitely was not a leg against him.
“I know — ” Jac replied; his lips found Kyle’s.
“What is it?” Kyle exhaled after. His body quivered from root to tip.
“I don’t know,” Jac replied and kissed him again.
They hung at the meniscus of the milky pool, their feet not touching the floor, suspended in the thickness of it. Kyle’s skin tingled where it made contact with Jac’s. Like their bodies were merging. .
“I never — ” Kyle began.
“— Want to leave?” Jac finished.
“—Felt this before,” Kyle replied in the same instant.
“We should go all the way —” Jac intoned, his eyes flicking downwards; the subtlest of pauses, “ — under.”
“Yeah,” Kyle agreed, and forced his head under the water. He wanted to see Jac down there, to feel him. Not to be felt back. Just because he wanted to. The skin around his eyes and lips tingled as the milky-blue water caressed their openings.
It wasn’t until he was under the water — until he saw the thing that made him scream thick bubbles and choke in a lungful of sappy-tasting, milky-blue liquid — that he fathomed the impossibility of it all. Of a space that was cavernous on the inside, but outside little more than a tiny erect blister; of vines or creepers reaching down from a roof where none grew outside; of a pool of not-quite-water so high above the water table. But none of those things mattered anymore. For even as he felt the firmness of a thousand things that were not legs all over him, probing and sliding and entering him, Kyle looked down into the infeasible depths of that milky pool, into interweaving of roots and branches and wood that even now seemed to contort around him. Looked down into the invitation of that impossible hollow, and saw the mangled, perforated and long-dead corpse of his friend Jac Piège.