Blood streamed between Lily's legs, dying the downy blonde hair and dripping thickly on the cold tiles of the Ladies’ Powder Room.
Michael pushed his way through the gathered dresses and wigs of the small crowd, panic destroying the illusion that until now had seemed so easy, so natural, to maintain.
He knelt before the collapsed diva, looking into frightened eyes that peered up through orange powder and glittering green mascara. "Vincent?"
The make up that had seemed so over-the-top yet so beautiful on the club's dance floor appeared blotched and freakish as Vincent looked out from behind the image of the woman he was even now so desperately trying to maintain.
"Shit," Michael looked down at the growing stain on the fringe of Lily's dress and across at the sweaty, thickset face of the club's owner. "What happened Peter?"
"Daryl found him in here," he nodded at the toilet, "the bowl's full of blood."
"I think he pissed it out his dick." Said Daryl, laying fingers with red, painted nails on Michael's shoulder.
"He's been sick as well," Peter added.
Michael closed his eyes...

and woke up in the casualty waiting area. The seats around him were empty. Had the department been busy when they rushed Vincent in on a trolley? Michael could not remember if they had treated his lover with respect, could not even remember how he came to be sitting here next to Daryl. Just sleep and an uneasy feeling that something had happened during it that he could not remember.
He took the lukewarm cup of tea from Daryl and nodded his thanks at the young man. "Sorry," he drew a sip, gagged at the sugar but did not complain, "Did I miss anything?"
"No, just Peter going home. He gave me his mobile number, told me to call him when we knew something."
Michael looked over at reception where a single nurse sat mutely behind the desk. "Should I go over and ask someone."
"I've been trying not to. Hospitals make me uncomfortable."
Michael offered a weak smile of reassurance. "Thanks for being here. Being uncomfortable on my own was the whole reason Vincent and I got together. I don't think I'd ever have told anyone I was gay if he hadn't made it seem so attractive. He hand-held me through Mardis Gras, let me watch the stage show, let me realize that there were a vast number of people -- too many to be coincidence or fake cult -- who knew what I was thinking was normal."
"But he didn't quite convince you to put on drag?" Daryl asked. "I mean, it's odd, one guy going out in a dress, the other not."
"That was the next big thing. I didn't have the guts -- but he never accused me of that."
There was a rustle of hospital-blue as a nurse came down the corridor and slowed as he neared them. "Mr. Pullen?"
Michael nodded.
"Would you come through to the relative's room, please."

The boiling kettle burned his hand and he opened his eyes. "Shit," he whispered to himself, too loud for Daryl not to hear.
"You okay?" Daryl called, moving to Michael's side as he rushed his reddening palm under the cold tap.
"Yeah, just tired." He closed his eyes deliberately. "Not sure I can go up and sleep in that bed though." In the darkness he listened to the music from the living room. It had changed tempo at dawn when the swollen mournfulness of Morcheeba, to which Michael and Vincent had made love many times, changed to the offbeat passion of Divine Comedy, a favourite of Daryl's.
"You could listen to music at my place, and I could make the tea. You wouldn't fall asleep over the kettle."
"I wasn't asleep," Michael protested, as if it mattered. "I was just trying to think...feel...Vincent back again. I could smell the lilies from the other room. It was stronger when I had my eyes closed."
Daryl raised his head and tested the air. "I can't smell."
"You pick your nose too much." Michael smiled. "You'll get an infection up there one day."
"You need a dressing on that?" Daryl snorted. He was too cute to be disgusting; brown hair parted down the middle, black eyes shining from a pale face. He reached out and took Michael's heat bruised hand. Turning it palm up, he looked down at an angry sea of lines. "Your future." He raised the hand and laid his lips upon the back of Michael's fingers.
"Daryl, please." he did not pull back, those words were enough. "Not here."
Daryl let Michael's arm drop, but their fingers remained entwined. "I smell the Lilies now."
Michael shook his head, looking down at the tight knot of fingers, reaching out for a kiss. "I don't."


"I feel honoured you came back." Said Michael, running his sore palm horizontally across the hairless curves of Daryl's chest. "But I'm not sure we can do this again. Not after tonight."
"Why?"
“Well, what about Sean? We'd parted company two weeks before you started seeing him."
Daryl turned his head on the pillow to look at Michael. "At the funeral I asked you about Vincent. Well, the answer's the same for me as it is for you. Sometimes we can't help moving on. Circumstance demands it."
"But Sean's alive."
"And so is Vincent," Daryl touched Michael's cheek, "with you. You feel the same kind of betrayal. Don't you."
Michael did not answer, did not even nod, but Daryl had his reply.
"And just like you I can't help this." Another kiss, just as gentle, without a hint of hesitation. "I love you Michael."
And Michael realized that, for him, the choice was easy, the conscience clear, his lover dead and buried. He could intellectualize the guilt and not be trapped by it. Daryl would have to deal with it and, at that moment, it did not seem to be a problem.


Michael woke in the hot clutches of an empty bed, the sweet smell of Lilies dancing like motes of dust in his nostrils.
He raised his head from the pillow. "Daryl?"
No sound of movement from downstairs: no kettle boiling, no rustle of the newspaper or hiss of the frying pan. The alarm clock read 9.30am, his watch 10 and he guessed the time was somewhere in-between. Daryl would be at what he called a job -- handing out free magazines to hapless commuters at Charing Cross rail station. Now, he would either have to phone in sick or admit to being late for work. He chose the latter, calling Kerry from the phone on the bedside table. "You've got an eleven o'clock," she reminded him, "and you've cancelled once already."
Michael showered and breakfasted on two slippery slices of toast. He washed up the excess of dishes and scraped daubes of candle wax from the bare floorboards in the front room where they had fallen the night before. Only now was he confident enough to greet the steady rain that was beating hard on the double-glazing.
He took his golfing umbrella from the rack in the hallway and opened the front door against the four-day tide of post that lay across the dark stained floorboards.
Raindrops prickled against his hands and face, out riders of the heavy drizzle that soaked the tiny square lawn, and rapped on the metal dustbin below the steps. Head lowered against the rising wind, he descended and drew level with the open top bin. He gagged at the foul musk of rain-stirred rubbish swelling like rotting leaves. The stench urged him to rush past, but a sweeter, underlying scent made him pause and look down.
Sprawled on a blanket of sodden celebrity magazines, the petals of six white lilies twitched in the rain. The aroma here was rich but not strong enough to reach inside the house. He frowned and looked up at the bedroom window, expecting, but still shocked to see -- if only for an instant -- a face painted in dull daylight and warped glass where once, beyond, Vincent had stood.
The moment he realised the illusion, light and glass seemed to rearrange themselves, putting back the mask of reality. Michael’s glance returned to the bin and the corpses of the lilies.
The cloying odour had vanished in the gale.

It was Michael's choice: Thai restaurant, celebrity owner and, most importantly, close to home. The service was fast, so they had each finished a Chicken Korma and drained their first bottle of Chardonnay before they started to relax.
"I miss the flowers," Said Michael. "Even in the winter Vincent used to get them, from a stall on the Leicester Road."
"I could buy you some tomorrow."
"I'm not sure it would be a good idea."
"Always Lilies?"
Michael nodded. "Or Orchids. He wanted something elegant in his life."
"Did the flowers come first, or Vincent's drag name?"
"Not sure," Michael pressed the tip of his chopstick into a gleaming white wedge of Chicken and only spoke when it was burning the roof of his mouth. "He started doing drag when he was 15."
"Fuck. Isn't that a bit obscene. Was this for someone?"
"He showed me some black and white photos. I thought the make up made him look a bit unnatural but he was still...beautiful. Does it shock you?"
"I'm not sure I have the right to be shocked. You loved him."
"Even some of my gay friends found it difficult to believe that I could fall for someone who goes out to clubs in a dress: but it didn't matter. When I first met him all I wanted to do was fuck him. He was the most incredible man I've ever touched. But four years...I still thought he was beautiful but I also loved his kindness, his gentleness, even the way he used to be so adamant about his political views. To be that close to someone all the time, to look after them when they needed it, trust them when you needed it. How can anyone hate you for that?" He added, "Least of all your parents."
"I don't know," Daryl sighed. "Do you still love him?"
"How can I? He's gone."
"But everything you have just described is still there, except the physical bit. You can still feel it."
"Yes," Michael agreed. He smiled, "But that doesn't mean I can't get to love someone else now." He reached out his hand to touch Daryl's fingertips but thought better of it as the blue uniformed waitress approached with another bottle of wine.

"Why the bare floorboards?" Daryl asked. He lay in the crook of the green leather sofa opposite the empty fireplace, a mug of coffee balanced against his thigh.
"Vincent loved candles, big ones with huge brass altar sticks. They're messy, drip on the floor. He used an iron to peel up the wax each morning - can't do that with carpet."
Daryl gestured at the bowel of floating candles on the low pine coffee table. "So, you're carrying on the tradition."
Michael blew the long match out and threw it over the copper fireguard. "Saves electricity -- the bills are astronomical."
Daryl lowered the mug from his lips, drinking in the steam. "It’s also very gothic." He drew up his legs and let Michael sit down. "And very Vincent".
"Is that really a bad thing?”
"I didn't say so." Daryl reassured him, tapping Michael’s thigh with his fingertips. "As a transition it's -- reassuring."
"A transition?"
"Between death and life," said Daryl, "Isn't that where you're at right now?"
Michael sighed and shrugged. "It's not something I would have realized on my own." He touched Daryl's rough cheek, leaned forward and kissed him. "Do you believe in ghosts?"
Daryl looked around at the candles and smiled. "I could, now."
"Do you?" Michael said more earnestly than he had meant.
"As memories that can destroy the present, yes," Daryl nodded, "Nothing more." He reached out for another kiss but Michael pulled back. "Why?" Daryl asked.
"If we make love tonight, please let's not do it upstairs."
Daryl stood and laughed. "Why? Michael." The frown on his face made Michael regret his words, but not enough. "Maybe you're right, about the memories. The bedroom -- "
"You didn't have a problem last night." Daryl backed towards the doorway, the hall, and the stairs. He held out his arm and beckoned with a finger. "Please Michael."

The sex was barbaric, frantic and confusing: as effective an exorcism as he had ever known. Michael held Daryl's face down on the pillow as he forced himself into him. He willed himself forward with each savage, grunting thrust as if, when the moment arrived and his seed spurted from him, his consciousness would go with it and he could leave this place as someone else.
The orgasm melted way leaving his groin tingling, his prick irritated by the wet rubber of the condom. But he was frightened to look up, to leave bedroom for the bathroom as he had done so often after sex with Vincent. Instead, he lowered his own face into Daryl's hair and closed his eyes against the sour smell of sweat.
He drifted to sleep with the sweet scent of lilies tranquilizing his consciousness. There were no flowers in the flat, but he was too enmeshed with Daryl to properly decipher, or care about, this impossibility. It was a fact of this place, he accepted it, but there was someone here with him and that someone was as strong as any perfume, no matter how poisonous.
In what seemed just moments later he coughed, choked and lifted his head from Daryl's cooling neck. The pungent smell of lilies rose in his head and squirmed like an eel in his empty stomach.
"Daryl?" He choked and coughed again before seeing the haze in the bedroom. It drifted like fog in the candlelight spiraling up towards the roof, attempting to escape the orange glow that flickered beyond the doorway.
Not lilies. Paint. Burning paint. The candles left alight downstairs. "Daryl?" He gasped, breathing in bitter smoke, "Daryl, get up." He slapped the naked boy under him. "Now."
Their clothes lay scattered on the warm rough-boarded floor but the grey smoke that stroked at their ankles deterred them from rescuing more than their underpants.
They stumbled onto the landing, its walls flaring with the light of the crackling, hissing inferno below. Daryl stepped down the creaking stairs but a sound beyond the spit of the fire brought Michael to a halt.
His name.
Michael turned, but there was no movement or light from the darkness behind, so he looked around to find that Daryl was no longer on the stairs. The boy had obviously escaped and he must do the same, not pause to worry about just what he might be leaving behind.
He stepped into the plain of fire that raged around him, yet it was the familiar slender figure looking out of the window that caught his attention. Glass shattered in front of it, the flaming curtains fell on either side and still the figure remained calm.
At last the form moved, turning slowly to meet Michael's frantic, stinging gaze. "Vincent?" he muttered, throat sore with smoke.
But the figure was not the thickly painted, over exaggerated, caricature he expected. Here was a face so delicate and white with shining, feminine beauty that Michael almost had to look away.
"Vincent?" Given the perfection of this woman's features he was unsure how he knew, yet that slight, impertinent smile was there; Lily's trademark on life.
Michael let out a breath, unsure how he had managed to gather it in, and drew another; heat and fear flowed with it. He looked at Lily for signs of malice, lust for revenge on a partner who had taken another lover despite such a recent loss.
There were none, just tears for an existence so desperately sought in life, so gratefully accepted now. "It's a dangerous habit, lighting candles and leaving them -- something I never appreciated until they couldn't hurt me."
"Vincent." He approached her, oblivious to the mounting heat and whispering flames around him, so certain of the love he still felt. Within an arm's length he stopped.
"Don't be scared sweetheart," Lily whispered, "I won't let them hurt you."
Michael frowned, aware of the heat and the cool sweat on his skin that seemed to be warding it off. "But I thought --"
If Michael had ever believed that ghosts could not feel pain the look on Lily's face showed it for a fable. "Oh sweetheart, how could I blame you for wanting to feel happy?" Lily smirked. "Why would I want revenge when I look like this?"
"Some transformation," Michael whispered against his own tears.
"Not for me."
"You're a strange saviour."
"Not anymore," Lily beamed, "This is reality babe."
For a second it was Vincent's gentle voice, his laugh, his assurance. The tears reached Michael’s lips. He leaned forward for a kiss, his body shaking, but Lily lifted her slender palm. She raised her head, as if listening beyond the fury of the flames. "Daryl's outside. You'd better go."
"No," Michael groaned, and then made up his mind. "Not yet. Let me stay."
That smile again. "You're flesh and blood. While you're that it's unnatural to want to be anything else. You can't be what you're not. Accept it now."
His pleading sobs almost tore him apart. "But I want to be."
She shook her head solemnly and reached out as if bestowing a gift. Her fingertips touched him...and fire burned his cheek.
Pleading with pain, spurred on by howling dervishes of flame, he rushed to the door and out into the icy night air where he stood, anaesthetized.
Daryl's voice drew him from the porch and down the steps. Behind him flame bowed and bellowed through window cavities on both floors, consuming all the life and memories of the house.
Michael turned and staggered backward. Daryl touched his arm, leaned close and whispered. "I thought you weren't coming out."
"So did I."
"What?"
Michael turned to face him, tears still drying on his cheeks. "I changed my mind."
“What?” Daryl asked again.
“I can’t be what I’m not,” he said with firmness that maybe only he understood. “At least, not yet.”
© John Gilbert, 2004