Prologue #2
Graham leaned forward, keeping one arm hooked around the older man’s neck, and flattened his small hand on the surface of the lake—then squealed and jerked his hand back, his mouth a startled “O”. “Something tickled me!”
Chuckling, Quinn said, “Put your hand back. It won’t hurt you.”
Graham grinned uncertainly, then slowly dipped his fingers into the water, then his whole hand. He started to jerk away again on reflex, but hesitated as the silky filaments threaded around his hand and through his fingers. “What… What is it, Grandpa?”
“It’s the secret,” Quinn murmured. “It’s… Lochlan.”
It took a moment for Graham to process his grandfather’s words as he watched with wide-eyed fascination as the tiny tendrils coiled gently around his small hand and wriggled up along his wrist. “Lochlan…?”
“He isn’t just a story,” Quinn said softly. “He’s real. And this is his lake.”
Graham’s eyes widened a bit more. “He… He’s real?”
“He is.”
“What…” Graham stared at his hand. “What is he… doing?”
Quinn laughed lightly. “He’s saying hello. I’ve told him all about you. He couldn’t wait to meet you. He wants to be your friend.”
When the tendrils withdrew beneath the surface, Graham slowly raised his hand from the water, mystified.
“Are you afraid?” Quinn asked. “Now that you know he is real? Does that scare you?”
Graham shook his head, face aglow with awe as he stared at the water and the filaments swirling just below the surface.
“He can help teach you to swim.”
“Really?” Graham beamed.
“Of course. I’m a good swimmer, but not nearly as good as Lochlan.” Quinn loosened the boy’s arm from around his neck. “Are you ready?”
“Uh-huh.” Graham trembled with excitement.
“You’re not scared?”
“Nope.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “He’s going to help me hold you up so you can practice using your arms and legs to swim. All right?”
Graham nodded, shivering a little as Quinn lowered him into the water.
The surface rippled as a tentacle, a few inches in diameter, coiled gently around the boy’s midsection. Graham gasped, eyes growing bigger in childlike wonder and surprise.
“Are you okay?” Quinn asked. “Still not scared?”
“I’m okay.” Graham grinned, face aglow with wonderment. “I’m not scared.”
“Good.” Quinn smiled, his hand on the boy’s back. “Lochlan would never hurt you.”
“I know.”
Despite the boy’s earlier insistence that he wouldn’t be afraid of Lochlan if he were real, Quinn was still a bit shocked that Graham accepted the creature’s existence without a flicker of fear. His complete trust in Lochlan as a friend was simply added evidence of the boy’s special qualities.
Silty tendrils played with Quinn’s toes on the muddy lakebed, tickling his feet with tiny kisses. Quinn wriggled his toes as a bittersweet emotion squeezed his heart. He will take care of you when I’m gone… please take care of him, too.
Quinn blinked away tears that started to rise, and immersed himself in the joy of the moment.
With any luck, it would be many years before he left this earth.
He was in good health, physically fit, and did everything he could to stay that way.
It was inevitable that he would die one day; there was no getting out of it.
But he would ward it off for as long as possible, garnering as many years as he could gather with Lochlan… and Graham.
The boy squealed as Lochlan lifted him so he was lying on his stomach on the surface of the water.
Quinn let his thoughts fade to the back of his mind and grinned as he flattened his hand on the child’s back.
“First, I’ll teach you to dog paddle. It’s the easiest. Cup your hands like this.
” He demonstrated with his own hands. Graham imitated him.
“Then reach your arms out in front of you and start scooping the water rapidly with your hands while kicking your feet. You’ve seen how a dog swims, right? ”
“Yeah.”
“Do it like that. I’ll show you.” Quinn pushed off the lakebed into deeper water and thrashed around, dog paddling.
He felt a little ridiculous, but Graham found it funny and giggled loudly.
The lake quivered around Quinn’s body as if Lochlan, too, were laughing at him.
“Hey, give me a break,” Quinn scowled, hiding a grin.
“I haven’t dog paddled since I was a kid. Do you know how long ago that was?”
Graham snickered. “A long, long time ago.”
“That was a rhetorical question.” Quinn made a face at the boy as he bobbed in the water. “I don’t need to be reminded how old I am.”
Graham giggled. “You’re not that old.”
“Well, thank you for that… vote of confidence.” He wiped water from his face.
“Okay. Your turn. Do it like I did, but maybe with… more grace.” He rolled his eyes, and Graham laughed.
Another ripple in the lake vibrated through Quinn.
“Lochlan is laughing at me, too. You two are not allowed to gang up on me.”
“Uh-huh,” Graham giggled hard when the tentacle holding him quivered, tickling the boy.
“All right, all right,” Quinn chuckled. “Show me what you got.”
The afternoon wound toward early evening with them in the water.
Graham was a quick learner, and it didn’t take long before he was swimming on his own, with Quinn and Lochlan staying close by his side.
Quinn watched with deep love and affection as Lochlan played with the boy, developing bonds that Quinn believed would remain for years to come.
When the sun dipped toward the horizon, and they left the water, Graham paused at the shore and looked back, his young face glistening in the fading sunlight. “Bye, Lochlan!” He waved wildly. “See you tomorrow!”
The surface roiled as tentacles broke the surface, as if the gentle giant were waving back at his new friend.
Quinn cooked dinner on a wood cook stove. Though the cabin was equipped with a generator, Quinn preferred cooking on the wood stove or the gas burners. He used oil lamps for lighting, while keeping gas lanterns and flashlights for when he needed to go outside after dark.
“Did Grandma Em know about Lochlan?” Graham asked as they sat at the small table, eating their dinner.
“No, she didn’t,” Quinn said, thoughts of Emily warming his heart…
igniting a soft ache. He missed his sweet Emily.
She had passed away within an hour of giving birth to Adam due to complications.
She’d known she was going to die, though Quinn had insisted she was strong and would make it.
She knew it was her time to go. No bitterness consumed her—rather, she was thankful that God had let her live long enough to hold her newborn baby.
“Because Lochlan was a secret?”
“Yeah.” Quinn smiled small. “It wasn’t because I didn’t trust her with the secret—I trusted her more than anyone I knew—but some secrets are only for yourself.”
“I wish Grandma Em didn’t die.”
“Me, too, Graham,” Quinn murmured. All Adam and Graham knew about Emily came from Quinn.
He didn’t need to exaggerate her admirable qualities; she simply was incredible.
When Emily became pregnant and her boyfriend, who had professed his love and desire to marry her, abandoned her, Quinn immediately stepped in.
In the sixties, unwed mothers faced ridicule and scorn, but Quinn refused to let that happen to Emily.
She was hesitant to accept his proposal initially, knowing he was gay, but he assured her that their marriage wouldn’t alter his life and that his love was genuine, even if not romantic.
She agreed to marry him, and they enjoyed a blissful few months until Adam was born and Emily left them.
Quinn had promised to raise Adam as his own, and to this day, Adam believed that Quinn was his real father.
You are his real father. He had been there through all of Adam’s “firsts”, had been his emotional support after the near-fatal swimming incident, and his financial support for college.
As a single father, Quinn had developed a close relationship with Adam that remained over the years.
When Adam got married, Quinn gave them their space as newlyweds and spent even more time at the lake.
He and Adam had drifted apart somewhat by the time Graham was born, but his grandson had drawn them back together.
“I bet Grandma Em would’ve thought Lochlan was cool.” Graham smiled.
Chuckling softly, Quinn nodded. “I agree. She was pretty cool herself. I think they would have gotten along well.” He could have trusted Emily with the secret of Lochlan’s existence, but his intimate relationship with Lochlan wasn’t something he could have ever shared with her or anyone.
Though he did speak to her of “Lochlan”—the reason he spent time at the cabin—she believed he was a man whom Quinn was in love with, and discreetly met at the cabin to prevent public scandal for Emily.
There was a grain of truth in that; he did love Lochlan.
Just after midnight, well past Graham’s bedtime, while the boy spirited through his dreams, Quinn left the cabin and walked down to the lake.
As the water lapped at his bare feet, Quinn undressed and waded in, the warmth of the afternoon sun reflected in the lake.
Moonlight shimmered on the water as gentle ripples rolled across the surface, meeting Quinn, ebbing his body.
As he swam deeper, the world beneath the surface began to awaken.
The warm water circled around his thighs as slick tentacles reached up from below, exploring his legs and gently coiling around his lower limbs.
Quinn shivered pleasantly as they suctioned to his skin, pulsating…
and pulling him under. He closed his eyes and held his breath when his head slipped under the surface, and when the thin, slippery tendril probed his mouth, he opened up.
A shudder of ecstasy rushed through him as the tendril slid down his throat and entered his lungs. He experienced that familiar burst of breath—nothing like the feeling of breathing oxygen, yet it sustained his life.
Lochlan surrounded him, tentacles—arms—of various thicknesses, curled around his aching body, while others intertwined in front of him, forming a mass that drew him closer.
Quinn moaned past the small tentacle pulsing inside his throat as another slightly larger one probed his mouth, the tip opening like a petal.
A tongue-like appendage emerged, tracing the lines of Quinn’s lips.
Quinn opened his mouth a little wider, and it slipped inside, exploring before coiling his tongue.
Quinn pressed against the mass, his hands caressing the slick “flesh” of the being he had come to desire and cherish, his love for Lochlan growing stronger with each passing year. Spending winters away from him was agony, but coming “home” was pure ecstasy.
‘I miss you so much when we’re apart,’ the words whispered from his soul, from every nerve ending, every molecule that made up his being.
An energy responded—not in words, but with an eruption of emotion and light that surged through Quinn’s veins and arteries, through the synapses of his brain fibers, setting off a kaleidoscope of light and colors inside his mind, his spirit. The expression of love.
The consuming sensations ignited Quinn’s arousal and passion, and he trembled as his hips rolled against Lochlan’s “body”, his hard member squeezing between the slick, tightly knit tentacles.
A shuddered rippled through him as the appendage in his mouth began to throb and gently thrust into the back of his throat.
He pushed his hips more urgently forward, gliding his engorged cock through the hard, fleshy roots, pulsating with tiny suckers that gripped and tasted his shaft.
Quinn whimpered, his loins burning with need.
A cave opened inside the mass of tentacles, and he thrust into the fleshy maw, which immediately closed around his erection.
A thousand tiny mouths attached to his dick, sucking him off as the larger “muscle” surrounding his member began to quiver; pulsing throbs rolling up and down his shaft.
His eyes rolling back, Quinn clung to Lochlan and pumped his hips faster, his loins on fire.
He sucked desperately on the appendage in his mouth, feeling it swell and quiver as it stretched further down his throat.
He moaned and sucked with more force, fucking his lover deeper, harder, his thick root slipping urgently inside the cave, now filling up with a warm, slimy substance that tingled his cock.
Shudders coursed through his tense body, and he gasped around the tentacle fucking his mouth when a quite thick appendage nudged his anus.
Quinn squeezed his eyes shut and parted his legs as the tip of the tentacle excreted a glob of slime into his hole before beginning its invasion of his anal cavity.
Quinn’s jaw dropped, opening his mouth wide, when the engorged appendage squeezed its “head” into his ass, the slippery substance aiding the penetration.
Even with the lubrication, his cave stretched to unimaginable proportions as Lochlan entered him, inch by massive inch, sliding deep into his core.
An explosion of ecstasy burst through Quinn, and he came into the sucking maw.
A quiver ran through the mass as the tiny mouths milked his shaft with frenzied delight.
His heart pounding, Quinn pressed more tightly to the shuddering mass.
The tentacle, pumping deeper into his ass, nudged his prostate.
Quinn whimpered, hungrily sucking on the appendage that continued to swell and throb against his tongue and inside his throat canal.
The head of the tentacle inside him fluttered open and latched onto the walnut-sized gland, a pulsing suction ensuing.
Quinn’s whole body convulsed, rippling the water around him.
Fireworks of lights and colors went off in his head—and he blew another load of cum into Lochlan.
In his mind and spirit, he felt Lochlan’s ecstasy, his hunger for Quinn.
Lochlan’s “arms” tightened around Quinn, and his “cock” thrust deeper, excreting slimy deposits inside his anal cavity.
‘I love you, Lochlan… I want to feel you… fill me…’
The mass quivered violently, and Lochlan released into Quinn’s mouth—a sweet nectar that filled his throat.
He swallowed rapidly, sucking the pulsing appendage, eager for every drop.
Another almost explosive quiver surged through the mass, and Lochlan came in his ass—an eruption of thick, slimy heat that permeated his prostate.
Quinn gasped from deep in his core and ejaculated a third time.
A sudden stillness settled over the lovers, soft tremors emanating from both bodies as they floated beneath the surface in the afterglow of their unique love—souls linked, transcending human passion and emotion.