A Rescue Twinks Novel: Worth A Thousand Words

By Cherie Noel

Meeting the “one” at the local Christmas Village where he’s playing Santa and you’re on-call as a sexy elf in shimmering Elf-A-Go-Go shorts, getting to happily ever after should be a snap, right?

Right?

Well, not if you’re Adrien Jimenez, possibly the only pretend elf in the world whose picture comes up if you do a Google image search for Murphy’s Law. Mix in a brother with a penchant for creating embarrassing videos and an itchy finger on the YouTube upload button, a brand-spanking new boyfriend with some tricky issues of his own and a bff trying to dress you up in his kid sister’s Ren-Faire cast-offs, anything that can go wrong is almost bound to do so.

Oh, and don’t forget the unbalanced stalker coming for his one true love... Come on back to the land of The Rescue Twinks. We’re calling a level seven Black-Sparkle Glitter Alert, so heist up your hose and come at a run!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cherie Noel
• Release date: Aug 24, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301024742

Cherie Noel

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker...ummm, eww, every chance I get, and I surely would if these damn characters would ever shut up. Born in West Palm Beach, Florida and raised...er, is all over the damn place a sufficiently descriptive term? No? Then how about this? Tinker, tailor, Indian chief...Ooooh, especially when smexy men are involved (!), only under duress, and did the cheek-bones give it away?Seriously? I’ve lived in Washington D.C., Virginia, Upper Michigan, Texas, New York, California, and Alabama in the United States; Hessen in Germany, London in England, Masirah Island in Oman and...sometimes it was in a house, sometimes in a tent, and sometimes anyplace I could find to lay my head.I’ve been in love with words since before I drew breath, and I don’t see that ever changing. I write stories. Sometimes I write music with them, sometimes they’re poems, and lately, to my great delight, M/M erotic romance. Yum. Smexy man to the second...or third power...now that’s the kinda math I can get behind!!The hair curls or frizzes as it will, the eyes are green and tend to look in two different directions—no, really—and the rest is subject to change. You know the guy who didn’t know if he was a butterfly dreaming he was a man or a man dreaming he was a butterfly? Yeah, that’s me, but substitute drag queen for butterfly and wacky, wild ex-Army chick for man.

Book preview

Worth a Thousand Words

A Rescue Twinks Novel

#2

Cherie Noel

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This book should not be copied in any format, sold, or

otherwise transferred from your computer to another

through upload to a file sharing peer to peer program,

for free or for a fee, or as a prize in any contest. Such action is illegal

Everywhere except the land of UtaDamDenial.

It is also a blatantly meanie-butt maneuver.

It takes the author’s hard earned ducats

(that’s greenbacks to you)

right out of their pockets.

Just don’t do it.

Cover Artist: A.J. Corza

Editor: Raevyn McCann

Worth a Thousand Words 2nd Edition © March 2015 Cherie Noel

Attention Readers: This book uses Ameriglish. English speakers from other countries should consider themselves warned…there will be donuts rather than doughnuts.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED: This literary work may not be

reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including

electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, without

express written permission of the publisher. All characters and events in this book are

fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is strictly

coincidental. The Licensed Art Material is being used for illustrative

purposes only; any person depicted in the Licensed Art Material is a model.

PUBLISHER: JAB-ON-SNAG BOOKS

~~We’re a wee little house, made up of equal parts dragonfly and butterfly. It’s said single flap of a butterfly’s wing can create a hurricane on the opposite side of the word. It’s said dragonflies heal, transform, protect, and are fluid as water. Jab-on-Snag Press embodies the essence of both creatures, for we seek to gently make the world more beautiful, sweet, silly and fun for all people…one book at a time.~~

TRADEMARKS ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The author acknowledges the trademarked status and

trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

YouTube

Tumblr

Drakkar Noir

Jeep

Penske

FaceBook

Google

Goodwill Industries

iPad

Gay-Straight Alliance

Bedazzle

Hostess Twinkies

Doctor Who

Cujo

Chevy Nova/Chrysler Corporation

Better Homes and Gardens Magazine

GMC Jimmy

The Fantastic Four/Marvel Comics

****

Additional Acknowledgements:

Special Thanks are owed, for many and various reasons to:

Raevyn McCann

Val L. Hughes

Paul Sludd

Carl Carter

Jennifer Saul

Lisa Gerbino

Lynn Mulheron

Jambrea Jo Jones

Tracy Tucker Faul

Taylor V. Donovan

Crouse Hospital Nursing Program

Schine Student Union Dining Hall

Quinetta, Matt, and all the other peeps I worked with at the Schine, half a lifetime ago…

And of course, the incomparable Kidlet who flings Glitter

and Flat Puppies (aka Plot Bunnies) around my house on the regular.

You were all necessary to this work.

Dedication

Always and always, every story is for Patric, my Balthazar.

This one is also for every soldier who fights arduous battles to protect those at home yet arrives back among those he or she fought so hard to protect

carrying myriad invisible but still bloody wounds…

May you find an Adrien somewhere near to hand in your world;

that one person whose heart is big enough to forgive the hurts you pass along when no one sees the wounds you still bleed from, and whose will is strong enough to forge a path to healing your weary feet can follow.

Prologue

Raymond Dieterman stroked his long fingers along the fine grain of the picture frame’s wooden edge. The tall, dark haired, dark eyed man laughing out at him from a narrow wood and glass prison urged him to hurry, hurry, hurry. Turning up the volume on his music player, one, two, three times, he smiled. Rosanne Cash understood. Yes. The soul took blows to be cleansed. She understood perfectly.

Scrutinizing the photograph closely Raymond searched for the pivotal item. The one thing which brought clarity to him on this issue. Ah, where…there…just at the lower left corner of the picture. A narrow brown boot, just inside the frame of the shot held all the significance if one knew what one looked for. Yes, yes, yes. There. Three gouges along the edge of the sole. They were put there by shrapnel from a land mine. The boot was a size fourteen narrow. Raymond should know. They were his boots, and he’d been saved from death by the laughing god whose face held court from the central point in the frame. The laughing god…he belonged to Raymond, and Raymond alone.

Yes, yes, yes.

Raymond, dear, are you coming to dinner? Mama’s voice quavered a touch. He couldn’t rightly recall if it shook like this before he left. Maybe she was sickening for something. Raymond shrugged. Hard to tell without looking in her eyes. She stood on the other side of his bedroom door, surrounded by shockingly bright lights. Even without the sickly smell of overcooked foods, the overabundance of florescence made seeing her tricky.

Raymond should know. He’d opened the door twice since he’d been sent home from the war. Both times the harsh florescent lights out there stabbed into his eyes. He could hear them almost, snickering and whispering in sibilant tones. Mama said the sound warn’t nothing but a hum-hum-hum from those soul killing lights, but Raymond knew better. His chin dipped in three hard, fast motions. Yes, yes, yes. That noise in his mama’s hallway were more of a hiss-hiss-hiss. Sounded like those horned demon snakes he saw over in the desert. And that didn’t even begin to account for the smell.

Dear Lord. The smell was terrible, like somebody smashed up handfuls of mashed potatoes and ground beef. Grabbed it after the food got dumped into those fifty-gallon garbage cans from out in back of the chow hall. Let that crap stand in the hundred and fifteen degree heat of the Middle Eastern sun all day and then shoved that foul shit straight up his nose.

Raymond’s sides and his chest heaved as he tried to get a breath in through the suffocating smell. He could go out there. Be pure foolish to even try. Mama, bless her heart, kept calling.

The first time mama called him to supper after he got home, he tried. He really did, ’cause sure as baby Jesus’s mama was named Mary, Raymond had always been a good son. So when Raymond’s mama called, he hopped up off his bed right quick. Double checked his shirttail was tucked into the back of his desert camo BDU’s proper like it should. Then, after he tightened his laces good and tight, he pulled that door wide open.

Oh, but mama baked fish that night. The heavy scent lingered like a coke slut in a crack house. In the end, Raymond bleached the entire kitchen so he could sleep. He swallowed down hot and sour gulps of air and bile. His throat stayed filled up with a nasty taste just thinking of the scent. Lingering fish. He threw up a little in his mouth. Then he rocked forward in his seat, back, forward, back, one, two, three, one, two, three.

Not now, Mama. Not now, not now. I’ll eat later, okay? Later, later. He whispered the last two words, wincing at the rough sound of his ruined voice. The VA doctors said with time and rest, he’d recover. He might even sing again. The songs only mattered if he could sing them to his god, though. He—

Ray, sweetie— Her high, shrill tones reverberated against the edges of his teeth, scraped dirty, jagged fingernails against the back of his throat and beat into his heart, his eyes, his heart, lungs, heart, heart…

"I said no, Mama. No-no-no. Can’t you understand that? Can’t you understand anything? Can’t you understand?" Somehow, Raymond stood to his feet, hands throbbing as he beat them bang-bang-bang against the heavy wood door. The door jerked and shuddered with the impact. Raymond watched, eyes wide and heart beating right out of his chest. He pressed those bad hands, pressed them flat against the solid wood, pressed them down tight. His voice, ragged, growling, and damn near roaring sprang from his throat while he watched from behind a glass partition.

Silence, and then the thick quaver of his mother speaking came to Raymond. A sneer twisted his mouth right up. He tried to stop it, ’cause this were Mama, but sometimes no matter how much a man might wish and pray, that dog don’t hunt. The sneer on his mouth twisted its way down inside his chest. He could imagine her there, chin firmed up to a brave little point and her hands clasped in an attitude of prayer. Sure as June bugs, Mama would be a’praying. Her high, mouse squeak voice thickened like mud to the bottom of a puddle in August when she spoke through the heavy wetness of a hurting heart.

Her face would be wet—Raymond stroked the door lightly—soaked from the eyelashes down with hot, hot, hot tears. Mama weren’t a pretty crier. She’d have little snot bubbles escaping her nose, and her complexion would be blotchy. The sound of soft weeping crept around the edges and under the bottom of the door. Raymond pressed his hands harder against the wood, pressed until the tips of his fingers grew white with strain. He found a rough patch on the door, fingers drawn like metal shavings to a magnet. Raymond knew this here patch of jagged wood. Raymond should know it good, shouldn’t he. He carved into the door right there when he was seventeen, didn’t he? He found the place and then he rubbed, rubbed, rubbed his face until the skin of his cheek tore, until his lungs stopped squeezing all the air out his body, until the whining screech and downright suffocating pressure in his head eased a bit. He drew in a trembling breath, pushing hard against the glass that hemmed him in.

Sorry, Mama, sorry, sorry…I don’t feel so good. My head aches, aches again, aches and I fell outta bed last night. Split my cheek open, Mama. Sure enough. Don’t you worry though. I’ll—I’ll come out later and eat. Don’t worry, Mama, don’t worry, don’t worry.

Something warm and wet slipped over the tip of his thumb. His hand rested against the door. Below the burning place on his cheek the wood shone darkly crimson. Raymond’s body jerked, his gut clenching as his stomach tried to empty itself. The hot iron scent rose, filling his head, and he had to get away. Raymond pushed back off the door, tightened his lips hard against his teeth, and took three deep breaths. Hoo-eeee, keepin’ ahold of his military bearing here in his mama’s house was a mite tougher than