Find'm

By Simon Graves

Find him on FIND'M!

FIND'M is the newest geosocial networking app for gay men that's turning heads and taking them off!

In this collection of 12 short stories by Simon Graves, the cursed app leads its users down bizarre and oftentimes deadly paths.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon Graves
• Release date: Sep 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311322470

Simon Graves

Simon Graves is an emerging author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy from Norfolk, Virginia. He has recently released his first horror short story collection and is currently working on a novella.

Book preview

FIND’M

By Simon Graves

Copyright 2014 Simon Graves

Smashwords Edition

All Rights Reserved

No part of this e-book may be reproduced or transmitted by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotations used in articles or reviews.

These stories are works of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Table of Contents

Into Brains?

First Time

Burned Before

Train 182

Hook Up

Got Pics?

Lone Wolf

Insatiable

He’s Closer

Another Headless Torso

45°

Looking?

About Simon Graves

Other Titles by Simon Graves

Connect with Simon Graves

Into Brains?

The house sat at the end of a short curving driveway that was cut off from the street by a small thicket of trees. It hadn’t taken Bryan long to find it. The mailbox was decorated with an action figure and curling vines painted in green and blue on a chipped white undercoat. A promising sight, not the kind of thing a serial killer decorates his mailbox with.

Bryan had promised himself that if anything seemed weird he would bail. He stepped off his bike onto the loose gravel and walked it up to the side of the house, leaning the bike against the white painted siding.

He pulled his smart phone out of his pocket again. This must have easily been the third time in the last five minutes he’d checked the house number in the message, and the floating icon with Jake’s picture in the FIND’M app. This was definitely the right place. He wiped his glasses on his shirt, ran his fingers through his hair, took a deep breath and walked up to the door.

This had been a long time coming. Finals had been hell, and it had totally killed his social life. Even worse, finals had been the final nail in the coffin for his budding romance with Nathan. That might not have been very serious, but it was something, and Bryan was sure it had been heating up. A few weeks with them both insane with stress had just killed it. Bryan could still feel the dull ache in his chest from the awkward way they’d said goodbye for the last time weeks before. He’d always imagined that relationships ended with a bang. With Nathan, it had just fizzled out into ill-fitting moments.

Bryan hadn’t gotten laid since then. He’d thought about checking someone out on FIND’M. He’d done it before… nearly. That time he’d arrived to the meet up but backed out. At first he told himself it was because there was something off about the bar they were meeting in, but if he was honest with himself, it was really because of the way he felt he looked naked. Scrawny, pale, a bit of a paunch forming from all the computer time. He knew he wasn’t fat, but he also knew he really needed to exercise more. Nathan had told him he had nothing to worry about, some guys just weren’t’ built, and Bryan wasn’t fat. He was just imagining it. That was the problem. The voice in his head sounded like his father, or like one of those gym ads that glared down at him from the billboards across from his room in town. Before and after shots of a pale, soft looking guy turning into a tan Adonis who actually looked happy. Bryan couldn’t help but slump a little when he looked at that.

This time though. He’d had enough to worry about with finals. Now that they were over a feeling of loneliness had started creeping in on him. A feeling of failure. The night before he’d contacted Jake, Bryan had lain in bed, unable to sleep for hours. The ache in his chest had filled into his throat, and hot tears had pricked at the corners of the eyes. He had felt this before. Bryan realized, while staring at his ceiling in the dark, that he could either take a risk or stay, as he was, unhappy and disappointed in himself. He’d taken a risk.

The guy he was meeting, Jake, said he was looking for no strings attached. He was a bit older, maybe by five year, and they’d been messaging for the past few days. Bryan wasn’t the kind of guy to just grab the first one that appeared. He must have looked at half the profiles for the guys in the downtown area and turned them down. He only spotted Jake’s because it was out near the old ‘haunted’ ironworks.

When he was a teenager, Bryan and his friend Tom had snuck in there on a dare. The place was creepy as hell, but Bryan had been a bit love drunk. Tom didn’t realize, thought they were just buds, but Bryan was young enough to still be carrying around that dumb hopefulness of youth. He remembered they’d been standing in a shattered section of the brick building, throwing stones into some standing water, Bryan complimenting Tom on his throws and making eyes at him when he wasn’t looking. That had been the first time Bryan had really known, had it come home to him without a doubt. He’d been about to tell Tom how he felt, the hope pushing the words up through the butterflies in his stomach, when Tom had told him to be quiet, his face becoming alert and concerned.

You hear that? Tom had asked.

Chains rattling from inside the ironworks. Bryan remembered the way all the hairs on his neck had sprung up. He remembered how his dad used to say, Sometimes you just gotta trust your gut.

Tom had stood up and looked along the broken section of brick wall into the darker portions of the ironworks interior, and then he had started to creep toward the sound. Bryan had tried to stop him, cementing itself as a piece of lifelong neurosis; Bryan whining like a coward to the first guy he was nuts about. Tom had kept creeping forward, one hand on the broken brick wall, eyes fixated on the dark interior, the chains rattling inside. Bryan didn’t know what it was about those chains, but he felt like they were both being watched, and it was freaking him out. Finally Tom had lost his nerve, and they’d both bolted, hurtling through the swampy trees out to the road. Moments later they were laughing and Tom was making fun of him for being scared. He never got another chance to tell Tom how he’d felt. He’d moved away a month or two later, his father being in the military. That had stuck with Bryan too. Missed chances.

Bryan couldn’t see the old ironworks from here; it was behind the house, down an overgrown asphalt road a few blocks away. Even if it’d been daytime, Bryan wouldn’t have gone and checked it out, and not just because they said it was haunted. In his memory that place went to Tom, then Tom to failure, self-doubt, those two to his loneliness, Nathan, the tone and happy billboard man. The ache moving up into his throat.

Still, it had led him here. He’d been looking down on the ironworks from the FIND’M app map, trying to spot the cracked, roofless brick enclosure he and Tom had sat in and thrown stones, when he’d glanced at Jake’s icon. The confident, scruffy face just hooked him. They started chatting, and Bryan didn’t know if it was the relief of finishing finals, or maybe some need from the thing with Nathan just dying, but they’d clicked. It was crazy, they’d only been chatting for a few days, but Bryan could feel the butterflies again, the longing pulling at him, and the love drunk lightness that reminded him of Tom.

Jake. They’d had long conversations. Bryan had told him about Tom, about Nathan, finishing finals, how he wanted to teach English Lit when he was done in college. Jake had told him how he had traveled the world before settling down here a few months ago. They’d talked about seeing Europe, China, and maybe even Africa. Jake talked about skydiving over Sydney, eating actual Chinese food in Shanghai’s back alleys, and reading Dylan Thomas to his partner at the time while they reclined in a tree top hotel bathtub, crickets echoing around them.

It’d been the last part that sealed it. Bryan loved Dylan Thomas, had a bit of a crush on him to be honest, along with a few other poets. Nathan had laughed when he found Bryan’s own handwritten poetry, and Bryan knew that had been one of the things that had come down between them. But Jake got it. He’d sent Bryan stanzas from his favorite poets, and Bryan had sent his own.

It was after their second four-hour text conversation that Bryan had started playing through their first real life meeting in his head. Lying in bed, the ache had been replaced by pictures of Jake opening his door and pulling Bryan into… love. Belonging.

The naivety of his teenage years may have died off, Happily Ever After was bullshit and we all die alone, but still, a deep part of him clung to the idea that one day he would meet someone who would slide right in with him. He’d never say this out loud of course, but he’d been saying it to Jake with every sentence he sent him.

Now his heart was hammering as he stood on the porch. It dawned on him as he stared at the door handle that he had made the almost always fatal mistake of building the whole thing up far too much. He could open this door and Jake could fail in every way. What if he had a stutter? What about a limp? Would that kill how Bryan felt? What if Jake was a rambling alcoholic who, in person, talked way too much about his ex?

A burst of birds broke out of the trees behind the house and drew Bryan out of his repeating thoughts and back into the just settling in night. It was getting dark now, the sun had slipped down behind the house, and Bryan could feel the damp of the nearby swamps rising and chilling in the air. He made up his mind, took a deep breath, walked up to the white front door, and pressed the doorbell. He heard it echo inside the house, and moments later heard someone approaching. A final burst of terror struck him, telling him to bolt off the porch, grab his bike, and get his ass home. He took another deep breath.

The door opened easily, and Jake, his chin covered in light scruff, smiled out at him.

Bryan.

The living room was small and cozy, warmly colored with a bright green couch taking up most of the space. It had two huge bay windows that looked out onto a deck at the backyard. Red curtains were drawn over them now. In the corner, a gentle, soothing woman’s voice played from a stereo, and it filled the small living room. Jake had poured them both a glass of pungent red wine, and the two glasses rested beside each other on green glass coffee table.

Jake was as interesting and attractive as their online conversations had suggested. He had a well-sculpted body that showed in his thick forearms. His smile was wide, bright, and seemed genuine. His face seemed well traveled, and he looked like he’d just come back from a round-the-world trip. There was a depth there too. Bryan thought he could sense the deep kind of sadness in Jake’s blue eyes that the truly introspective carry around with them, the kind of melancholy that brings about great poetry. Jake’s voice was deeper than Bryan’s and skirted over a baritone, not too rough, but warm and welcoming. It was enchanting, sweet. Bryan was caught as soon as they shook hands, feeling his heart jump and a silly grin settle on his face.

Bryan had taken his shoes off at the door and, while he was still nervous, most of the terror had been wiped away by how inviting Jake and the house were. All thoughts of serial killers evaporated. They had both curled up on the big couch, Jake’s foot resting lightly against Bryan’s. Bryan could feel himself blushing, could feel the wine warming him.

It had been ages since he’d been drunk. Unlike the stereotypical college student, Bryan didn’t go to parties and get completely smashed. He tended to be a bit reserved, and usually hung out with a small group of friends, maybe getting high if someone had some. Nathan had tried to get him to be a bit more outgoing, taking him to a few bigger house parties, but that had backfired when Bryan had gotten stupidly drunk with ridiculous ease. He’d ended up embarrassing Nathan and himself. That had been one more nail in the coffin.

Now, he could feel the wine making his cheeks flush, and he marveled at how quickly he’d gone through two glasses.

Want a refill? Jake asked him, himself nearly through his own.

Yes, please, I would, Bryan could feel himself getting a bit giddy, Hey, um, do you have a bathroom I could use?

Oh yeah, of course. Just to the left, third door on the right with the drawing of the two cowboys. Can’t miss it. Jake grinned.

Bryan got up heavily, and then walked into the hallway. He felt bouncy and could feel a grin plastered across his face. All his nerves were settling down. All his doubts about Jake not living up to his expectations vanished too. Jake was great. He was warm and funny, confident in a way Bryan just wasn’t, not yet at least.

On his way back from the bathroom, Bryan stopped to look at a painting. A girl with bright red hair was stretching in the nude beneath a volleyball. It was a very good painting, the motion of the girl almost appearing lifelike. Bryan could feel himself swaying just a little. It really surprised him how much of a lightweight he was.

Next to the painting, Bryan saw a picture of