STALK ME : A M/M Dark Romance Novel Read online

  STALK ME

  A DARK ROMANCE NOVEL

  BY:

  DAYA DANIELS

  Everyone wants to be adored, don’t they?

  I’ve been watching him…

  Because that’s what I do.

  Hour after hour.

  Day after painful day.

  Month after tediously long month.

  It has become a much-treasured pastime. A simple thing I truly take pleasure in between walking these streets as if they belong to me beneath the refuge of darkness than finding sleep. And just like this city, I never rest…

  At night, my spirit comes alive—blood flows stronger, every questionable thought which tiptoes around in my mind feels less wrong and consequences have no meaning. But when have they ever?

  I do whatever I like.

  After all, who could ever stop me?

  Every part of my famished soul feeds on his presence.

  Needs it. Breathes it. Believes in it.

  Worships it.

  I’m an affliction though—the worse kind—the type that eats away at you, consumes you from the inside out.

  Devastation. Desolation. Disorder.

  All in the purest sense.

  Everything I touch in this life eventually turns to ash which slips through my fingers.

  So, I’ve learned to keep my hands to myself.

  Still, I leave nothing behind.

  The plague never does.

  CONTENTS

  COPYRIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  DEDICATION

  PLAYLIST

  QUOTE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Little Boy Blue

  CHAPTER TWO

  Step on a Crack; Break Your Mother’s Back

  CHAPTER THREE

  Farewell, Mighty Bastard

  CHAPTER FOUR

  So Goddamn Cruel

  CHAPTER FIVE

  An Old Penny Never Rusts

  CHAPTER SIX

  All’s Fair in Love and Acrimony

  BONUS EXCERPT

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  STALK ME

  Copyright@ 2020 by Daya Daniels

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any way, including electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or any other means without the explicit written permission of the author, except for brief quotations of the book when writing a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, and even facts are the product of the author’s imagination. Wait a minute...especially facts. Any resemblance to actual people—alive, dead, or someplace in between—is completely by chance and likely in your head.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. Holy hell, this is important. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Let’s not forget! All song titles in this book are the property of the sole copyright owners.

  Thank you to J. Zweifel for proofreading this novel. As always, I appreciate you!

  For you, because you love my mind.

  PLAYLIST

  Click SPOTIFY to listen to songs inspired by this story

  “Closer” — Nine Inch Nails

  “Nessun Dorma (Puccini)” – Luciano Pavarotti

  “Jesus Christ Pose” — Soundgarden

  “Acid Rain” — Lorn

  “Master of Puppets” — Metallica

  “Burden in my Hand” — Soundgarden

  “Casta Diva (Bellini)” – Maria Callas

  “Don’t Cry” — Gun N’ Roses

  “Killing in the Name” — Rage Against the Machine

  “Purple Haze” — Jimi Hendrix

  “Limo Wreck” — Soundgarden

  “Sympathy for the Devil” — The Rolling Stones

  “Killing Strangers” — Marilyn Manson

  “Are You Experienced?” — Jimi Hendrix

  “Wherever I May Roam”— Metallica

  “Freak on a Leash” — Korn

  “C’est l’extase (Debussy)” — Montserrat Caballé

  “(Rock) Superstar” — Cypress Hill

  “Anvil” — Lorn

  “Cello Suite No. 1” – Johann Sebastian Bach

  “Baracuda” — Heart

  “Crazy Train”— Ozzy Osbourne

  “Walk” — Pantera

  “He who searches for evil must first look at his own reflection.”

  — Confucius

  WARNING: This dark romance novel contains strong language, strong sexual content, graphic violence and situations some readers may find disturbing.

  If you are sensitive to explicit sex, then this most definitely isn’t the book for you.

  Move along…nothing to see here.

  There are no trigger warnings.

  Proceed at your own risk.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Little Boy Blue

  Cooper

  THEY NEVER TELL YOU how long it’s all going to last.

  I suppose that’s because no one truly knows…

  A person can only read so many of those self-help books anyone can find tucked away in that corner of the bookstore most people avoid, take so much advice from well-meaning friends and relatives and agree to sit in the kumbaya circle of so many recovery support groups before they give up, walk away and allow whatever plan the universe has the chance to be executed, uninterrupted.

  You can’t stop life.

  No one can prevent the inevitable. There is no way to fortify oneself against occurrences that the elusive transition of time and fate bring. Although I’m sure many have tried—many may have died trying too or at least driven themselves insane with the attempt.

  Resigned, I can’t say I see the point of it all any longer, so now, I’ve simply decided to wait…

  To be patient.

  A cool wind rushes past me, dusts my cheeks and leaves them as chilled as my soul when it doesn’t stay for long and goes away. After I breathe in, I shut my eyes. I already miss it—wish it would come back, just like everything else that’s already left me to never return.

  Laughter coming from the three children playing in the distance fills my ears.

  It descends deep into the broken chambers of my heart and settles there. I allow it to simply because I don’t want it to leave…and leave me empty once again. I open my eyes and find myself fixated on all the joy ahead of me. The children don’t mind the cold. They play and play. The lot of them soon form a circle and hold hands, spinning, spinning and spinning. And then with a few giggles, they fall out into rip-roaring laughter and descend to the ground and lie there for a while, chests rising and falling as they catch their breaths, just staring up at the sky which moves above us.

  The world is always turning. We mustn’t forget that. It never ever stops…for no one.

  A woman’s gentle and flirty voice tangles with the breeze as she whispers lies to the man I’d seen earlier in her embrace. Her face was tucked into the crook of his neck. And his arm was wrapped around her shoulders, seemingly protecting her from the world.

  The chink of coins as they bump into one another perks my ears and then a muted applause follows…

  A low and haunting melody of a cello being played begins.

  The bow sails across the strings and hits notes which I’ve heard before and can never forget.

  I keep my eyes closed and accept that for the mere coins and leftover dollar bills the cello player across this park had likely just collected from the people forming an arc around him, his music is priceless,
though no one listening likely sees it that way.

  Except for me.

  More giggles. More laughter. The playful screech from a little girl prompts my eyes to snap open again and I survey the scenery ahead of me. It’s beautiful. Always. A mixture of colors which captures the senses for far longer than intended usually. Your eyes can’t help but linger on the leaves piled high which cover the ground. Some of them scattering this way and that, drifting upward toward the sky, sweeping across the landscape and going wherever the wind takes them…

  Strong. Wild. Carefree.

  The way I once was…

  In another life. In another time. When I was a different version of myself.

  The leaves are a comforting blanket to the cold earth made of burnt orange and brown. Still they are beautiful.

  How could something dead still be so beautiful?

  I ponder the question for a moment, cock my head to the left, then right, thinking, thinking, thinking, and decide it’s possible when I remember tracing my fingers over the contours of his face. Cold. Unmoving. Devoid of all animation. Encouraged by the memory, helplessly, I think back to the last time he told me he loved me. Those three little words had wrapped around every piece of my being and held on tight. I can still feel them. I can still feel him. Every night my palm presses into the cold sheets, making little indentations along them, almost drawing him there next to me, then rests for a while where he used to lie. He is always here with me… I must believe that. There isn’t much left to believe in except that God is so, so cruel. A small smile forces its way to my lips, and I allow it to bloom even though it feels like a monumental effort and an utter betrayal of everything my life used to be to do so.

  Even with all the color having drained from his cheeks, stolen away by death’s sadistic angels, he was still so unforgettably beautiful—the most mesmerizing view a man could ever ask for. His face is still there, burned into the front of my mind. A wound that will never heal. A pain that I know I will continue to live with and love.

  A scar.

  That I will keep touching, and touching, and touching, because although it hurts, I love how it feels. And also because, by now, it is simply a part of me. Like my left leg or an ear, or one of my hands.

  A big breath leaves my lungs. Then, I crane my neck and stare up at the gray October sky and then allow the sounds of this untamed metropolis to descend into the very core of my being.

  New York City.

  Population—eight point four million people.

  A place that I, Cooper Ellison Miller, have called home for the entire thirty-three years of my life and will likely never leave. There are too many memories here… Too much terror…

  Honking horns. Nonstop chatter. The endless piercing scream of a police siren… The delectable aroma of meat being broiled by the man standing to the halal lunch cart parked on the wide sidewalk in the distance. The rumble of the subway train as it moves underground around this city. There’s a faint trace in the air of roasted coffee beans which wafts out from the Starbucks nearby. The crisp and pure fragrance of the wind which swirls around me. The faint scent of a Sobranie Black Russian being smoked into my nostrils and reminds me of the good but long-lost days of the past when my father enjoyed one after a long day’s work. They were a true pleasure he seldomly allowed for himself since a box of them would have cost him three days’ pay back then. The olfactory memory sends a tiny smile racing across my lips, then I laugh a little to myself. Do people still really smoke these days?

  I suppose it’s not my place to judge—and never will I ever—so I inhale the stench, breathing deep. Besides, what difference does it make anyhow if toxins fill my lungs? It cannot kill what little life is left in me if anyone could ever call it that. Physically, I’m half alive. Mentally, I’m on life support. Emotionally, I’m flatlining.

  So, perhaps, I’m already dead?

  At the thought, my head drops low and I focus on the perfect seam pressed into my trousers, ignoring the small hole in the material there covering my right inner thigh. I am used to holes. They’ve been with me my entire life—large ones, small ones, along with the ones so gargantuan that you can never stitch closed no matter how much thread you’re able to find. I don’t look away from it though. I simply stay focused on the perfection, rather than the imperfection and then quickly conceal it when I press my thighs together.

  In an instant, the monstrosity is gone.

  My chest rises and falls with the careful breaths I take, conscious of each one of them and how they move around inside me, filling me, fueling me, reminding me that I will have the pleasure of witnessing another day floating by.

  Should I feel grateful?

  Yes, yes, yes, I should be grateful…

  I’m as appreciative as a cold day is for the golden sun even if it only shines for a little while.

  You may understand…

  I purse my lips, elevate my head, then look around, gaze swinging left and then right.

  Hulking buildings, many stories high hover over treetops.

  So much green is ahead of me.

  It covers the landscape for miles, dotted every so often by massive pine and elm trees that have stood here for hundreds of years and will likely still be standing when I am long gone, unless some vile human being decides to chop them down to make way for more godforsaken pavement…

  Along the bridle path and near the lake sits the multi-trunked London plane—a hybrid tree which stands at around ninety-six feet tall and that to my knowledge is around one hundred and fifty years old. A tree planted somewhere around the time when the population of this city was just under one million ambitious souls and Ulysses S. Grant was president. A tree planted a long, long time ago.

  Two people, hands shoved into their pockets and faces tucked deep into the collars of their jackets, loiter beneath its boughs and laugh dramatically at whatever they’re conversing about. My eyeline shifts left and lingers on a white oak tree.

  Tilting my head to the side, my eyes rove over the weathered bark and twisted limbs of it which reach for the sky. And then they cascade to the earth and crawl over the thick roots secured to the ground almost bolting the tree to the deepest parts of the earth. It is a clawing. A claiming of its eternal home. A desperate attempt for it to stay in place. Fiercely, ferociously, and forever. Same as love is. One heart secured to another’s…

  How terrible it must be for that tree—knowing that it doesn’t have any say in its own fate.

  But I presume the same goes for me…

  Man controls his own destiny—it’s a lie. If anyone ever tells you that, be sure to tell them it’s a lie. As a boy, I’d read that maxim somewhere in a book too hefty for my own small hands then and always held tightly on to that fact. The words sunk down deep and settled in my psyche. They were too heavy to ever be removed. And over the years as I grew into a man, I believed that if I lived my life in a certain way, pursued all of my wildest dreams and never wasted any of the hours I was given on this earth, that I could control all the outcomes and conquer anything that my own existence would ever have to face down. That I could guide my life in the direction of where I ultimately wanted it to go. Mold it like clay into the masterpiece that I wanted it to be. That I could predict my own ending too. All futile.

  Exhaling frigid air from my lungs, I examine the pair of cold hands settled in my lap, bring them to my mouth and blow a little warmth into them before I make myself more comfortable where I’m sitting. I place my hands on my thighs and stare out at the lake, admiring its glassy and still surface, accepting how shallow it looks judging from the surface but knowing still how fathomless it truly is.

  Deep enough to swallow a man. Abysmal. A place one could disappear—never to be found.

  I had the mind to dive in once, swim around for a bit, take one big breath and then drop to the bottom like a two-ton stone. I still consider it. In the late afternoon when I sit here each day, I allow the rancid thought to cross my mind and then it settles in
to my toes for a little while, forcing them to wiggle and almost propels me to stand and move.

  But the children’s laughter brings me back to the present…

  I finally blink at the sweet sound of it and then allow it to happen a few more times, effectively clearing my head of the awful thoughts. Then my gaze swings to my left, examining the empty seat next to me. Always empty. Empty, empty, empty. And then I face ahead once more admiring the view, absorbing the sounds, breathing in the distinct aroma of this great Big Apple so many have taken a chunk out of and smile. It’s a brittle smile though, full of cracks and fissures too tiny for anyone with the naked eye to see but they’re there, hanging on, promising to never leave me alone.

  These days an odd sensation tugs at me, constantly, consistently, and shows no signs of going away. Maybe because it never does… A heavy load of tungsten rests on my chest full-time. The world smashes down my shoulders. Still, I struggle to stand tall and balance its weight while keeping myself alive. At night, I gaze up at the ceiling for hours before my eyes shut. And in the morning, I sit on the edge of my big empty bed for far too long before I gather up the courage to place my bare feet on the floor, rise and face the universe.

  Day in.

  Day out.

  Unable to breathe.

  Yet often, just like now, I manage to leave my apartment and find some much-needed air.

  The exhale I allow myself to make is a useless attempt at letting it all go because I never can.

  Hands on knees, I tap each one of them twice, comforting myself and then my thoughts sail away with the cool wind which rushes past me and leaves the tip of my nose cold before it’s gone.

  I truly wish they’d told me how long it was all going to last…

  With each slow passing day, I search for the answer, and as more and more time crawls by, I accept the unfortunate reality that I may never know.