The months passed much as they had before Will. Even though he and I kept in touch via Skype and email it would be over a year before he and I met again. Things began to change for the three of us after 9/11. Our schedules really got scrambled so that it was rare that we saw each other at work or at home except on weekends. If we weren't too tired we were often busy making up for lost time. For all the reduction in frequency we made up for it with sexual intensity.
But then both Josh and Stephen were deployed. Literally overnight they had to pack and report for deployment. Luckily they had made arrangements for the rent to be paid while they were away so they would have a place to come back to. Just like that they were gone and I was living alone. That didn't bother me at first. But after having spent over year and a half with them with the last year as a full sexual partner I started getting lonely not to mention horny from the lack of attention I had grown accustomed to receiving.
Every few weeks or so they'd call. Of course as they were monitored by NIS there wasn't any overt sexual banter that we could engage in. Their letters were much more entertaining but again were filtered due to the censors possibly getting a clue of the nature of our relationship. I often wondered what would happen if I sent them a pornographic letter with full descriptions of the things I wanted them to do to me when they got back. Those letters were often sealed and left on their mattress instead of actually sending them. There was simply too much risk involved.
I had no concerns for their safety as they were both non-combatant personnel and seldom anywhere outside the base. But as the months passed their calls became less frequent until an entire month rolled by with my not hearing from them, then two months...three. At the end of the third month we had heard that they had gone missing. They had been part of a convoy of trucks when they disappeared. No attacks were reported, their Humvee had simply disappeared. One minute they were riding between two trucks carrying tanks to a forward base and the next their humvee was gone. Nobody had seen them turn off and there was no place for them to turn off. No cliff faces to drive off of and no roads to turn onto. The only thing that could be agreed on was that a sudden sand storm had blown up and when it passed they were gone.
They were the only two people in the vehicle when it disappeared. The shock of losing them both shook me badly. I had hope that they would turn up eventually but after six months I'd began to lose hope. I could not afford the rent by myself and had no desire for another roommate, my heart simply wasn't in it. So I hired a moving company and moved their stuff into a storage unit, I set it up like a tiny apartment so I still had a place I could disappear to. I moved back into the barracks and simply lived life one day at a time.
Six months after they disappeared their humvee was found undamaged on the top of a mountain. There were no roads for them to have used to drive up and the cliff face was sheer rock all the way around it. The altitude was too high for a helicopter to have carried it because the air was far too thin at that altitude. Both Josh and Steven where nowhere to be seen. The military simply left the Humvee where they found it having no way to bring it back down the mountain. Even disassembling it would have been impossible given the fact that nobody could have carried the parts back down the mountain. I was numb when I heard the news. I couldn't display my heart break for fear of what NIS might conclude. I mean they weren't all that bright. That and they were often gung ho about performing their duties in the absence of evidence or reason. So I kept my heartache to myself the best I could.
Late one Friday night I decided to get the letters I had written to them and burn them in memory of them, not to mention burning evidence of our relationship. I drove to the storage unit and went to the drawer where I'd stashed them. They were gone. The box I'd put them in had been locked and so was the false bottomed drawer. Nobody had been in the unit, that I was aware, and there was no way anybody could have known to look for them much less where to look. For a brief moment I thought I'd forgotten where I'd put them, but I distinctly remember putting them in the silk bag and placing them in the wooden box and that box had been placed in the false bottomed drawer and locked. The box was still locked and the bag was still there tied up and folded as I'd left it but the letters were gone. Panic took hold of me. I was sure that NIS had them and were going to arrive at my storage unit evidence in hand to arrest me for my homosexual relationship with Josh and Stephen. I started picturing the headlines 'Surviving member of a gay threesome arrested!!"
In my panic I ran to the open door turned off the light and listened for sirens and flashing lights to come racing down the isle. A highway patrol rolled by sirens blaring nearly sending me over the edge. As my heart beat came back to normal I slowly closed the unit door and got into my truck and headed out. I didn't know what to think as I drove down the highway. Was I going to be arrested in my barracks? Was I being paranoid? Where had the letters gone? Had I been careless? My mind raced with all sorts of scenarios. In my frenzied thought I had worked myself back into a panic as I approached the base gate. I showed my ID and passed the gate and drove to the barracks. I was sweating now heart in my throat beating like a trip hammer.
Waiting in my truck I looked up at my barracks door wondering if I was being watched. Were they going to rush me as I entered my room? Was I being foolish? I waited for ten minutes in the dark wondering if I was noticed pulling up. It was then I noticed the entire barracks was blacked out. The barracks to the right and left of my building were fully lit as usual for evening, but mine was blacked out. All the curtains were pulled closed.
My panic returned. Why were my barracks lights out? What problem were they having that the other barracks weren't? So I decided that I'd drive to the base clinic where I worked and call the duty officer. If I reported a problem from a different location I might have a better answer.
The duty officer reported it to maintenance division. Turns out someone had blown a circuit breaker by spilling beer on the box as he was making out with his girlfriend. So once again my fears were laid to rest but this time I decided to stay in the clinic duty bunk room. I changed into my scrubs and went to bed. I woke up early the next day and got out before the duty crew had stirred and went to my barracks as the sun peaked over the mountains. I had on my scrubs and canvas shoes I'd been wearing the night before with my clothes in the duffle bag I kept in the truck.
Entering my room I closed the door behind me tossed the duffle on my bunk and went to take a shower. While in the shower I did my usual cleanse as if I were prepping for a night of fun with Josh and Stephen. I
