Afterlife - Douglas Clegg [82]
She took the Xalax and Darmien with some Snapple when she got home, and then she went to lie down in the bedroom and let the supposed relaxing benefits of the new miracle drugs take her over.
At first, she watched the ceiling with its swirls of patterns, and then she felt as if she were moving into the patterns. She felt quite wonderful and rested and only vaguely sleepy. The sex dream came, of course, and in the dream she had no fear at all. Hut parted her legs, his mouth pressing into her, his hands reaching up and around to grasp her breast and stroke her. It wasn’t like the nightmares of sex and lust, this was lovemaking, thank God, she thought, thank God for drugs and psychiatrists, this wasn’t post-traumatic stress, this was love, this was love that never died, this was no ghost making love to her, but a man of flesh and blood, and the world was fuzzy—she remembered Hut’s first wife’s phrase, “the warm fuzzies,”—that’s what this was, the warm fuzzies had her in their thrall. She felt taken care of again, secure in his arms, his ministrations, and she realized he had never done this before, when they were married, he had never taken her like this in real life, this pounding and battering and swirling and lifting, but with the warm fuzzies, he transformed into this sexual dynamo who wanted her, and her alone, wanted to be within her, wanted to find her pleasure and press into it, delight her, awaken her, but the warm fuzzies pulled her back, ah, she could not be awakened. She could not. The warm fuzzies drew her down into a rich comforter of Hut, his body, wrapping around her as he moved upward, kissing her navel and flicking his tongue within it. She didn’t care that several cameras were filming them—it was a porno movie, she saw people filming them as he took her again and again and she gave herself to him. Then, moving to her breasts and taking each nipple in his mouth, like he was a baby, like he drew strength and comfort from her, like she was his mother and his lover and his wife and his whore and his savior.
And when he came up to her face, when she looked in his eyes, his eyes were normal, his face was normal. Not milky white. Not a nightmare at all.
His body was covered with strange markings, whirligig drawings and little sunbursts etched into his skin, but it was him. It was Hut.
She was sure.
He pressed himself into her, inside her, and she opened, she blossomed—ah, the warm fuzzies made it easy. That Darmien sure could get a girl in trouble, she giggled softly. Had she said it aloud? Ah, but it was her warm fuzzy-maker, that Darmien, and she didn’t even have to move or struggle or embrace him. Her arms and legs felt as if they couldn’t move, but it didn’t bother her. She liked that he had taken control. She liked that Hut was there, taking her. Taking her the way men took women in fantasies. She loved this fantasy.
She awoke several hours later. In the dark. God, another insane dream, she thought.
Someone had screamed.
As the seconds passed, she was sure of it. But the house was silent. No, not a scream. It was as if the silence itself had made her wake up.
The scream, or cry, or quiet, she wasn’t sure whether it was that or even a little shriek—it must have been what had snapped her out of sleep. Or it was in a dream? she couldn’t quite remember—like a spider web of a dream that she’d somehow broken through.
11
The headache from hell battered at her, but she managed to dress. Had she undressed herself? She couldn’t remember. She went into the hall, and flicked the light on, but it didn’t come up. Have to change the bulb. Damn it. She went down to Livy’s room. It was dark, but everything was in place. She looked in at shadow upon shadow—the toys, the doll collection, and then the small, perfect bed, piled