The Trouble With Eden - Lawrence Block [105]
Peter had had little trouble convincing her that Warren was alive. Because she had learned not to trust memory, had learned to doubt her own ability to be sure. Warren was alive, though she had dreamed him dead. Her dreams did not have the power to kill.
Perhaps she had not even had that conversation with Peter. Perhaps that too had been a dream—
She got out of bed again and crossed the room to Robin’s side. She knelt beside her daughter’s bed and listened to her steady breathing. Devil’s daughter, she thought. Spawn of the Devil, thief of sleep. How many times had she dreamed Robin dead? How often had she killed her in her dreams? In some dreams Robin ceased to exist entirely; Gretchen edited the past and killed her by an abortion. In other dreams Fate did the deed—Robin would die in a car wreck, or drown in the canal, or be carried off by a mysterious fever. And in still other dreams Gretchen bloodied her own hands, wringing that little neck, slashing the throat, going berserk and beating the little one to death.
“Oh, baby,” she said softly. “Oh baby, you know what scares me? Someday I’ll think I’m dreaming and won’t be, because I can’t tell the difference anymore. Christ, baby, don’t let me do it—”
Robin grunted softly, shifted position. Gretchen leaned over and kissed her lightly on her lips. pointed her index finger and brought it to her own lips, kissing the tip. “This is a knife,” she whispered. She traced a line across Robin’s throat with her fingertip and dreamed a fountain of scarlet blood. She snapped her eyes shut and the scarlet fountain gushed more vividly; then opened her eyes wide to calm herself with the sight of the sleeping and undamaged child.
“Oh, God,” she said.
She returned to Peter’s side and lay on her back for a few more minutes, trying to will the disturbing image out of her mind. It was difficult to do this. Sometimes they tried to take control and it was very difficult to keep them from overpowering her. She was so afraid of what she might someday do. There would come a night when; instead of believing her finger to be a knife, she would hold a knife and believe it to be her finger. And it was so hard, so unbearably hard, to know what was real and what was not.
Time to be the succubus.
She breathed deeply in and out, in and out. It was indeed time to be the succubus. She always put off this moment as long as she dared because it was the one thing that calmed and reassured her, and thus she would wait until the most desperate part of the night so that afterward she would not have long to wait before sleep saved her. But it was time now, and his sleep was deep and easy, and it was time.
Succubus. Suck. Suck you. Bus, a Greyhound, she herself lean and sleek and spare as a greyhound, the succubus.
First she touched him, her hand fastening immediately upon his penis. For a time she merely held him in her hand, held the soft harmless sleeping cock in her hand Then slowly and carefully she shifted position at his side and breathed her warm breath over him.
The succubus. The devil’s spawn, the succubus, sucking men’s souls from their bodies while they slept. Steal my sleep, Petey, and in return I steal your soul. The succubus, stealing your soul, sucking it out through your sleeping cock.
Her mouth claimed what her hand released. She took all of him into her mouth, at first just holding him for long moments in the moist warmth. There was a time when he seemed on the point of stirring but it passed and his sleep continued as before. Gradually, with her considerable skill, she began to use her mouth to excite him.
This was what she liked best. These special moments, when his body responded while his mind remained utterly unaware of what was taking place. She felt him growing in her mouth and her heart thrilled. Bit by bit he grew until his cock was rigid and pulsing in her