Thor'sday Night - Paranormal Erotica (5 page)

Outside, the intensely blue sky is hung with
thick white clouds. Brief torrential downpours are common in Miami
as the atmosphere seeks to relieve the mysterious tension caused by
the separation of heaven and earth. This particular storm has
cleared the air, and made way for a delicious ‘cold’ front. It is
after one o’clock in the afternoon, yet it is at least five degrees
cooler now than when she drove to work in the morning.

Carmen is delighted. The fresh breeze caressing
her bare arms and legs makes her feel even more slender and lovely.
The hot, humid air of summer is like having a sweating lover she
doesn’t really want pressed against her. She has often thought how
perfectly happy she would be up north, yet for some reason she is
still down in hell.

She starts up the car remembering the way Will’s
silver bracelet glimmered in the darkness.

She might have two very good reasons to stay in
Miami now.

She takes a back road to her favorite
supermarket, past a cemetery that consumes three whole blocks. The
flat ground littered with colorful bouquets of plastic flowers is
profoundly ugly. She always has to cheer herself up by remembering
that beyond the atmosphere’s blue veil lies an immeasurable
darkness burning with stars, because an eternity of fiery passions
is much more to her taste than a saccharine heaven. Her body is
destined for the earth, but ever since she was a little girl she
has been sure that her soul is another matter entirely.

In the supermarket a young man stacking produce
looks up as she stops to choose her tomatoes.

She reads surprise, pleasure, and distress (that
he didn’t have time to think up a clever greeting) spark in his
dark eyes.

‘How’s it going?’ She smiles at him, then
concentrates on the very important task of choosing just the right
tomatoes.

‘I didn’t expect to see you today,’ he answers
in Spanish, almost sounding hurt by her violation of their Saturday
morning ritual.

‘Well, here I am,’ she replies cheerfully, in
English.

‘You didn’t work today?’

She deposits six firm red beauties in her cart.
‘I got off early.’ She keeps talking in English, the language she
thinks in, and in honor of her U.S. citizenship, which means
everything to her. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are
in no sense abstract words to most Cuban-Americans. ‘So, I guess I
won’t be seeing you on Saturday, eh?’

‘No.’ She selects two large baking potatoes.

‘Doing anything exciting?’ he calls after
her.

She smiles over her shoulder at him as she moves
on to the peppers. ‘I hope so.’

The old man at the seafood counter asks her
respectfully, ‘Que deseas hoy, mi amor?’

‘Una libra de calamares, porfavor.’

She fills the cart with her usual favorites, and
two new gourmet experiments; a can of lobster pâté and a tiny jar
of red lumpfish caviar. Jay’s hair, a wall of fire in the back of
her mind, and the expensive tastes reflected in his dark suits, no
doubt inspired these selections.

Before checking
out she pauses in the magazine section to flip through the latest
issue of
Cooking Light. None
of the recipes she glances at inspire her to pay for it, however.
She is putting it back when National Geographic catches her eye,
blurring all the skinny half-naked women on the covers of other
magazines together into snowy branches hung with colorful strips of
cloth…

She recognizes the long brownish bones in the
photograph from the news; a woman’s partially decayed skeleton
surrounded by the golden teeth of buried treasures. She is lying on
her back, her arms raised straight up over her head, and her legs
are spread wide open. In most ancient burials the bodies are found
in fetal positions evocative of a peaceful return to the earth’s
womb. This ancient grave site is shockingly different.

Carmen grabs an issue and tosses it into her
cart, where the picture lands on top of her fresh greens like a
shovel-full of dirt.

Frowning, she turns it over.

There is an ad on the back cover for a black
sports car, and its headlights piercing a mystical fog evoke a
dragon’s molten snout.

Carmen is lying on her couch covered by a
purring quilt.

Her front door is open to the trees growing up
from the courtyard, and through the dark net of the screen the
space between every leaf and branch is suffused with an intense
violet glow that almost looks dangerous, mysteriously active.

She sits up slowly, gently peeling off her warm,
living mantle.

Her apartment is as cold as a tomb.

She forgot to set her air conditioner on
energy-saver before leaving for the grocery store, and it was still
roaring away when she got home even though the temperature outside
had dropped into the sixties.

She turned it off right away, feeling
guilty.

Dating an enforcement agent for D.E.R.M. is
already making her feel self-conscious about her bad environmental
habits. Life wouldn’t be possible without the atmosphere, yet a
truly enjoyable life wouldn’t be possible in South Florida without
air conditioning. It doesn’t seem fair that the skin around the
earth should be at odds with the one over her bones.

Carmen rests her forehead against the screen
door, relishing the quiet now that her Freon-eating monster is
asleep in its niche in the wall.

The hypnotic percussion of water dripping from
leaves rises up from the courtyard, the only sound in the world
apart from the constant subliminal hum of distant traffic.

Just above the other half of her building the
sky is a deep purple, except near the zenith, where it is still the
softest violet imaginable, the end of the visible spectrum. And
suddenly the sharp fingernail of the crescent moon tears through
the twilight’s luminous veil.

‘Wow,’ she whispers. Her mind tells her that the
splendor before her is just a random combination of particles and
ions even as her awe feels no need whatsoever to answer to her
brain.

The intense relief her emotional system is still
digesting that she wasn’t raped is strangely exhausting. The rest
of her vital energies are tied up in daydreams of Jay. She closes
the front door and walks into her bedroom intending to shower, but
her body decides she has time for a nap before getting ready for
her date by simply falling back across the bed.

It feels so good to just lie there on her soft
feather comforter with her eyes closed…

It doesn’t surprise her that a moment later she
sits up on a deserted white beach beneath a breathtaking violet
sky. It is high tide, and she senses that the choppy, dark blue
water is freezing cold. She can’t be sure, yet she thinks she sees
a ship on the horizon, but it is so far away it might only be the
crescent moon rising. Then Jay and Will are kneeling on either side
of her, naked, and they push her roughly back across the sand. She
has no desire to resist them, her fear is of the tide surging
inexorably closer, which makes her think of a hissing beast’s
salivating jaws hungry for her body. Then her fear vanishes as Mike
appears. He spreads her legs, kneels between them, and thrusts his
magnificent erection deep inside her…

Meow
! Green eyes stare
urgently into hers.

‘Sage,’ she gasps, ‘get off me!’ She lifts the
purring animal off her stomach. ‘I’m going to kill you! I was
having the best dream!’

Someone is knocking on the front door.

Her bedroom is cold and dark, and her digital
clock’s red numbers are flaming branches that brand the time into
her brain: 8:09 p.m.

‘My, God, it can’t be! What’s he going to
think?’

She runs and opens the
door even though all she’s wearing is a burgundy teddy from
Victoria’s Secret.

Jay gives her a long, penetrating stare before
stepping into the arctic night of her living room. ‘Jesus Christ,’
he whispers.

She quickly closes the door behind him. ‘I
turned the air conditioner off this afternoon, Jay, I swear I
did.’

‘What’s wrong with you?’ He grips both her arms
and holds her eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you on drugs, Carmen?’

‘No!’ She tries to sound indignant, but all she
really feels is disappointed that her intense dream was
interrupted.

He lets go of her to switch off the air
conditioner. ‘You’re going to catch your death sleeping in silk
lingerie at this temperature,’ he remarks coldly.

His sarcasm helps wake her up. ‘I told you, I
turned it off.’

‘I guess it has a life of its own.’

Part of her dimly realizes he is being rude
because he thinks she doesn’t give a damn about going out with him.
If she had been looking forward to their date she would have been
making herself beautiful for him, not sleeping. ‘I’m sorry, Jay,
it’s just that…’ But she can’t bring herself to tell him what
happened to her in the Grove – not yet. ‘I don’t understand how I
could have slept so long.’

‘You probably went into suspended
animation.’

‘Very funny.’The roar of the tide is still in
her head, not letting her think straight.

He asks in an undertone, ‘What were you dreaming
about, Carmen?’

‘What?’ She suddenly feels guilty.

‘I asked you,’ he comes and stands close enough
for her to feel the warmth of his body, ‘what you were
dreaming.’

She stares at the dark space of his chest. ‘What
does it matter?’ She glances up at his face to try and discern his
expression.

Like the sky at sunset, his hair is visible in
the dark room above his black shirt and pants. ‘I’d like to know
what you were dreaming,’ he insists quietly.

‘I don’t remember,’ she lies desperately.

He suddenly grabs one of her wrists and pulls
her across the living room into her bedroom. He quickly closes the
door on Sage and the kittens, then pins her roughly back against it
with his body. He yanks her arms behind her back and holds both her
wrists with one hand while the other one rises to grip her throat.
His voice is a dangerous undertone. ‘Was I in your dream,
Carmen?’

‘Yes,’ she whispers, confused and yet thrilled
by the fact that he seems to be able to read her mind.

He asks in what strikes her as a stage whisper,
‘Do you like this?’

‘Oh, yes…’

‘I thought you might. Now, are you going to tell
me what you were dreaming, or do I have to force you to tell
me?’

Her eyes close, as if she can’t face how
pleasurable she finds the loss of her will. ‘I was on a beach.’

‘Look at me.’

Meeting his luminous gray irises feels like
looking through a telescope at a pair of faraway moons; she can
scarcely believe they’re real, and orbiting her body. ‘It was high
tide,’ she goes on breathlessly. ‘The water looked really deep and
cold, and there was a ship on the horizon, but it was so far away
it might have been the crescent moon… Then you were there suddenly,
kneeling beside me…’

‘Go on.’

‘And this policeman I know,’ she wants to look
away, but his stare has her trapped in its intense gravity, ‘he was
there too.’

‘Mm, interesting.’

‘I was scared,’ she adds quickly, ‘the tide was
hissing like a beast, and I was scared.’

‘There’s more.’

She manages to look away into her dark bedroom.
‘Mike was there too.’

‘Mike Peterson? Your boss?’

‘Yes.’ She desperately wonders why she didn’t
just make up a dream. ‘But then Sage jumped on top of me and I woke
up.’

‘Were we all fucking you?’

‘No,’ she gasps.

He releases her abruptly and takes a few steps
back. ‘Take that off.’

She hesitates, not because she doesn’t want to,
but because the authority in his voice excites her so much she is
afraid she won’t please him as she longs to. She reaches up with
both hands and lifts the teddy’s thin straps off her shoulders. It
slips down her arms, exposing her breasts, then across her hips and
down her legs, pooling around her ankles.

‘You’re beautiful, Carmen.’ His voice is hard.
‘How often do you make use of that nice tall bed of yours?’

She holds her head high. ‘Hardly ever. I’m very
particular.’

‘That’s good, but you’re not finished.’

Her panties are so damp she has to peel them
away from her pussy before she can slip them down her legs, and
step out of them.

‘Come here,’ he commands.

She walks towards him.

‘Put your arms behind your back.’

Another thrill like an electric shock goes
through her, making her feel mysteriously weaker every time she
obeys him without question.

He moves behind her, grips both her wrists, and
bends her elbows up so they cross at the dead center of her back.
‘Like this,’ he says impatiently, ‘always like this.
Understand?’

‘Yes.’ Her voice is barely audible.

‘The proper response is “yes, sir”.’

Fear suddenly blends with her intense excitement
in such a way that it feels like the burn of ice on which all her
thoughts slip helplessly. ‘Yes, sir,’ she whispers.

‘Arch your back.’

He is standing so close she can’t turn her head
to look at him, and she doesn’t want to. She feels deliciously
drugged by his warm and powerful aura. She obeys him, thrusting her
breasts out.

He captures her right nipple between his thumb
and forefinger, and squeezes it.

She cries out in pain.

‘Don’t move, Carmen.’

She makes helpless sounds beneath the
excruciating sensation even as she holds perfectly still for him.
He crushes her nipple between his fingertips remorselessly, rubbing
it and pulling on it until it burns like a solid flame. Then he
abruptly reaches down with the same hand, and grips her between the
legs.

This time her cry is one of amazement; his hard
palm suddenly cradling her cunt feels so good her excitement
literally flows into his hand.