by Jeff Gelb
She replaced the paperwork and then unlocked Evan’s desk, but the only personal item she found was a paperback novel titled Lust in the Ashes, apparently part of a series about life after an atomic war. Several pages had their corners turned down, and when she read these, she discovered they invariably involved rape or other violence.
Her sense that something was seriously wrong grew worse, not better, and she left the building as quickly as she could manage.
That night, Toni experienced the most realistic dream of her life. If it was in fact a dream.
Her first impression was that she’d been in an accident. She lay half buried in a pile of unrecognizable rubble, apparently unhurt, although her clothing was so badly torn that she might as well have been naked. When she tried to stand up, she discovered that her left ankle was pinned tightly to the ground by a fallen beam of some sort.
“Can someone help me?” Her voice echoed off the half-collapsed roof above; through several gaps, she could see bolts of lightning playing through a sky filled with roiling thunderheads.
“Toni? Is that you?” It was a male voice, accompanied by the sound of someone making his way through the wreckage. She turned to see Evan Wade stumbling in her direction. Despite the destruction through which he moved, his clothing was neat and clean.
“Over here!” Her emotions alternated between relief and revulsion. Her apartment building must have exploded, she realized; probably a gas leak of some sort. “My foot is caught.”
He reached her side and crouched to evaluate the situation. “No problem,” he said softly, then placed both arms around the rough wooden surface. She saw his back tense as he strained to lift it, and he whispered, “Pull your foot out now.” When she had done so, he released the beam, which fell back with a crash and a small cloud of dust.
“What happened?” Toni sat up, rubbing her bruised ankle until she realized that what remained of her blouse concealed nothing of what lay underneath. And somehow she had forgotten to put on a bra that morning. Despite the hot, dry air, goose pimples formed on her exposed flesh.
“The damned idiots,” Evan responded bitterly, turning to face her. “Just when it looked like the world was finally on the road to peace, someone decided to push the button.”
“Oh, God, no!” Toni raised both hands to her mouth, coincidentally allowing him a panoramic view of her bare breasts. “What’ll we do?” But within her mind, Toni was struggling to control her own body. This is all nonsense, she thought. It has to be a dream.
“Don’t worry,” Evan said reassuringly, reaching out to pat her bare knee. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”
Without transition, they were walking together along a street. Buildings on either side had been reduced to crumbling ruins, funnels of smoke rising into the still angry sky, scattered fired flickering here and there. Toni noticed that although she was barefoot, there was no sense of pain as she walked over the ragged, broken ground.
“We can shelter here for the night.” He indicated a small office building whose roof had fallen in, but it was in much better condition than anything else they’d seen. The front door was missing, so they entered without hindrance and soon found an intact office with an undamaged couch. Evan found some candles and they were soon huddled together as darkness fell with unnatural suddenness. Throughout this transition, Toni felt stunned, her body playing the part as it had been written, while her mind insisted this was a nightmare conjured up from her previous hallucinations and the discovery of the apocalyptic book in Evan’s desk.
But when his hands started moving over her body, the sensation was too real to ignore. Toni turned her head toward him, intending to shout obscenities, seeing once more than subtle curve of the mouth, all too similar to one she had seen years earlier, and in her nightmares ever since. But the words she actually spoke were unexpected, and appalling.
“Oh, Evan. I need you now more than ever. Can’t you make me forget this horrible world?” Toni wanted to vomit as her body began to move rhythmically under Evan’s. The remains of her blouse and his untouched shirt had disappeared, and he was squeezing her breasts—breasts that she now realized had gotten a good deal larger during these past few hours.
“God, you’re so good! Don’t make me wait for it!” Toni was stunned by the words she felt compelled to speak, terrified by the touch of alien hands. Evan literally tore off what remained of her jeans—she had apparently forgotten to put on panties this morning as well as a bra-while his own pants seemed to have dissolved away. She had a brief glimpse of an impossibly long appendage before he slammed his body down onto, and into, hers.
Her last thought before unconsciousness overwhelmed her was that no matter how hard she scrubbed, she would never feel clean again.
She woke in her own bed, alone, unsurprised to discover that the word was intact, that no nuclear war had taken place, and that her breasts were back to their normal, unexceptional dimensions. “You’re losing your goddamned mind, Toni,” she muttered aloud, wondering if she had made a mistake in discontinuing her therapy sessions with Dr. Brodsky. The violent moodswings that had plagued her ever since the assault had ceased, though, and she had believed herself adjusted, if not entirely healed.
She started to rise, intending to get a glass of water, but when she moved her legs, there was a stinging sensation, as though something sticky had dried on her inner thighs. She took a hot bath instead and rubbed her thighs until they were red and raw.
Toni almost literally ran into Evan Wade at work that morning, turning a corner just as he reached it from the opposite direction. Without thinking, she retreated, one arm half raised defensively. He smiled familiarly, his eyes meeting hers for a split second too long, then moved on.
That evening, the dream took up where the previous one had ended. They were chased through the ruins by hideously deformed mutants, then became separated due to her stupidity rather than his error. Captured by the mutants, she was stripped and tied naked to a cooking spit over a low fire, only to be rescued in the nick of time when Evan appeared, armed with an automatic rifle that never needed to be reloaded. After dispatching several score of the mutants, he freed her, for which she was so grateful that she made passionate love to him in the ashes of the fire, even though hot coals burnt her flesh.
The following morning, she discovered a dozen tiny blisters on her buttocks.
Her life fell into an uneasy pattern in the days that followed. Although there were no more incidents while she was awake, she dreamed of Evan every night. She was convinced that he was somehow invading her thoughts, manipulating her imagination while she slept. At times she found herself quietly weeping with frustration. There was no one she could talk to about the situation, not even Marian, who was beginning to make pointed comments about her productivity and the consequences if Mr. Nicholson noticed her absent mindedness. What she believed to be happening was clearly impossible, and if she claimed otherwise she’d end up in an institution.
Even never approached her at work or elsewhere, confining his attentions to her dreams. At times she believed he was quite conscious of what he was doing; at others she wondered if he might be unaware that he was somehow dragging her into his own wish-fulfillment fantasies. It was not a difference that mattered; the results from her point of view were identical.
Eventually Evan tired of the nuclear scenario. During the days, or rather the nights, that followed, he rescued her from pirates, terrorists, and a psychopathic killer. They survived plane crashes in stormswept mountains, were shipwrecked on abandoned but bountiful islands, were trapped in a sunken submarine, and thwarted an invasion of alien creatures who, despite their entirely inhuman appearance, had crossed the galaxy for the express purpose of raping human women. In every instance, she rewarded Evan’s efforts with her body, the single element in her dreams that did not vary from scenario to scenario.
Toni began to suffer from flashbacks even when Evan was not involved. The dreams and memories of the man who had
assaulted her in the woods behind the Sheffield estate returned as fresh and hateful as in the days immediately following her abduction. As the days passed, his face and Evan’s seemed to grow similar, as though in this aspect, at least, her own fears were beginning to reshape his projected fantasies. After several fruitless efforts to affect her own part in the surreal minidramas, she had retreated into a numb acceptance. Several people told her she appeared unwell, and indeed she moved with none of her previous easy grace. Psychosomatic or not, each morning she discovered a fresh collection of bruises and scratches. All of this could have resulted from uneasy thrashing in her sleep, but Toni was unable to avoid noticing that the injuries always coincided with those she had dreamed about and always replaced those of the previous day.
She might have continued this apathetic acceptance indefinitely if Evan had not read the vampire novel.
Toni had gotten into the habit of walking by Evan’s desk several times during the course of the day, trying to see what book he might be reading. The pirate dreams had occurred while he was reading C. S. Forester, the shipwreck after Peter Benchley, and the psychopath coincided with his purchase of The Silence of the Lambs. So when she saw the dark cover decorated with two dripping fangs poised over a punctured planet Earth, she knew pretty much what to expect that evening.
She found herself in a large wooden cage with a dozen other women, all of them completely unclothed, and even though she had managed to remain relatively detached during her recent dream experiences, their utter terror communicated itself to her. Nor was she unaware of the fact that each and every one of them bore an uncanny resemblance to herself; they might have been her sisters, if she had ever had any sisters.
“There’s no hope for us now,” one of her fellow prisoners was insisting. “They’ve taken over the whole world. There’s no one left to fight them.”
“It’s not over yet,” protested another. “There’s still time to strike back.”
Several black caped figures appeared from the darkness, one of whom opened a door on the side of the cage. One by one, the prisoners were pulled out into the dim light, where one of the vampires would seize hold of his victim, bend to rip out a throat with gleaming fangs, drain the blood until the woman’s struggles ceased and her limp body fell to the floor.
Toni was the last to be taken, and for once, her mind and body worked in consort, struggling against the powerful arms of the red-eyed monstrosity that held her. The fans were within an inch of her throat when the vampire suddenly jerked, eyes widening with surprise. The restraining arms fell away from her shoulders and Toni stepped back far enough to see the wooden shaft that had suddenly emerged from the creature’s chest.
The room was a sudden pandemonium as archers systematically finished off the rest of the undead creatures. When they had all fallen and turned to dust, one of the rescuers rushed to her side. It was, of course, Evan Wade.
In this dream Toni was so grateful that she rewarded him with something special: oral sex.
And that was the straw that broken the metaphorical camel’s back. Even the man who had broken her forearm, shattered her nose, and bruised several of her ribs before making free use of her body had not subjected her to this indignity.
The following morning she rose calmly, called Marian, and told her she was too sick to come to work. After a long hot bath that made her feel no better, Toni dressed and drove to her uncle’s house on Cape Cod. He was in Florida for the winter, but he always left a key so she could look in on the place from time to time. Behind the panel of a false closet, she found her uncle’s collection of handguns and rifles, chose the revolved that he’d taught her to use after she’d been released from the hospital, located the right ammunition, and loaded it. Satisfied, she replaced the panel and drove back to Rhode Island.
Although she had eaten neither breakfast nor lunch, Toni felt no hunger as she sat in her car in the parking lot behind the apartment building where Evan Wade lived. The clock on her dashboard moved slowly but relentlessly forward, and she became more alert when it passed five o’clock. There was no clear plan in her mind, but she knew that the time had come to confront Evan, to show him she was not completely powerless and that he would either leave her alone or suffer the consequences.
At seventeen minutes past, she saw him climb out of a battered Datsun and start toward the rear entrance. With one fluid movement, she opened the car door and slipped outside, the revolver concealed in her purse. She moved quickly across the lot at an angle, to intercept him just short of the entrance. As she approached, he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye and half turned in her direction. At that moment, she withdrew the revolver from concealment, raised her arm, and opened her mouth to speak.
Evan turned in her direction, eyes widened in recognition, and then his lips curved in a sarcastic, knowing smile. Toni blinked, and Evan’s face was replaced by that of the man who had raped her. The two identities flickered back and forth, then slowly merged into a single gestalt, an amalgam of the two.
The gun seemed to fire itself; Toni never consciously realized that she’d pulled the trigger. There was a startled look of dismay on Evan’s face just before the bullet struck him in the forehead. His body flew back against the wall of the building, then slid to the ground.
Toni was momentarily paralyzed, uncomprehending. Someone else must have shot him, she thought; I only meant to frighten him. I never would have pulled the trigger. But there was an acrid smell from the handgun, and she let her arm drop to her side. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean…” she said in a soft voice.
And then she saw the station wagon signaling to turn into the parking lot, and panic reanimated her limbs. She had accelerated into the late-afternoon traffic before anyone spotted Evan’s body.
Marian told the news early the next morning.
“Did you hear about poor Evan? Someone shot him last night.”
Toni made what she hoped was a suitably shocked face. “That’s horrible! Do they have any idea who did it?”
Marian shrugged. “If they do, they’re not saying. Probably a mugging. There’s no place safe anymore, I guess.”
“Did he have any family?”
Marian shook her head. “Maggie said he was brought up in an orphanage.”
“I suppose we ought to go to the funeral.”
“Well, that would be a little premature. He’s not dead yet.”
Alarms began to ring inside Toni’s head and she felt a strange sense of detachment. “I thought, I mean, how serious is it?”
“He was hit in the forehead and there’s some brain damage. He’s in a coma, according to the radio. They don’t know if he’ll pull through or not. I called the hospital, but they said they wouldn’t know anything until after he’d had a chance to recover from surgery. I’ll call again this afternoon.”
The morning was an eternity. Toni was certain that Evan had recognized her; he could identify her if he recovered consciousness. She fantasized about sneaking into his hospital room, disguised as a nurse, suffocating him with a pillow, but her fantasies were far less convincing than those she had experienced at his instigation. And she knew she could never muster the nerve to act.
At shortly after four in the afternoon, there was news, both good and bad. The bad, from her point of view, was that Evan Wade’s condition had stabilized, and the hospital felt confident that he would not die in the foreseeable future, barring unforeseen complications. The good news was that, although he had intermittent periods of consciousness, he was totally paralyzed, could not speak or even blink his eyes, and the doctors believed it might be permanent.
She left work that evening in a calmer frame of mind, if not entirely at ease. After an unusually heavy meal, she took one sleeping pill and went to bed, determined to finally experience some untroubled rest.
Toni found herself lying on a bed of filthy straw in a dark room with a barred door. Even as her internal self collapsed into a pool of self-pity, realizing that sh
e was still subject to Evan Wade’s unconscious desires, the door creaked open and three men entered, one wearing an elaborate clerical costume, the others outfitted as medieval men-at-arms. They lifted her to her feet and half-pulled, half-dragged her from the room.
They passed along a narrow corridor to a wider, torchlit chamber, at the opposite end of which three heavily robed men sat at a long table. Her escort forced her past an array of devices she only vaguely recognized: a rack, a brazier of glowing coals, a strangling post, a rack of whips and flails. Toni had never been particularly interested in history, but she realized she had been thrust into the era of the Spanish Inquisition.
“You are accused of trafficking with demons!” the voice thundered across the room. “In order to save your soul, we shall use pain to drive the forces of evil from your body.”
And just before the soldiers lifted her body onto the rack, Toni caught sight of the Grand Inquisitor’s face, half concealed in the shadow of his cowl. It was the face of Evan Wade.
Toni suddenly realized there’d be no resuce this time.
Blind Date
Julie Wilson
Sally Jameson’s temper boiled. She moistened her lips, glanced away from the man standing before her, and surveyed the crowd of divorcees and never-married packed into the smoke-filled banquet room. Sally knew the odds of being propositioned at a singles function were relatively high, but she never expected anything like this. Perhaps she had misunderstood. Having finally regained her composure, she uttered a nervous laugh in response. “I beg your pardon?” she said.
