Seeing Black

by Sidney Halston

  Alexander stood up, lifting Jill to her feet in the process. “Come on,” he said, as he led her to the dance floor. The fast tempo changed to a slower one as soon as their feet hit the dance floor. It wasn’t slow enough to be considered a slow dance, but it was slow enough that when Alexander pulled her in close, instead of bouncing up and down, they rocked side to side. She turned, her back to his front, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. Their hips continued to rock side to side. “I’m so turned on right now,” Alexander whispered in her ear. Her head fell back to his shoulder as they moved to the beat of the music, and his arm around her waist tightened. She could feel on her back exactly how turned on he was. He bent his head down and kissed her neck. “Mmm. Sweaty.” He inhaled deeply.

  She turned her head to the side. “Gross.”

  “Not gross.” He groaned. “Delicious.” His tongue peeked out of his lips, and he licked the spot where her neck met her shoulder. She shivered. Alexander used the arm he had wrapped around her waist to propel her around so they were once again dancing front to front. She reached up and pulled his head down. He opened his mouth, allowing her tongue access. She kissed him hard and long, and when she was finished, she nipped his bottom lip and then kissed his neck. She then licked her lips and tasted his saltiness, “Yes, delicious,” she said. His eyes hooded and he groaned again.

  “Fuck. I need a drink, or we’re gonna have to get out of here soon. You’ve made me insatiable.” With his hand on the small of her back, he led her back to their table. Oliver and Heather were still somewhere among the sea of people.

  Alexander moved closer to Jill in the small booth, not that he wasn’t already pretty close. “You look so good, babe. Every guy here’s staring at you. I don’t know if I should be proud or jealous as hell.”

  She heard what he had said but was unable to process the information. She could only see him between flashes of light. Heat from the crowded bodies was making her hot, and sweat began to trickle down the nape of her neck and down her back. It had to be the number of people packed in so closely that was making her so overwhelmingly hot. A crowded room of people would do that to a person. And nausea. The nausea must’ve been from the two glasses of wine she’d had during dinner and the second vodka tonic she’d recently consumed.

  “Baby? You okay?” Alexander ran his knuckles gently along her face. “Fuck, you’re burning up.” She felt him scoot even closer. At this point, she was practically sitting on his lap.

  “Um. Yeah. No, I’m fine. Sorry, what were you saying?” She was most definitely not feeling well.

  “Are you okay, babe?” Alexander asked softly but with so much underlying concern that it pulled her out of the weird black haze.

  “The music. It’s so loud.” She winced and couldn’t help covering her ears. Noise had never bothered her before, but now, she felt blood rush to her ears. Suddenly, the slight feeling of nausea totally consumed her. The burn moved up her esophagus. She quickly realized what was happening.

  “It’s a club. Of course it’s loud.” He stood up and began to pull her up. “Come on. I think you need some fresh air.”

  “Xander?” she whispered right before she felt a tug on her arm. All she saw were flashes of light, pounding from the music and from her chest. All her senses were on fire. Sensory overload. Her mind was unclear. Confusion. Panic.

  “Fuck.” Alexander sat back on the small couch and scooped her up onto his lap. Then the trembling started. It was uncontrollable. She was burning up, yet her teeth chattered. It started from the tips of her stilettos all the way up to the top of her head. Jill felt Alexander’s hands caress her arms up and down to warm her. She wanted to tell him she was burning up, but he must of misread the shivers and thought she was cold. Unfortunately, all form of speech had left her, and she was unable to communicate this to him. She clenched her hands into fists. All she could see was the sea of people swaying side to side and up and down between flashes of the strobe lights and the beats of the music.

  Tall. Muscular. Long hair. Unshaven. Piercing blue eyes rimmed red from a sleepless night. Nude. Completely and utterly naked.

  Her eyes were focused straight ahead, unblinking. Her breathing came in and out in small gasps as she tried to focus on what she was seeing. She continued to blindly stare straight ahead. She was completely still, unseeing, and unaware. Her eyes were open but almost as if she were unconscious. She was rigid. Her breathing was harsher.

  Pressed against the beautiful man. A woman. Long blond hair. Leggy. Tall. Deep blue eyes, blond eyelashes, thin pouty lips. Both her hands in pink polish pressed firmly against the man’s bare chest. Pleasure and something else showed through her eyes. Embarrassment, maybe?

  “Oh. My. God,” she panted.

  “Come back to me. I’m here. You’re okay. I love you. Come back to me. Focus on my voice.” Alexander’s arms around her body tightened as he whispered soothing words of love into her ear. Then she heard different voices.

  “What’s wrong? What happened?” Oliver placed his palm against Jill’s forehead.

  “Honey? You okay. Look at me, sugar,” Heather begged.

  A bare bicep. A nude thigh. A woman bent over. Then blackness.

  First, she saw the strobe lights flash. She then heard the pounding music. Next, she felt arms suffocating her. She began to blink, to breathe.

  “What’s going on? What is it? What did you see?” It was Alexander’s voice.

  “What happened? How long was I . . .?”

  “Less than a minute, honey. You okay?” Heather said.

  “Hot.”

  “What?” Oliver asked.

  “So hot,” Jill mumbled.

  “Sugar, you’re suffocating her.” Heather said to Alexander.

  “Oh, shit. Sorry,” he loosened his grip around her but kept her on his lap.

  “I saw you. You were . . .” Jill’s lips quivered. Her eyes stung, and as hard as she tried not to cry, the tears had already formed and were about to make their début. And once those tears began it was almost impossible to stop them.

  “I was what?” Alexander asked. She just shook her head as if she couldn’t clear the memory.

  “Babe?” He continued to stroke her hair. Heather came back with a glass of water and some wet napkins that she pressed against the back of Jill’s neck. The club was so full of people that no one noticed what was occurring at the table. Alexander reached for the cup of water and pressed it against Jill’s lips. She reached up to hold the cup, but her hands were uncooperative. He must’ve noticed, so he held it up to her lips. She took small tiny sips. The heat was now all-consuming, but even worse was the overpowering exhaustion. She swayed slightly, eyelids heavy and threatening to close.

  “Can you walk, love? We need to get you out of here.” Alexander asked.

  She just nodded, and Oliver helped her up from Alexander’s lap.

  Luckily, she was in a dance club amongst drunks, so, being as she was walking like a drunk, she blended right in. She was swaying, her eyelids heavier and heavier with each passing second. Like dead weight, she leaned against Oliver until she was scooped up by Alexander, who carried her out of the club and to the car. Safely in his arms, she let the fog consume her mind, and she was asleep within seconds.

  ***

  She was sweating. She was uncomfortable. Something heavy was draped over her stomach. “Xander?” she whispered. Nothing. She tried to move but was just too tired to make a full-blown effort. “Xander?” a little louder this time.

  He jackknifed off the bed. “Huh? What?”

  “Xander? What happened? What time is it?”

  Sleepily, he lay back on the bed and re-wrapped his limbs around her body. “How do you feel?”

  “Tired.”

  “You’ve been sleeping for hours.” He turned and looked over his shoulder then burrowed his face back onto the pillow. “Twelve hours to be precise.”

  “What?” She said, louder this time.

  “Yeah. You fell a
sleep. Well, more like passed out, last night around one in the morning, and it’s midday now.”

  “Alexander, you’re suffocating me.” She pushed his limbs off of her.

  “Oh. Sorry.” He scooted over, slightly.

  “What happened?”

  “Good question. You tell me. We were at the club, talking, having a good time, and you zoned out completely. What happened? What did you see?”

  She was silent for a few minutes, trying to get her thoughts in order. Alexander was twirling a strand of her hair, lazily. A naked beautiful man who looked a lot like the man who was currently playing with her hair, had been touching a beautiful and familiar-looking woman. Shit, shit, shit. The tears started, and they kept going and going.

  “Jill? What’s wrong?” Alexander sat up and held Jill up to his chest. She didn’t speak, just kept crying and crying.

  “Babe? Please, what happened? What did you see? You’re scaring me. Is it you? Were you hurt? Or Oliver? Me?”

  She shook her head and kept crying. He just held her and caressed her back until she was a hiccupping, blubbering mess. “Y-you cheated on me.” She smacked his chest. Hard.

  “Ow!”

  “Asshole! You cheated on me!”

  “I did not! I would never.”

  “I saw it. She’s tall and blond and beautiful, and you’re naked, and you are ch . . .” The waterworks started again.

  He snorted.

  “Are you laughing?”

  “Sorry, Red. It’s just so ridiculous. You know I’d never cheat on you. I’ve been trying to get in your pants for like twenty years! I’m not about to fuck things up when things are just starting to get good.”

  “So maybe it’s in the faraway future when things stop getting good and just get routine.”

  “Baby, that will never happen. I love you. I’d never hurt you. You have to know that. Deep down in your heart, you have to know that. I don’t care what you saw or what you think you saw. I’d never do that to you.”

  She thought about it. Yes, women never thought they’d be the one to get played. Maybe it was naive of her, but she believed him. She’d never had a vision that didn’t come true, but this just didn’t seem plausible. She took a deep breath and a leap of faith.

  “Fine. I guess I believe you.”

  “Good. Now can we go back to sleep? I’m exhausted. You are so needy sometimes,” he said, playfully slapping her ass before settling them both back in bed.

  ***

  The following Saturday, while Alexander was busy picking up a part for his motorcycle across town, Jill received a text message from Rocco inviting her to have brunch at a nearby restaurant. Hesitantly, she agreed, and within a half hour, Rocco picked her up and they went to brunch. As they enjoyed the fabulous food, Jill talked about her most recent vision. She didn’t disclose all the details but was able to vent all the same. “It’s mortifying. Luckily, I have great friends. But what if I had been alone? That possibility really scares me. With each episode, I get more and more tired. I was practically paralyzed afterwards.”

  “Let me try to explain. All your endorphins are working at once. They’re on overdrive, and when you snap back, it’s like a punch to the gut. All your energy is drained. Your body is going from zero to a hundred in a second.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I hate to tell you this, but it will keep getting worse, Jillian. You’ll get more and more tired and weaker, to the point that you will need more than a few hours of sleep to recover. You’ll need a week of sleep. That is how debilitating they will be.”

  She gasped.

  “Do not fret, Jillian, dear. I can help. Next week, come by my house, and I will show you different forms of meditation that will help you begin to control your visions.”

  “I’d like that.”

  He smiled, and they continued eating and making small talk. Jill forgot all about the fact that Alexander wouldn’t like her being with Rocco, but she hadn’t lied. She never said she wasn’t going to meet him. She’d said she’d think about it, and she had. She’d thought about it and had decided she wanted a relationship with her father. After that last vision, she needed her father more than ever, if only because he was the only person who could relate. Alexander was her boyfriend, not her handler. She was a grown woman, and she could do as she damn well pleased, so why was she so nervous, then?

  As if he had super sensory powers too, her phone rang. Speak of the devil. “Excuse me. I have to take this,” Jill said to Rocco.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey, babe. I’m headed to you now. You want to grab lunch?” Alexander asked.

  “Um.” She wasn’t a good liar.

  “What did you do, Red?” God, did he have to know her so well?

  “I’m not hungry. I just had a lovely brunch.”

  “Brunch?” She heard him groan through the phone as if he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask. “With who?”

  “With Rocco. It was so delicious. We ate—”

  “Where are you?”

  “On Spring Hill Avenue and 7th Street in a restaurant called The Gauntlet,” she answered quickly all in one breath.

  “You don’t ever listen, do you? Do not move from there. I’m going to pick you up. I’m not far. Wait for me outside.” She stuck her tongue out at the phone when he hung up before she could argue any further.

  “I guess we’re done with brunch?” Rocco asked.

  “Yep. He just worries. Don’t pay him any attention. I’ll see you at your house soon.” She bent down and kissed his cheek before walking out. She was furious. Alexander was pitting himself against her father, and he was basically making her choose. It was a decision she didn’t want to make, but he was forcing her hand. She wasn’t used to being accountable to anyone, and this was not something she liked at all!

  “Hi, Xander.” She said with her biggest fakest smile when he pulled up to the front of the restaurant.

  “Get your ass on the fucking bike, Jillian.”

  “No.” Jillian stood, foot tapping, arms crossed.

  “You are exasperating.” Alexander stomped towards her, so angry that she flinched and took a step back. She wanted to keep her resolve, but he looked predatory. She knew he’d never hurt her, but at the moment, she had serious doubts. He reached down and hugged her knees with one arm, lifted her, and threw her over his shoulder.

  “Oh my God, put me down! What the hell are you doing?” Jill fisted his back and kicked her legs, but Alexander didn’t say anything. He walked to his bike and set her down, none too gently. He put a helmet on her and almost belligerently tightened the strap. The still frighteningly silent Alexander lifted her again and sat her on his bike.

  When he finally spoke, he said, “I asked you not to see Rocco.”

  “No. You didn’t ask anything. You told me not to go, and I said I’d think about it.”

  “You are not to allowed to go see him, especially not alone and especially without telling anyone.” He shook his head and ran his fingers through his disheveled hair. “How is that such a fucking complicated concept for you to understand?” He was angry, very angry.

  Normally, Alexander went relatively slowly on his bike since he knew she hated the death machine, but he climbed on, tied his helmet, reached around, ferociously placed her hands around his waist, cranked up the motor, and took off. Jill’s head slammed back then forward against his body. Had Jill not been holding on tightly, she would have fallen right off because he didn’t ease into the speed. He went full throttle. She fisted his shirt and tried to say something along the lines of “slow the fuck down,” but with the speed and the wind, nothing came out. She ducked her head into his back and held on for dear life.

  Before she knew it, the motorcycle stopped, causing her body to slam into Alexander’s back again, and then he leaned the bike to the side and put down the kickstand. He got off first and then went to help her, but she shoved his hand and pushed his shoulder away. He stood back, impatien
tly, arms crossed, watching her stumble off the bike. When she finally stood, spine straight and chin up, indignant, she marched towards her apartment. He was right on her heels. She rummaged through her purse for her keys. Right before she opened the door, she stopped and turned around, slamming right into Alexander. She hadn’t realized he was standing that close.

  She put both hands to his chest and pushed him back, but he didn’t budge.

  “Go home, Alexander!”

  “Pfft!” He yanked the keys from her grip and opened the door. Exaggeratedly, he held the door open and swung his arm so that Jill could go in first. “After you, princess.” The sarcasm rolled off his tongue.

  “Ass,” she replied as they walked in to her empty apartment. “Stop acting like a pissed-off jerk.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, I’m soooo not acting.” He dragged out the word before slamming the door shut and slowly walked towards her. “You’re being selfish, Jillian. I’m tired of worrying about you. You can’t ever do anything I ask. Maybe I should call Oliver and ask him to talk to you.”

  “Why Oliver? What the hell does that even mean?”

  “You’ve always listened to him. Me? Never. Him? You bow down to whatever he says.”

  “Oh my God! That’s what this bullshit is all about, isn’t it?”

  “What?”

  “You’re jealous. You are so jealous,” she hissed.

  “No. I’m not jealous. I’m merely stating a fact. Had your precious Oly asked you to please,” Alexander clasped his hands together as if he was praying and then batted his eyelashes, “stay home and not put your life in fucking danger, you wouldn’t have dared move. You wouldn’t have wanted to disappoint him. You never have.”