BLOOD NIGHT
Chet Williamson
She was fire and flesh and motion. Her body coiled and released beneath his, returning thrust for thrust, the candlelight caught and held in the thin sheen of sweat that filmed her skin. He tasted the salt as his mouth searched her neck and shoulders. His orgasm was dangerously close, and he pulled his head away and looked at the oak headboard, trying to regain control, to hold back the torrent that threatened to spill out of him, a sensation too demanding to be restrained by mere flesh.
And then she moaned differently than before, and stiffened, and he knew she was there and he let himself pour into her. The moan became a low scream, and his pleasure was seasoned with bright pain as her nails sketched crimson tracks across his shoulders, down his back.
He winced, but the pain heightened the flaring in his groin, and he began to jet again, even more forcefully. He closed his eyes and let the feeling wash over him, let the sensation take him deeper into his dream until he was utterly lost in it, and the cool and unrumpled sheets of the bed where he slept alone were not even a dim, vestigial memory.
When he awoke the next morning, he became aware of sticky moisture on the sheet beneath him. His pajama bottoms were damp as well, and had turned starch-stiff at the edge of the stain.
Jesus, a wet dream, he thought. And no wonder. He couldn't remember having an erotic dream that seemed so real. He recalled in vivid detail the feel of the woman's body, her face aglow with ecstasy on the white pillow. And he could swear that the scent of her still hung in the air, a cloying, heavy, musky aroma that perfectly complemented her wildness in lovemaking.
Richard Bell tossed back the sheet, put his feet on the floor, and wished that he didn't have to go to the office, wished that the girl had been real and was still there in the bed, waiting, begging for another bout.
To Bell, making love was just that — a bout. A fight to be fought, a game of dominator and dominated, not in the sense of sadomasochism, but of a contest between two adversaries. If Bell made the girl come, he won, he had done it again — kicked the winning field goal, hit the homer in the bottom of the ninth, scored a knockout that left his opponent breathless on her back.
But there were the other times — few, thankfully — when the ball was blocked, when he swung too soon, and when the blow missed completely, leaving him weak and lifeless, while unsatisfied and appraising eyes busted what was left of his balls, one at a humiliatingly slow time.
He didn't like that feeling one bit, and that was why last night had been so good. They had been perfect together. He had made her come with an intensity he had not known women were capable of. It had been damned good, and he felt himself grow hard at the memory of it.
Enough. He hadn't had a wet dream since he was in college, and he didn't want to start pulling on it before he went to work.
Bell hopped up and walked into the bathroom, pausing to take off his stained pajamas and drop them into the hamper. He shaved and showered, but as he toweled himself dry he became aware of an irritation on his back. Wiping the steam from the mirror with a few swipes of his wet towel, he turned his back to it and looked over his shoulder.
There, starting at the top of his spine and trailing downward to where they disappeared in the thick curly hair just above his coccyx, were four thin, red welts, parallel to each other. He studied them with narrowed eyes and reached awkwardly around to touch them.
They were real. He could feel the narrow mounds like taut cords under the skin. A thought occurred to him, and he walked quickly back to the bedroom and examined the bed. There were blood stains on the bottom sheet, mere traceries of light red that he would never have noticed had he not been looking for them.
What the hell's going on here? he wondered. Did a girl sneak into his bed last night and ball him silly? Or had he been out and gotten so drunk that he didn't remember picking her up? No, there was no hangover, and the book by his bed reminded him that he had read himself to sleep. He turned the volume around and looked at the naked girl on the cover, the good-looking man with the gun pulling back a lilac sheet to expose her to the prospective buyer.
Typical paperback crap, he thought, with lots of violence, lots of action, lots of sex. For a moment his mind clicked into overdrive, and he asked himself, could that have been it? Could he have dreamed about a scene in the book and…
But where the hell did the marks come from?
Weird. Really weird. Maybe he had done it to himself — put his arms around his shoulders like that goofy high school gag where you muss your own hair and from behind it looks like someone else is doing it.
He looked at the clock and started to hustle. Maybe he'd tell Perry about it. Maybe Perry would know something.
Monday
"Stigmata," suggested Perry.
"Stigmata? Like the wounds of Christ that show up on people at Easter?"
Perry chuckled. "Kind of. Some people can will themselves, consciously or subconsciously, to bleed, produce scars, wounds, you name it." He put his size thirteens on his desktop and smiled benignly at Bell, who shook his head.
"Doesn't seem possible."
"Why not? You made yourself come subconsciously by what you dreamed."
Bell put a finger to his lips. "You mind? I'd rather not have everyone in the office know I still have…" He hesitated.
"Nocturnal emissions?" Perry grinned. "Sounds like something Captain Midnight would go on, doesn't it? But don't worry, my lips are sealed. No one will hear about your adolescent sex life from me."
"Smartass. You're married, you don't need an adolescent sex life."
Perry's face got serious for a moment, almost dreamy. "I sort of envy you the ability," he said, and sighed.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, if your dreams are that realistic," he said, pointing to Bell's back, "they must be beauts. Hell, you could fuck anybody, living or dead — Cybill, Cher, Madonna, Eleanor…"
"Eleanor?"
"Roosevelt. Looks aren't everything."
"Asshole!" Bell laughed. Then he started to think. "How could I do that?"
Perry shrugged. "Just go to sleep thinking about them, maybe."
Bell thought about what Perry had said. He thought about it at his desk, he thought about it driving home, and he thought about it as he ate his dinner. Maybe Perry was right. Maybe he could control his dreams, make them the next best thing to reality.
But when he thought about the women he could dream himself into bed with, Bell got scared. Movie stars, models, celebrities — in all likelihood they had two things in common. One, they were beautiful, and two, they were ballbusters.
And why not? They could call their shots, ask for the results of the AIDS tests, then bed whom they please. And if Mr. Wednesday Night turns out to be a washout in the rod department, there's always Mr. Thursday Night. Even the famous lays of the past — Messalina, Catherine the Great, Cleopatra — flop with them and you could lose your head, after they took God only knew what else first.
But what if the tables were turned? What if he, Richard Bell, became someone else in his dreams, someone who couldn't flop, like Don Juan, or Casanova, or even Enrol f'crissake Flynn? He swallowed the last bite of TV dinner and grinned. Goddammit, it just might work.
He dumped the aluminum tray in the trash and tossed the silverware in the sink, then went into the spare bedroom and slid open the closet door. Inside were a dozen large cardboard boxes, one of which was marked "Books." He pulled it out, undid the flaps, and looked inside at the erotic souvenirs of his college days.