Nightmares

This short story was published in FishHook, the University of Southern Indiana's literary and art magazine last fall (2012).

I once had a lover who woke frozen and terrified in the night. The absolute stillness pulled me from troubled toss and turn dreams, waking to the sleep drunk conclusion that she had died next to me. I groped forward almost blindly, heavy hands sliding over her neck and face, searching for the rise and fall of breath or the steady beat of pumping blood under her skin.

She jerked to life at my touch, her whole body trembling. I expected her to flinch back in disgust and demand to know why I had decided to grope her as she slept, a lead in to the yelling that would go on till the grey dawn became painted through with the orange and red stains of sunrise.  Or, in another turn, the argument would end with a last remark and a taunt silence when she stumbled angrily from the bed, dragging the comforter and pillow with her to settle in the bathtub to sleep. I expected those reactions, and a few more with the same taste and feel. Instead she clutched out, grabbing onto me as if someone, or something, was trying to drag her from the bed, or life itself.

She pulled herself against me hard, jarring me into lucidity; I wondered if she was trying to crawl inside my skin.  She entwined her arms and legs with mine and burrowed her mouth into the soft place where my shoulder and neck met. The sheen of cold sweat on her rubbed against me where our skin touched and each inhale of breath brought its musky smell with it.  When I pressed my lips to her temple slowly, with hesitation, the taste of salt lingered. Each exhale of her breath pressed fast and hot, trapped in the space between the pillow and my skin. The proximity and heat, the smell of her, brought forward images and memories of sex. I might have liked this at some other time, the urgency of her need making me want her. But she shook, cowering into me, and I marveled at what strange darkness could so overcome her, enough to forget my petty crimes, my snide remarks, my socks left wet in the bathroom, enough to need me like this. As I tightly held her in my arms, pressing our bodies together, I could feel the gentling of her pulse through her shirt where our chests cemented together, the rise and fall of our breath syncing up. In all the time we had been together we had never allowed ourselves this kind of closeness. Not even when making love.

We fell back asleep that way, melded together as if our lives depended on it. When I woke alone, those hidden moments in the dark were the half remembered bits of a dream, the empty bed like the hollowness in my chest, an echo in a silent room. I left the cold, mussed sheets and found her in the kitchen. When I asked what it was that had scared her so badly she turned to me, her face covered in invisible words. I read no questions sketched around her eyes and how dare you ask? written neatly along her thin lips and down her hard chin. I wished she would have screamed it all. When she turned away I pressed a hand to my chest. Somewhere below my skin, my heart beat on, pushing my blood along predestined paths, but I couldn’t feel it. For that one moment, as she clung to me in terror, I had felt both our hearts race as one. For once I had been needed, for once trusted.  In those blue hours just before sunrise we were not just alive, but we lived. It would not happen again. Though my pulse was a roaring ocean in my ears, the pain deep beneath my fingers said that my heart had stopped once again. Always going through the motions of life but never actually living.

By Alissa Tsaparikos