J. Lennon - See You in Paradise

He had grown used to its wanderings, and he tried to ignore it. But after a moment, the footsteps continued into the hallway and down it, to stop right outside his door. His fingers paused over the keyboard, and he held his breath. The door wasn’t locked. The wraith had never seemed to show much interest in him without Lurene around.

“Hello?” he squeaked.

The door flew open and crashed into the wall behind it, deepening the depression the knob had dug over years. The wraith was staring at him, its eyes blacker and deeper than ever, and as lifeless.

He jumped out of his seat. “Uhh …” he said.

It took three long steps toward him and grabbed his shirt in its long gray fingers. It was right there, right up in his face, holding him close. He was not frightened, not yet, but he understood that he was helpless. The wraith had a smell, not a bad smell, like that of wet stones drying in hot sun. A bit of ozone, a bit of rot.

“What … what is it?” he managed.

The wraith pulled his shirt open, and the buttons clattered on the floor. It — she — pushed it over his shoulders and down his arms and tossed it back over her head. She was very, very strong. She reached for his belt.

“Whoa, whoa!” he said, and she stopped. She did not back off. She stared at him. He gulped air. And then took the rest of his own clothes off, without her help.

The wraith pushed him into the bedroom and onto the bed, then settled itself over him like a landslide. Its skin was neither rough nor cold, though it wasn’t as warm as living flesh, and certainly wasn’t as soft as Lurene’s. It had the consistency of scar tissue, rough but yielding. It felt unbreakable. It felt like it would survive for eternity.

And it turned him on! That was certainly a surprise. He touched hips, belly, breasts, and felt as breathlessly eager, as hungry, as lustful, as he had ever felt in his life. He marveled at himself, his breath catching in his throat. How was it possible? But it was. The wraith knew precisely what to do with him, and did it without hesitation. It moved over him, shifting its tremendous weight, sending shocks of pleasure through him. It could kill him in an instant, that was the crazy thing. It could crush him, but instead of feeling afraid, he felt safe. Protected by it. Gentled. Unlike with his flesh wife, he used no condom. It hurt to penetrate and it hurt when he came.

Its eyes remained open, its lips pressed shut, until it was through. Then it heaved itself up off him and flopped over, facedown on its pillow.

It took a while before Carl realized the whole thing was over. When his heart stopped racing, he picked himself up and tiptoed back to the office. He put his clothes back on, realized he couldn’t button his shirt, then threw it in the trash. He had to walk past the wraith again to get a new one, but it didn’t budge. Somehow he managed to return to work.

When Lurene got home, they did it in the shower again, and the wraith didn’t bother them. He could barely keep it up. And when afterward Lurene emerged from the bedroom, fully herself, she gave him a look. But she didn’t pursue it. Whatever had happened, she didn’t want to know.

And so it continued for several weeks, became routine, and he amazed himself at what depths of depravity it was possible to grow accustomed to. The warrantless wiretapping continued, the vice president shot some guy in the face, and Carl got himself off daily with his giggling fake wife and a lumbering clay monster. The new normal! His work increased to full productivity, and the fissure that these strange events had wrenched open simply filled itself in and smoothed itself over. He began to wonder if this was his fate, to be married to a pair of horny half-women, and he decided that there were worse ways to live out one’s days.

But then one morning Lurene came out of the bedroom disheveled, stooped, and utterly whole. He gaped. He didn’t have to ask, but he asked.

“What happened?”

“I can’t do it.”

“Well — can’t you — did you try again?”

A sharp look. “Yes I tried again, you prick!”

He winced, sunk a bit into his chair. “I’m sorry!”

She looked around the room, as if for some obvious solution she had failed to notice. “Fuck,” she said, and pulled on her coat and hat.

“You’re just going to go in to work?” he asked.

“Do you have some better idea?”

He shook his head no.

He spent the entire day in a state of mild anxiety, unaccustomed as he had become to being alone in the apartment. Several times he peeked in the bedroom to see if she’d been mistaken, if the wraith was there. But nothing lay on the bed. His palms sweated and he had to change his shirt often. He did things wrong, then did them wrong again.

He slept on it, figuring it would all make sense in the morning. But it was the same the next day, and the next, and all the rest of that week. And then one night Lurene stumbled from the bathroom wearing an expression of horrified epiphany.

“I know why I can’t do it,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Unthinkingly, he added himself to the crowded ranks of men who responded to those words by saying “That’s impossible.” To which Lurene did not lower herself to reply.

He tried again. “We were protected.”

She shrugged, lowering herself onto the sofa beside him. They sat in silence, waiting for this new information to settle itself. The television seemed very loud. Carl turned it off.

“Carl,” she said.

He turned to her.

“You fucked it. Didn’t you.”

He looked at her with what must have been an expression of utter forlornness, and he realized what a weakling he was, that he had no volition, he could only do what he was told, he habitually ignored the world’s ills because he couldn’t abide them, and he had capitulated to her misery, not because it was right, but because it freed him from his own. And then he proved it to himself by saying, “It forced me to. I couldn’t stop it.”

Her slap was not unexpected, nor was it undeserved. But it was unprecedented. It turned his head with a sound like a splintering plank, and though it didn’t hurt, not much, it had all the force behind it of a ton of stone.

His head was hung when she got up from the sofa, and it was still hung when she marched into the kitchen, with what, if he had been paying attention, he would have recognized as her old steely resolve. But the silvery snick of the paring knife being pulled from the block — that he recognized.

He managed to stop her. She meant for him to. Her hand was in the air, the fingers white around the knife; her eyes were trained on the doorway as he stumbled through. He grabbed her by the wrist and she pretended to fight against him, and the knife clattered to the floor. She let herself go limp. He encircled her in his arms and led her back to the couch.

“I want it out of me,” she said, through gritted teeth. She threw off his embrace and rocked back and forth, her lip between her teeth.

“We could … get an abortion,” he said, and regretted it immediately. But she shook her head.

“Not that!” she cried. “The other!”

Her face was wet and livid, the lips trembling, and to his great surprise, Carl gasped and let out a sob. The sound it made was very loud, like a bedsheet being torn in two, and he slumped against the back of the sofa and for a few moments was insensible with grief. When he came around, he was again surprised, this time to find himself in Lurene’s arms, to find her kissing his forehead, his ear, his hair; to find her small rough hands caressing his cheeks, wiping the tears away. “Oh, baby,” she said, and her voice was deep and unhappy and real. “Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”