Black Leather Required by David J Schow

Author:David J Schow [Schow, David J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Horror, Short Stories, Collection
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2015-03-27T00:00:00+00:00

Breaking and Entering,

or:

You may like

what you find

behind certain doors

Life Partner

The dirty gray light told JJ the sun was still waking up. Next to her, Walter continued the cadenced respiration of his own sleep. She hated him for the sleep he could achieve when she had to fight for every Z.

JJ was on her back, only her right calf brushing Walter, who was also on his back. He did not snore. Walter never snored. Snoring was for less cultured beings. He told her that she, in fact, did snore–lightly, delicately, "daintily" was how he put it. The telling did its insidious damage and became just one more thing to push her awake when she most sought sleep's oblivion.

What had jolted her back early to the real world this morning was a weird dream about Walter. Sort of.

In the dream, JJ was ten years older, and Walter was there, which meant they were still together. It was less a commitment or a sentence than simple inertia; after awhile you compensate for your private losses by taking petty agonies out on your mate of record. She stood before a mirror in the dream, having lost a decade. Her eyes looked lost and haunted. Walter appeared behind her. They were both naked. He embraced her, reaching around to cup and collect her. He told her they both still had each other. She could feel his erection prodding her butt. They still had each other. His palms brushed her nipples and brought them up; he knew her body too well. And she was warming . . . the old reliable process, and soon Walter would be inside of her, and they still had each other. . .

. . . but JJ no longer had herself.

Bang–awake. So to speak.

JJ awoke feeling so lost that her reach to Walter was on the instinctual level, flesh seeking the comfort of flesh. She ran her hand from his navel to his nipples, then all the way down.

Pause. One more breath. She did not hear a husky inhalation; that sleepy-warm precoital sound that certifies and bonds what follows. Walter slept on, limp as a juvenile offender's alibi, as unconcerned as a snake's prey in mid-swallow. He breathed onward, regularly, and slept.

Maybe his dream was better than hers.

The moment ebbed. JJ gave up. A little reciprocity, for cryin' out loud. A touch of tactile reassurance. Did she ask so much? Had she taken so much from him?

She released a long breath as a sigh. No way she'd get back to sleep now.

To hell with Walter. She could do herself, and if he finally decided to wake up, so much the better. Maybe the rigorous wiggle of the bed would do it.

It took time, but JJ lost herself for a few moments of the new day, inside another kind of dream.

JJ dozed. It was a thin, greasy kind of sleep, like passing out with gas heat clogging the room. When she awoke she found semen drying on the bottom sheet of the queen size, and silently cursed Walter as a deep-sleeping son of a bitch.

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