Sarah followed her husband to the back of the store where deceptively innocuous clothing hung on racks. She could not wait to see what kind of weird stuff they’d built into these garments. She felt like James Bond preparing for a mission. There were leather jackets with built-in bulletproof vests and holsters, purses with a slit in them for storing a gun for easy access. There were kitchen aprons with gun pouches, negligees and garters with built-in holsters, a Kevlar baseball cap, a pair of gloves with a built-in Taser gun, Kevlar pillowcases with hidden gun pouches.
“Okay, this place is pretty cool.”
They ended up buying the Kevlar pillow with the hideaway pouch for a gun. On the way out of the store, Sarah stopped to look at the surveillance equipment.
“I think maybe we should get a burglar alarm.”
“I don’t know if the house is prewired.”
“I think it is. We just need to hire a company to set it up and monitor it.”
“I’ll look into it tomorrow. It sounds expensive.”
She picked up a teddy bear with a camera in it.
“What’s this? He’s cute.”
The man behind the counter perked up, sensing a sale. Sarah guessed that he was probably on commission.
“That’s our nanny cam. It attaches to a VCR. You just turn it on and it’ll record everything that goes on in the room. Then you just play it back when you get home.”
“That’s pretty cool.”
Josh took the bear out of her hands and handed it back to the salesman.
“Maybe next time. We’re going broke here.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. We can take the pillow back if you want. We don’t need it.”
“No, I want you to have it. I don’t work as hard as I do for nothing. We can afford it. Let’s just leave before we buy anything else.”
“There is one more thing that I want.”
“What?”
“Let’s stop by The Linen Store and buy some new sheets.”
Josh didn’t ask her why and Sarah didn’t volunteer the information. She knew he’d figure it had something to do with some type of rape-trauma recovery, a ritual like cutting your hair or buying new clothes. Maybe he’d figure the sheets reminded her too much of the dream.
When they arrived at the store, Sarah began looking at sheets that she knew Josh thought were hideous. She didn’t care. The more hideous they were the better the chance he would remember them and that’s all she wanted. She picked up a set of green sheets with polka dots, flowers, and stripes.
“No way in hell. I’m sorry but those things are so loud they’d keep me awake all night.”
Sarah laughed.
“Okay, how about these?”
She held up a set of paisley sheets with big lotus flowers all over it.
“Didn’t Jerry Garcia die in those? They look like they should come with a bong and a nickel bag.”
Sarah covered her mouth and giggled. She always loved Josh’s sense of humor.
“It’s either these or the green ones.”
“Okay, but if I start having acid flashbacks in the middle of the night, you’re going to have to talk me down.”
When they got home, Josh went straight to bed, but not before Sarah stripped the bed and put on their new paisley sheets. There were still those disturbing bloodstains on the mattress. They had dried now but they were unmistakable.
“Jesus! You did bleed a lot.”
“I never started my period though.”
“Maybe you bled it all out in one night.”
“That doesn’t happen.”
“It could have been a miscarriage.”
Sarah stopped making up the bed and looked over at Josh. That was a possibility she hadn’t considered. She and Josh had stopped using birth control so it was entirely possible. Sarah finished putting the sheets on the bed and then stared at the sheets thinking about the possibility that her body had rejected an embryo or a fetus and Josh was about to take a nap in the blood.
Why the hell did you have to say that, Josh?
she thought. It was time to buy a new mattress. Out of the corner of
her eye she saw Josh staring at her while she stared at the sheets.
“Those sheets trippin’ you out? I’m suddenly in the mood to hear some Jimi Hendrix.”
Sarah forced a smile and tried to snap herself out of it.
“I’ve got some Jim Morrison and The Doors on my iPod.”
“I’ll pass.”
“Sleep tight, lover.”
Sarah closed the door quietly as Josh slipped into bed. She walked back downstairs, leaving Josh to sleep. They had been out all day and now he had only a couple of hours before he needed to leave for work, just enough time for a quick power-nap. Sarah sat on the couch, pointing the Sig Sauer across the street at the neighbor’s house and dry-firing it.
Sarah got dressed for a late-afternoon run. The summer was nearly over but the temperature was still in the low nineties. A stark white sun blazed directly overhead. The air was hot and dusty and there was no shade to be found. Sarah imagined that she were running directly beneath the hole in the ozone layer. She could feel her skin tightening as the Vegas sun baked all the moisture from her pores. Next time, she’d have to remember to put on sunscreen. Sarah hated women who fried their skin to darken it and thought tan lines were absolutely hideous. Living in Vegas, she’d seen the aftermath of one too many tans, premature wrinkles and dark spots, skin the texture of leather, and eventually the big C. It was idiotic to do that to yourself on purpose just to look beautiful. Sarah thought her own milky white skin was beautiful as it was. Yet here she was risking melanoma under the hot September sun.
She decided to cut her run short. The idea of getting tan lines was freaking her out. Sweat stung her eyes and a crust of salt covered her forehead and cheeks. Her black dry-fit top had big white stains on it that resembled efflorescence from all the sodium and potassium she’d perspired. By the time she made it back to the house, Josh was already up and getting ready for
work. Despite the new gun sitting on the kitchen counter where she’d left it before her run, Sarah experienced a moment of dread at the thought of being left alone.
“You sure you can’t take the night off?” she asked as she hugged him from behind.
“Not after all the money we just spent. Tips have been slow lately, that’s why I’ve been working so much. The days when I made five hundred dollars in tips on a regular eight-hour shift are pretty much over until the economy recovers. I was thinking about doing a double tonight if the pit boss will let me.”
Sarah frowned.
“Just remember that I’ve got a gun now. If I find out that you’re fucking around on me I’m going to give you a .40-caliber castration or, better yet, an enema!”
Josh kissed her on the forehead, then licked her salty sweat from his lips.
“You don’t leave enough when you’re done with me to share with any other woman. If you’re still too freaked out to be alone, then I’ll stay.”
“No, you’re right, we need the money. But don’t do a double tonight. You can do it tomorrow but I need you tonight.”
“Okay, I’ll be home by one.”
“Be home by twelve thirty.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Josh smiled wide and kissed her on the nose, once more getting a mouthful of salty perspiration.
“When are they going to start giving you regular hours? You’ve been extra-board for over a year. One day you’re working eight to five and then the next day it’s four to twelve, then twelve to eight. And then with the overtime? This is getting ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but that’s why our house isn’t in foreclosure.”
Sarah smiled weakly, then made a pouty face.
“We could fuck just as well in an apartment. Probably better because I’d see you more.”
“All you think about is fucking. I guess I should be flattered.”
“What else is there to think about? I’m bored half to death!”
“You could work on your dissertation.”
“But if I finish my degree I’ll have to get a real job; then I’d have even less time to drive you crazy.”
Josh kissed her again and wrinkled his nose at her musky smell.
“I hope you’re going to shower before I get home.”
“You know you like me when I’m dirty.”
She winked at him as she pulled her shirt over her head. She was pleased to see his eyes zero in on her breasts. It meant that he was still attracted to her. He knelt down to slip on his shoes and Sarah wondered what he would have done if she’d dropped her shorts and told him to lick her pussy—sweat, funk, and all. Knowing him, he would have probably done it just to please her. He may have even enjoyed it. The thought of it began to turn her on. One day she’d have to try it.
“Good-bye, beautiful.” Josh walked out the door.
Almost immediately the silence became deafening. Sarah walked into the kitchen to get her gun and then walked upstairs, leaving all the lights on downstairs. This was not the time to worry about the electric bill. The last thing she wanted was to be in a dark house alone.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, on her ugly new sheets, cradling the gun in her lap, Sarah wished she
had talked Josh into buying her a pit bull. As much as the notion of pooper-scooping repulsed her, it would have been nice to have something big and mean in the house that was on her side. She’d have to talk to Josh about that when he got home.
The forty-two-inch plasma-screen TV protruded from the wall opposite the bed, flicking from one channel to another as Sarah hunted for something to preoccupy her. Her bedroom was painted a light tan with a cola-colored accent wall behind the king-size four-poster bed and the light from the TV cast flickering shadows across the dark wall. She loved this room. But tonight it was filled with bad memories, memories she wasn’t even certain were real.
There was nothing on TV and Sarah didn’t feel like cleaning. She felt exhausted, as if she’d just run twelve miles instead of four, but she was afraid to fall asleep. Dark, violent dreams still echoed in her mind.
Sarah began flicking through pay-per-view channels, growing increasingly frustrated. She’d already seen all of the new releases and she had no appetite for soft porn. Sarah clicked off the television, tossed the cable remote across the room onto her love seat, and grabbed her laptop.
She went onto eBay and surfed through the ads for iPods, laptops, designer purses and shoes, and various collectibles before logging on to a local runners’ message board and checking the forum threads for any interesting discussions. This was her ritual. It was what she did to convince herself that she hadn’t logged on just to look at porn. But the truth was that surfing the porn sites was her favorite pastime. It wasn’t something she did for titillation so much as morbid curios
ity. The bizarre fetishes she ran across amused her to no end. She kept telling herself that she was going to write a book someday and that this was simple research.
Sarah clicked through all the usual bukkake, farm sex, amputee, and midget porn sites until she got to the weird stuff. She stopped at a “sleepy sex” website for men who liked to make love to women who just lie there like corpses and then a necro-sex site for men who liked to make love to actual corpses. Josh would have lost his mind if he knew about the type of websites she went on. The necro-sex sites were all geared toward the goth crowd and featured women lying in coffins wearing pale makeup with black eye shadow. Sarah laughed and clicked on another link. For some reason, even the goth freaks who fucked fake corpses were making her uncomfortable.
She found a site for blood-play that showed men and women making love while cutting each other with razor blades and another site showing nude women hanging from nooses. Sarah shuddered and clicked off the website. It was just too much for her tonight.
“What the fuck is wrong with people?”
But Sarah knew that normally she would have found even the most violent and perverse porn sites fascinating. That was before she dreamed about being murdered, then woke up the next morning on a blood-soaked mattress. Now she wanted something more vanilla. She clicked on a lesbian site and tried to amuse herself with pictures of women who looked like anything but lesbians fucking for the camera. She closed her laptop and lay back on the bed with the gun on her chest. There was no fighting it. She was tired as hell and, for once,
she wasn’t the least bit horny. She felt like she’d never be horny again.
Sarah closed her eyes and clicked the safety off the pistol.
Sarah woke up as Josh walked into the room.
“Sorry, baby. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
Sarah wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands, then sat up straight in bed. She looked around the room in a panic.
“Turn on the lights.”
“Go on back to sleep,” Josh whispered.
“Turn on the lights!”
The room filled with light and Sarah immediately looked down at the sheets. Her heart began a drum roll in her chest. The sheets were white. No flowers. No paisleys. No psychedelic colors. Just plain white. Sweat broke out on her brow and she began to hyperventilate.
“Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit.”
Josh’s forehead wrinkled and he held his hands out helplessly. The gesture annoyed the hell out of Sarah and made her feel completely alone. He eyes began to tear up.
“Oh God. Oh shit.”
“What? What is it?”
“Where are the sheets? Where are the sheets, Josh?”
Josh shrugged.
“What sheets?”
“The ugly ones we bought from The Linen Store.
The hippie sheets with the paisleys and the big ugly fucking flowers? I put them on the bed before I went to sleep. Where are they? Where the fuck are they, Josh?”
Josh looked down at the bed.
“Are you sure you put them on?”
“Of course I’m sure! That’s why I bought them. So I wouldn’t forget them. I know I put them on the bed.”
Sarah sprang from the bed and stomped into the closet. She rummaged through the laundry basket, tossing jeans, T-shirts, skirts, and bras onto the floor. She ran out of the closet and downstairs to the laundry room with Josh following close behind her. She opened up the laundry machine and there were her sheets, clean, wet, balled up at the bottom of the washer. A pair of her underwear were in there too. They were the same ones she’d been wearing when she’d fallen asleep. She looked at Josh. He stared back at her wide-eyed. Slowly he shook his head.