Dark Whispers

The only light in the room came from the alarm clock.

Projected on the ceiling, the red laser advertised that it was 3:02 am and 67 degrees.

Outside her neat little house, but unheard in that bedroom, nightsounds stopped in the ninety degree humidity. In the distance, a far walk from the little subdivision, cars could be heard singing against the concrete of the interstate. Aside from the highway and hums from airconditioners, there was unusual silence and still.

She had grown used to sleeping alone. She still didn't sleep the whole night through, but she'd given up reaching over and patting his side of the bed, searching.

It had taken a year for her to clean out the drawer he kept in her dresser.

Her closest friends and family had encouraged her to date. To move on.

But she couldn't.

She wouldn't.

Once, she went out on a blind date that her sister had set. There were drinks, there was dinner, but there was no dessert. The night ended with an awkward hug and no followup phone call.

When she came home, she found an indention on her neatly made bed.

On his side. Like he'd been lying there.

She tried not to dwell on it, but sleep was difficult to find that night.

It had taken two years for her to begin hearing his voice. Almost indistinct at first, and always from the next room, she never could be sure if she were losing her mind. Once or twice, she heard her name clearly. Her heart would clench, and her eyes would well with tears, but she always answered. "Yes? I'm here!" she'd say, and then feel like a fool for speaking to an empty house.

After three years, the house answered her.

_______

The only light in the room came from the alarm clock.

It was a rare night that she slept solidly and soundly, and a rarer night still when the bed would move with the mass of another.

This was such a night.

First, the bedclothes were slowly pulled down.

61 degrees.

Two minutes passed.

The bedframe creaked beneath weight unseen.

57 degrees.

Sleeping on her side, she'd drawn her legs up and in, fetal. Invisible hands traced from her calf to her thigh, pushing her thin nightgown up to her waist.

52 degrees.

She stirred, but didn't wake. Her hair moved as though underwater; it waved in the darkness, stroked by hands as black as the void and as clear as the air.

48 degrees.

Her cheek was caressed, and a butterfly kiss flitted across her lips.

42 degrees.

"Wake up."

His voice was shattered ice in the chill; broken glass in the night's still, dancing on nerve's edge and heart's race.

40 degrees.

She awakened with a start and her breath plumed, but she couldn't see it. All was darkness, and then she felt him.

His familiar hands, his scent, his breath surrounded her.

She smiled, and he wiped away her joyful tears.

As they kissed, she felt his weight move atop her, and she parted her legs for him, wrapping them around and behind his form.

A sharp exhale from them both as he entered her, gently, the way he used to do, those years before.

She knew it must be a dream.

Everything was a dream, since that day he fell/flew. It has all been one nightmare, and this, this cold darkness must be real, because he was here and he was now and there were never fingers pointed and widow's stares and labels thrown and bridges leaped or burned or jumped. In this embrace, in the cold summertime darkness, she felt his love and she was filled with hope; finally, he had chosen and terms like mistress, homewrecker, whore and other woman weren't uttered and wept.

She laughed as she came, and his groans took a more urgent tone.

As he filled her, his hands found her throat, and she smiled with the familiarity of his touch.

He collapsed onto her in that way, spent, and her arms wrapped around his strong back.

His hands never left her neck.

A whisper.

"You."

A harder clench.

The darkness of the room was filled with red splotches of color behind her eyes.

"Shouldn't."

Her smile fell away as tunnel vision began to turn those splotches into pinpricks of crimson.

"Have."

Consciousness was nearly gone as she began to struggle, weakly and too late.

"Told her."

The world went as dark as the room.

"About us."

37 degrees, and only light and signs of life came from the alarm clock.

Nightsounds resumed in the neat little yard, and tires could still be heard singing on I-95. The tune resembled a dirge as the spectre of her former lover faded, returning to the water below the Talmadge bridge, where he spent the last few seconds of his life those years before.