Happy Halloween: Nothing Like A Good Night’s Sleep

From the upcoming book.

This my first short story wriiten in 1985.

Nothing Like A Good Night’ s Sleep
11 p.m.

Elizabeth Morgan sat down on her bed and stretched a long satisfied stretch. What a wonderful night it had been! She had gone to that nice new restaurant on Miller Street with Benjamin, and now sated, she looked forward to reading that new romance novel and sleeping late. It was too bad Ben was such a prude. She had asked him to stay with her tonight (wasn’t she being the brazen hussy!), but he demurred, saying he had some things to take care of before he turned in. Oh well, she was just stuck with Barbara Cartland again. At least Barbara Cartland didn’t whisper endearing love words in your ear all night and not call you afterwards. Still, she didn’t think Ben was like that. No, he was so quiet, so gentlemanly. Somehow though, she could also tell that she made him nervous; that he wanted to take to her bed but was too shy to do so. Ah well, it was probably better this way, for tonight anyway.
She took a sip of the small glass of sherry resting on her bedside table and stood up. My, she certainly was being the wicked one tonight! She took off her sweater, then her blouse, then her skirt. She undid her bra and slipped off her panties. She looked great for thirty-two; she knew that. She looked in the full-length mirror on her closet door and admired her flat tummy and the way her breasts fell heavily, yet firmly.
She looked down at the indentation of her hips and let her hands roam slowly but briefly around her supple body. A moan of pleasure and surprise escaped her parted lips and she thought about taking a bath. She giggled at the euphemism. No there was no need of that, tonight. Poor Ben, if he only knew what he was missing.
She slipped on her flannel nightgown. (How sexy!). She chuckled. She took another sip of the wine, crawled into bed, picked up the book and began reading. She’d gotten to the second page when she slipped into a deep dreamless sleep.

Midnight

Benjamin Cole left his house on Alter Street and looked both ways before he crossed the street. His mother had taught him to do that when he was very little, and he had remembered it to this day. He remembered everything she had ever taught him, he thought with a sense of triumph. Things like ‘birds fly South for the winter,’ how to put his underwear on properly (she’d spent a long time on that one) not to pick your nose or touch parts of your body in public or in private, not to eat with your mouth full, and so on. Oh yes, she’d taught him well, no need for anybody to worry about that. No siree. Well and many things. That sex was dirty.
Filthy!
Any woman who would want to do such a thing was evil. Once he had asked her why. She had taken a kitchen knife from the drawer and screamed, “Do you want me to cut you all over with this, you little scumbag? DO YOU!” whimpering, he let out a, “No,” in a small terrified voice.
She held him close to her breast very tightly in her scanty nightgown. He smelled her cheap perfume mingled with her sweat. “Come on now, let’s kneel down and pray before Mommy has to go back to work.”
They would do just that. They would kneel down before the plastic statuettes of Jesus that glowed malevolently in the dark, filling the squalid boardinghouse room with an ethereal luminescence. She intoned supplications to the Almighty as her fingernails gouged profoundly into his seven year-old arms. After ten minutes, she would get up and switch on the single naked overhead bulb and make him lie down on the gray sheets. She would walk over to the chipped dresser, take a small, oddly shaped bottle out of the drawer, take a very long pull on it and stand there weaving, a red stain blushing her cheeks. After a moment, she regained what she mistook for composure and warned sternly, “Now, don’t you turn that TV on. You go right to sleep. I come back here and find that thing on, you’re in heap of trouble!”
She would let herself out the door, switching off the light as she went. All of this passed nebulously through Benjamin’s mind before he reached the opposite curb. Mommy said that those women had to pay for their sins.
It was up to him to make sure they did.

One a.m.

Elizabeth awoke with a start. She had heard a loud thump, and in the swirling ether that accompanies first consciousness, she thought someone was in the house. She felt her skin constrict with goose bumps, and she started to turn on the bedside table lamp, then hesitated. If someone were in the house, turning on the light might alert whoever was out there, and she would forfeit any element of surprise, Instead, she softly opened the drawer next to her and slipped out the small three-shot, 22 caliber her father had given her as a house-warming gift. As she sat in the darkness, cradling the gun between her legs, her mind’s eye was replete with visions of burglars, rapists and murderers. She watched as the bedroom door, which she never closed completely, soundlessly swung open. She stifled a scream, raised the gun to the level of a man’s stomach, and her finger tightened on the trigger when she heard a distinct “Meow!” She suppressed another scream as she jumped then relaxed and plaintively said in shrill exasperation, “Calico! God, you scared the hell out of me!”
Still shaking and laughing nervously, she got out of bed and placed the gun on the bedside table. She stooped and picked up the enormous tom¬cat who had wandered so innocently into the room.
“You silly cat! Good Lord,” she said stroking him, “I nearly shot you.” Calico, who was initially glad for the attention, decided that while it was fun to be held by his human for a moment, all this attention was beginning to smother the hell out of him, so he clamored to get down. Feeling his claws starting to pierce her nightgown and into her left breast, she lowered him to the floor. In her bare feet, she padded into the kitchen where she mixed herself a strong bourbon and water with lots of ice. As she took the first sip, standing in the cool fluorescent light of the kitchen, she winced and had to admit to herself that she really was quite shaken. She calmed a bit as she felt the second sip slip, burn and spread its warmth through her stomach and her outer extremities. She carried the drink back to her room switching out the kitchen light as she left. She sat on the side of the bed finishing the drink quickly, then lay down and stared at the stucco-like ceiling, imagining the bumps to be the mountains of the moon.
She fell into a troubled sleep.

1:30 a.m.

He saw her kitchen light switch off as he stood in her back yard. She told him during dinner that she had taken her German Shepherd to the vet that afternoon for some shots and upon examination, the animal doctor had implored her to let him give the dog a thorough going over. Perfect!
Now he knew she had no protection; nothing to save that sluttish body of hers from his righteous and deadly indignation.
The prostitute he had been with didn’t slake his thirst for vengeance as he had hoped. He had walked down Alter Street for a while until he had seen the brazen one leaning against a wall.
Her breasts had sagged and her behind was pockmarked he noted when they reached her dingy little room, and she slipped out her scanty clothing They got at it right away, and they made animal love until he could feel her body racked with spasms of pleasure, her mouth open wide in a silent scream. When he was sure she wasn’t faking it, he took her hands from her side and curled his fingers around her neck and squeezed as her silent scream metamorphosed into a very real one. He exploded when he saw the life extinguished from her eyes.
Now squatting in Elizabeth’s back yard, he smiled grimly. He’d sent that whore to a better world where she would sin no more. In the bargain, he had absorbed her essence, her life force and it coursed through him making him stronger.
He really had affection for Elizabeth. He was almost stricken that she had to sully their relationship with the offer of sex. It showed him that she was truly no better than the rest of the harlots. He’d never had a relationship with a nice girl before, and Elizabeth had seemed like such a nice girl.
They had met two months before. He was a junior accountant in a large firm of CPA’s and had been sent by his office to go over the books of her small company. As he explained what he was doing as they perused her records, he noticed the clean way she smelled, the way her thick blond hair fell across one shoulder, the way her eyes sparkled when she smiled. She had asked him to lunch, and for the next eight weeks they had met for lunch and dinner with increasing regularity. In all that time, she had not soiled what they had together with even a kiss – not until tonight. Well, his mother had told him about women like that. The fact that his mother was exponentially worse never seemed once to penetrate his mind. He thought about the task at hand and knew that he would have to wait until she had fallen into a deep sleep. He went around to the side of the house and noted that a light was still on. Well, that was okay. He had patience.
He had plenty of time.

3:30 a.m.

Nothing.
Satisfied, Ben opened the door noiselessly, and ever so slowly let himself into the house and just as slowly closed the back door. He crossed the kitchen floor, each step taking an eternity. He finally made his way towards the lit bedroom with its door ajar, being especially careful not to make the slightest sound.
He allowed himself a peek in the room.
Elizabeth was lying there on top of the covers, her long hair masking her face in strands. He noticed the fullness of her breasts as they rose and fell in a relaxed easy motion.
She was dead to the world. He almost giggled with delight at the joke he’d made; DEAD to the world!
He slipped into her room through the crack in the door and started towards her bed when she uttered a low moan in her sleep and turned over restlessly. He retreated and startled himself when he saw his reflection in the full-length mirror embedded in the closet door. Seeing the door gave him an idea. She moved again as though she could sense his presence, and began to mumble in her sleep.
If she awoke, she would scream. He moved over to the door, opened it and practically leapt into the closet and closed it.
It made a large click.
It was the “click” that awoke Elizabeth, although she couldn’t have explained that to anyone. She felt a chill down her spine though the house was comfortably heated. She looked down and saw the cat at the foot of the bed and felt an unknown dread. She absolutely knew that someone was in the house. Her feet hit the floor with a thump, and she looked around inconspicuously. There was a draft from somewhere, and she rose uneasily shaking her head to free it from the fuzz that ensconced it.
With a false bravado, she called out sharply, “Who’s there?” She picked up the .22.
Inside the closet, Ben jumped involuntarily.
She walked across the room and opened the bedroom door wider and he had to stifle a scream as he heard the door creak towards him. Ben heard her footsteps fade as she walked down the hall switching on lights. She was shaking as she made her way down the hall. She turned on the hall light and held the gun in front of her tightly. She called out again, and went into the living room and switched on the lights, flashing the gun about as she did.
No one.
Nothing had been disturbed. Her nerves were jangling as she switched on the dining room light.
Again the room was deserted.
She pushed the swinging door to the kitchen open quickly and felt her essence stretch taut as she turned on that light, her eyes straining as it flickered on. Again, everything seemed right, as it should be, as she scanned the room for anything wrong, anything out of place. Ben sat in the closet all this time, his mind racing. He knew he would have to remain here for a very long time until she had calmed down, and he knew that could be a very long time indeed. Her intended lover wanted to sit down on the closet floor amongst all her shoes. If he sat down he might be too cramped to move when the time came. If he didn’t, he might be too tired. He mulled it over.
In the kitchen, her eyes darted around wildly. She still saw nothing out of place. There certainly didn’t seem to be anyone here. She started to relax, and decided that this time the situation called for brandy. God, she was going to be an alcoholic if she didn’t stop this. She sloshed a large dollop into a large glass and took a long pull. Through the bottom rim of the glass, she looked at the back door and froze, the glass still at her lips.
The chain!
The chain was unlatched. She was sure that she had latched it before. She would have staked her life on it. Hell, maybe she was. She was shaking in a palsied fury and raced through the house again, this time in a random frenzy. The cat alarmed by her fear, rushed in and around her legs. She bolted through the living room, then the dining room, back into the kitchen while trying to scream, “Get Out, GET OUT!” but her throat was so constricted with fear that it came out as a hoarse whisper. She ran back down the hall and into the bedroom and saw a quick movement out of the corner of her eye. She whirled around and fired all three shots into the full length closet door mirror. She stood dumbly as the shards of glass fell to the floor and shattered as though in slow motion, leaving only the wooden backdrop with three holes in it. She collapsed on her bed, her body wracked with sobs that flushed out of her unchecked.
She lay like that for the longest time. Finally, gingerly, she raised her head and looked around. There was nobody there after all. Thank God.
She must have just forgotten to put the latch on.
As her hysteria lifted, she smelled the pungent odor of cordite in the room. Oh no! What if the neighbors had heard the shots and called the police? She knew she could not bear dealing with them right now. As her rational mind began to assert itself, she realized that when she had shot the gun at the target range, it had made no more of a sound than that of a small firecracker. Sure, it made a large noise in her bedroom because it was an enclosed space, but she doubted seriously whether anyone could have heard the popping sounds in the street.
She lay on top of her bed for a long while, the empty gun still in her hand. As dawn began to spread through the eastern sky scattering faint beams through her lace curtains, she fell into an exhausted sleep.

Noon

She awoke with the sun shining directly in her eyes. She lay there for a moment, feeling the sensuous warmth of the sun as it bathed her. She felt an object in her hand and jumped.
The gun!
Oh God!
She guiltily lifted her head and stared at the closet door. What the hell had gotten into her? Why had she been so jumpy? She gazed over at the bedside clock as she placed the gun back in the drawer. Damn, she was late. Why had nobody at the shop called her? It was Sunday. “You silly goose,” she said aloud.
She stared at the door mirror, shattered to pieces, shards scattered all over her bedroom floor. What a silly woman! She got up, glided into her slippers, went into the kitchen, grabbed a broom and dustpan, went back into the bedroom and swept up all the glass taking extra care to get all the small slivers. She emptied it from the dustpan into the garbage can in the kitchen.
She thought fleetingly about the tremendous damage the shots had inflicted upon her clothes. She pushed the thought aside—too depressing. Wait until later after a well-deserved breakfast. She went to the front door, retrieved the huge Sunday paper, sipped several cups of strong coffee as she perused its bulk, then went back to her bedroom to get dressed. As she slipped off her nightgown and opened the dresser drawer to get her jeans and turtleneck sweater, she decided to take a walk—a long walk to clear her head from the nightmare of the night before. She might even walk over to Alter Street to see Ben. They could have a good laugh over her silliness. He might even want to offer succor and comfort. The thought brought an impish smile to her face.
What was wrong with her? She had never been like this before. Oh well, it was, over now! She slipped the sweater over her head and walked to the front door. She opened it and stood admiring the idyllic scene of a crisp fall afternoon. You know, it felt good now, but if she spent the afternoon with Ben, it might get a bit chilly later on.
As she walked back into the house, she thought about what coat she would take with her. The thought struck her that there would probably be more than some moth holes in her clothes.
Oh please, not the herringbone. She loved that coat! Well, she was just going to reach in, grab it and go, the devil take the hindsight! What else could go wrong?
She strode purposefully into the bedroom and pulled open the closet door…