that Josh needed this. He immediately became more alert, less depressed.
“Okay,” he said, turning to face her, “what do we know?”
Sarah took a death breath and hesitated for a long moment before she spoke.
“First, I saw you getting murdered by the neighbor. I remember him raping me and slitting my throat. When I woke up the next morning, you and I were alive but the bed was saturated with blood. The dreams or memories or whatever they are seem to come and go. Sometimes they’re vivid and I can remember just about every detail and sometimes I can’t remember anything. I woke up three nights ago and found that the sheets had been changed, the walls and the rug had been cleaned, my gun had been fired and all the bullets had been removed from the clip. But since we’ve been in the hotel there hasn’t been any strange things happening.”
“Except you did have a nightmare.”
“Yeah, true, I had a nightmare. But that was it. Nothing in the room had been changed. There wasn’t any sign that anything abnormal had happened at all. No bloody mattress and no missing sheets. And the digital recorder didn’t record anything unusual.”
“But we know that someone other than me had sex with you on the night before we got here because they found another man’s semen inside you.”
Josh was staring at Sarah, studying her face, trying to gauge her reaction. It pissed her off. He still doubted her.
Sarah wanted to tell him to shut the fuck up about the semen. Just hearing him say it made her feel as if there were a cold draft wafting beneath her skin. It made her want to stab him to death just to keep him from repeating it again. She wanted to forget about it, she wanted to pretend that the detective had never called. But she needed to figure out what was happening to her. This wasn’t something she could just ignore.
“Yeah, okay. They found semen, but no signs of vaginal or rectal bruising or tearing and no drugs in my system.”
Josh stood up and began to pace the floor.
“It doesn’t add up.”
“No. It
“You could be sleepwalking and washing the sheets in your sleep.”
“But then where did the blood in the mattress and the semen come from?”
“You could be having sleep sex.”
“I don’t see me being able to leave the house without waking you up.”
“Well, they didn’t test me for drugs. Someone could still be drugging me and then sneaking in and having sex with you and you could just be blocking it out.”
“That’s possible. Or I could be drugging you and then sneaking out and having sex with other men and making up all the rest of this.”
Josh looked at her. Shocked.
“Somebody had to say it. I know you’ve been thinking it. You’ve damned near said as much. We have to address every possibility. Then we can exclude them one by one. So, is it possible that I could be cheating on you and just making up all of this?”
Josh blushed, then shook his head, dismissing the notion.
“It wouldn’t make sense. You were the one who insisted on the rape kit and they would have never found the semen if you hadn’t. Why would you do that if you were cheating on me? I mean really, I wouldn’t even know about any of this if you hadn’t told me about it. It wouldn’t make sense for you to bring all this up if you were fucking around on me.”
Sarah was relieved. She slapped Josh on the arm.
“Then why the fuck did you say all that shit about me being a nympho and not being satisfied with you? Why’d you make me think you didn’t trust me?”
Josh shrugged.
“I’m sorry. That was just my insecurities talking. The thought of another man having sex with you is just driving me crazy. I want to fucking kill somebody.”
Josh was pacing the floor, clenching and unclenching his fingers, looking for something to break that he wouldn’t have to pay for. He settled on punching the pillow.
“Someone could still be drugging us both. They could be using something rare that they don’t test for. We can’t rule that out.”
“A new date-rape drug?”
Sarah nodded.
“Could be, I mean it’s possible. I still think we’re missing something though. We need to think waaaaay outside the box.”
“Okay, let’s do it. Let’s not rule anything out yet even what we know is impossible. What if everything you remember is true?”
“You mean that I’ve been raped and murdered two or three nights in a row? That you were murdered too? How would that be possible?”
“We’re not thinking about what’s possible yet. We’re just laying everything out right now. We can start ruling things out later.”
“Okay, so then we’ve both been murdered.”
“But we both woke up, alive.”
“So somehow we healed. Either we healed on our own or someone healed us.”
Sarah shivered.
“Okay, that’s just fucking creepy. What else?”
“Hypnotism? Some sort of subliminal suggestion or mind control of some sort? Someone could be attacking you and maybe knocking me unconscious somehow and then hypnotizing us both so we don’t remember, maybe making you think you’ve been murdered just to freak you out more.”
“Even weirder. What else?”
“I don’t know. Can you think of anything?”
“Well, we’ve covered sleep fucking, infidelity, drugs, spontaneous regeneration, and hypnotism. I think that about covers it. So what do we do now?”
“We need to prove that you’re being attacked. Catch the fucker redhanded.”
“Well, we could always go back to The Spy Shop and buy that nanny cam. If we can get him on camera, then we’ll have our proof.”
“You’re right, that’s probably the only way. Do you have any money left from the slot machine?”
Sarah picked up her purse and began shuffling through a stack of bills. They were mostly twenties and fifties with only a few hundreds left.
“About nine hundred dollars.”
“We spent sixteen hundred dollars last night?”
“Well, we spent about four hundred on food and then I bought you that shirt from Armani Exchange and those pants from Hugo Boss and then I bought a skirt from Calvin Klein…”
Josh shook his head and laughed.
“Okay, it doesn’t matter. It was your money. I guess that means we can either buy the camera or the alarm but with the money we already spent on the gun, we can’t do both. I haven’t put anything in the bank for next month’s mortgage yet.”
Sarah didn’t hesitate.
“Let’s get the camera.”
“Are you sure? What if we see something…terrible?”
Sarah thought for a moment. An alarm would just chase the rapist away. Then she’d never know what was happening, who was causing all of this, or if she was crazy. She had to see it to believe it. But even more, she wanted Josh to see it. She wanted him to see with his own eyes that she wasn’t crazy, wasn’t lying, wasn’t cheating. It made her skin crawl to imagine watching herself getting raped on camera. Her stomach did a little flip as she tried to picture it in her mind. She shuddered and turned back to Josh.
“We need to catch this fucker. We need evidence.”
