The Black Train

Collier lay atop the sheets in a trembling rigor, eyes peeled in dread. A cold sweat thick as honey seemed to sheen him. Confusion came first; then his stomach tightened when images from the dream illuminated in his head. Holy SHIT, that was the most disgusting nightmare of my life…

He tried to swallow but couldn’t; then he found he couldn’t move, either, the dream having crushed him like a collapsed ceiling. The image snapped brighter in his brain: a gut-sucked nude woman with parchment white flesh shuddering and in tears as a pair of iron shears identical to those he’d seen in the display intricately snip-snip- snipped off all of her hair. Like the Nazis, he thought.

Did the Confederates really do such things? Had he read that somewhere?

Or had his mind generated the entire atrocity?

I must really be fucked up to have a dream like that…

Indeed.

He still couldn’t move; he felt half suffocated. His chest rose and fell as he heaved in air—

Holy shit!

—and immediately noticed a figure standing next to the bed.

Collier’s heart quaked. His brain told him to roll off the bed and turn on the lamp but—

The dream paralysis only hardened around him.

Who are you! he tried to shout but his throat was just as paralyzed. Grainy darkness filled the room like smoke. The figure’s head seemed bowed. It seemed to stand there looking down at him for full minutes, and then suddenly its pose snapped. The figure’s head was leaning toward his face.

Collier’s body clenched when a mouth locked to his and a fervent, hot tongue began to churn over his lips. His own lips parted against his will, to allow his tongue to be sucked. The action was fastidious, almost machinelike, and then petite yet insistent fingers toggled his nipples. The forced kiss sent wet smacking sounds about the dim room.

The clash of opposites couldn’t have been more profound: terror and arousal. The shapely shadow figure manipulated itself above him; then eager, deft hands pulled his shorts down and dabbled with his genitals. I’ve got to get up! Collier thought. I’ve got to find out who this is…

But he couldn’t. He couldn’t budge.

Now the figure slid over his hips; he could tell—thank God—that the intruder was a woman, and a rather insistent one. Collier’s arousal strained; then the figure adjusted itself and suddenly he was engaged in intercourse with someone he couldn’t identify.

The figure’s hips began to stroke up and down over Collier’s helpless member. He remained lain out on his back as this person took him in the dark. He heard the faintest moans as his own climax impinged. Bedsprings creaked as the rhythm rose…

The dream rigor released just moments before he’d orgasm; his hand shot out and turned on the light.

It was Lottie, grinning down at him.

Reason of the most unpleasant sort flooded his awareness once the paralysis was gone—

Lottie continued riding him, her grinning face bearing down, and he was pretty sure she mouthed these words: Knock me up!

More terror, then, as more awareness returned. Collier heaved her hips off him, severing the coitus. “Damn it, Lottie! You don’t just sneak into a guy’s room and start…doing him!”

She giggled silently.

He snapped his shorts back up over the straining erection. Knock me up, he thought in the worst dread. At least he’d interrupted the intercourse before he’d climaxed but still, he knew that was no guarantee. Errant sperms in preejaculatory fluid could indeed make women pregnant—couldn’t they?—and making Lottie pregnant was a prospect he shuddered to contemplate.

“You have to get out of here, Lottie!”

She shook her head. Collier had to snatch her hand away when she reached for his groin.

“Get out, get out, get out!” he half shouted, but only now did he take full note of her trim, toned naked body. Christ…She leaned over him, still tipsy, and began to rub his chest.

“Just—stop. No more of this, okay? I’m not in the mood; I just had an awful nightmare.” But even as he said it, the ghastly nightmare’s pall took a backseat to more primal impulses. “Go back to your room, just—” But his lust kept tipping. He stared slack-jawed at her bonbonsize nipples atop the ripe-fruit breasts. The tight stomach curved down…

Finish the job! that other voice said. What’s WRONG with you!

His hand began to rise to a breast, but then retracted…

Have some common sense for once! he berated himself. “Lottie, no. We can’t do this, it’s not right. You’re still drunk, and your mother’s already mad enough at you, so just go back to your room!” He pushed her back with some urgency.

I love you! her silent lips told him.

Collier groaned. There’s always something, isn’t there? “Lottie, look, you can’t possibly love me.”

She wagged her head up and down.

“We’ve only known each other a few hours, and besides, I live in California, and I’m married.”

She shrugged energetically, still drunk but enlivened by him. She got on her knees at the bedside and began to rub the inside of his thighs.

Collier grabbed her hands again. This is a lawsuit waiting to happen, he knew. And—shit!—what if she really DOES get pregnant? I’d be ruined. He wanted her out of here so he could simply go back to bed. But he didn’t want to be caustic, and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. What a pain in the ass. “Lottie, you’re a beautiful girl but this can’t happen again. You understand that, right?”

Now she frowned, and the frown turned sad.

Collier got up, put on his robe, and wrapped her up in a clean bedsheet from the dresser. “Come on, you have to go.” He opened the door and stepped out with her. It was his very best luck that no one else stood in the hall to see them.

“Just go to bed now,” he began. “You had too much to drink tonight, and that’s why this happened. You’ll feel better tomorrow…”

But then he paused as the words left his lips because he heard something.

From the bedroom, he felt sure.

A voice from the bedroom. Very light.

A woman’s voice. A drifting accent…

“Come on, sweetie, there’s one more thing ya gotta do for me.”

Then a rougher voice, a man’s. “I’m done, now I gotta get out’a here.”

“No, no, not yet. Do it—you know.”

Collier’s hands froze on Lottie’s shoulders.

Who the hell is in my bedroom!

His eyes beseeched Lottie’s. “Did you hear that?”

But all Lottie could offer was the familiar drunken grin.

Collier pulled himself back into the room. Looked around.

There was no one there.

But what did he expect? I know I heard voices, he told himself. It sounded like they were coming from here but…

Had someone come into the room, then left just as quickly, all in the few seconds he’d been standing outside the door with Lottie? Was there some alternate entrance?

All right. I’m just tired. I heard some voices through the air duct, from another room is all.

The stair hall remained clear. “Go to bed, Lottie,” he whispered. “And hurry. Someone could see us out here.”