by Robin Janney
He was always in this room. Growling and muttering about the one he called the Little Angel and how he was failing her. And then he would start flexing his muscles and his wings, trussing her up and torturing her for her own failures. Pat would always wake up with a headache.
But he wasn’t here.
“Beast?” she called out.
There was a soft sound, almost not there. Like a snake slithering through dry leaves.
“Beast?” Pat whispered, shivering in the pale moonlight.
“He’s not coming,” growled a low voice. “He has betrayed us.”
Her breath caught, and she backed into the rough wall the window was set in. Something poked through her thin nightgown, in several locations, but she didn’t dare turn to see what. Would her bed be bloody in the morning? It wouldn’t be the first time.
A being like the Beast moved into the now reddish moonlight from the other side of the room.
But he was taller.
Bulkier.
Blacker.
Smellier.
He waved his hand and the red light filled the room. Had she looked, she would have seen the rest of the large torture chamber familiar to her memories of this dream, but all Pat could see was this new creature.
“Who are you?” she managed to say with chattering teeth. It wasn’t the sudden cold causing her teeth to chatter.
“I am Lucifer,” he replied. His wings fluttered a little, but he didn’t unfurl them. The tops of them reached far above his grotesque face. Vampire like fangs peaked out of his lips. Smoke trailed from his nostrils. He was naked but for a black loincloth. His eyes glowed like suns, first yellow then red then orange.
Lucifer himself? Surely not. Not in her dreams! Pat’s mind fumbled in fear, trying to recall everything she’d ever learned from Sunday school as a youth so long ago, everything she had learned while researching the Beast and how to get him out of her dreams.
Beast had ignored her mentions of Jesus, saying she didn’t know what she was talking about. Odds were this one would do the same, but she decided to try anyway.
“By the name of Jesus, I command you to leave!” Her voice trembled a bit, but Pat got it all out.
Lucifer laughed.
Oddly it wasn’t a frightening laugh. It sounded genuinely amused. “If you knew Jesus at all, I would never have been able to get in here in the first place.”
So, she wasn’t a Christian. Big deal. Besides, wasn’t Lucifer supposed to be the father of lies? She remembered reading that somewhere. Had it been in the same article mentioning about how he usually appeared as an angel of light? Perhaps.
Since he wasn’t going to leave, she tried to stall him. The last time Beast had appeared, he had mostly talked and paced as he whined about his failures.
“I thought you were supposed to appear like an Angel of Light?” she asked the devil.
He smiled, fangs glistening in the red moonlight. “I can be many things. I usually choose whichever form I think will suit my purpose better. Which will get me further with you, Patricia?”
The tone of the dream changed. From a dark room to a sunlit beach, waves nipping at her toes as she reclined on a low beach chair. A large umbrella shaded her. A handsome man, tall and muscular, white leathery wings tucked behind his back stood before her now. His pale white hair shimmered in the sunlight, stark against his tanned skin. His ears curled into fairylike points. The length of him was tanned and his loincloth was gone.
He knelt at her feet. His hands, with just the right amount of callouses, held her left foot and massaged it. Long deep strokes along her arch and kneading into the ball of the foot. Gentle strokes across the top. Heavenly. Damn near orgasmic.
“Is this what you want, Patricia?” He spoke with a light Italian accent, her favorite. “Will teasing your senses and pleasuring you help my cause better than frightening you?” His fingers were magical as they moved.
“I like this better,” she murmured. How long had it been since she’d had a man pay this kind of attention to her? Especially a younger man? With abs, and those shoulders. It didn’t matter. He wasn’t a man, no matter how decidedly male his form was. What did he want? It was getting hard to think as his massage began to move up her leg. “What cause?”
“Later,” the Italian accent murmured back. He kissed her skin lightly. “For the moment, enjoy yourself. Smell the salt air. Perhaps we will go skinny dipping later. Let the wind caress you and the sun kiss your skin. Relax.”
In the dream, Pat began to relax. Her eyelids drooped and the young man massaging her seemed to have a reddish halo around him. It must be the sun at his back. His touch and his kisses were light as they climbed to her center, teasing her senses. Yet it was firm, reaching into her core.
She felt as though she were floating. Where was she going? Why was she here? Where was here? Pat struggled to stay aware, but it was getting harder and harder. Whatever manner of being, he was lulling her senses, and she was enjoying every minute of it.
He was touching her face now, peering into her eyes with his unblinking ones. They were…what color were they? First as blue as the ocean behind him, then green, they seemed to flicker from one end of the spectrum to the other. It should have frightened her, but instead she found it fascinating. His wings spread out behind him, shading her from the sun.
“How far do you want me to go?” he crooned in her ear. A warm breathy caress as his fingers trailed down her neck. His firm male form pressed against her skin.
“What do you want?” she asked again.
Lucifer chuckled. “You.”
It was getting harder and harder to think. “I thought it was something about…” Which of her patients? She couldn’t remember.
“Just you,” he told her, his soft harsh lips grazing her ear lobe.
Pat couldn’t remember why she had been afraid of her dreams.
H umming a happy tune, Pat Herschel tapped her pencil on her notepad as she watched her patient. It was a tic she knew irritated the woman across from her, but it failed to elicit a reaction today. Usually, Angela Moore was fidgety and full of nervous energy. Today, the young woman sat almost motionless in the armchair across from her. Her hands were folded in her lap, and her gaze was centered on them. Given the events detailed in emails from both her husband and her primary care physician, Pat wasn’t surprised to see this level of depression.
“No Craig today?” she asked her patient. “I know he’s home, he’s already sent me an email with his concerns for you.”
Angela shrugged. “No, he had Nan drive me today. I think he’s talking with his own doctor this afternoon.”
“I guess that’s expected. He’s hardly come home to a happy wife.” It was easy to hear the pain in the younger woman’s voice, but it was time to stop coddling her. “Where do you want to start today?”
“Did Dr. Ryan talk to you yet?” the other asked.
“He sent me an email. I was sad to read about your miscarriage, along with the events which caused it.” That much was true.
Her patient seemed relieved. “I’m…I’ve been thinking about trying the new meds you wanted me to try.”
“Why is that?” To say Pat was surprised would be putting it mildly. She had been prepared for an argument, and here the other woman had brought it up herself. It was almost too easy.
Again, her patient shrugged. “I need to be better balanced, so I don’t drive my husband away again. I told him if he were to come home, I would do whatever I had to to get better.”
“Does that include talking more?” she asked. The doctor leaned forward and turned the laptop sitting on the low table between them around. She hit the play button on the video the woman’s husband had sent her. “This would be a good starting place.”
Angela jerked as the video began to play. The sound of the letter opener stabbing into the first picture had only sounded once before the young woman leaned forward and slammed the laptop shut. “Where did you get this?” she demanded angril
y.
“Your husband emailed it to me.” Pat’s eyebrows raised at the slew of profanity the other woman verbalized. It really was no wonder the man had stayed away for so long if this was what he had to come home to. “He’s concerned for you. Rightfully so. While I realize you were angry because he threatened an affair, why did you think this was the right course of action?”
“I wasn’t thinking at the time.” Angela gathered her purse and stood to her feet. “Are you going to write me a new prescription or not?”
“Have you restarted taking any of them since the miscarriage began?” Pat sighed but wasn’t surprised the other was calling an end to the session.
“No, I thought I should wait in case you wanted to change stuff around.”
“Let me get my prescription pad.” She left her seat and crossed the room to her desk. Writing the prescription, the doctor continued to counsel her patient as the other woman approached the desk. “Medicine can only do so much, Angela. While I understand the wounds are extremely fresh, you will need to start addressing them. The sooner the better.”
“What do you want me to say Pat? That I feel like that bitch reached inside of me and tore my baby out? That I feel dead inside? That I feel betrayed even though Craig managed to stop from going all the way? Saying those things doesn’t make me feel any better. It only makes me feel worse because it’s my own damn fault. If I had just trusted my husband. If I had just stayed in bed and slept. If I had just told him I was pregnant to bring him home faster.”
“Those are all very good starting points, Angela. If you keep it bottled up, you’ll only explode and then what do you think will happen? You will only succeed in driving your husband away, especially if your resulting episode destroys more of his property.”
“Are you done writing that?” Angela held her hand out.
Pat nodded and handed the prescription to the other woman. “Don’t restart the anxiety medication until I tell you to. I think the depression takes priority and I want to get this regulated before we start dealing with the anxiety.”
“Fine. I’ll see you in two weeks,” said Angela, walking away.
“Would you consent to weekly visits?” she dared to ask as the woman put her hand on the doorknob. “I’ll be able to regulate the medicine better that way. Help with the balancing.”
The young woman’s shoulders slumped. “Fine. See you next week.” She slammed the door behind her.
Pat let out her breath and allowed herself a smile. “Well, that went well.”
A ngela’s anger had not lessened by the time Nan dropped her off in front of her home, but she managed to give a friendly wave at the other woman before springing up the steps. Carrying the plastic shopping bag with her chocolate, pads and new medicine in one hand, she opened and shut the front door with the other. Locking the door behind her, she wondered if she had to do anything with the alarm system, but one check told her it hadn’t been activated.
Of course not. Craig wasn’t concerned with his own safety, only hers. So what if he had seen her manhandled when they kidnapped her? She had seen him fall from a bullet wound! She thought he had died!
His protectiveness should have been enough to cool her anger, but it only served to fuel it. Walking through the house to his office, she was further angered at the sight of his closed office door. Well, she had to give him her receipts from her afternoon anyway. He didn’t care what she spent, but he kept meticulous financial records. She’d looked once, it made her old checkbook look like a child’s crayon stick figure. Now, she was able to make the knock on his closed door gentle, even though what she truly wanted to do was pound on the door. Pound until her fist was bloody and the door fell off its hinges.
“Come in,” she heard him say.
Opening the door and entering the office, her heart couldn’t help but be happy to find him here. Anger and happiness warred inside Angela.
“You’re back early,” Craig said, straightening in his office chair.
There was no warmth in his greeting, no smile, and he didn’t hold his arm out to her like usual. Her happiness died a quick death. When was the last time she had seen him smile? Just before he’d yelled at her? Or when he’d come home? Either way, he hadn’t smiled at her since. Oh, was he irritated over the interruption? Fine, let him be.
Reaching into her purse, Angela pulled out her receipts. “Here are my receipts.” She stepped to the desk and held them out to him.
His eyebrow raised at her quizzically as he took them. “This could have waited. I’m a little…”
“Why did you send that video to Pat?” she asked angrily. Her foot stomped the floor involuntarily. Pat’s advice not to explode was worth ignoring in this case. “You had no right! It was a private moment in my home when I was angry and hurting, and you should have at least talked to me first!”
Her husband leaned back in his chair, his guilty eyes returning to his laptop.
“Oh Craig, you didn’t?” came from the laptop. And Craig gave a small shrug in response.
Angela jerked back, her heart beginning to pound. “Kevin?”
Her husband turned his laptop towards her and she could see his friend/doctor on the screen. It looked like the other man was at his job, and she could only assume she’d interrupted her husband’s therapy session.
“Hello, Angela,” Kevin said.
Her face flushed, with further anger and additional embarrassment. Their friend looked concerned, but not even his calm gaze was helping her right now. She waved her hand in the air in frustration. “Did he send it to you too? The video of my wrecking his office?”
Kevin looked uncertain, but then nodded his head. “He did. He did it because he’s concerned about you and doesn’t know how to help you.”
Rubbing a hand over her face, Angela pointed a finger at her husband. “Fix yourself first, Craig. And dammit – don’t send any more videos of me to anyone without talking to me first.”
Turning, she left the office. Slamming the door behind her.
S ighing, Craig looked down at the receipts in his hand. He wasn’t surprised to see peanut butter cups on them. Quite a few packages. Was she going to eat them all herself?
“Uhm, Craig? Mind turning me back around?”
He’d managed to forget about Kevin. “Sorry,” he said, turning the laptop back around, so its screen faced him again.
“That was a…tense…moment. You really should have talked to her first,” remarked his friend. His doctor at the moment.
Craig sighed and shrugged. “I didn’t think she would. I mentioned it the night I came back that I was more upset about what she’d done to her pictures than what she’d done to the desk. She didn’t comment, just buried her face in my shirt.” Helplessness threatened to drown him.
“Everything was fresh that night, Craig. Even if she didn’t want to talk about it yet, you should have at least gotten her permission to send it to her doctor. And to me.” Kevin shifted in his seat, resting his elbow on his desk and placed his hand under his chin. “Don’t get me wrong. I understand exactly why you did it. I share your concern. Do you do this often?”
“What exactly?” asked Craig, leaning back in his seat.
“Do things concerning her without talking to her first.”
The argument they’d had in the bedroom before he had left for New York played again in Craig’s mind at his friend’s question.
His wife who normally accepted his decisions as final, was arguing with him, wanting to come to New York with him. And Craig kept refusing. He had to protect her.
After Angela tried convincing him to put a camera in his bedroom, because she didn’t trust his stepmother, she’d had enough because his anxious wife slid off their bed to her feet. “If you won’t do that much, then take me with you, Craig! Please!” she had begged.
“No,” he snapped at her impatiently. “Angela, please, we’ve been over this.”
“No!” she snapped back at him. “You made your decision withou
t even talking to me and just delivered it like I’m back to being your employee! I deserve to have a say in my own life!”
“Probably more than I realize,” he admitted. He looked again at the receipts. If it made her happy again, she could have all the chocolates he could afford.
50
“A nd how are you feeling now that a week has passed since the incident, Angela?” Pat asked her patient, even though the answer was far too obvious. Although the other woman had left their session last week in an angry huff, there was no sign of it at the start of today’s appointment. The sullen young woman’s depression hung about her like a cloud.
“How do you think I feel?” Angela Moore asked. She shrugged her shoulders. “I’m not bleeding as bad as I was, but there’s still some heavy cramping. My bruises are still tender, but I don’t think the bite marks are going to scar. She didn’t bite as hard as Derek did, he was vicious. I’m taking the pain meds Dr. Ryan gave me. Usually to help me sleep at night. They work better than the sleeping pills.”
Pat nodded and made a notation on her notepad. “I’m glad you’re feeling better physically. What will you do when the pain medication runs out?”
She watched another despondent shrug take place even as Angela’s hands twitched in her lap.
“If I’m still in pain, I’ll talk to Dr. Ryan and see if I can get a refill. If not, I’ll go back to using sleeping pills,” answered Angela. A hand came up and brushed at her hair. Usually feathery with curls added in, the hair hung limp. Clean, but not fussed over. Her fingernails were missing their usual pink polish as well. The only jewelry were the rings on her left hand, and she kept twisting them with her right hand as she spoke. “Craig’s not coming to bed at the same time he used to, and it’s hard for me to sleep if he’s not there. I know we can’t have sex right now, but it would be nice to be held.”
“Is that why you’re not keeping up with your appearance?” Pat was pleased to see the other woman flush.