Saying Goodbye to the Sun

by David McAfee

  Then it hit me. A lift! There was a lift under the chair. Had to be. Nothing else could explain it. Raine, furious that I didn’t believe her wild story, had tripped some switch and set the chair to rising. I hadn’t seen it because I was turning to leave. Well, I hoped she enjoyed her little game because as soon as I figured out how high I was, I meant to jump down and sprint for the door. This time I would not let her stop me.

  I leaned over to see how high the chair was, half expecting to see some long curtains or something under the chair to hide the lift. I didn’t see any curtain, nor did I see a lift. What I did see stopped my heart like a deadbolt.

  There was Raine, eyes glowing a fierce red. She held myself and the chair - easily 300 pounds - over her head with one hand like a waiter carrying a tray. She wasn’t even straining. That terrible/beautiful feeling was back, but added to it now was a new feeling. Awe.

  “Is this a lie, too?” she asked. Two sharp points glinted in her upper jaw. Stark white, they reflected the room’s ambient light back at me with a stunning clarity.

  Fangs.

  “Is it?” She pressed.

  Startled, I jumped back in the chair. Raine was no waiter, and the chair was no tray of food. She might be able to hold the chair and me up one-handed, but balancing it while I squirmed was another matter. The whole world tilted crazily to the right, and the next thing I knew I was falling headfirst towards the stone floor. I heard Raine call out my name, but the sudden overwhelming crack of pain at the back of my skull drowned out her voice.

  Then the room went dim.

  ***

  When I opened my eyes, I saw Raine kneeling on the floor next to me, cradling my head in her lap. Concern etched her features, and her eyes shone a vibrant, electric blue as she pushed aside a few strands of hair from my face. “Are you all right?” She asked.

  “I think so.” I tried to sit up, but she put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down.

  “You could have a concussion,” she said. “Better to take it slow.” She touched the back of my head, the part that hit the floor, and sent a jolt of pain through my skull. I winced. “Sorry,” she said.

  “That’s OK. I’m better. Really. I—”

  She cut off my protest with a kiss, pressing her lips to mine as though my breath were the only thing keeping her alive. She kept one hand on the back of my head, which suddenly didn’t hurt anymore, and placed her other hand on my chest, kneading my shirt between her fingers. Her lips parted and I tasted her tongue in my mouth, feeling, exploring…looking for someplace to go.

  After a moment’s surprise I reached my arms around her and kissed her back. Something awakened in my body that had only simmered before, an urgent, mounting need that cried out to be met, and soon. The crotch of my jeans grew tighter and tighter with the strain of holding in a thrumming erection, and I couldn’t do anything by that point but go along for the ride.

  We stood together without breaking our kiss, both of us feeling, roaming the other’s body with our hands. Her nipples poked through her blouse, hard as nails under my fingers and begging to be kissed. Her hand found its way to my crotch, and she squeezed what she found there, sending an jolt of anticipatory pleasure up my spine.

  She reached her hands up to my chest, grabbed my shirt, and pulled me to a doorway in the back of the room. I followed her in silence to a lushly appointed room with an antique grandfather clock on one wall, a massive Cherry wood dresser on another, and a huge four-poster bed that dominated the center of the chamber, its scarlet sheets held the smooth sheen of satin. She led me to the bed and gently pushed me onto it.

  I lay on my back, looking up at her as she removed her blouse. Raine’s nipples stood erect and almost poked through her soft red bra. Then she reached behind her and undid the clasp, exposing her bare breasts to the open air of the chamber. I reached up and rubbed one of her swollen nipples between my fingers, and a sigh escaped her lips.

  She pushed me back down on the bed, grabbed the edges of my shirt, and tore it from my body, then leaned down and kissed me again, her passion nearly stealing my breath. I felt a sharp jolt, like the release of static electricity but more intense, as our bare skin touched, and the tightness in my jeans grew to uncomfortable proportions, throbbing in anticipation.

  I don’t quite remember how, but the next thing I knew the barrier of clothes between us had vanished. Torn away in breathless passion, and Raine lay on top of me, the dampness of her crotch evident as she maneuvered herself into position. I thought I was ready, Hell, my cock sure thought I was ready, but nothing could have prepared me for the spasm of pleasure that ripped through me when Raine guided my painfully rigid manhood into her.

  I almost screamed as she thrust herself down on me, enveloping my swollen gland with a warm, silky wetness and igniting every single nerve on the way down, until I felt like my whole body was on fire. My legs twitched as the smell of sex filled the room. I couldn’t think straight, the heat in my lower body blocked out everything except Raine’s gyrating, pulsing hips that continued to thrust up and down, up and down, until all too soon I felt that familiar pressure building.

  “We…need to stop, Raine.” I said, not at all convinced, myself. “I don’t..I don’t…”

  “No,” she said, and buried her face into the small of my neck.

  “But...I don’t…have a…” That’s all I got out. Raine ran her tongue along the hollow of my throat and at that point I was beyond protesting. Condom or no condom, I passed the point of caring and fell into the rhythm our lovemaking with all the vigor I could muster, pushing upward with my hips to give her as much of me as I could manage. She moaned louder. Then she kissed my neck and bit down on it softly, while continuing to grind her naked hips into mine and force myself deeper and deeper inside her, sliding up and down the length of my shaft with a primal, animalistic need. Raine’s increasing moans in my ear excited me more than I would have thought possible. The skin of my arms pebbled with gooseflesh, and she pushed me right to the brink.

  Then she bit down hard on my throat. The sudden misture of pain and pleasure sent my mind reeling as that wonderful, intense blankness that is the male orgasm took over. Raine moaned again into my neck as she gripped my shoulders tight, drawing blood with her nails. I pumped my load into her even as she twitched in the throes of her own moment, and the entire time her mouth stayed on my neck, a delicious touch of pain that swirled through the orgasm and made me come even harder.

  When the pleasure receded, and my mind resumed normal function, I loosened my grip on her, letting my arms fall limply to the bed. I hadn’t realized how much the whole experience had taken out of me, but as I lay there, Raine still nuzzling my neck, my eyes grew heavy, and I could not keep them open.

  Maybe it was the blow to the head, or the cognac, or the intense session with Raine, but sleep called out to me, a Siren song I was unable to resist. My eyes drooped, and the pain in my neck diminished into a low, throbbing pulse that I barely noticed, as soft now as the feeling of Raine’s obsidian hair splayed across my bare chest.

  I closed my eyes and gave in to my exhaustion as Raine lifted her head from my neck.

  “Oh, no,” she whispered.

  I cracked my eyes open, just barely, and looked at her. She leaned over me, her blue eyes sparkling with moisture. Twin runnels of reddish fluid ran from her mouth down either side of her chin. Damn, I thought. How hard did she bite me? The effort of holding my eyes open proved to be too much, so I closed them. Then sleep won.

  Chapter Five:

  Something Is Different

  July 16, 1986

  I woke with the sun shining on my face like a razor. Blinding would perhaps be putting it too mildly. The dazzling light poured through my bedroom window, sending white-hot needles through my optic nerves to stab the inside of my head with searing pain. I’d never seen the sun so bright. It hurt even with my eyelids closed, and it did nothing for my pounding headache. With my eyes clenched shut, I felt around for the ed
ge of the curtain. When my trembling fingers closed around it, I yanked it shut. That did darken the room a bit, and at least made it bearable, if only just.

  I lay in bed for a handful of minutes and thought about going back to sleep and letting the sun have its day. Try as I might, however, I couldn’t doze off again. After a time, I opened my eyes to see my own bedroom. The place felt strange to me. I didn’t know why, but something seemed different. Off.

  The room itself wasn’t strange, it was just my same old room. The same tired old dresser sat on the left wall next to the same faded closet door, in which hung the same old wardrobe. The same painting of Janis Joplin hung on the faded yellow wall opposite the bed, which certainly felt like it held the same old worn out mattress. The same unfinished copy of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment sat on the nightstand with the same B. Dalton’s bookmark stuck right where I’d left it. I’d just reached the scene where Raskalnikov first meets his sister’s pompous fiancé. Ha! He didn’t like that fellow much now, did he?

  My memory of the night before drifted in and out of my head like a thick haze. The only thing I knew for sure was that I must have gone on one hell of a bender. My head, which felt like two construction workers were taking turns with a jackhammer on the inside of my skull, only pounded this after a serious bout with the sauce. That explained the unusual brightness of the sun, as well. My eyes were always more sensitive to light when I had a hangover.

  Groggy, I rolled over onto my back. For a while I stared at the blank white ceiling and tried to piece together the events of the night before. I’d gone to the Diner across from The Eye, where I met a rude, filthy man by the name of Kagan, and had a few words with him before he stomped off. I remembered talking to the waitress, Rose, afterward, while she sat with me and ate the food he’d ordered and paid for but not eaten. I remembered Rose wiping a smudge of grease from the tabletop, a present from Kagan. Then she stood and headed back to the kitchen while taking an order from another guest, and then…

  Nothing. The next thing I could remember was waking up with a face full of sunlight and a head full of stomping elephants.

  Now, this wasn’t the first time I’d blacked out. On two previous occasions I had awakened with no memory of the previous night after mixing it up pretty good with booze. Both times had been similar to this, head booming and eyes squinched shut against the tiniest trickle of light. The worst part about it, though, was hearing from my buddies about the things I’d done. I will spare you the details for the sake of what remains of my dignity. Suffice it to say that on those occasions I’d been no end of irritation and sometimes amusement to the people around me.

  This was different. For one thing, I couldn’t remember drinking anything. Both times prior I could at least remember the beginning of the alcohol flow. I could even remember getting drunk. There was just a cutoff point somewhere where I could remember nothing in between it and waking up the next day. The cutoff point this time seemed to have occurred before the drinking started, which was weird.

  The other part that didn’t fit was my hunger. My stomach felt as though I hadn’t put anything into it in days. I thought it might start digesting itself any minute. Normally when I wake up after a good bender, I can’t even think about food without getting nauseous. This time, I could barely think about anything else. You can wait, I told my growling belly. I need to figure out what happened last night. I lay there in bed, stomach gurgling, wondering why I couldn’t even remember one lousy drink from the night before.

  In the end, it was neither my hunger nor the steamy moss growing in my mouth that got me out of bed. The winning soldier in my battle against lethargy turned out to be my bladder. I hadn’t noticed it right away, but the entire time I’d spent staring at the ceiling thinking about the strangeness of the morning, the pressure in my lower abdomen had slowly built up. Little by little, it crept up on me until it reached the point where I just couldn’t ignore it any longer. Suddenly my need to pee demanded my full attention and would settle for nothing less than immediate compliance.

  I leapt from my bed, tossing my sheets aside with such force that one of them ripped. I heard the tearing sound, but couldn’t spare the time to investigate; my bladder would brook no nonsense on my part. It wanted to be emptied, and it wanted it now. I could almost hear it telling me not to stop and look at the sheet, or it would just let go here and now. So get moving mister, unless you want to piss all over yourself.

  I did make it to the bathroom, barely. Good old Mr. Bladder was just about done waiting. I stood there making water for an eternity. Christ! I didn’t know the human body could hold so much piss. Could a person’s bladder could be bigger than his head?

  Eventually I finished, and walked over to the sink while zipping my pants back up. (I’d slept fully dressed, also not surprising after a severe drunk.) I pulled my toothbrush and toothpaste from the cabinet and commenced with the morning ceremonies. I brushed my teeth, same as every morning for as long as I have been able to hold a toothbrush. My mouth tasted better, at least, but before I finished I started gagging on the paste. That had certainly never happened before. I’d always liked the taste of toothpaste in the morning, sort of a sharp, mint-flavored pick-me-up to help get my eyes open. Not that morning. It was all I could do to keep from emptying whatever might still be in my stomach. I managed to rinse and spit without vomiting. I attributed it to my strange hangover and convinced myself it was nothing.

  I washed my face in the sink, and felt a lot better after. When I saw my reflection staring back at me, I thought the hangover was to blame for the redness of my eyes and the pallor of my face. I shrugged it off and went into the bedroom to change clothes.

  Once shed of the dirty clothes from the night before, which reeked of liquor and cigarette smoke, I walked into the little room that served as my kitchen looking for something to eat. It was more of a walk-in closet than a kitchen, with a small, apartment-sized oven crammed in next to a refrigerator that could only hold enough food for a bachelor like me. Next to the stove and fridge sat a sink roughly the size of the box my last pair of shoes came in. Those three things and a tiny cabinet, which filled up after putting in a couple of boxes of cereal, were the only things in my kitchen. Still, it sufficed for my needs, since I didn’t know how to cook anything that didn’t involve tossing noodles into a pot of boiling water, and it smelled better than my bedroom, which still smelled like a party.

  At the thought of noodles my innards growled and contracted, sending me a painful reminder of my hunger, so I went to the cabinet and grabbed a box of cereal. Coco Puffs, and old favorite, and a holdover from childhood. I took a dirty bowl from the sink and rinsed it out, then filled it heaping full of those little brown pebbles. Thankfully, the milk in the fridge was still good (always a gamble at my place), and I poured some into the bowl, then poured a little more into a glass for good measure.

  I took my breakfast into the living room, sat on the couch and turned on the TV. My hangover was almost gone and my mood lightened considerably as Tom & Jerry appeared on my screen just in time for me to watch Tom clothesline himself on an ironing board. You know the kind I mean; they fold up into the wall when you don’t need them, and only come out when you were ready to iron your laundry or a hapless gray cat chases a mischievous mouse the size of a large rat.

  Grinning, T&J being an old favorite of mine (it went well with the Coco Puffs, don’t you think?), I started to eat my cereal.

  I didn’t get to enjoy it for long, though. As soon as the cereal hit my stomach, a gut-wrenching pain ignited in my belly. It felt like some sick doctor had taken my innards and tied them in a knot. The doc was pulling both ends of it, too, tightening the knot as much as possible. If you’ve ever had a Charlie Horse, try to imagine that same feeling in your abdomen but much, much worse.

  I dropped the bowl, spoon, Puffs, and milk onto the floor as I fell off the couch and landed, squirming, on the carpet. Milk and cereal splattered everywhere, and the bowl shattered. So di
d the glass of milk. Through eyes squeezed almost shut against the pain, I saw a laughing Jerry on the television partially obscured by a large stain of brownish milk. My head landed in a patch of wet carpet and crushed a handful of still crunchy puffs.

  I knew what was coming, and I wanted to get to the bathroom before it did, but I couldn’t move. I tried to heave myself up off the floor and run to the toilet, but I was too late. All at once, my breakfast rejoined the atmosphere in a shower of milk, masticated cereal, and bile.

  The vomiting fit seemed to go on forever, but in truth it was only a few seconds. When it was over and everything that had been inside was now outside, the pain receded. It dropped off so fast that I might have thought I’d imagined it if it weren’t for the mess in my living room. Gingerly, more than a little afraid that my doing so would invite the pain to come back and party some more, I sat up. Tiny trickles of milk ran from my head down the side of my face to disappear under my shirt as I surveyed the scene.

  I didn’t think I’d eaten much (Hell, I’d just started my breakfast when the choco-bile geyser went off), but you couldn’t tell that from where I sat on the floor, looking at the ruin of my living room. Milk and cereal were everywhere! On the TV, on the couch, on the coffee table, some had even managed to get on the ceiling. Little drops of brownish fluid dripped on the carpet from above like a leaky faucet. In a daze, I looked up to see a big wet spot above my head.

  How did that happen? Was my first thought. Why did that happen? Was a close second. I stood, slowly, and shuffled to the bathroom, where I assumed the position at the altar of the Porcelain God. Better safe than sorry, right? I had a big enough mess to clean up in the living room; I didn’t want to add to it if it happened again.