The Lady Smut Book of Dark Desires (An Anthology)

by Liz Everly

  "S'up Jennifer." He stood back, opened the door of his room wider in a silent invitation. "What's the matter? Having a hard time getting to sleep?"

  She felt a surge of saliva in her mouth and ran, ran, ran for her room, got into it, locked the door, and made it to the toilet just in time.

  Chapter 6

  She left the institute within hours. She spent much of that time on the phone with Nadia trying to come to terms with what was going on.

  "How can this happen Nadia? Awake and asleep at the same time–what is that? How is that possible?"

  "I don't know why, it just is," Nadia said. "We still don't even exactly know why we sleep or dream, we just know we'll go insane if we don't."

  Nadia wanted to keep tabs on her—for research—but she said it was also because she considered herself Jenny's friend. A friend. But she thought science would do the trick, so Jenny visited the Stanford sleep center.

  In the end, she'd fled not just from Turner and her econ peers, but even from her research and her career, quitting her job at the university by the end of the summer. In less than a month she'd moved across the country to San Francisco.

  Meanwhile, one didn't just quit a tenure track job and get another college teaching position, not in as desirable a location as SF, so she accepted a position as a middle school math instructor at a private girl's school.

  The real upside to the crisis was that she fell in love with her job. It was a school specifically devoted to shy girls and girls suffering from social anxiety disorder. She taught small classes of sixth, seventh, and eighth grade math. Teaching at the school was her sanctuary.

  But the rest of her life was hell. It was as if Jennifer knew she'd been outed and decided to flaunt it. That fall Jenny never woke up at home wondering what happened the night before. Soon, on two or three mornings a week Jenny woke up in strange places, not knowing how she got there and not knowing who was next to her. Each encounter—sometimes there was more than one sexual partner there—and not just men—left her staggering home in the early hours feeling used, exhausted, and terrified. She felt like a whore.

  She visited the sleep clinic at Stanford every two months. Now they were moving her up the ladder again. A new doctor was scribbling on her chart, checking his notes again and checking her most recent intake. In between all that he was looking her over, then scribbling some more. He had a salt and pepper beard, acne-scarred skin, a middle-aged barrel chest and a deep voice with an overdone posh accent. What she really didn't like was that he also was very much a man, hairy with a beard, and there was something heavy about him, a rumbling sensuality, a strong magnetism. Given her problems she would have preferred an asexual geeky science type. No such luck.

  Finally he looked up. "How are we doing then?" he said.

  "I've been having some new issues," she reported.

  He went back over the file. "You've stopped taking the Clonazepam."

  She was shaking her head. "That was months ago. It didn't do a thing." Except make her a zombie during the day. She'd been worried about losing her teaching job and was teetering on the brink.

  "My colleague tried prescribing…ah, let's see here. Trazodone. That seemed to work for a time," he said.

  "Um, it's hard to say," she said.

  Because she couldn't say. At the time she reported it was working she would go a week or more without waking up someplace new. She was ready to whoop and holler for a while. But her gut said Jennifer wasn't done yet, she was just hiding.

  Only it turned out that Jennifer had latched onto one guy, Brett. He was an international model.

  So it turned out to be a coincidence that she'd started taking the drug and she'd had fewer symptoms. Brett was traveling for work and Jennifer was waiting for him to come back. One time his shoot was cancelled so he showed up at her place. She opened the door and discovered the drugs weren't working at all. Jenny felt a dip in her spirit remembering. It was all a little hopeless.

  "But you stopped reporting as many episodes…for the past two months. There's nothing new in the way of sex partners is there?" he said, checking the paperwork.

  "No, you see…these are new symptoms."

  "All right. Tell me what's happening now." His voice hit just the right compassionate note and she found the knots inside her relaxing.

  "When I went on the other drug, I was also trying to find a way—a safe way—to restrain my ability to go out at night. I think that the drug wasn't effective, I just finally got a lock for my door that I can't get out of in my sleep."

  "What about your symptoms now?"

  She told him—part of it. "It's like I'm trying to read in my sleep."

  "People can't read in their sleep."

  There you go. Doctors loved to state what you could and couldn't do, even if you were doing it and you knew you were. She struggled to tamp down her frustration."I know. I know you're not supposed to be able to. But I wake up knowing I'm struggling to read something."

  "Are you? Are you holding a book in your hand?"

  No. She woke up sitting at her desk, or holding her phone.

  "I'm not reading pages and pages. It's not like a book. Sometimes I can make out only one a word, or a short phrase—not much. My eyes feel strained, and I feel like I've been concentrating for hours."

  "You can actually remember this?"

  "Yeah, I'll be aware that I'm asleep, but I finally can read one word—a small word. Then another. But there's a sense that I need string of them together."

  Are you okay?

  You sure?

  I want to see you.

  Those little bits she remembered…there were more, but they were lost by the time she was awake.

  She couldn't tell the doctor Jennifer was plotting something. She couldn't say, I've locked myself up at night because I'm worried I'm going to kill someone—or myself.

  He switched focus again. "The Clonazepam—did you experience side effects?"

  "Yes. And isn't it…addictive?"

  "It can be, but if it didn't work before, no need to try it again."

  He scratched on his sheet. "You're not drinking alcohol, are you?"

  "Never."

  "How's it going with managing your stress levels?"

  "I try. I changed teaching jobs. I like the school where I'm at now."

  "Good." He looked at her over his reading glasses. "What grade?"

  "Middle school."

  "Good god!"

  She could tell he was joking with her and started to like him a little bit.

  "And that's not stressful?" he asked.

  "Not too bad. I love my students and I just had the entire summer off."

  "But now you're back in school?"

  "We started back in August. I'm trying bubble baths before bed, scented candles. Meditating. Any relaxing device, you name it, I've got it."

  "What about sex? Are you sexually active right now when you're awake?" he waited, not looking her in the eye, his pen ready to record what she said.

  She swallowed.

  "Jenny?" He lifted his head, kindly, but firm.

  She couldn't talk about her sex life with him. She couldn't. He wore his sexuality right on the surface, like a lot of charismatic successful men did. The nightmare of waking up with one of her doctors hadn't happened yet. Yet.

  Once she had a thought it seemed like Jennifer had access to the thought. She didn't actually know for sure if it worked that way. It was all a guessing game.

  She wasn't attracted to the doctor but Jennifer would be, and she was at the point where she didn't want to think about things Jennifer might like. Jennifer was pissed off right now. Jennifer wanted to punish her.

  But this doctor was far too hands on for her taste. He pressed her again for more details about her recent sexual history and asked about her preferences.

  She didn't think she could possibly feel the deep scorching burns of her blushes ever again, but he proved her wrong.

  "Well," he said finally. "Let's mov
e on. Perhaps you could update the form for my resident Sandra."

  Sandra she could handle. Sandra she could talk to. When Sandra had wanted to know about the sexual partners she'd had in the last year, Jenny said, "Let me write you a list. I've kept a diary." She'd copied out the list, a question mark next to at least five of the encounters.

  She'd handed the list over to Sandra, whose eyes widened. By now, Jenny knew that wow look of shock when she saw it.

  The doctor held up the same list.

  "Let's assume for the moment that by day you're celibate."That horrible furious blush again. She couldn't even go there with him. The world she'd been in for the last year had been drowning her in all kinds of filthy sex. She couldn't even dip a little toe into the waters with him, not even to help herself.

  "The human animal is fundamentally sexual in nature. We know that. Of course, society represses this. Homosexuals for example, can still struggle against the sense that they're fundamentally doing something wrong. Young women are still repressed. They often pay a heavy price for indulging in a strong libido."

  She looked at him with suspicion. Where was he going with this?

  "We were indeed able to establish an underlying conscious or subconscious sexual intent in several of our patients with sexsomnia."

  "What are you saying?" she asked.

  He gave the example of a young man who was sleeping in a bed between a man and a woman, when he turned and started trying to have sex with the man in his sleep.

  "Apparently he was gay. He came from a conservative background and when he was awake, he quashed his sexual preferences. But when he went camping, got drunk, and went to sleep, it all came out unconsciously."

  He rumbled around in his chest a little, giving her time to comment. She didn't.

  "Maybe if you let yourself go a little when you're awake, these urges will be satisfied. The pressure, the psychic crank of repression, will be released a few notches."

  Again, she couldn't respond. At least he didn't let the pause sit there killing them both. "The body wants sex. Most bodies do. Let yourself out of the box a little. At the very least you might try masturbating, and maybe your symptoms will stop.

  Her face was going to go up in flame. She felt like even her eyeballs were blushing.

  "In these more extreme cases we can't attribute the problem to sleep itself. Often it's a case of stress affecting sleep."

  "Yes, I've been trying to reduce stress."

  "A colleague of mine, a Doctor Anderson, theorizes that sleepwalkers will often do simple things that make some kind of sense. For instance, they'll eat if they've gone to bed hungry. The people we work with have complicated lives, but the basic issue here is that if you're depriving yourself of something very important like food, the body is in a state of stress. You see what I'm aiming at? What you're experiencing at night is a confused awake state because your body is seeking something it needs or wants that will relieve the stress. In sexsomniacs, the body is seeking sex."

  She nodded in agreement. Inside she was shaking her head no. No, no. She could see what the doctor wanted her to do. No way, no how.

  Masturbating made her think about Turner. She couldn't get off if she didn't summon his face up. Even if she did, then she would lie there in agony for hours unable to sleep from the humiliation of everything she went through. What if the video he made was on the internet somewhere? Most of all she thought of what he'd done to her when they were together. That caused all kinds of other reactions in her.

  "One can only try," the doctor was saying. He crossed an ankle and placed it on his knee. "I may have shocked you, but the histories we have of young people like yourself indicates that it's necessary to work with your desires to find a healthy outlet for them, or your own subconscious starts working against you."

  She sat twitching her foot, legs crossed, arms crossed, face red, not responding.

  "Would you rather risk getting AIDS or Hep C because you're running around at night having unprotected sex with strangers?"He paused. She held her mouth open a little bit so the whoosh of air in and out could pass silently.

  "Are you crying? Look, I'm sorry to sound so harsh. It's just this is really the only thing I can recommend as your doctor to help treat your condition. Drugs aren't working, and we'd like to see an alleviation of your symptoms soon. We need to try all the options. I'd hate for you to be harmed by a stranger because we couldn't help you soon enough." He reached forward towards her with a box of Kleenex.

  Then, like almost all doctors who made their patients cry but were profoundly uncomfortable with tears, he got up and fussed around, while she made a big effort to control herself.

  Dabbing at her eyes, she balled up the tissues and then desperately tried to lighten up. "Haha. It's so funny you should bring up my subconscious working against me." She was very careful. She jokingly brought up the possession angle, telling the story of her mother, the maid in Morocco, and the exorcist who spat some chewed up leaves in her face.

  She didn't go one bit further than that, because he was looking at her in a new and funny way. His eyes looked through her almost, and with a poker face, his pen poised, he asked, "Do you think you're possessed?"

  This wasn't going to help. This was only going to get her into more trouble instead. Soon they'd be mentioning terms like involuntary incarceration and schizoid beliefs.

  She shook her head as if she was promising not to be bad again. "No."

  He seemed visibly relieved.

  Yes. I know I am possessed. I call her Jennifer.

  "Sleep research is new science," he said. "We don't have all the answers yet," he tapped her knee with her thick file that he held closed in his hands, "but we will one day." He stood. "I assure you, there will be scientific explanations."

  And she was dismissed with that last pat on the head.

  Sandra came back to see her in the waiting room and she was taken off into an empty examination room.

  "The doctor just wanted me to wrap up some of the details in his notes. So, your sleepwalking incidents almost stopped from February to June last year."

  "Yes."

  "That was the Brett phase. He was your boyfriend?"

  "Not exactly. He was…accommodating about my condition." Now he was dead.

  "And then…that relationship stopped?"

  "He's deceased."

  "I'm sorry." Sandra shuffled some papers to let that moment pass by. "And lately?" She asked.

  Shaking her head, Jenny said, "Nothing, really. I was able to finally create this special lock. I can’t get it open when I’m asleep."

  "Oh, where did you get it?" Sandra asked, crossing her legs. Did Sandra ever think about having sex with the doctor?

  Jenny thought about having sex with anyone and everyone. When you didn't know who you might wake up next to, you tended to size people up in a whole new way. For instance, she'd prefer Sandra over the doctor. The bagel guy with the big Adam’s apple over the barista with bad skin where she bought coffee.

  "I made it. You have to solve little puzzles before it opens."

  "Really?" Sandra perked up. "Little puzzles? Like what?"

  "Simple memory games, or you had to learn something easy in order to press the right button that releases the magnetic door lock."

  "That's just fascinating. Can I just—I'd like the doctor to hear this."

  The doctor came in again and Jenny explained the device to them both. The computer gave you a memory challenge, or an easy little learning challenge. If you could solve the challenge, the door opened. It picked the challenges at random. You couldn't learn to press the same combo of buttons by rote.

  "I see. And you created this device?" the doctor said, chuckling, "How clever."

  She wished that creating the device allowed her to triumph. To shout I won, Jennifer, I won. But given how bad she felt—tired, sleep deprived, ready to shatter—she knew not to underestimate her enemy. Jennifer could make her pay for thinking she'd gotten the last word.r />
  Don't think it, don't imagine it. Plenty of bad things could still happen. Let's hope Jennifer has a strong survival instinct.

  They talked about the device some more and Jenny offered to email pictures to Sandra so they could share the idea with others in need. The doctor played golf with a patent attorney, and he volunteered to get the man's card and give it to her.

  This seemed to get the doctor to take an interest in her again. He remembered that she'd recently been an academic.

  As she left, she thought that he was indeed a good doctor. He did all the right things. He took his time with her, he read through the notes most carefully, and gave his best advice.

  It was just that he didn't see how traumatized she was. She couldn't date. Well, only if you put a gun to her head. She shook her head. Just walking into a bar…Jennifer would spot the biggest, sexiest asshole in the room and then the next morning…Jenny shuddered.

  At home she set the door lock. What a clever young woman you are, the doctor's voice echoed in her brain. Clever maybe, but she didn't feel young. Not anymore.

  She called Nadia. She could tell Nadia the truth—because Nadia already thought she was crazy. Like bat shit bonkers.

  "Let me have it then," Nadia said with a sigh. Nadia didn't believe in the possession thing, but Jenny had worn her down so that at least she wouldn't voice her skepticism and was willing to listen.

  The problem was, she confessed to Nadia, she was starting to see some patterns.

  "What patterns." Nadia didn't care, but this was their pact for Jenny being a part of her research.

  She could never tell the doctor, but when Jennifer slept with someone multiple times… "I think I know what she's doing," Jenny said.

  "What is she doing now," Nadia sighed.

  "She's killing them."

  She explained to Nadia about Brett.

  First there was Johannes. Then Turner. But once in SF three times a week, or sometimes four, Jenny woke up in a strange place, next to a strange man. Or strange men. Or strange couple. Yet after a few months there was just the one guy–Brett.

  "They all looked a little similar," Jenny told Nadia. "I think she has a type. I think it took her a while to find him when I moved."