Lightning Forrest
By Tyler Sherman
Even though the sex wasn’t great, and ultimately didn’t come to anything, he was still appreciative to Chloris for coming home on her lunch for a matinee. They, neither of them came, so in the twenty minutes they had left in-between driving back and forth from Chloris’ lunch break were basically spent on exercise. He was still partially hard, by design, as he was trying to commit some more arousing sexual act in his memory, with the intention of masturbating as soon as he saw Chloris off. He remembered having sex with two women in college at after drinking too much, having sex with someone in high school, also after drinking too much. The sounds of Chloris in the bathroom washing herself were making it hard to concentrate, and reminded him of how sweaty he was, which was sometimes a good thing, but not right now. It was colder in the house than he remembered, which also was counter-productive to his aims. He thought about getting dressed, and went completely soft.
The afternoon was colder than it was in the morning, which struck Carrion as strange, as she made her way home from school. She was more worried about getting home to an empty house. School was a half-day, which she forgot about, and she couldn’t remember if she told anyone or not. Her aunt Nancy didn’t have a job, and it was totally feasible that she could be there, making cookies even.
The sun was dancing lazily in the sky, weaving itself into patterns, though none of its signature heat was making it to the ground. She could see her breath for the first time this year.
Chloris came back in still naked, and gather he work clothes, which she’d laid out neatly one the chair, and began to dress.
“Frank, I’m sorry about this,” She said.
“Its… Don’t worry about it. Thanks for coming back. Thanks for trying.”
“No, I know. I’m sorry I have to go.”
“Don’t be sorry.” He said.
He rolled over in the bed, completely entangling himself in the sheets, and tried to come of with a decent fantasy that involved Chloris, to masturbate over, but couldn’t come up with anything.
Chloris got up and said goodbye, and left. Frank got up and followed her, wrapped in the sheets to the back room and he watched her get in her car and back out. He considered taking a nap right there, naked, more or less, but for the sheet, Carrion was coming to visit that day, but she was driving, and there was no telling when she’d show up. But the moment he was alone he became aroused again. The idea of being alone was exciting; he became erect just thinking about the empty house. He ran, post haste, to the bedroom, and took out the shoebox of porn from the top shelf in the closet, and found Lesbian Spank Inferno, which he only had on VHS, and a bottle of lube from the bedside table – that was still disconcertedly slippery – and darted off, to the back room.
The house was quiet, which wasn’t a good sign, and the shadows, in the entry way were bigger than anything else, and took on characters of their own. It was colder inside too, she noticed as she took her jacket off, and dropped it in the entryway. She started to breathe heavier, and heavier, maybe getting ready to cry, as she made her way back into the house, to the kitchen, or her bedroom. The afternoon sun was hanging lower, and lower in the sky, such that shadows bounced around the halls, and the sun was shooting right through the sliding glass door in the back like Stonehenge.
Carrion stopped short as she heard sounds coming from the back room, she thought. She couldn’t be sure what she was hearing, but her initial reaction was to be terrified. The house was empty, Aunt Nancy’s car wasn’t there, mom wasn’t there. As Carrion edged closer the sound condensed into something she could comprehend, it sounded like crying, or laughing, she couldn’t be sure. It did sound like it was coming from the back room.
The darkness was like tar, in that it stuck to her eyes, and seemed to gel things together, when she turned this way, or that. And as she tiptoed around the corner into the back room, she was blinded for a moment as the pale light from the moon/stars made the wall across from the back room glow like bioluminescence in the depths, and the glow may or may not have been from been from the heavens, because the television was on, and it was blown out white feedback.
Frank was there. She felt some comfort in knowing that someone was home. He wasn’t wearing anything, except for a sheet that was wrapped around him, though his peepee was clearly visible, and he was rubbing it furiously.
It took a while to get the tape queued up, to the second scene. The last time he watched it he came early into the second scene, maybe a minute or two, and sat around covered in come, and watched the next scene, and the next one, which he’d never actually seen, before getting up to shut it off. It was colder in the back room, which was the death-knell of an erection, and he had to fist himself furiously to keep from going soft. The sofa was still covered in parts with the sheet, which itself was still grasping at wisps of his body heat from before, but it was mostly cold, and another impediment to maintaining an erection. All in all Frank’s erection suffered many setbacks, and the resultant orgasm was less then exemplary.
* * *
As Nancy drove, she felt the wind in her hair. She knew Chloris wouldn’t be around, just fucking Richard, and Carrion. She’d had an okay day. She met with a few people going to Shinjyuku, which was a total nightmare, everyone was being very obtuse, and she had lots of trouble navigating the conversation with them. She thought about Chloris and about what she was doing.
He got back from the hospice a few days ago, but it just seemed like one long day. He couldn’t sleep the first few nights, and was feeling exhausted, but just couldn’t sleep. Later he got more and more tired until he fell asleep while watching Carrion, and began taking naps all the time. He just woke up from a nap that was shorter than he wanted it to be, and he was wonder what had made him jolt awake when the front door opened and Nancy came in with Carrion, who he thought was asleep in her crib
Being this tired wasn’t fun, though it was nice to be home, and the sense of impending doom had passed, though death was no farther away. Carpet, Richard found, had more comforting effects than people thought it had. Nancy had come over for whatever reason, and Chloris wasn’t anywhere to be found, but Carrion was ambling around and Nancy was chasing her, or keeping her from running into anything, so the heat wasn’t entirely on him.
The sun, this time of year, was almost orange, turning into brown, which was filtering through the dying leaves, which had a certain amount of poetic justice, in a transcendental sort of way.
Richard was overwhelmed for a moment at the thought of computers taking him over, delivering him to the darkness and Nancy looked up, and Carrion started crying, and it took him a while, but he managed to get his breathing under control, and Nancy looked back down at Carrion, and he sucked air in through his teeth.
Richard really was out of it. He was drifting in and out; she could see why Chloris didn’t want to leave him alone with Carrion. He was a menace. It was just like him to die, and leave Chloris with a kid, and no prospects. Sometimes Nancy would think about how if they were all alive in England or something, in the twenties or thirties it’d be one family’s jobs to take care of them, but nobody did that sort of thing anymore
She made Carrion, and Richard lunch, and what she wouldn’t have given to put charcoal into his egg-salad sandwich. Wouldn’t it be a coup to choke him with charcoal?
It was completely dark out when Richard opened his eyes. He could just make out a dark charcoal outline of a reflection off of the sliding glass door that led out of the backroom. He felt more than he heard Carrion crying, or making dull moaning sounds, maybe crying, or maybe laughing, and the sound of bubbles or foam. He tried to get up, which wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped it would be. His legs were still very sore, and they gave out after five seconds on their own. Richard thought about crawling his way there, but the sounds stopped, and he really couldn’t be sure that they were even going on before. It was nighttime. Sounds did all sorts of crazy things at night. It was the medications, it must be the medications. He was high as a kite, strange things were about to happen. He fell back asleep but the thought that Nancy was maybe, or maybe not drowning Carrion in the bathroom kept running around inside his head.
Nancy finally submitted to the exhaustion. Sopping up pools of blood with a few old chamois took a lot of work, and even thought Nancy was more or less “fit.” Either way she finished up fine, a little tired, very sweaty, but more or less okay. She took a shower, and got in bed. As she lay in bed she noticed the sky was very dark, and it was glittering around the silhouette of the moon, and the stars were shaking slightly, jittering around. They sped up so they were really only smears of light, and then everything subsided, and the tension was totally relieved.
She thought she heard Carrion teetering around, but when she got up to look nothing was there. She went to Carrion’s room, and look into her crib, and she wasn’t there either. The sounds of small untrained footsteps followed Nancy as she searched the house but there were just places that Richard had lived, couches he’d sat in, beds slept in, showers occupied. The sounds kept getting louder and louder.
Eventually Nancy found her way back to the car. She turned it on, and navigated her way out of the driveway, in her nightgown, looking terrible. The headlights on her car were basically not working, so she was driving there in the dark.
Shunnnkg.
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copyright 2006