He Loves Me Not Read online

  “Do you ever think about her?” Sheri asked, approaching to sit beside him on a bench seat in the shade. The girls were sitting cross-legged in the grass by the grave.

  “Occasionally,” Randal lied. He often thought of Snack Bar. No one knew how he used to take advantage of her—to drag her into his truck or a garden shed or whatever and hump her at will. Sheri had no idea of any of that. She would probably divorce him if she knew he used to tell the girl how he loved her and wanted to be with her—that as soon as he got through college, he would be able to take her away with him.

  “I’ll never get the look on her face out of my mind,” Sheri went on. “I often wonder if she not only walked out in front of a car on purpose—that she walked out in front of us on purpose, which makes no sense to me at all. I didn’t even know her, other than the rumours about her getting around with guys all the time.”

  “No, me either. I don’t get that,” Randal added to the lie. “I hardly knew her other than the talk around the locker room.”

  “Come on, girls!” Sheri called out, and they were on their way.

  They ate dinner at a truck-stop café and found a cheap motel for the night. Once the girls were sleeping, Randal snaked his arms around his wife and pressed behind her, nudging with his erection and feeling her soft breasts.

  “No, Randal. Not with the girls right there!”

  He rolled away and huffed. He had seen a bar across the street, so when Sheri was asleep, he slipped out of bed and wandered over. He had a beer and found what he was looking for—a young thing with dark rings under her eyes, turning tricks. He led her outside and pulled her along a laneway to a spot behind a dumpster. She took the hundred dollars and stuffed it in her purse then turned and leaned against the wall. He rolled on a condom.

  *

  The following night was at a nice holiday apartment with a separate room for the girls, so Sheri allowed him sex. She gave in begrudgingly and never seemed to enjoy it. Randal didn’t get that at all.

  He figured on staying at the same motel on the way back and visiting the bar. Maybe the hooker would be there again. He yawned and rolled over to go to sleep before Sherri got back from cleaning up in the bathroom. She would often want a cuddle after sex, and he wasn’t feeling so inclined.

  8

  Wendy gripped the bedspread. She was on her back, looking up at the ceiling. The left side of the bed was where the wife slept. She was on that side, imagining the feel of her husband lying there beside her, the way Randal used to promise he would be.

  Wendy had no idea of time. A seemingly short while ago, she was digging potatoes in a burlap dress. She was an elderly woman with braids of long, grey hair. There was a wagon nearby that was horse-drawn. She was alone in a small garden, in sight of a rustic, timber cottage. Her name was Gretchen. The memory was fading fast. It had been just moments ago, but moments felt like years, and years flashed by as moments.

  Wendy released her grip on the bedspread and slowly drifted upward. She closed her eyes as she passed through the ceiling. It was dark outside. It was always dark outside. High in the night sky was a super-highway of souls. It was a spiritual conduit, transferring entities from one life to the next. The energy there was positive. It willed Wendy higher and higher, and she wanted to go but could not.

  Soon her time in despair would be over. She knew that, though she didn’t know how or why. Her purpose was as vague as the jumbled experiences.

  She thought again of the potatoes. She could feel the dirt beneath her fingernails, but what was her name? It had left her.

  She clutched the leafy branch of a tree and thought about returning to the house, but the pain was filling her. It was not physical—nothing so pleasant as the mere aching of tissue. It was entirely emotional—something akin to both longing and fear. It flooded her, and she was ripped into the darkness to wait.

  Time passed slowly once more. Hours, weeks—Wendy wasn’t sure. She was then back in the potato garden, but there was a man this time. She thought of her name again: Gretchen Wilkes. Her husband was Arthur. He had brought the horse for the wagon and was hitching it. She felt the love in her heart. It was familiar. It wasn’t new. She had loved this man for many years, and he had returned that love. Wendy tugged a strip of cloth from the pouch in front on her dress and dabbed at a tear. The pain was filling her, and she was suddenly ripped back into the void.

  Time passed again before she opened her eyes in the bedroom of the house. She was at the end of the bed. Randal and the wife were sleeping. She moved hand over hand until she was above the wife. It was more than a week since she was last there. She sensed that without being able to reason it. The wife was close to ovulating. It was time.

  Wendy experienced a rush of excitement at what she was about to do. She held the pillow on either side of the wife’s head and pressed her face close. Her form was touching the bedclothes, but she could pass through that barrier easily. She lowered her face closer, staring at the wife’s closed eyes, the eyelids twitching. A breath was drawn through parted lips.

  The wife’s eyes suddenly opened, and she screamed. Her face twisted in terror, and she slithered from the side of the bed and onto the floor. Wendy reached for the sleeve of her nightdress and clung to it. The woman was up, and Wendy covered her back, wrapping her arms around, but the wife shrieked and squirmed violently, thrusting herself forward and running from the room, brushing at her skin.

  Randal stirred. Wendy drifted into the curtain, blending within the folds of fabric. The wife had gone into the children’s room and slammed the door. Randal was sitting up, peering around in confusion. He yawned and rubbed at his face.

  He was a man now. When Wendy had fallen in love with him he was a boy. His features had sharpened. There were laugh lines where his cheeks used to be too chubby for wrinkles. He kept his hair shorter now. His chest was covered in hair where it used to be only sparsely so. Wendy remembered the feel of his chest. The memory of the old man hitching the wagon was fading, but she remembered the serene contentment of love and how she so wanted that with Randal. She had died while fully consumed by the notion, and in death it haunted her.

  The pain filled her, and she was ripped into another experience. Her thoughts had guided her this time. She was sitting on the floor of her childhood bedroom. She was naked from the waist up and held her arm across her breasts. Her underwear was around an ankle. A long denim skirt was hiked up above her hips.

  Randal was facing her dressing table mirror, fixing his hair. “I just can’t take you… We’ve talked about this, how many times? I won’t be able to keep seeing you if you’re going to get all clingy and pathetic.”

  Wendy remembered what she had asked for: to be taken to an end of term dance.

  “Plus there’s no need to stop putting out. If you don’t let the others have some, then I don’t want it either. I told you it has to be casual until I’ve finished college. I want you to keep screwing the guys until then… Okay? It’s good for team spirit.”

  Sitting there on the floor, Wendy was nineteen years old and the play-thing for the guys on the football team. Sometimes she would be the only girl at the party, and they would keep her in a bedroom, or one of them would drag her back in there when she would come out. They were Randal’s friends, doing as he said.

  The longing and fear filled her quickly that time, and she was ripped into the void of despair to wait again.

  9

  “It was right there above me, an inch from my face, staring at me!” Sheri cried.

  Randal chuckled. “What was—a ghost?”

  Sheri glared back at him. “I don’t know what it was. It had eyes, a nose and a mouth, and when it put its arms around me, I felt it growing on me. It made my skin crawl.”

  Randal was fixing his hair in the bathroom mirror. Sheri had spent the night in the children’s bedroom after seeing her apparition. He turned to rest back against the wash basin, checking her out as she got ready for a shower. She had on her cotton nightdr
ess and a short nylon robe over it. He took hold of her from behind, kissing her neck and pressing his erection against her bottom.

  “Randal, stop that. Not now—like this.”

  Being rejected was commonplace. He went back to adjusting his hair. “I need a haircut.”

  “Okay. Well, let’s do it before my shower. I don’t want hair all over me all day.”

  Sheri was a trained hairdresser. She kept her equipment there in the bathroom cabinet. Randal got a kitchen chair and returned to sit in front of the mirror. Annabel came in to watch.

  “I’m telling you it was real. It was like this grey form floating right there above me. It had facial features, but its body was less defined, like a cloud of dull light. It was a damned ghost.”

  “Do you mean the lady?” Annabel asked.

  Randal looked at his daughter in the mirror.

  Sheri turned to her. “Have you seen her, sweetheart?”

  “Yes, of course. We’ve seen her, but we don’t say her name.”

  Randal scoffed. “Yeah, right. It was probably the tooth fairy.”

  “Oh, stop that, Randal… Have you really seen her, sweetheart?”

  “Yes, Mummy. But don’t worry, she’s a nice ghost, not a nasty one.”

  Randal laughed that time. “Come on, just get on with it. I need to get to the shop before the stupid traffic starts.”

  Sheri shut up and trimmed his hair. She looked for the razor she used to shave his neck but couldn’t find it until she saw that Annabel had it open, feeling the sharpness of the blade.

  “Darling! You’ll cut yourself!” She took the razor from the child.

  “It’s very sharp, isn’t it?” Annabel said oddly. She was looking at Randal in the mirror.

  He frowned. “You don’t touch sharp things, Annie.”

  “I know, Daddy. I won’t touch it again,” she responded sweetly, and she ran off to play with her sister.

  Randal wiped his neck with the towel he had around his shoulders. He grabbed his wife from behind again and groped her breasts. “Tonight, then?” he breathed into her ear.

  “I don’t know. I suppose. Maybe. It depends how I feel tonight.”

  It was as good a promise as Randal ever got and would have to do. He could always go out if his wife wasn’t in the mood. He had a few current phone numbers and could score when he needed to.

  The shopping centre got busy on Saturday mornings. Parking was a problem if you were late, and Randal was later than he wanted to be. He got in and out with his newspapers and a bag of goodies from the bakery.

  A few moments after arriving home, he was kicked back in his favourite lounge chair reading the paper when Annabel climbed onto his lap for a cuddle. He shifted to make her comfortable and continued reading. She had her head resting upon his shoulder and was twirling his chest hair.

  “Don’t pull it, sweetie.”

  She didn’t say anything but stopped trying to pluck individual hairs. “Do you love me, Daddy?”

  “Of course I do, sweetie.”

  “But do you really?”

  Randal was reading the sport section.

  “How do we know if you love us, Daddy?”

  “I just do, baby girl. You know Daddy loves you.”

  “But how do I know?”

  “Look, just run along and play,” Randal said, lifting his paper over his daughter and shooing her from his lap.

  She didn’t go far. He lowered his paper a few minutes later to find her there staring at him.

  “What?”

  She smiled. “Nothing, Daddy. I love you.”

  Randal frowned and shook his head at the child. Who knew what went through their mind half the time? “Run away and play,” he tossed at her dismissively and returned to his paper.

  10

  There was a football game on that night. By the time it had finished, Sheri was already asleep. Randal was still feeling horny but not so much that he was going to get dressed and go out. He just got into bed and went to sleep instead.

  In the middle of the night, he woke to the feel of wet warmth and the unmistakable sensation of being sucked off. “Aw, yeah, baby,” he groaned, touching his wife’s head and gripping it as he thrust his hips.

  Sheri swiped at his arm, so he released her and rested back to enjoy. He could just make out her facial features in the dim light. She was holding the base of his penis and slurping noisily as she sucked and licked. He was on the verge of ejaculation when she suddenly straddled him and guided him into her body.

  “Yeah, that’s it, baby,” he said, but her hand clamped over his mouth, and she shook her head.

  Randal knew enough to do as he was told right then. The last thing he wanted was to break the mood his sweet, conservative wife was in.

  Her head rocked back, her hands in her hair. She was gyrating on his erection, rolling her hips and grinding down on it, stroking him with the heat and wetness of her sex.

  “Baby, I can’t hold back,” he warned her. He wasn’t wearing a condom, and she always insisted on that. “What about—” he added, but she clamped a hand over his mouth again and glared, and he nodded his assent.

  She gathered her cotton nightdress and lifted it off completely then took his hands and placed them upon her breasts. She had stopped grinding on him momentarily, and his impending climax had abated. As soon as her hips rotated again it resurged. He held her breasts, squeezing them for a moment, then releasing and clutching her hips as he gave in to the overwhelming pleasure and ejaculated.

  He had his head thrust back into the pillow and his toes curled up. She continued to squirm and grind down on him, her belly folding and her hips gyrating wildly, her breasts swaying and jiggling. Her head was arched back all the while, and suddenly she reached behind and gripped his legs, with her body taut and convulsing in what Randal assumed was an orgasm.

  He hadn’t seen his wife like this since the last time she conceived, and the only time prior to that was when she conceived with Annabel. It seemed she really enjoyed sex when she wanted to have babies.

  Randal had firmed again, so he tipped her over and got between her legs. Her arms came to rest above her head. She relaxed fully, lying there limp and not looking at him. He lay down on her and had his way, jiggling and humping until he reached another climax, then he turned onto his back and flung an arm over his eyes.

  He felt her get up. She walked over to the wardrobe door and looked at her naked body in the mirror, turning one way then the other, feeling her skin.

  Randal rolled over and pulled the covers up to his ears. He felt Sheri getting back into bed. She spooned behind him, cuddling tight, and her face came to rest upon the back of his neck, her lips pressing to his shoulder in a soft kiss. He drifted off to sleep.

  11

  “Oh, my God! What happened to my clothes?” It was Sheri’s frantic voice. It disturbed Randal’s sleep, and he rolled over to see what was up.

  “You undressed me!” she accused him.

  “Hey, baby. What are you going on about? You undressed yourself.”

  The sun was up. Randal yawned and stretched. He felt good.

  “I did not undress myself.”

  “Sure you did. When you were riding me like a cowgirl.”

  “When I was what?”

  Randal grinned and nodded. “Like a cowgirl, baby.”

  His wife frowned, but her affront visibly waned. “I… I did?”

  “You were hot, baby. Woke me up with a BJ and all.”

  Sheri blushed. “I didn’t think that was real. I was just dreaming…”

  Randal grabbed his crotch lewdly. “Oh, it was real.”

  Sheri slipped from the bed with an arm across her breasts. She found her nightdress on the floor and clutched it to her front. “Well, I didn’t mean to do that. I don’t know what I was thinking.” She squirmed into a robe and pulled the nightdress from under it, protecting her modesty in the broad daylight. “I hope you were safe at least.”

  “Hey, I tr
ied, but you wouldn’t let me stop and put one on.”

  “Oh, no, Randal!”

  “Well, what was I supposed to do? You were the same as last time. Your body must know best, and she throws herself at me.” Randal was chuckling. He didn’t care if Sheri became pregnant. He liked the wild sex.

  She left him to tend to the children. He rolled over and went back to sleep, quite content and pleased with himself, but he woke again sometime later to a sharp pain in the sole of his foot. He jumped, tucking his leg up. Annabel giggled and ran from the room. He checked and found a drop of blood oozing from a puncture wound that was probably made with a pin. It was stinging and becoming itchy. He put the discomfort aside and ran after his daughter, catching her trying to hide behind her mother. He pulled her by the arm and smacked her on the bottom.

  She didn’t squeal or cry. She was smiling defiantly. He smacked her again, hard.

  “What? What is it?” Sheri asked with concern.

  “The little bitch stuck me.”

  Randal opened his daughter’s fingers and found the pin.

  “Sorry, Daddy. I didn’t mean it.”

  Randal rubbed at the sole of his foot again, inspecting the wound. “Look what you did!”

  “But I didn’t mean it, Daddy.”

  He turned and walked. “Do something with her, would you?” he said to his wife. “You’re supposed to be raising the children.”

  The incident had spoiled Randal’s feeling of satisfaction but only momentarily. The last time Sheri had been in one of her rare horny moods, it had lasted a few nights, so there was a good chance of a repeat performance that night.

  It was Sunday, and he decided to get out of the house for the day. He found a few buddies at the local football park and hung out with them until late afternoon.