by Charlie Fabre
In honor of opening our submissions for issue III on the theme of Sleep, we are sharing a short story written by our editor in chief that will hopefully bring some inspiration and new interpretations.
Jen shot up in bed, throwing the covers off as though she had been drowning in them. The mosquito buzzed by her ear and landed on the wall beside her. She flung her open palm towards it, missed, and groaned. The buzz came again moments later, whizzing right in front of her nose and spinning small circles. So much for those mosquito screens – Bostonian bugs would not be deterred.
“Lee,” she slurred, “Lee, where’s the bug-spray?” Her hand searched the right side of the bed, digging around in the duvet and the sheets, but it was empty. Jen sighed. She had forgotten about their argument from the night before. Lee had been relegated to the couch.
Jen looked towards the window. The night outside was still bustling with life. She could hear the soft scuffs of people’s shoes on the pavement and the hum of late-night drivers. The alarm clock on the bedside table displayed 3:03am in bright green numerals. There was no way she’d go back to sleep with that pest flying around, so she turned on the TV and waited for sleep to clutch her in its arms again.
The late-night channels were boring and isolating, they made Jen acutely aware of how lonely the night was. She flipped to a news channel and briefly read the headline: String of Burglaries Around Beacon Hill: Police Advises Residents to – she switched the channel and scoffed. Beacon Hill was one of the safest neighbourhoods in Boston, oozing upper class delusion and bliss.
After that, Jen only found obscure documentaries and countless porn channels. She flicked to one of the latter and was greeted with the bright image of a woman wearing next to nothing, surrounded by a pink neon phone number that flashed on the screen. The woman was brightly outlined, her breasts glowing and seeming to support themselves effortlessly. Surely due to the effects of sweat and plastic. Jen looked down to her own breasts, two small hills that were steam-rolled into non-existence when she lay down. Cursed to a life in the Itty-Bitty-Titty-Committee like they teased in school.
Once at a dinner party in Charlestown, Jen overheard the men discussing their wives’ bodies.
“I’d have her get her tits done for Christmas if she’d let me.”
“Letting her’s your mistake, telling her’s more like it.”
“Yeah, they’re plastic, but at least there’d be something.”
“I heard from Rick that’s what all the college girls are getting in to. That, and each other’s pants.”
A snicker, a grab for the crotch, a swig of whiskey.
They were egged on by their own hearty chuckles and cigar smoke.
As their jokes filtered into the kitchen where the women were washing up, Amanda, the host, blushed and waved her hand in front of her face, as though to clear the thoughts from her mind.
“Craig always jokes about this,” she winced, “it’s just locker room talk.” Then, to the dining room, “Now listen here boys, there’ll be no cheesecake for you if you don’t quieten down.”
“Oh, come on, honey,” said Craig, “Don’t be like that.”
Jen was embarrassed for Amanda. Even though she could cherry-pick Lee’s own comments and laughter out of the crowd. Later, in the car, she had asked him if he liked her small chest.
“Well, all men prefer larger portions, don’t they sweetheart? That’s just basic biology. But I like ‘em, sure.” As long as they’re attached to you, she filled in for him.
Jen didn’t check in with Lee to see if she fit his ‘type’ after that, though he tended to remind her that she didn’t. Her friends liked to keep track and Sunday brunch was filled with talks about the next sunbed appointment, the newest yoga class, no-heat hair curlers, and eyebrow tattoos. All in an effort to look like the Fresh-Faced All-American Girl, who was usually much younger than they were.
Jen was lingering on the porn channel, staring at it in a daze. The woman on the screen was bouncing on an exercise ball and rolling her hips. Her breasts bounced with her. It was a wonder the tiny bikini top held her nipples in.
She dozed off with the TV lights flashing over her eyelids. Pink, green, blue, yellow. Dreaming of the nightclub she frequented when she was younger. She and her friend Nina had gotten fake IDs from a senior, and when Jen asked how Nina had paid for them, she gave her a flirtatious wink. The bouncers knew they were lying, but they always got in. Bottle of drink strapped to the inside of their thighs, peeking out just enough that the bouncers could see. The image it created in their minds was a tease, and there’s nothing in the world like an underage tease.
The mosquito buzzed in Jen’s ear, closer and louder this time. She swatted her hand at her face and slapped herself awake. It buzzed in her ear again, taunting her. She flicked the bedside table light on and immediately winced. Once her eyes adjusted, she scanned the room, searching for the mosquito’s tiny body. It buzzed around her right ear, and then her left, taking her on a dizzy goose chase. The search proved fruitless, it was impossible to locate the parasite in a partially lit room. Jen snatched her phone off from the bedside table, googled mosquitos, and found an information page.
Likes:
- Tight-fitting clothing
- Heavy breathing
- Sweat
Dislikes:
- Citrus scents
- Loose-fitting clothing
- Smoke
Smoke.
“Fuck it,” Jen declared. She retrieved her pack of Marlboros from her purse and slipped one between her lips. If the smoke alarm went off, it went off. That would be that.
“Mommy?” a small voice trailed from the doorway. Jen looked over to where her son stood and quickly took the cigarette out of her mouth, placing it back in the pack. He stood in the doorway rubbing his eye with a sleeve-clad hand.
“Oh, Tucker, honey,” she cooed, getting out of bed, and crouching before him. “What’s wrong sweetheart?”
“I can’t sleep, there’s too much noise.”
“Noise?” Jen frowned, “What noise?” she asked and brushed a piece of curly hair behind his ear. The lights of the TV were still flashing on the wall, and faint moaning sounds emanated from it. Shit. She shuffled to block Tucker’s view.
“It’s probably the TV honey, I’m sorry, I’ll turn it off. Mommy couldn’t sleep either.” She clutched him under the shoulders and picked him up into her arms carrying him koala-style, as he called it, off to his room.
“No, it wasn’t that,” he yawned in her ear.
“Was it a mosquito?”
She felt him shake his head, his dark hair brushing against her cheek.
“Where’s Daddy?” he asked as Jen tucked him back into his bed just the way he liked: all edges of the blanket securely under him, bound tight like a mummy resting in its gilded tomb. She felt a twinge of pain in her stomach.
“Daddy’s sleeping downstairs tonight,” she hesitated, “he needs to get up early for work tomorrow.”
“Maybe that’s where I heard the sound.” Tucker whispered then, he was already falling back asleep, snuggled up warmly under his space themed duvet.
“Maybe,” Jen smiled and stroked his forehead, chasing it with a kiss. Tucker hadn’t lost his baby fat yet and he was still a little soft around the edges. Jen adored it, blowing raspberries on his belly when she got him dressed in the morning. Her mother thought he needed to start losing it. He’s 6 Jen, he’ll start to seriously get fat. Lee agreed.It didn’t surprise her from her mother, though, Jen had gotten the same critiques growing up. What was wrong with a little fat?
Jen stood in the doorway of her son’s room and gazed from wall to wall at the clues of his existence. There was a rocket-ship lamp that glowed a warm amber and acted like a hearth. It illuminated all four corners, and she could see the posters with their edges curled up, Tucker’s Chuck Taylors kicked under his desk, three feet apart and reaching for each other. His baseball mitt and Red Sox ball were displayed neatly on his windowsill, with a picture of him and Lee in front of Fenway, Wally the Green Monster waving dopily behind them; even though Tucker liked the Yankees.
In truth, Jen remembered vividly what her fight with Lee was about; it was the same as every fight they’d had. He had made a nasty comment about her weight, her appearance, her entire person as a whole, and she had started crying, which only fuelled his anger; an anger which was somehow her fault. She’d get flowers tomorrow, or a box of chocolates if the florist was closed. Then everything would go back to how it was, until he made her cry again.
Somewhere, Jen knew that she should leave Lee, but she also knew that she couldn’t for Tucker’s sake. Despite the occasional nasty remarks that he extended to Tucker, Lee was a good father and her son loved him; and Jen would do anything for him.
Jen left her son’s room, keeping the door open just a crack. She gazed out the townhouse’s front-facing windows into pitch black. She couldn’t see, but she could hear, and the city was louder on this side, cars whizzing by and rattling the building’s bones a little. That was probably what woke Tucker up.
Jen looked down the hallway and into the stairway, where the bottom was a pool of darkness. Maybe she should go down and wake Lee up to apologize. Faintly, caught in the cross-fade between light and dark, she saw the body of a mosquito. She couldn’t yet hear the buzz, but it would come, and now was her chance. On the foyer table lay a flyswatter, from the last unwanted visitor, and Jen lurched towards it.
The mosquito flew around easily, racing on an invisible track that Jen could not follow. When it left the pockets of light she could only guess where it was, swinging poorly, but it soon re-emerged, and she was getting closer. A buzzing went swiftly past her ear, and then another on the other side. She swatted at the air with her weapon, but the buzz returned, and it seemed louder now. It spun round and round and round her head, creating a barrier of gauze and zzizzziiis. Dizzy. On the far wall she saw a black dot settle. It had to be now.
Jen took shallow breaths to stay quiet as she approached. She held the swatter out to her side, arm up and ready to strike. Her feet moved soft as a cat, one in front of the other, and her eyes stayed focused on the mosquito. In one swift movement she flung the flyswatter at the wall, and it slapped the surface with a clean thwack.
A light flicked on downstairs, followed by the soft click of a closing door. Jen heard the shuffle of bare feet on wood and her heart rose to her throat. Maybe Lee was coming up because he was tired of sleeping on the couch. Maybe he would come apologise. Jen felt her heartbeat and the throbbing of it extended to her entire body; she could feel her veins swell underneath her skin. She tiptoed back to their bedroom, still clutching the flyswatter. She didn’t want Lee to find her there, awake, swatting at mosquitos in the night. He’d think she was insane.
The TV lights were still flashing on the wall, but the porn’s neon had been swapped with the blinding white of telemarketing. A man in a baby blue suit with hair styled into a dollop on top of his head held out a necklace with five emeralds set into the centre. It was a gaudy thing, and the price was outrageously high. Jen heard the last of his sales pitch “He’ll love to see you in this” before she switched the TV off and the screen was swallowed in black. The bedroom fell into silence, but the streets were still bustling with life, though the noise started to dwindle as the clock on the bedside table read 3:47am.
If Lee came into the room right now, wearing his white t-shirt and anchor print boxers, and if he told Jen he was sorry, again, for the millionth time, that he didn’t mean the words he said, that he would never say them again, Jen thought she could forgive him. She switched the bedside lamp off and lay still in bed. Her hands settled in the small dip between her breasts, and she felt the thundering of her heart.
If Lee came into the room right now, she would forgive him then and there, and let him play their game.
It was in California that Lee came up with their game after having been to a late-night screening of Eyes Wide Shut. Jen liked the idea of husband and wife, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, playing a couple in their movie. It kept the spark alive and added a romantic and passionate flare to the sex scenes which proved that her marriage could be the same. Lee was inspired by Nicole’s infidelity though, when she lay still on the bed and let the man touch her and do what he liked.
In their luscious hotel room Lee wanted to do the same, and she let him because he touched her kindly, for the first time since she could remember, not like in the film, with a tenderness she was seldom offered, like he was tending to a skittish doe. He fed her sweet words like chocolate and liquor and Jen, blind as ever, had succumbed. Since then, in the silence and darkness of the night, he and Jen would play these games; he the huntsman, she the prey. But the rules had changed, and Jen would have to lie incredibly still, or he wouldn’t come. He liked her when he could run his fingertips over her collarbones and she wouldn’t flinch, squeeze her throat and she wouldn’t squirm. There would be a moment when she liked it, when his cheeks were flush with his own pleasure and his eyes alight, before they dimmed when he was done.
Once, at brunch, Jen had told her girlfriends about their games and they all giggled, covering their mouths with dainty hands.
“So risqué,” Joy had said, poking at the eggs benedict on her plate to mask her discomfort.
“Nathan wanted to try something like that the other night. I wouldn’t let him,” said Delia sternly.
“Well, you’ve always been very reserved.”
“Why did you let him do it, Jen?” asked Amanda.
Jen wasn’t sure what to say, her cheeks blazing, they weren’t normally so open about their intimacies.
“I just wanted to do something nice for him.”
Jen waited a while, five minutes, ten, but it became clear Lee was not coming up. God she was stupid for hoping. Her insides turned over on themselves, creating giant loops in her stomach. Jen’s eyelids were heavy, they were iron curtains that she couldn’t keep up. The clock read 3:59am and the mosquito was gone, so she could sleep. But the knot only tightened, constricting her organs, and she needed to speak to Lee and have him come back to bed with her.
If she went downstairs to see Lee, she would apologize, and he would forgive her.
The light was still on, and it filtered to the bottom of the stairwell like a puddle of melted gold. Jen wrapped a silk robe around herself tightly, she cinched her waist and knotted the tie at the front. The world had quietened beyond the windows, though everything was still dark. If she really squinted, she could make out the hazy outline of the opposite townhouses.
The fly swatter lay abandoned on the ground and Jen picked it up so she could put it back in the utility closet. She took the steps down one by one, and a nervous itch settled on her wrist.
There was a noise, a creek, or a shuffling of sorts, followed by a bump. Jen’s mind went back to the headline she saw on TV. The burglaries in Beacon Hill. She was hit by a wave that almost knocked her off her feet, as she crept closer to the ground floor. What if they were being broken in to? Maybe that’s why Lee was up? Maybe he was hurt? Could that be what Tucker heard? But she was being silly, it was only a bump in the night.
Still, Jen started counting the rooms of their townhouse on one hand and the number of valuables they owned on the other. If they were being broken into, God forbid, Jen was not ready to put up a fight, what good would a flyswatter do?
“Lee?” she whispered.
A pit grew in Jen’s stomach as she rounded the corner of the hallway and found herself in the entryway. Here, the light was brighter, and she could clearly see that the living room had been lit up. She stood still for a moment, assessing her surroundings. Bump, creek, shuffle, bump. Faint but there. Jen took a deep breath, it was only Lee, it could only be Lee getting restless in the night, it would be fine. The itch crept up to her elbow.
“Lee,” she whisper-shouted, “Lee, it’s me.”
Their living room door, and the room itself, was at an awkward position in the house. The door was at a slant from Jen’s view so she couldn’t see fully inside, and whoever was inside could not see her.
The thought of being held hostage by robbers seeped into Jen’s mind. She’d only have one chance to say what she wanted to say. She rehearsed it in her mind, her mouth feeling suddenly dry with her tongue shrivelling up like a dehydrated sponge. I’m sorry, Lee, honey, I was being silly, I upset you, it was my fault, can you please forgive me? I love you. She thought of Lee wheeling her out of the hospital as she held little Tucker against her breast, he had kissed the top of her head before fetching the car. Or when he folded her hand into his own as they walked together down the aisle, and when they first met and he kissed her neck, in the spot she liked, and called her beautiful.
A bump and a squeak. Jen clutched the flyswatter with her now clammy hand to try and stop her body from shaking so much. She was at the threshold of the living room, she could see through the crack of the door.
Lee was on the couch.
Jen saw a pale wrist strewn over the edge of her yellow vintage couch. The wrist fed into a slender arm which belonged to a woman, a girl even, lying on Jen’s matching yellow cushions, with her head fallen to the side and a tennis skirt hiked up around her waist. She noticed the faint indent of her teeth on her lip.
Crouched on top of her was Lee, with his boxers hanging just under his ass and the crest of his t-shirt dampened with sweat. She heard the sick sounds of sex – slapping and squelching – and Lee’s vulgar low groans as Jen watched him fuck the girl, twice as young as she, the way he liked to fuck her. Jen noted the clenching of his buttocks which meant he would be done soon, and she let herself get a glimpse of his face. It was reflected faintly on the window, and she saw the shadow of his brow crumple together. The look that signaled that this girl’s purpose had reached its expenditure. Soon he would just be disgusted by her.
Jen’s insides twisted, wringing themselves of the foul feeling that was flooding her. She had half a mind to scream and kill him right there, take the flyswatter to his bare skin, see how he liked to be beat, but she cupped her mouth and retreated back to her room, dropping the fly-swatter on the ground. She wished she could cry but no feeling came, other than the hot itch that had spread to her entire body. In her room she slammed the light on and saw, crawling on the back wall, a single black dot.
She stared at it, she watched it move and then watched it take flight. She scrutinized its every move. There was a buzz, the high-pitched buzz that had taunted her all night, only it was louder now, amplified. Jen peeled her robe off, let it slip to floor, and got on the bed, not bothering to get under the covers. The mosquito landed on her arm, making a few steps to get better footing, and Jen just let it. Had she not killed the one from earlier? Or had there been a second one all along? Jen supposed there would always be more mosquitos lurking around.
The mosquito bit into her skin.
Jen let it, and she felt a real itch start to pool and throb in her flesh. The buzzing continued, though it was only in Jen’s ears now, the mosquito still prodding at her skin. It grew louder and louder until her head felt like the static on the TV.
And then it stopped. Jen’s palm was flat on her arm and underneath was a dead mosquito. A splatter of her own blood. She flicked the corpse off and downstairs there was the faint click of the front door.
Jen thought of Paris, the first time Lee had started to harden. It was before Tucker was born, a last hoorah of sorts. Stretch marks crept over Jen’s body in a silky spider web, and each of Lee’s comments got caught in it, spinning themselves into beasts must larger than they were. Are you wearing that? The women here really are something else, I wish you were French. I can’t wait for you to pop. They were at a café not far from Le Champs de Mars, and Jen was discussing the way French people smoked a lot, and maybe that’s what kept them so slim. Lee said he hated cigarettes, and that was the last real answer she got from him in years.
She thought about the flowers Lee would get her in the morning, peonies, and how she would never buy herself those flowers again.
In 3 years’ time, Jen would be back at her mother’s house in Hanover. She would be divorced at 33 and Tucker would only see his daddy on alternating weekends. She would be living off the alimony and she’d buy her son nice shoes for school. Her mother would yell, still, and try to take over the parenting and make Jen feel bad. But in 5 years Jen would find a job in New York and she’d take her son and move there like they always dreamed. She’ll repeat I Regret Nothing in the mirror every morning and put on the clothes that make her feel beautiful, because she says so. Tucker will grow up to love his mommy and daddy equally, much to Jen’s dismay. But he’ll be a smart young man, the apple of her eye, he’ll treat women the way she taught him, and he’ll never forget the day she whisked him away. Neither will Jen, that night she wrapped him up in bubble-wrap and saved him from the world. The world being Lee, because at the time, that’s what he had made himself out to be.
But for now, there is this, Jen lying in bed as her husband creeps into the room to find a different shirt. He smells of sweat and hairspray. Jen pretends to be asleep for the thousandth time in their relationship, only this time she is awake.
swim press 