Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep

Story Info
Horror-cult-thriller, dual reality.
21.2k words
3.33
8.2k
1
0
Share this Story

Font Size

Default Font Size

Font Spacing

Default Font Spacing

Font Face

Default Font Face

Reading Theme

Default Theme (White)
You need to Log In or Sign Up to have your customization saved in your Literotica profile.
PUBLIC BETA

Note: You can change font size, font face, and turn on dark mode by clicking the "A" icon tab in the Story Info Box.

You can temporarily switch back to a Classic Literotica® experience during our ongoing public Beta testing. Please consider leaving feedback on issues you experience or suggest improvements.

Click here

Copyright © 2006 De Rozario Jesse

All rights reserved.

Portions of this document may not be reproduced through any means, including, but not limited to, scanning, uploading, reproduction, transmission, and distribution via the Internet or any other means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying or recording in any form, without express permission of the author.

Any reproduction or redistribution of this document must be done wholly and in its entirety.

*

1

Travis Born stirs.

He rolls over and then is wide-awake. He half-sits, looking at the greenish glow of the digital display on his bedside desk.

3:13, Mr. Casio tells him in mocking cheer.

Travis groans. He thinks of knocking the damn thing off the table, but then remembers it had been his wife's clock, and leaves it alone. He buries his face in the goose down pillow and screams.

3:13, he thinks. What's going on here?

These bouts of insomnia started two weeks ago when his wife disappeared, a month after the nightmares began.

Karen Vernon. Twenty-three, blonde shoulder length hair, green eyes like javelins. A shape hot enough to burn the pants off the devil himself, he'd oft boast after a round too many of Chivas Regal. Tall, slim. Shit, Trav, you should get her to pose for Playboy, one of his brilliant friends remarked. Travis laughed, agreed, then gave that intelligent friend a bruise for his wife to question. Good ol' Chivas probably had a part to play in that.

Travis thought about going to the cops with this vital data and submitting a Missing Persons Report (a code 2-14 as they called it in this part of the world) when he first came home and found her vacated from the premises. But after mulling it over (this thought process quickened by about half a bottle of Jim Bean, another favorite), Travis decided it wouldn't do any good. The cops would talk to her friends, relatives, other people she may have got into contact with within the past couple weeks or months—standard police procedure, really—and the truth would burst out, magically as a green rabbit from a hat. Only differenece was that everyone would (think) know she'd left him. He preferred it this way. Let her walk out nice and quiet with no one the wiser. But he thought that everyone would find out sooner or later. Seemed everyone knew him. Of course they did. His house was the highest on the hill. But better this way. Save him the humiliation—and terror.

He wants to go after her and see if she can be saved—but after that letter, Travis changed his mind.

Give it the full two weeks.

This dark, ungodly, insomniac morning was Day Fifteen. A few minutes more and he'd find out if it was all true...or just his wife's freaky way of leaving him.

They said two weeks, and Travis wants to wait two weeks. Right now, he is too afraid.

He thinks about the past year.

Travis had been the general manager of the city's largest bank. A boring job, some would say, but being a banker paid well. Well enough that he can afford a suburban home with a pool and a yard and what Karen liked to call 'the view'. Of course, this view is nothing more than three miles up on a hill looking down at the rising fog of pollution weave clouds through their city's skyscrapers and slums, but it has done him fine. Done Karen fine as well. The Lotus he bought her for their second anniversary suited her fine too.

This is a second marriage for both of them. Some say experience is the best teacher, and their previous tie-ups has taught them a thing or two.

His first wife left him because he 'didn't listen to her enough'. Mike Furl, Karen's first I Do, quit when he figured that if she wasn't going to provide certain favors, well, he could find it elsewhere—and cheaper, too.

That was then. This was now. Travis finds her ex's accusation silly. During the first year of their marriage, Karen and he were making regular practice of the horizontal mambo—sometimes vertical, diagonal, or whatever which way you might imagine mechanically accessible—at every possible opportunity. It was great, just great. He felt young again—though thirty-eight was not an age he liked to consider old—and hadn't been able to go so long since he was in high school. She could go and go and go all night. Their sex life was great, their social life was outstanding, even their occasional arguments and fights were one-of-a-kind.

And then one day, Travis got promoted, and that, really, was the beginning of the end.

Travis's work hours stretched, home hours shrunk. Out-of-towns became more frequent. But Karen never protested when it meant he'd be bringing in an added fifty percent to the already ungodly amount he was raking in.

Travis and Karen had discussed this one night after a light dinner and a heavy bottle of wine. The weather was running riot outside, canceling their plans to go out dancing. She'd agreed that he take this new position now, worry about the commitments later. They decided to celebrate.

Other than the promotion and their first anniversary being only five days in the making, there was another issue Karen noted to him that needed discussion. She didn't tell him, but knew he'd better be in a good mood before she dropped it. Blasted weather for ruining everything. If you looked at it from the right point of view at the wrong time, the weather might have been to blame for everything. If not for the weather, Karen and Travis might still be alive.

But the weather mocked them.

2

"Damn the weather," Travis said. "Doesn't look like it's going to let up anytime soon. Look at the sidewash blowing over my wall! I just had that furniture revarnished!"

Karen walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He could tell from the way her breasts pressed against him that she wasn't wearing any bra.

"Too bad," she said. "I really did want to check out that new Salsa place Celine told me about."

Travis turned around and looked at her. "Hmmm," he said, though he didn't sound very deep in thought.

"Screw the weather," Karen announced with that impish gleam in her eye. "Just fuck me."

He did.

First over the kitchen counter, which was the nearest location to the back porch—dinner at the half-way stage of preparation, the water in the sink running—both of them fully clothed. It was just before the moment of truth that Travis first remembered to ask her what her important announcement was. But it was hard—Have a pun!—with her legs dangling over the edge of the counter while her top half squirmed and responded. Besides, he had an idea what it was, and didn't feel inspired to talk about Travis-Karen miniatures just yet.

He dropped the thought and put his mind and soul into the task at hand.

Later, after a dinner that was too rushed and the drink too generous, they continued the charade upstairs in the willowy comfort of their feather bed, sans clothing. The thought was still creeping around in his mind like a dark beast (What is it what is it? You stop taking the pill? Mr. Jones from the business center make a pass at you?), and he was about to lean over into her ear and whisper something horribly unromantic but horribly pressured on his mind. His lips reached her neck and opened to speak. As if sensing him, Karen spoke instead. She locked her ankles tight around her husband's hips and whispered, "Do me do me do me," into his ear. All rational thought vanished. Then she grabbed the back of his head and stuck her tongue into his mouth as he came.

That, really, ended the night.

Of course, the celebrating couple took in a few more rounds of the bad and naughty, but by then, Travis had forgotten all about what she was supposed to tell him. Karen, however, did not—she remembered wonderfully, oh yes.

That was after their first anniversary. Following it, Travis found himself ensnared by his work—almost to the point where he oft thought of quitting. He was home less frequent, but upon discussing it with Karen, telling her he would would drop it all at, well, the drop of a hat, if that was what she wanted. She did not want that, she had affirmed. She wanted them both to be (piggishly rich!) happy, and was willing to make sacrifices. Ten hours in the office a day, he found, really was a sacrifice.

With his new working hours, the once happy couple rarely had time for more than an hour (meals usually being consumed 'le solitaire' prior to his return) before dropping off to sleep. As the sun was still breaking the horizon on the next morning, he would be gone again. And that was the routine, day after day, week after week, month after month. And then Travis realized, with an enlightening horror, that their second anniversary was approaching—and that he had seen more of his secretary and coffee boy than of his wife. A whole year had escaped them both without an inkling of their suspicion.

This sudden remembrance caused him to recall something from that last anniversary. What was strange, was that though the wild sex on that first anniversary should have been the most memorable thing of that celebration (really, it was the only time he'd been able to come five times in one night—first time more than twice, anyhow. Oh, the things she could do to him...), there was something else that held a greater hold on his memory.

What was it she had to tell me?

He found that though a whole year had passed since that night, the burning curiosity had not diminished.

This memory had even occurred to him a few weeks back when he was sitting in the high-backed leather recliner—phones ringing all about like a madhouse (he personally had four in his own office), enough stacks of paper surrounding him to condemn a small forest—and he had, of all things, been thinking about life. Now that he remembered, it was the closest he'd ever come to a breakdown.

Amid this contemplation, his secretary had come in, her pressed three-piece suit rustling with every move (the skirt's hemline a liberal two-hands' breadth above her knee, a couple jacket buttons left open for a generous view), gold-rimmed spectacles resting on the tip of her nose like costume jewelry, another stack of papers in her arms that ended inches under that generous bust, blabbing on and on about how he was going to be late for something or other, that he had this to do, so and so to call, arrange, meet, pick up and so on ladida dida.

Travis wasn't listening to her. He was thinking about what a movie character would do. He felt like screaming, but didn't think the management would look too kindly on that one. Travis Born thought about laughing and laughing—just laughing himself silly—and figured that would be a more Hollywood reaction to all of this, but then he realized the management would most probably not appreciate this either. In fact, they might form a more suspicious conclusion to mad laughter than simple screaming.

This thought squeezed a fat, liquid chuckle from him, prompting a question from his secretary if he was feeling well. Yes, he assured her, he was. He hadn't caught the flu for over a year now, and he'd been faithfully taking all his medicines too. He was eating well, sleeping average, he supposed, taking occasional trips to the gym, and doing his wife the service from time to time. That counted towards good exercise also, he did not say. He did not say the rest of that thought either, which amounted to how much he would enjoy tossing those papers from her hands, laying her over the desk, and 'showing her who's boss'. Ha-ha. In truth, Miss Rosa really did have the figure and costume of an adult film star. He thought she might prove better than a week at the gym, but failed to enlighten her on that as well.

This thought led to another and another. Soon, Travis found himself reminiscing on the night of riotous action he and his wife shared that dark and stormy night five days after their first anniversary. But the memory that followed wiped away all trace of humor from him.

Travis remembered the feather bed (and the kitchen counter, and the rug under their wedding picture...and the barstool...the bathtub too...jeez!), and this jolted memories of that special something Karen was supposed to tell him.

Then he realized that she had not told him until now.

The part of him that wanted to contribute maniacal laughter to the stressful working environment was subdued. His mind was all of a sudden alert and sensitive. Pricked like feelers.

What did she want to tell me oh what was it what what?

The more he thought, the worse the answer became.

She wanted to pursue her own carreeer and you stifled that.

She wanted a baby...well, not too late, is it?

And this one convince him with a dread that she had been pregnant at the time, but decided—under the turbulent circumstances of his upcoming career—to terminate the pregnancy. Oh, that one scared him more than anything. Travis had been raised a Catholic, and though he liked to think of himself as liberal, the thought of ending a life over a reason petty as work commitments filled him with a fear few other things could have—

Until a month ago, when the nightmares started.

When Travis remembered that night and her 'Forgotten Agenda', his mind stayed blank for a long time.

"Something the matter?" Miss Rosa asked again, and Travis had to once more stifle that urge to tell her how perfectly he could perfectly see her splayed across his glass table—papers scattered, hose tattered.

And I am a poet, and you did not know it! Ha-ha, bring on the madness!

Travis assured her he was fine (going mad, perhaps, but fine), but owing to circumstance he would be taking the rest of the afternoon off.

Let the management deal with that one. Ha!

Despite the pleas and objections of Miss Rosa, Travis went down to Central Park, sipped coffee, ate a slice of twenty-cent pizza (God, the free, reckless taste of dirty oily street food was liberating!), and watched the sun disappear behind the mosaic sky of the west metropolitan.

And he thought.

He thought of a lot of things.

This led eventually to the pressing question of Karen's Agenda. The more he wrestled with it, the more he could not let it go. After an hour of sitting exposed to the pigeons' rectal bombings in his three thousand dollar suit—though he was lucky enough to not find himself the target on this not so pleasant evening—Travis came to the conclusion that he would ask Karen about it tonight.

He would go back, open an expensive bottle of wine, then 'pop the question'. Something helped him wonder why he was making such a big deal about it, but he told that impish part of his mind to shut it. And shut it the mind did. He carried on in his planning on what would go on after the questioning and the bottle of wine. The prospects were encouraging, though he doubted he'd be able to beat his personal record of five after all the stress he'd been taxing himself with.

Three's more like it, he thought, then laughed out loud. Nah. Who am I kidding? I'd be happy if I get any at all. And then he laughed again.

The idea formed that maybe she would have no recollection of what he was talking about. That was okay, he told himself. The more he thought about this, the more he realized that this was just an excuse for him to get 'reacquainted' with his wife. God knew that needed doing. With that wonderful plan in mind, Travis Born, general manager State City Bank (North-Western Central Branch), husband of Karen Vernon Born (home maker, and just about the biggest bombshell this side of the GMT Line), stood from his splintery park bench and straightened out his Armani suit. He was smiling. He knew there would be a new spring in his step when he walked off.

But then, his cell phone rang.

It was one of 'the management' on the line, demanding an explanation as to why he'd gone out without prior notice on a day that had so much in store for 'the organization', and that in future, it would do him best to bear this in mind before acting rashly.

After the initial tongue-lashing that Travis received in relative silence, there came words of encouragement from 'the management', praising his work so far, and that if all went smoothly tonight with 'the deal', then he could be assured of a 'worthy reward' as a 'token of our appreciation to your selfless contributions'. They also did not fail to mention that his second anniversary to a certain Miss Karen Vernon (Mrs. Karen Born, he thought of correcting them, but did not) was nearing, and that there was a certain 'luxury automobile' they were aware she was intent on receiving. Travis assured them that this was his wife they were talking about, and that he knew her well enough. In an equally friendly manner, they advised him that should he wish to be able to afford that wine-colored Lotus, and more in the future, it would be in his best interests to keep his loyalties in the right places.

They asked if he had any problem understanding that.

With the white flash of smile that had closed billions of dollars worth of contracts (and won Karen Vernon's heart), Travis assured them that he did not have any problem, and that he would promptly return to his office on the forty-second floor, and, furthermore, they could expect no more of such activity on his part. With the management, it was always best to play convinced.

The line cut, and with it, went the bottle of wine, the night of passion intended, and The Agenda. Again, forgotten.

The meeting went as planned, the deal cut magnificently over dinner—even before coffee was served. In contradiction from what Travis himself had expected, his mind was not occupied with the afternoon's plague. By the time Mr. Jenkins (his face of 'the management') and Mr. Delcrout (some Frenchman with obviously too much money) arrived at the St. McClean's Steak House, all such questions were forgotten. His mind pushed out all other things and focused itself to the task.

The deal was sealed with remarkable conciseness, and even Mr. Jenkins praised Travis for the transient dealings so that he'd be back home in time to watch the hockey game with his son. Travis smiled pleasantly, then returned to his own son-less home and no hockey game.

What happened that night between Travis and Karen is something better left for those pizza-face dorks with nothing better to do than write Internet porn and express their explicit fantasies on paper. But you will be granted the liberty to know that the bottle of Montagut '67—Rosette—was produced in due time, and that surely served to spice up the evening. It was how Travis had planned, with the one forgotten exception: The Agenda.

A few days later, their second anniversary dawned on them clear and crystal with a sudden feeling that the whole past year had been worth the effort, and now the hard times were over. It was time for fun and play.

The couple planned a small, private party in the lawn of their hilltop home, with only their best friends and select relatives invited. Travis invited his parents, but was more than a little surprised when Karen informed him that none of her relatives would be coming.

"Can't make it in time," she explained. "Business engagements."

"I see," Travis said, though he did not see. In all of their two years of marriage (and three years of sex and dinners before that), Travis suddenly realized that not once had she even mentioned her parents or siblings.

Travis brushed it aside and went on with the preparations for the luncheon. All in all, there had been nothing to mar day so far. It seemed there could not possibly be a better day for celebration—except for one thing.

It had happened late in the nine o'clock region—past nine thirty, not yet ten—when Travis was heading down to the basement to locate a bottle or two of champagne. Into the steamy cave of the cellar he went—it was a false cellar, actually still above ground level—with a lit candle and wicker basket. Small as the basement was, Travis was discovering great difficulty in locating what he wanted.