Shades of Guilt Ch. 1

The first sign of that came at around 3am on a humid and sultry night in mid June as Randy slept beside his wife. He had intially thought the russling that had jarred him awake had came from the dog jumping up onto the bed.

Slightly awake, Randy laid there trying to go back to sleep when his eyes instinctivly opened. Seeing his wife's silohuette in front of him in the dark, Randy instantly could tell she was having a dream.

With Ann's back facing him, Randy allowed his eyes to slowly adjust to the absense of light in the room. Clearing the cobwebs of sleep out of his head, Randy could hear Ann talk to herself in short fits and starts as she twitched in place.

Randy's first reaction was to reach out and calm her. Scarred he would startle her and do more harm than good, Randy patiently laid there and allowed Ann to work out the dream on her own.

Watching his wife's body by the greenish light of the digital alarm clock, after a few minutes Randy sensed what Ann was imagining in her head and doing with her body wasn't quite the same as the way her usual nightmares played out.

Perching his weight up tentativly on his right elbow so that he could see over Ann's turned shoulder, Randy detected a mix of contorted and confused expressions darting across his wife's sleeping face. Tracing his sightlines down her body, Randy could see both of Ann's hands had disappeared under the covers and were making strained, twisting motions as if she were trying to reach for something hidden between her thighs.

Listening and watching with curious fascination as his wife's dream continued to play out, Randy correctly sensed that this wasn't a typical nightmare for Ann.

"MMMPHH...ahhhh..eee..uummmmmm..ahhhhhh," Ann whispered in harsh rasps as her ocean blue eyes darted crazily behind her closed eyelids.

"What in the...?" Randy questioned himself as he looked on, shaking his head as he mentally processed what his wife's body was doing. "She can't be...."

Looking up briefly at the alarm clock, Randy found it hard to believe 10 minutes had already passed since he intially started watching Ann's hypnotic display. He also was embarrassed by the fact that there was a definate pressure building between his own legs as he watched his wife sleepily squirm beside him.

Seeing a few drops of spittle glisten off of Ann's lips, Randy was sure he could also hear the sounds of his wife's arousal as she buried both her hands deep between her clenched thighs.

Desperatly fighting the urge to reach out and touch his crazed bride, Randy's eyes widened even more when he saw Ann part her legs slightly so that she would have unhindered to her genitals.

"UUMMM....AAHHHHHHH,'' loudly hiccuped from Ann's mouth when her fingertips dug into her moist vagina.

"Shit," Randy moaned in return as his throbbing dick begged to be stroked.

Taking in a series of quick breaths, Randy could distinctly smell and taste his wife's arousal permiating the room. "She's fucking herself," he moaned incrediously as he balanced himself on one arm.

Even though Ann's gestures were hidden by the covers, Randy could still hear his wife's frantic hand motions as the sounds of her wanton movements squeeked noisely through every corner of the Thomas's bedroom.

"FFUUU......CCCCKKKKKK," Ann gurgled, biting her bottom lip hard as her hands pressed into the messy fissure of her crotch.

Randy watched his wife's body appear to levitate off the mattress in a violent rush for 5-10 seconds before one last brutal gasp ripped free from her throat. Ann's whole body then went limp, falling into a sweaty heap where she had originally been resting.

The blood inside Randy Thomas's head was rushing so forcefully that he was sure he misunderstood the words that slipped free from Ann'as mouth while she was in the throws of her curious, sleepy orgasm.

"...land....oland...Roland..Roland," part of him was sure he heard Ann moan while she was cumming.

"That can't be..it just can't be," Randy whispered with glazed disbelief.

The sheer perversity of imagining his wife allowing herself to orgasm over the same man that had tormented her nightmares for 14 years, even if the facts of the case showed Roland Curtis wasn't responsible for the brutal violation, was simply too obscene for Randy to even contemplate.

"This...this..this..just can't be," Randy muttered as the sounds of his wife's light snoring filled his ears.

All Randy Thomas was able to do was let his right arm collapse and drop his weight back down onto the bed behind Ann's turned back, staring blankly at the woman in front of him as if she were an alien that had somehow taken his wife's place.

* * * * *

Getting back to sleep after such a vivid and unsettling display was a long and fruitless battle for Randy. By the time the first hint of sunlight peeked through the window, he knew there was no chance at recouping any rest before he had to get up and go to work.

By the time the alarm went off as it always did at 6am and Ann slowly stirred before reaching to turn it off, Randy tried mustering the words "Good Morning" to his wife, but no sound came out of his cotten mouth.

* * * * *

After Ann Thomas was able to pull herself out from under the covers so she could head down to the kitchen to start breakfast and put her children's school lunches together, she couldn't help but feel an eerie sense of refreshed lightness fizz internally as she made her way down the steps.

"Randy and I didn't have sex last night...did we?'' Ann quietly asked herself, the feeling in her bones exactly the same as when her and her husband made love the night before.

The fact that she had came a few hours earlier, in her sleep, never crossed Ann's mind as she wipped through her morning chores before sending everyone on their way and then heading upstairs to take a shower before she dressed for work.

With the house all to herself, Ann carried her coffee mug upstairs and disappeared into her bathroom to take a shower. With the stall already wet and humid from Randy's shower a half an hour earlier, the temperature in the room was just right as she stepped under the torrent of steaming water.

The instant that the warm rushing water collided against Ann's exposed pussy however, she knew something just wasn't right. When the cascading water from the showerhead above sizzled down against Ann's pubic area, spectacular bolts of lightning exploded in her head as the rushing flow of liquod stung her buzzing vaginal lips.

"GAAWWWW," Ann cringed, cowering away from the shooting water at first, clueless as to why her senses were so heightened.

Slowly easing back under the showerflow, Ann gradually found a comfort level as she racked her brain trying to figure out why her pussy was so gloriously raw and energized.

Delicatly cleansing the length of her body, Ann wondered out loud what strange aura had entered her. After a good 10 minutes enjoying the giddy sensations flowering in and around her body, Ann finally dragged herself out of the shower, tapping her feet happily on the floor, knowing for some reason, it was going to be a very good day.

After drying off, applying her makeup and getting dressed for work, Ann cast one last look at the unmade bed, trying to remember having sex with her husband before going to sleep the night before. She couldn't help but think she had entered the initial stages of dementia when no memory of making love filtered through her mind.

"Hell..its been over a week and a half since Randy and I have done it," Ann laughed out loud as she headed downstairs.

* * * * *

Every other Friday was Randy Thomas's poker night with his buddies and Ann usually used that time to do nothing but enjoy some time with her kids, lounge around, catch up on some housework and generally recharge her batteries after a long week of work. This particular Friday was especially relaxing considering all three kids were spending the weekend with their Grandparents.

After going a million miles an hour all week however, the soothing quiet echoing through the usually bussling house had Ann strangely on edge by 9pm.

"Nothing's on TV ," she told herself. "Everything's a re-run..read the newspaper twice and everytime I go into the kitchen I end up finding something to eat. If I don't find anything to do I'm going to end up weighing 500 pounds."

Deciding the week old pile of newspapers sitting beside her husband's recliner needed to be taken out to the recyling bin, Ann gravitated over to the corner of the den and bent down to pick up the stack of papers. Scooping up the bulky pile in her short arms, Ann couldn't help but notice the feature article sitting on the top that a reporter for the local paper had done several days earlier about her meeting with Roland Curtis at the local Baptist Church.

Setting the armfull of papers back down gently, an instant meloncholy swept through Ann's body as she replayed the ridiculous events of the past 14 years in her head. Before she even knew it, 15 minutes had passed as she sat there reading and re-reading the same article.

The stark and surreal sight of the picture where Ann and Roland were standing together on the front page of the paper, arm in arm on the church steps, caused every nerve in Ann's body to flinch. For nearly half her life Roland Curtis had been the bogeyman that had haunted her every turn and to see herself embraced with him, even smiling while she was doing it as the assembled photographers clicked off shot after shot, filled Ann with a weird sense of vertigo.

Congnitivly, Ann was able to shift the blame for her attack to the man serving time upstate whose DNA matched the evidence at her crime scene. But to literally shift 14 years of builtup emotional hatred and fear for someone, even if he was nowhere near her apartment that night in 1983, was not that easy for her to do.

Ann internally cursed herself for not having the fortitude to let go of all the misplaced anger against Roland and that feeling led to a tenacious, biting guilt that ate at her stomach.

Before she knew it, Ann found herself digging through her purse, trying to find the phone number Roland have given her. For some reason, Ann felt the need to apologize once again.

Knowing Roland was living in the downstairs room of the church where they had met at, Ann waited for nearly a minute until a gravely and surprised male voice picked up and said, "Hello....Wilmington Baptist Church", after the 6th ring.

"UHHH...," Ann sighed, suddenly realizing she hadn't even planned out what she was going to say if anyone answered the phone.

There was a patient pause on the other end before Roland seemed to clarivoiantly say, "Hi Ann."

"How did you know it was me...Roland?" Ann Thomas asked curiously .

"I haven't given this number to that many people since I got here...especially women..and besides this is a church..nobody calls after dark....lucky guess I guess," Roland laughed tentativly.

Several moments of awkward silence passed between the two until they both tried speaking at the same time, causing each to outwardly laugh from their nervous and strained timing.

"How are you?" Ann asked, trying to break the ice.

"....Fine I guess...tired..they work you pretty hard around here," Roland replied heartily.

"Me too," Ann shyly laughed. "Its been along week..I'm just trying to wind down. Sounds pretty quiet there?"

"Yep..everybody cleared out after chior practice. I thought the boys in the joint could get loud but those damn girls will bust your eardrums," Roland mused, referring to the Wilmington Baptist Chior that used the church to practice every Friday evening.. Sounds kinda quiet on your end too, Ann."

"Yeah..its my husband Randy's poker night and the kids are off with their grandparents this weekend," Ann answered, the void and lonliness in her voice readily apparent.

Roland immediatly picked up on Ann's empty tone as he sat in his small boarding room, trying to determine just what the woman on the other end was trying to say.

"So...how are you?" Roland asked, turning Ann's original question back against her.

The long pause before Ann answered told Roland that all wasn't well in the married woman's mind. There was a part of Roland's psyche, deep within the recesses of his mind, that bubbled to the surface during the sleepless nights in prison that wanted to make the woman who was responsible for his false incarcuration suffer for her mistake. As that very woman tettered on the verge of emotional collpase on the other end of the phone, that vengeful part of the ex-con's pysche couldn't help but snicker just a little.

The other 99.9% of Roland Curtis's being however, was much more understanding. "I've got all night Ann..do you want to talk about it?"

The audible sound of Ann's relieved sigh came across the phoneline loud and clear, signaling to Roland the shaken woman was suffering from a massive amount of internal guilt over what had happened.

"Feels like the walls are closing in sometimes," Ann softly answered, not referring to anything specific, but perhaps her whole life in general.

Figuring long periods of awkward silence were the best tools to get Ann to explore her jumbled emotions, Roland stayed as verbally brief as he possible, allowing Ann to continue her strange catharsis.

"I was just thumbing through some old newspapers and came across the story the Free Press did about our meeting a few days back...I dunno...for some reason I just felt the need to call you," Ann sighed honestly, not knowing Roland had turned his gaze up to his bulletin board where he had the exact same article pinned up.

"Yeah," Roland politly replied," I think I remember reading that last week in the paper."

Another extended moment of silence passed before Roland decided to make his move.

"Tell you what, Ann," Roland started.

"What," Ann gulped, jumping slightly in her chair from the change in Curtis's voice.

"If those walls feel like they are closing in..why don't you drive down to the church ...maybe we can talk for a while without the glare of all the photographers and reporters around," Roland casually offered.

Ann hesitated for several seconds, trying to process Roland's gesture. The guilt she was feeling over what had happened was weighing her down so much, Ann knew she couldn't flat out decline. The fact that she had been the one that had initiated the call to Roland was a clear signal that she was adrift in confusion and needed in some way to sort through her feelings.

"Well..I guess I can ....for a while," Ann heard herself tentativly agree. "Randy won't be home until at least 12 or 1 anyway..."

* * * * *

The moment Ann hung up the phone, her conscience asked her point blank if she knew what she had done.

"This is just something I have to do," she told herself, even if the definition of 'something', she didn't have an ready answer for.

Running up to the bedroom to put on a clean pair of black stretch leggings and to get a jacket to cover her teeshirt clad body, Ann slipped on her tennis shoes and went out to her car as if she were simply going to run an errand.

Ann didn't allow herself the opportunity to question what she was doing as she turned the key in the car's ignition and weaved through the sparse Friday night traffic on the outskirts of Wilmington.

It wasn't until Ann Thomas, a happily married mother of three, pulled her Toyota Camry into the North Wilmington Baptist Church's otherwise vacant parking lot, that she seriously questioned if she had gotten in over her head.

Steering the car into the third parking space closest to the front entrance to the church, Ann robotically switched the ignition off and immedatly felt the enveloping darkness surround her.

Sliding her tongue across her dry lips, Ann waited for any sign of life inside the darkened church as the wilderness around her seemed to close in.

"What have I gotten myself in to?" Ann asked herself in the rearview mirrow Even though it was so dark, all she saw was the vague reflection of her shiny blue pupils in the glass.

Ann waited, for what seemed like an eternity, for any sign of Roland. She contemplated getting out herself and walking up to the church doors to knock, but her childhood fear of the dark combined with the natural instinct to avoid venturing out alone in a desolate place, kept Ann firmy planted in her car's driver seat.

Just as the urge to turn the car's ignition back to start clicked in her head, Ann saw a sliver of light escape through the front door of the church followed by Roland's shadowy figure emerging from inside.

"No turning back now," A voice from deep within Ann's psychological bowels warned with a mix of temptation and trepidation.

To Be Continued...