From Darker Places than I Want to Feel Ch. 05

"Well, Mr. Sullivan, I see that you are still associating with a known homosexual." Melissa turned to Sarah with a sneer. "You know, Jesus said that homosexuality is an abomination before God."

That was it. He was fed up. He'd finally had enough of her vicious tongue. Ryan stood up slowly and stepped between Cavanaugh and Sarah. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." It was all he could do to not slap the mouthy bitch into next week.

"Back your little religious bandwagon up here a moment, Cavanaugh. Jesus never said that. Go back and check your Bible again little girl, Paul was the one who spouted that bile, not Jesus. And everybody knows that Paul was a crackpot, looney-tune. He was a self-proclaimed zealot, not a chosen disciple by the way. He used religion, and religious fervor, as a means to control, condemn, and castigate people. If you're going to misquote the bible don't do it with me around. Go home and get your facts right before you go public and make a fool of yourself."

Sarah was shocked. Melissa stood like a statue, completely apoplectic. She was unable to utter a single word; her face was beet red. Ryan turned towards Sarah with a grimace. He piled his and Sarah's tray atop one another. Then he reached down and took Sarah's hand. Together they walked to a collection station to dump their trays. Then they walked out of the dinning hall hand in hand.

Sitting around Melissa the crowd of students spoke in hushed tones, glancing towards her from time to time. Melissa slowly turned and returned to her table ashen faced. She had never been so thoroughly rebuked before, and in public no less. She was going to get that little bitch Daniels if it was the last thing she ever did.

Melissa glanced up at her entourage. They all sat silently staring at her. "What?!" Heads dropped and turned away. Not another peep was heard from the table in the center of the room.

Near the end of the day, the following week, Sarah was coming down a set of stairs in the History building, when she met Melissa starting to climb up.

"Well, rumor has it that you are getting preferential treatment on your grades from Professor Sullivan. As the second assistant to the secretary for the sociology department I think I should inform them of this."

"I hardly think that anything will happen Cavanaugh, because if you had half a brain you'd see that I don't have any classes with Professor Sullivan. So why don't you just shut the fuck up and go bother some freshman somewhere." Sarah continued down the stairs a step or two before Melissa reached out and took her arm to stop her. "You want your hand back?"

Melissa hastily withdrew her hand. "Funny thing about rumors Daniels, once they're started it's kind of hard to stop them."

Sarah leaned forward into Melissa's face. "Yeah, I know. Just like the one I could tell about how you stuff your bra and pad your ass."

"How do you know that?" She hissed vehemently.

"It's easy when you know what to look for. Don't mess with me, Cavanaugh."

"I don't care if you tell everyone, it doesn't matter. As far as I'm concerned you're just a freak and I'm going to tell everyone I know all about you."

"I hope you do little Miss Prissy, so that I can tell them all about Shelly Rhodes."

Melissa's face turned ashen. She was stunned, opening and closing her mouth without making a sound.

"If I hear so much as a peep out of you..."

"You won't, I swear before Jes..."

"Don't give me your Jesus crap, you believe in that as much as you believe in the tooth fairy. Your truth is in your actions, Cavanaugh. So just disappear and your truth will be safe with me."

Sarah turned on her heel and walked down the remaining steps. At the bottom of the steps she turned and walked off briskly trying hard to wipe the grin off her face. It wasn't every day she was able to best one of these weasels. Today was a good day.

=FIVE=

Later the next week, Sarah decided that it might be fun to add a little play into their newly established sexual experiences. After all, it had only been six months since they were together, and only three months since they started to share a bed.

She gathered together a few toys and shoving them into a cloth bag, she walked down the three flights of stairs from her sister's apartment and out the front door of the apartment complex. Ryan's apartment was only a few blocks away and he would be home from his last class soon. She was getting hard just thinking about what they would be doing together. She liked teasing him. He was such a good sport about everything. Maybe a little "tie me up, tie me down" might be fun.

She took the two flights of stairs to his apartment two steps at a time, her face was grinning from ear to ear anticipating what was going to happen next. She loved to make him hard, to make him yearn for her. It made the moment so much more pleasurable.

She used her key to open the door and then she ran into his bedroom and hid her bag under the bed. Surprises are always more fun anyway. She almost skipped out of the bedroom and down the hallway to wait for him to arrive. She was giddy with anticipation. Twenty minutes later she heard the latch click in the apartment door.

Ryan walked into his apartment and immediately the aroma of freshly baking bread assailed his senses. He dropped his briefcase on the chair by the door and walked into the kitchen. "Whatever you're making for dinner smells wonderful."

"The dinner rolls are in the oven and I'm reheating the stew from last night on the stove."

He wrapped his arms around her and nuzzled her neck then kissed her behind the ear.

She squirmed under his attention then she spun around and wrapped her arms around his neck. "Welcome home darling."

"Hmm, you are intoxicating."

"You know, sweetie, the dinner rolls will take a while and the stew is nearly ready. Would you like to play a little while we wait?"

"Play?"

"Uh-huh, you said the other day when I asked if you wanted to play with some sex toys. You shrugged and said you didn't have any so I brought a few of my own."

Ryan's eyes began to sparkle. Sarah was acting remarkably coquettish; it was really turning him on. He was getting hard watching her act so innocent especially with such a devilish gleam in her eyes.

She reached back and turned off the stove then she turned and walked seductively towards the hallway that led to the bedroom. She glanced back over her shoulder and winked. He melted into a puddle right there on the kitchen floor.

She giggled then she disappeared down the hallway. He could hear the click of her high heels on the tile floor as she walked into the bedroom. He was rock hard. He kicked off his shoes and socks then started to unbutton his shirt as he followed her down the hall.

As he entered the bedroom Sarah was lying seductively in her lingerie on the bed playing with a piece of cloth. Ryan dropped his shirt on the floor, his pants quickly followed.

Sarah crooked a finger and beckoned him onto the bed. He knelt on the bed next to her then leaned down and kissed her gently on the lips.

"Let me slip this on sweetie, things always feel so much more sensual when you can't see. I brought some toys to play. I can see you're excited." She moved around behind him and slipped the cloth over his head like a blindfold. "Anticipation. It's so intoxicating. I love you, my darling. I want you to soar tonight. I want you to feel my love for you."

She moved her hands to his shoulders. He felt her encouraged him to lie down on his back in the center of the bed.

He couldn't see her reach beneath the bed and bring up a fur-covered cuff attached to a soft cotton rope. He felt her bring his arm over and slip it into something, something restraining him.

Blindfolded, he jerked against the restraint. At first he was curious but then something seemed to snap inside his mind. Suddenly he wasn't at home in his bed with Sarah, suddenly he was in a prison compound being pushed violently into a wooden box barely large enough for a man to crawl into. A rusty metal bucket in the corner of the wooden box filled his nostrils with the smell of excrement. The reek of urine spilled on the floor of the box stung his nostrils. The images were flying around his brain like flashes of a nightmare smashing into one another.

Next, he felt someone try to restrain his left hand and he snapped again as his left hand flew violently away from his attacker. Suddenly, he was back in Vietnam in the middle of a firefight; an unseen enemy surrounded him and wanted to kill him. He had to run.

Ryan dashed off the bed running naked across the bedroom. He disappeared down the hallway.

Behind him Sarah was startled by his actions. "Ryan, honey, what's wrong? Come back sweetie." She dropped the cuffs and grabbed her clothing, pulling on her pants and blouse. Then she followed him towards the living room.

In the living room ahead, she could hear chairs and tables crashing together. It sounded like a battle zone was erupting when she heard lamps and glass crash to the floor.

As she walked out from the hallway the scene in the living room stunned her. Across the room a pile of furniture had been stacked precariously like a barricade in front of the window. Behind it a crazed looking Ryan crouched, naked, hiding from an unseen enemy. She looked into his eyes; they were totally crazy, like he wasn't inside his head anymore. Like he wasn't Ryan anymore, he'd become some crazed animal trapped in a cage.

The room was littered with debris, broken, scattered pieces of what a moment before was an ordinary living room in an ordinary apartment.

She tried to calm him down but he was so tightly wound that she knew that a single false move would send him over the edge. Suddenly, he was talking to people who weren't there, motioning to them to hid in places that didn't exist, at least not in this world they didn't. Then he began to move about objects that weren't there either. It looked like he was loading ammunition into ammo clips and jamming them into an imaginary rifle. He was totally immersed in a nightmare world and he was quickly dragging her into it with him.

Grabbing her and pinning her arms, he pulled her towards the apartment door. He shouted at her that the VietCong were everywhere. "Dammit Carl, stay down!" He hissed through his teeth as he scanned the hallway outside the front door like a mad dog. "We don't have much ammo left! I'll hold them off as long as I can." He flung the apartment door open again and shoved her out of the room with such force that she flew across the hallway, landing nearly naked and clutching her clothing. She slammed against the far wall and slide to the floor as he pointed an imaginary gun at an unseen enemy. Then the door slammed shut.

Anna stood in the kitchen fixing dinner for her boys as the front door opened and closed violently. She glanced towards the hallway to see her sister dash by. She only caught a glimpse but she could see that she was crying. Then she heard Sarah's bedroom door slam shut.

"Sarah? What happened Sis? Open up, tell me what happened."

Silence. There wasn't a sound coming from Sarah's bedroom. Anna tried the doorknob but it was locked. She jiggled the doorknob and pounded on the door. "Sarah, you're frightening me. What happened? Did you two have a fight? Are you all right? Are you hurt? Sarah!"

She tried the doorknob again. It was still locked. Bobby and Michael came out of their bedroom and looked down the hallway. "What's wrong, Mom? Is Aunt Sarah okay?"

"I don't know sweetie, go back into your room, okay. Supper will be ready in a few minutes."

"Okay, give Aunt Sarah a hug for me okay?"

"All right Bobby, I will."

Anna turned to the door again and spoke softly to her sister. "Sarah, no matter what happened it's going to be all right. You're safe Sis, no one can hurt you here. Open the door and tell me what happened. Please open the door,sweetie. Please Sarah."

She heard footsteps softly coming to the door from the other side. Then a gentle click and Anna turned the doorknob to open the door.

Across the room, Sarah sat slump shouldered on the edge of her bed, her hair was in disarray, and long streaks of mascara ran down her cheeks.

Anna walked over and sat down on the bed next to her sister. "What the hell happened?"

Sarah began to cry again, hysterically sobbing into Anna's chest. A moment later, her eyes still filled with tears, she began to tell Anna a little of what happened between sniffles.

"We were playing around, you know, like lovers. Tonight was our three-month anniversary of the first time we made love. I wanted to make it special. You know, add a little spice."

Anna nodded then lowered her head. She was afraid of where this was going.

"So I pulled out this piece of cloth and tied it around his head like a blindfold. As I was putting it on him he was beginning to act kind of strange but I didn't think anything of it. I thought he was getting excited, you know from anticipation. He was blindfolded now and I pulled a set of play cuffs from under the bed where I placed them before he came home. I was going to tie him to the bed. It was innocent, not really bondage, he could easily slip from the cuffs. But then he went nuts. I don't know, maybe I triggered something."

Anna began to gently stroke her sister's hair.

"I tried to calm him and he went ballistic. He was screaming at me and at people who weren't there. It was just the two of us in the bedroom. He was pointing an imaginary gun at people and firing it off.

He ran naked into the living room and I followed him. He forced me down to the floor and covered my body so that the others he said that were around us, wouldn't see me. He started to call me Carl, he told me that he knew that we'd been through a lot and that if I made it back I was to call his mother and tell her he would be home soon. God, Anna, it was so frightening. He was so scary."

"I know sweetie, I know. He was in a flashback and you were part of it. But he didn't see you as Sarah, he saw his friend. You must have done something to trigger it."

"I knew he had old war wounds, he told me so months ago when I talked about getting beaten up. But I didn't realize. I didn't know how badly he was hurt."

"How could you Sis, you weren't there. None of us were there. That war was a nightmare for young men like Ryan. In some ways it was worse for the ones who made it back alive."

"I fucked up Anna. I really, really fucked up. He's the love of my life and I've destroyed it, I've destroyed it all."

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

The author copyrights From Darker Places Than I Want To Feel and all of its parts. The reproduction of any part of From Darker Places Than I Want To Feel without the written permission of the author is expressly prohibited.

This story is a work of fiction. All of the characters, their names and the places they visit, are purely from the imagination of the author. Any resemblance to persons, places, or things is not intentional and purely coincidental.

© 2013/ Dreamweaver594