SSC 2009: I Walk with You, by Katharine

She felt her own breath bouncing back to her as she lay with her face partially buried in the pillow. Despite the French doors being wide open and the ceiling fan churning at top speed, the room was far too hot. She felt steamed alive in the bed clothes and kicked them away from her. Too tired and dreamy to get up yet unable the sleep, she lay in bed drifting on waves of heat and perspiration.

He stood in the bedroom doorway. It was far too dark to see clearly, but she knew the silhouette, and knew also that he was both naked and aroused As he walked to the bed, the streetlight shining through the window caused his blue-gray eyes to glow in the dark like a cat's.

He took her is his arms the moment he lay down, as of course he would. She was his. And because she was his, she had gone to bed naked, as was his rule. She was his always, to have, to take, to do with as he pleased; still, she pressed her hands against his chest in a vain attempt to push him away.

"Woman, are you rejecting me?"

He said it playfully, but still the words sent a tiny thrill of fear through her heart.

"It's so hot tonight." Heat always made her skin feel raw. The rough hair on his body seemed to be scraping her.

"I can make it hotter."

She knew what that meant; still she kept her arms outthrust, hoping to deter him.

He released her and sat up. She felt a moment of relief before he pulled her over his bare thighs and began to slap her bottom. There was no warning caress, no warm-up swats, just a good, hard spanking that made her kick and squeal.

He ended the spanking using the hardest swats he could deliver bare-handed to emphasize his words.

"You-know-better-than-to-tell-me-no!"

He continued to spank her as hard as he could for several swats more, then he turned her over on the bed and fucked her from behind. This time she did not squeal with pain. She screamed as the sex reached its crescendo. He rolled away.

When she roused from her post-orgasmic stupor, she realized he was not there; nor had he been. He would never be there again. She was forever alone in the beach house they'd dreamed of sharing one day before the stroke took him.

Strangely, she did not feel sad. She could hear someone's radio out on the beach. It reminded her of their one afternoon here, the long walk along the edge of the water. She used her memories of him to help her fall asleep again as she listened to the plaintive voice of Roy Orbison singing "In Dreams I Walk with you."

C.K. email

I didn't see the bittersweet ending coming in the finale of this story, the abrupt switch from the rather raw sexuality of the flashback--with its roughness and crude language--to the dreamy wistfulness of the conclusion.

I'm not certain if the woman's scream was only part of the flashback or if it also took place in the reality of the story. The protagonist is described as being in a "post-orgasmic stupor," which pretty much indicates that her sharp recollection of the past spanking-and-sex encounter caused an orgasm based on the memory--so possibly the orgasmic scream occurred in both the flashback and in the actuality of the narrative. (I don't personally know if a remembrance or daydream can bring on an orgasm in a woman, but if a female author postulates that it could that's convincing enough for me.)

"I can make it hotter," there's an obvious double entendre (spanking and sex) yet it does fit in with the sultry, languid overall mood of the woman who's finding it difficult to rouse herself to fullfill her dominant partner's desires--but of course that's a handy provokation to justify the chastisement as well.

An interesting read, with a touch of Tennessee Williams perhaps...

Pablo email

Much as there's some nice writing here, this isn't far enough away from an 'It was all a dream' cliche to really catch the interest. It would have helped to use the dream-state to reveal much more in the way of character and back-story. At the end, we don't know much more about the characters than we did at the start - who they are, who they were, what happened between them. Mood pieces can read well, but, like the dream, can vanish from our minds almost as soon as we're done with them, and that's the case here. Delicate can also mean insubstantial.