Dream Lover Read online

  I like to think he hurts himself because of me.

  In the mornings when I leave for work, he peers through a slit in his curtains. I know he does. I think he looks at my mail too—just the envelopes. But to look at the envelopes, he’d need a key to open my mailbox in the hallway. I think he has this key. I think he has all sorts of keys and his morals are loose.

  I think this because I watch him as much as he watches me. At least, I hope that’s the ratio. Most of the residents of Tate Court have left and those who remain must stay vigilant. He senses my fear, I’m sure he does. Worse, he enjoys it.

  Before the elevator broke down, he joined me one afternoon as the doors were sliding shut. He came from nowhere, bringing with him a whiff of sweat, cooking oil, and cigarettes. I held my gaze several feet above the ground, staring at geometric repetitions on a panel of parquetry, hoping I seemed cool, not intimidated. When he pressed the button for his floor, I glanced up, despite knowing five was his level. Everyone does this. We’re habitually on our guard, seeking confirmation that the people around us are still themselves. It doesn’t do to be lax about the details.

  The floor shuddered and the elevator creaked upward as if carrying the weight of the world. Tate Court is dying. Its cool, modernist lines are slumped and cracked, concrete gapes through chipped mosaic floors, and over half the apartments stand empty. We are a burden on the building, although our number is dwindling. That was the last day I used the elevator. The mechanism jammed, leaving us stuck between the second and third floors, only for a few minutes, but those minutes changed everything.

  “Damn.” I jabbed at the floor buttons.

  “There’s no point,” he said. “It’ll move when it’s ready.”

  He was calm while I was tense. “You speak as if the building’s alive.” I couldn’t keep the accusatory tone from my voice.

  He smiled smugly, implying he knew it was. The elevator whirred but we said nothing. The dial above the door flickered between two and three. Sweat prickled in my armpits and across the small of my back. I made a mental note to remind myself of this moment in winter when I was huddled in a blanket, the heating having failed once again. Perhaps it would warm me.

  Eventually, he said, “Rachel, isn’t it?”

  He was leaning against the paneled wall, forearms resting on the brass rail, effectively taking ownership of the elevator’s space. Stubble shaded his jaw and his dark skin gleamed with grime-streaked sweat. He looked like a laborer, dirty and vigorous. Two of the knuckles on his right hand bore raw, red wounds, and a finger on his left was wrapped in a blue bandage. Above his right wrist, an inch or so of silvery scar tissue made a bare patch among his soft, dark hair. Inexplicably, I wanted to suck him there.

  “Yes,” I replied. “And you’re Merrick North.”

  There was no friendliness between us, merely an acknowledgment that we were equally wary.

  Another silence passed. I focused on my breathing exercises, trying to get a grip by reassuring myself I wasn’t in danger. My fears were irrational. The walls were not closing in on us; the space was not getting smaller; we were not running out of air; we would not die together in each other’s arms. Deep breaths, Rachel.

  I didn’t know where to look or what to say. In our hard, boxy surroundings, he seemed increasingly real: human and vulnerable yet intent on protecting himself, just as I was. After only a few minutes—minutes that seemed like hours—the living, breathing physicality of him began to get to me. You can’t blame me. If you were stuck in an elevator with a stranger, I bet your thoughts would start warping too. He filled the space and he filled my mind. His jeans sat neatly on his hips, a thick buckle riding above his crotch, and his stomach was flat beneath a shabby, blue T-shirt. I wanted to touch him, wanted to press my head to his chest and hear his heart. I wanted the warmth of his flesh. The walls of the elevator made a coffin. I don’t know why that made me want to fuck him but it did: a crazy thought.

  I wondered what he did when he wasn’t working. Sometimes I hear music seeping from his apartment two floors above mine. A soprano sings about drowning in a river; a weird, haunting fairground tune as lively as it’s mournful. The music drifts through walls and floors, winds its way down the stairs and bleeds inside my head. It sounds as if it’s coming from an old tape recorder, a reminder that the past dances in the dust motes of this near-empty building.

  After a while, I forced out a laugh and said, “Phew. Hot in here, huh?” I pressed the third-floor button again. The elevator growled and dropped fractionally. My stomach lurched. “Oh, fuck.”

  When everything was still again, he said, “You do realize you’re trapped, don’t you?”

  His eyes were the color of blueberries.

  “Me?” I glanced at the doors; pointless really, because they would only slide open onto the blank wall of the shaft.

  “She wants you,” he said.

  “Who?” My heart beat faster.

  “This isn’t an accident.”

  “Who wants me?” A note of panic thinned my voice.

  “This is how it started for me.” He cast his eyes around our small space. “In here.”

  “Who wants me?”

  He was with me in two steps. His scent hit me, fresh sweat overtaking the smells of steak and cigarettes. His face was before mine, a muddle of stubble, neck, nose; a lock of ink-black hair falling across his forehead. Then his lips were on my lips, moist, warm and insistent. I found myself responding. I couldn’t help it. He leaned into me, the brass handrail digging into my back, the weight of him squashing my breasts and my breath. I touched his sides, not knowing whether to push him off or embrace him. Almost without me knowing it, my hands were running up and down, chasing the hardness of him, the ripple of his ribs beneath muscle and flesh, the pliant softness around his waist. My cunt throbbed. When my hands slipped beneath his tee and found smooth, hot skin he pulled away and smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. It was self-satisfied and secretive. Panting, I swiped the back of my hand across my mouth. I felt such a fool.

  “Who wants me?” I breathed.

  Above us, the mechanism clanged. The elevator shuddered, whirred, then began its slow, noisy ascent.

  “Tate Court,” he replied. “But it’s already too late.”

  That night, I dreamed Tate Court was fucking me. Freaky, I know. It was a rectangular, strangulating fuck. The swirls on the Egyptian-green marble in the lobby became botanical tentacles writhing around me. I squirmed in their vile grip as the building’s Art Deco angles jabbed and poked. When I woke, the name “Peter” was on my lips. “Peter, oh, come to me, Peter. Please.”

  Who the hell was Peter?

  I was wet and wanting. I made myself come while thinking about Merrick in the elevator, thinking how I didn’t like him or trust him, but I wanted him all the same. He knew something we didn’t. None of the residents who’ve left Tate Court have been able to fully explain their departure. “I don’t like it here anymore.” “It’s giving me bad dreams.” “This building is diseased.”

  I noticed the decay before I noticed the emptiness. Several months ago, Tate Court began falling apart as fast as a modern construction. The stained glass sun rays no longer shine over the entrance like a brave new future. Instead, the floor is littered with chips of glass, yellow and red like piss and rubies. Damp began seeping into my apartment, leaving stains on walls and mildew on windowsills. Bulbs popped within weeks of being fitted. I use candles to light my rooms now.

  They couldn’t let the vacated apartments. Rumors of bad feelings increased. The rents were lowered, but still no one wanted to move in. Merrick, though he’s watchful, doesn’t have the hunted look of the remaining residents. But then I’m not sure I do either. I’m cautious and alert because I’m not sure what’s happening. But I’m not cowed. My biggest fear is of Merrick because he doesn’t seem afraid, so mine is a fear grounded in logic and suspicion. I don’t have that inexplicable bad feeling shared by so many others.

  Last
year, the guy I was dating said it crawled all over him, whatever “it” was. Before long, he stopped staying the night. Then he said I was creeping him out too. He said, “It’s not me, it’s you.” We split after that. I don’t take kindly to being called “creepy.” Since then, I haven’t met anyone prepared to stay the night. I’ve given up trying to get a boyfriend and instead I make do with random hookups.

  The incident in the elevator upset my equilibrium. I began avoiding Merrick North. I felt strange, not quite myself. Flashes of déjà vu kept assaulting me. I couldn’t identify what might already have happened but I was left washed by melancholy and longing. At other times, I was consumed by a desire for Peter, my groin thumping with sudden lust as I climbed the stairs or hailed a cab or sank into a candlelit bath. But I didn’t know who Peter was. I had no image of him. Nonetheless, I knew my lust was for him, and that he wanted me too.

  After several days, my unfathomable hunger for Peter led me to Merrick’s apartment. The drowning song was playing again, the woman’s high, otherworldly voice warbling over a plinky-plonky, music-box tune. I took a flashlight, feeling half drunk, my senses wading through a sea of unreason. I barely knew what I was doing. I just knew something up there wanted me and in return I wanted him or it. On the fourth floor, an open door revealed a cracked, peeling room, empty except for a dehumidifier. I made a mental note to return and swipe it for my place if it worked. For now, the important thing was to reach Peter or Merrick or the music or whatever was drawing me on.

  The door to Merrick’s apartment was open. I tiptoed into a large room, sparsely furnished but with an atmosphere of warmth and age, despite the dampness in the air. Candles in wine bottles dotted the room high and low, and a silver candelabra on an old TV set made ghoulish shadows wobble in one corner. A wide sweep of windows overlooked the city, reflected candle flame flickering among the squares of lit apartments. Debris littered a threadbare Turkish carpet, but the biggest mess of all was a vast, ragged hole where a wall had been knocked through, connecting Merrick’s apartment with the one next door. Structurally, it looked unwise. A yellow-handled sledgehammer lay across the rubble. There was no sign of Merrick.

  Glancing around, I crept toward the hole, my heart pumping fast. The music seemed to be coming from the other side. Tentatively, I climbed onto the heap of fallen brickwork. The adjoining room, similar in size to Merrick’s, was practically empty, the floor stripped back to underlay. At the far end was a torn armchair and a glass chandelier hung from the ceiling, drips of water falling from its pendants and splashing into a plastic bowl. There was still no sign of him.

  Turning, I stepped down from the rubble, shining my flashlight about Merrick’s room. When I saw the wall opposite, a wave of horror hit me. My heart in my mouth, I scrolled the beam of light over tile-patterned wallpaper, back and forth, not wanting to believe it. A ghost of a fireplace scarred the wall and spray-painted above it, in huge, red letters, was the word PETER. It looked like the work of a madman.

  Had Merrick written that? Was he nuts? Who was Peter? I had no time to consider my questions because Merrick sprang at me from behind. I spun around at the sound of him scrambling down the rubble, catching only a glimpse of him before he clamped a hand to my mouth, stilling my scream. I remembered falling from a window, trying to fly and failing as the pavement raced toward me. It wasn’t my memory.

  Merrick held me tight, an arm wrapped across my stomach, his breath hot against my ear. “I’ll catch you if you fall,” he said.

  His words made me weak. I couldn’t recall ever hearing anyone say a sentence so simultaneously romantic and sexy. I relaxed in his grip, wanting to hand myself over to this man, feeling I could trust him to be good, even if he was insane. My heart was thumping and so was my cunt. When his hand slipped down to cup my groin, bunching my skirt between my thighs, I didn’t protest. He rubbed me there and I liked it, even though I felt he had no right to touch me in such a way.

  “That good, huh?” he murmured. His lips nuzzled against my ear.

  I said nothing. The hand on my mouth was hot, rough, and smelled of nicotine while the hand between my legs was melting me. “I want to do things to you,” he continued. “Dark, filthy things to unite us.”

  I moaned into his hand. I wanted that too, wanted it so badly.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked. “Are you wet?”

  His voice, so close to my ear, was driving me to distraction. I didn’t know which question to answer and his hand was covering my mouth, so I couldn’t speak anyway. I whimpered in confusion and want.

  “Don’t scream,” he said. “Okay?”

  I shook my head, saying nothing when he removed his hand. Standing behind me, he unfastened the top couple of buttons on my blouse then pushed the shoulders down my arms, baring my bra. Working methodically, he pushed the straps down then scooped my flesh from the cups, exposing my breasts as if to an audience. My nipples shriveled to tight, tingling points. He clasped my hands behind my back and rubbed his stubble against my neck. I reached for him with my pinned hands, brushing the swell of his jeans, excited to find him hard.

  “We’re waiting for Peter,” he said.

  I squealed and tried to break free. He held me firm.

  “Don’t be afraid,” he said.

  I was afraid, of course I was, but then my fear evaporated as something swept across my breasts, something hot, wet, and inhuman. I groaned at the touch, an unearthly caress lapping like warm water and swirls of silk. Again and again, the sensation moved across me, a massaging lightness with a rich, peaty weight. I knew then that Peter had drowned.

  “Do you like him?” asked Merrick

  “I love him,” I replied. I remembered falling through the air toward the street, flying toward Peter and death.

  “Good girl. Are you wet?”

  Merrick lifted my skirt, slipped a hand between my legs and stroked me through my underwear, his fingers light and teasing. He kept me there for several seconds before asking, “More?”

  I moaned and thrust against his hand. He laughed softly, edging my underwear aside to find me. I was soaked and empty, my body straining with the need to be filled. He hooked a couple of fingers inside me, nudging and rubbing. My juices clicked stickily while behind us in the other room, water dripped from the chandelier. The music was quieter now, floating around us like an enchantment. Everything else was silent, even the city outside. We seemed to be suspended in another place, removed from reality.

  “Peter wants you here,” said Merrick. “Here in your cunt. Do you want him?”

  I nodded, unsure of what I meant.

  “And I want you in your ass,” he said. “Do you trust me? Trust both of us?”

  “I don’t know what I’m dealing with.”

  “Do you care?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I said.

  “Get on the floor,” he said gently. “Take off your panties then get on the floor. Show me your ass. Tell me your name.”

  In a daze, I stepped out of my underwear, struggling for my name. I knew I wasn’t Dora Niehoff. I was someone else. But that was the first name that came to me: Dora Niehoff, the woman who’d jumped from her window on hearing that her lover had drowned.

  “I’m Rachel,” I said. “Rachel Niehoff. No, that’s wrong.” I kneeled on all fours, raising my skirt to bare my butt. I heard Merrick undressing. I fought to concentrate on who I was. “I’m Rachel Walters,” I said. “I think I’m Rachel Walters.”

  Merrick kneeled behind me and plunged his fingers into my wetness. “That’s good,” he said. “You’re losing it. And now I’m going to fuck you so hard you won’t know at all, won’t know who you are anymore. Won’t even care.”

  I moaned loudly, wanting to be in that place where I was so lost to pleasure I was lost to myself. I thought about falling from the window again, falling into death and water and Peter. And I knew this time it would be okay because someone would catch me.

  Merrick slicked my juices backward and moist
ened my ass, his fingers nudging at my narrow entrance. Then I was groaning in shocked bliss as something or someone penetrated my cunt, filling me and opening me out. It wasn’t Merrick, it was Peter, the ghost of him or some manifestation of his spirit, and he was inside me and on me, fucking and licking and taking me to wild, new heights. I gasped and cried, the distinction between reality and impossibility growing hazier by the second.

  I felt Merrick’s cock slap against my ass and slide along the split of my cheeks. That was real, that was possible. Suddenly, I was so moist there and Merrick was trying to nudge his way in. Sparks of pain snagged at my opening. I didn’t think I could take him, I was already too full. Peter in my cunt was bigger than anything I’d ever known. Then I realized I could take Merrick because I was expanding around him, my circlet of muscles hugging the thick, slippery length of him as he rushed into my darkest, tightest hole.

  I held still, trying to absorb the immensity of sensation and how dense I felt at my core. I almost forgot to breathe. My body was packed to its maximum, and when Merrick started to thrust, Peter’s invisible touch surrounded my clit. Unseen lips pulsed on me, a touch like velvety water.

  Merrick tipped me back so I sat astride his thighs. He caressed my breasts as I rose and fell on his cock, chasing my peak while the other thing, Peter or whatever it was, swamped me with delirious luxury. Merrick’s groans mingled with my own, the eerie music still winding around us, then something changed for him. I heard it happen. A softer breath escaped him, a moan of incredulous pleasure. I caught the word, a barely audible whisper: “Dora.” And I understood she was on him and in him and around him just as Peter was with me.

  I rode harder, sinking deep, the nearness of my orgasm bunching in my thighs. Tension fluttered, making me high and woozy, then Peter pushed me over the edge and I was plunging into ecstasy, falling long and fast. I felt as if all the world’s history was being dragged into a vortex within me, then all the pleasures in that history were scattering through my body in a billion fragments of bliss. For a moment I was Dora, hurtling past blurred windows, desperate to be with Peter. The air blew in my face like wind and freedom. Someone screamed and I saw a jigsaw of sky, curly lampposts, old cars, the candy stripes of a barber’s pole, and a ragged barrow boy in shirtsleeves and cap. The pavement loomed then Merrick clasped me in his arms, holding me so tight it hurt. His orgasm spilled into me, his thighs jerking below my ass, his cock lodged high. And I was saved, I was intact, and so was he.