Doomsday Warrior 10 - American Nightmare (7 page)

Kim’s marshmallow-soft, pink lips continued to slide moistly up and down his manly staff, tightening ever so slightly now and then, bringing paroxysms of response from her bedmate.

Rockson could no longer remain idle. He pulled her face to his, stared at her. His eyes melted into her. “Kim, lie down. I’ll do some of the moving—”

“But Chessman says—”

It was too late. Rockson had rolled over onto her, tearing the flimsy panties off with one snap of his fingers. He felt her yielding, her legs opening, her burning-hot sex wet and ready for him. “Yes . . .yes. Please, please
put it in!”

Rockson needed no encouragement. It was a bit distracting to see endless rows of naked Rockson-Kim images—the damned mirrors—all around them, but soon he was lost in the task at hand. She undulated the wet tip of her blond triangle forward to meet his manhood, and he plunged.

He thought the shout that Kim uttered at that instant might arouse the neighbors:
“Oh, yes, yes—Aaahhhh!”

But soon she settled back to simple gasps and groans, punctuated by love-words. The probing staff slid in and out between the opened petals of flesh. She rolled her eyes, rocked her head back and forth on the pillow. The bed set up some sort of obscene rhythm underneath them. She moved up and down, meeting the Doomsday Warrior’s every thrust, locking herself against him, being a full participant in the age-old ritual of coming together.

“Oh, it’s so good. Oh, Rock, it’s—been so long. I’ve—I’ve never—experienced you like this before . . .”

“Don’t talk—not now,” he whispered. For he was reaching the point of explosive completion. Like a gathering tidal wave, he moved faster and faster, the mattress nearly bursting a seam from the impacts. At the same time, Kim was reaching her own peak. Then suddenly, together, they shuddered in surrender to the heaving ecstacy.

“Always, always I will love you,” she said. She lay limp on the tousled satin sheets, exhausted as she had never been before. And happier.

Rockson was exhausted too. But when Kim turned off the love-light’s pink rays, no matter how he tried, he couldn’t sleep. He turned to look at Kim, his wife. She was beautiful.

She lay there asleep, a smile a mile wide on her face.

He sat up. Something still seemed wrong. He had to think,
had to think.

He went to sit near the bedroom window. He stared out over the humming city and the winking stars above.

Why? Why do I feel like a stranger in this city?

When Rock finally returned to bed it was four
A.M.
He dozed off; a dream began. It was a vivid, frightening thing, a nightmare of twisting images and symbols . . .

He was walking alone, walking across a long flat plain. Where was he going? Something about the mountains to the south . . . A vehicle appeared—a jeep. And in the jeep were red-clad men who laughed and pointed at him. They threw ropes, and though he fought with all his might the ropes ensnared him, like huge winding snakes; they coiled about his body, tightening. Then he was thrown down a hole, and as he screamed out “
Let me go, let me go,”
the snakes whirled him so that he spun on his heels like a top, around and around, and he couldn’t stop.

Then a red-clad man came in, his face leered at Rockson every time he spun past the man. Then the spinning stopped and Rockson was on a big chessboard, and the red-clad man with the leer was wearing a crown, and Rockson felt on top of his head and he had a crown on also. And Rockson noticed that he was now dressed in a white outfit.

The man at the far end of the chessboard—it was a half-mile square, at least—was approaching. He came rapidly, without moving his feet. Rockson turned and tried to run, for he knew that something awful was about to happen. But he was blocked. Two men with flamethrowers, also dressed in red, were coming at him from the opposite direction, leering, spurts of fire coming from their weapons.

Rockson tried to run another way, but a beautiful blond woman with long wavy hair and blue eyes stopped him. She had no weapon, but her blue eyes flashed at him, and somehow they paralyzed him. Her mouth moved, her luscious lips undulated up and down, but he couldn’t make out the words. What was she saying? Her body was all curves and she was dancing as she walked, swaying in her clinging white gown, which sparkled like starfields afire. The sexual rhythm of her movement was all-powerful, all-desirable. And Rockson couldn’t break away from her spell, couldn’t leave the square he stood upon, even though the two men with flamethrowers approached closer, even though the king in red was rapidly closing on him.

“Stop,”
Rockson shouted.
“Stop! Let me go, Kim, let me go!”

Gasping for air that would not come, Rockson sat bolt-upright in bed and looked wildly around. The nightmare vision faded like an old sepia photograph in sunlight, until it was replaced by the room. And Kim was looking in his eyes, her mouth moving. “What’s wrong, dear? Have you been having a nightmare? Do you want me to turn on the lamp?”

Rockson nodded; he could breath now, he could move. But he wanted to see the room better, wanted to know this wasn’t also part of the nightmare. She turned the light on, and Rockson, taking long oxygen-sucking breaths, looked around. There were the large-eyed-children pictures, the door to the bathroom, the bureau and mirrors. He was home, he was safe. His shoulders relaxed. He slid back down and put his hands, which had been in front of him in a defensive position, back down.

“I’m all right,” he said. “Turn off the light. Let’s go back to sleep. It was just a nightmare.”

Six

R
ockson awoke to the buzz of the alarm, the whistle of the kettle, and the sound of music. Moments before, he had been dreaming of something about being trapped by snakes, trudging endlessly in the desert. The combined sounds drove the rest of the dream from his head. He stared quietly at the ceiling. It’d seemed so real. He yawned. What day was it? Who was he? Where was he? Slowly it all came back to him. He was Ted Rockman, C.P.A. His eyes scanned the room. He was at home. Today was Friday, September eighth. He glanced at the clock—if he didn’t hurry, he’d be late for work.

He swung himself out of bed, afraid it would collapse from the movement. His back ached. What a nightmare he’d had!

Kim’s side of the bed was empty. He could hear her elsewhere in the apartment, humming along with the synthesized music that seemed to come from everywhere and couldn’t be shut off.

Groggy, he shuffled into the bathroom and relieved himself, only to find the toilet didn’t flush. The handle came off in his hand. For some reason he felt very dissatisfied, almost angry—at everything.

“Kim!” Rockson shouted. “Come look at this!”

Kim came to the doorway of the bathroom. She was wearing a pink chenille robe with a frilly green apron over it. She carried a fork, which she brandished like a weapon. “Yes, dear?” Before he could speak, she clucked, “The stove keeps going out. I’ll have to run down to Worthington’s and order a new one. I hope they’re on sale.”

He looked at her. She looked so stupid—what she wore was so silly too. It was some sort of tunic outfit that was a washed-out pink.

“What is it, dear?” Kim prodded him. “The Pop-tarts will burn if I don’t get back to the kitchen.”

“Pop-tarts?”

“Why, yes, your tummy’s favorite breakfast. Really, Teddy, you act like you never heard of Pop-tarts before.”

Remembering his original point, Rockson indicated the toilet. “It’s broken.”

She sighed. “You’ll have to call the repairman again. Speedfix takes care of all the maintenance.” She pursed her lips in thought. “Except, I don’t know if we have any money for plumbers, Teddy. Honestly, if you’d only go to Mr. Cooper and ask for a raise, like you promised. I’d like to buy some new furniture, too . . . You think I enjoy looking at this third-rate stuff all day when we could have first-rate plastic on a better salary?”

“But—”

Just then the music swelled, snapping his patience. “Turn off that blasted music! I can’t take it anymore!” Kim looked as though he had slapped her in the face. “Teddy, that’s blasphemous! It’s a crime! I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that! Oh, thank goodness the children already left for school—what a bad example you set!”

Rockson charged out of the bathroom, looking for a speaker or amplifier to punch out of commission. “I guess I’m just in a bad mood.”

Kim burst into tears. Rockson halted, chagrined. He could not bear to see women cry. He went to her and said, “What’s the matter?”

“You,” bawled his wife. “You’re not normal anymore. You say illegal things and you have such a temper! I’ll have to turn you back over to the police. Then the kids and I will starve. We won’t be able to pay our rent, and we’ll get thrown out— We’ll have to sleep on the streets—”

He shushed her.
“All right.”
He would not mention the music again—he had no desire to have another run-in with the police. He only wanted to get out of the house. It was the nightmare; it had made him uneasy.

“I’m sorry,” Rockson said, brushing away her tears.

She sniffed. “You’d better hurry and eat your breakfast, so you can get to work on time.”

Work? He knew he was a C.P.A.—but what was a C.P.A.? Odd thoughts, disjointed memories, were sweeping over him like a tide going out to sea, and it was all he could do to not drown in them.

“I’m not going to work today,” he said. “I have . . . other things to do.”

Kim looked stricken again. “Teddy, you
must.
It’s against the law to miss more than five days of work a year, and you’ve already missed several, thanks to your little escapade. The police will know if you don’t show up today, and I couldn’t bear to go down to the detention-and-rehabilitation center and bail you out again.”

She was already marshalling him back to the bedroom, pulling clothes out of a closet, and laying them on the bed. “Here, I pressed your best suit. Don’t forget to be careful when you eat lunch—you always manage to spill something on your tie, and this one’s brand new—I got it in a terrific sale at Harvey’s—real silk, Teddy.”

She waved a strip of red fabric at him. “And above all,
don’t
say anything at work about being arrested. Why, I’d just
die
of disgrace to have everyone find out about it. I told the office you took time off to rest, that you were exhausted from working so hard—I figured it would play up the fact that you are such a hard worker . . .” Kim prattled on.

Done whipping clothes out of the closet and drawers, she hurried back to the kitchen as Rockson began to get dressed. “Oh, no!” he heard her wail. “The Pop-tarts burned!”

Rockson sighed to himself. “It’s all right—I’m not hungry,” he muttered.

When he finished dressing, he stared at his distorted reflection in the cheap, ripply mirror. What a trussed-up outfit—fake-leather black shoes that pinched his feet, a gray suit that was tight across the shoulders, a stiff white shirt so tight at the neck that it practically choked off his air—how could any man be comfortable? How could any man
think
in clothes like this? No wonder there was talk of nuclear war. The men who owned the buttons had all the oxygen cut off from their brains from self-strangulation.

Kim bustled back into the bedroom, bearing a tall glass of red juice and a mug of coffee. “Here’s your tomato juice and coffee, sweetie,” she cooed. She set them down on the nightstand by the bed. “My, don’t you look handsome in that suit! Here, let me do your tie—you never could do Windsor knots very well.”

She slipped the tie under his collar and deftly cinched it up to Rockson’s Adam’s apple. He gagged.

“There! You look marvelous! My handsome Teddy!”

He gulped down the juice and coffee. He wanted to get out of the apartment as fast as possible before she killed him.

At the door, Kim pecked him on the cheek and thrust eight dollars into his hand. “It’s almost all the money I have until you bring home your paycheck,” she said accusingly. “Don’t spend it all on lunch!” At Rockson’s bewildered look, she went on, “Oh, you’re still in a fog, aren’t you? The police warned me this might happen. Here.” She went to one of the glass tables, supported by two plastic cocker spaniels, and scrawled out some information on a scrap of paper.

Her voice took on a baby-talk tone, as though she were addressing a child. “Take the Number Four bus at the stop right outside our building, and get off at the sixth stop, which is Number One Nietzsche Square. That’s your office building. I’m sure you’ll find your way from there.”

She handed him a fake-leather briefcase and pushed him out the door. “Have a good day, dear!”

As soon as her husband was gone, Kim’s happy demeanor changed abruptly to sadness. She sat down in one of the bean-bag chairs and sniffled. Something had happened to Teddy, and she couldn’t understand what. He just wasn’t
himself
anymore. She ruminated over the events of the past few days.

It had all started four days ago, when Ted had gone out for a quart of ice cream—and disappeared. Kim had looked everywhere for him, to no avail. The next thing Kim had known, the police were calling her to come and get her husband, who’d been charged with drunk-and-disorderly conduct. She was shocked to the bone—Teddy had been a straight arrow his entire life.

She’d brought him home, but he hadn’t been the same since. He acted like part of his memory was missing. Familiar things were strange to him, and he said the oddest things about the date and the TV programs. Mad things.

He seemed to be hallucinating. Poor Teddy! Was he going insane? Such things
did
happen. And what would become of her and the children if Teddy was put away?

She resolved to act normal. Teddy would come around and return to his usual self. Except for one thing: He had mysteriously become a great lover. She hoped
that
change would endure!

The morning air was already hot, adding to Rockson’s discomfort in the ill-fitting clothes and shoes. At the bus stop, he bought a newspaper, looking for answers to the questions that overwhelmed him. The date on the paper disturbed him: September 8, 1989.