DITW 11-22: Acheron (Patreon)

There wouldn’t be much time to play with Josh this morning. She’d woke up late, showered at Hyun’s, and Josh would have to get ready for work. Although, if she played this well, maybe she could even convince him to call in sick to work. What she’d like to do is lure from him his darkest fantasies—remind him that he builds the walls that cage him. And then coax him toward what she wanted to hear: the worst his imagination could conjure. Devlin wasn’t inside Hyun’s apartment, so why were you there? Without Devlin, what was Josh’s greatest fear? That fear would become his new desire. And she could craft and shape it to her whim.

They were perfect. They were meant for each other. How could two people work so well together to manifest the world around them, all while attaining the most frightening treasures they would ever dream of possessing?

When she was done with Josh this morning, she could cook breakfast and they could lie around, maybe go for a walk later. Maybe even go house hunting—though they weren’t quite there yet, the time would be soon. She wouldn’t be able to skip work today, too much to do, but she could go in after lunch if she wanted.

The apartment was still when she entered. Had she riled him up so much last night, handling his hard dick through the car window, that even though she was late, he still lay in bed waiting for her? Probably naked and erect and nerves cinched tight as a shipyard knot. She would reduce him to a jiggling puddle of orgasmic jelly. She toed off her sneakers in the hall, enjoying for a moment the idea of Josh’s existential orgasm. The sound of his sexual whimpers had begun to arouse her recently. She chuckled, and palmed her forehead, her stomach tight with anticipation, the gray morning light beginning to fill the apartment enough she could make out the Lungshan Temple in her father’s framed photograph hanging over the stand.

“Wow,” she whispered to the silent apartment, feeling the aching stretch of her nipples. The buds pressed out her cotton top enough to cast long shadows. She squeezed her own breasts, and when she did, could feel pressure and heat between her legs, her body already beginning its preparation.

The kitchen was quiet, and she padded past it in sock feet, for the first time disconcerted by the apartment’s pure stillness, heading down the narrow hall, wondering in what manner she would find Josh. It was almost five-thirty. Either he was in the shower, or he was in bed, tormented and touching himself. She would deliver him the greatest thrill.

At the door, she paused and listened, but heard nothing. Thought of perhaps stripping down and entering the bedroom naked. But that would be for her own enjoyment. The anticipation was driving her wild. But how would she lure from him his dark thoughts if she entered too far into the game? She needed room to maneuver, to bargain, and removing garments would be antes. She turned the door knob and eased the door open. Josh wasn’t in bed. He wasn’t in the room. In the bathroom, having a shower.

But he wasn’t there, either.

She turned and regarded the bed. It was loosely made, looking much the same as when she’d left for work yesterday morning. Was it possible he hadn’t slept in it? She pulled down the covers and put a palm on the bedsheet. No collected warmth from an overnight sleeper; it was cold.

Josh wasn’t home, and he hadn’t slept here?

The first thought that came to her was terrifying: he’d been injured. He’d been in a car crash. Someone had beaten him up at a bank machine; he was in trouble, he was hurt, he was alone.

Her mind raced and her heart galloped. She lay a hand on her chest, eyes wide and staring at the floor as she wrestled with anxious, fearful thoughts, and sought a plan of action. He’d left Hyun’s last night at about what, nine-thirty? Where would he go? Steve’s? Meyer’s? Someone else’s? Did he fall asleep playing video games? That had to be it.

She quick-stepped back to the hallway, seeking her phone left on the hall stand. Swiped it open and checked again for messages. Nothing from Josh. No word at all.

She typed a quick and simple message.

Kimmy: Where are you?

Then right away flicked open her Find My Phone, saw for a second Josh was in Ajax. Her heart soared, then crashed. It was from yesterday, and now her phone changed its mind on showing her where Josh was, giving her the message, The user hasn’t shared their location with you.

“What the fuck?”

Josh had removed permission for her to see where he was.

“Wow,” she sighed, eyelashes fluttering, her temples beginning to throb.

What did that mean? That was direct action.

She backed toward the bed and sat down on it, swirling disappointment clouding the sexual tension that had tautened her insides.

“So you’re not missing,” she said aloud. He wasn’t in the hospital, a John Doe with no ID on him. Josh had chosen to exclude her digitally.

Now the disappointment combined with concern and darkened her interior skies. She rested her phone on a thigh and put her hands on her cheeks.

This was not what she had expected to find when she came home.

Then the thunderheads of guilty foreboding galloped over her shoreline and drenched the landscape.

Josh knew what she’d done last night with Hyun.

But how? How the hell would he know?

She grabbed a handful of sweater fabric over her heart and closed her eyes, bracing against a blood pressure vertigo that seized her.

Horror, shame, guilt, and bottomless mortification seized her.

Josh screaming in her head: With Sophie’s fucking mom?

“It’s not like that, Josh,” she said, then whimpered. She hid her face in her hands. “And how do you know?”

Eyes darting all over the carpet, her mind riffled through potential weaknesses in her spy craft. How did Josh see them in bed together? She’d looked up at the window standing next to the car, making fun of him for being a voyeur. He’d taken her up on it like a challenge. Or what? A nanny cam. Meyer? Did Meyer have access to a nanny cam? But no, not in Hyun’s bedroom. He’d end up in jail for that.

“Hyun?”

Once she said it, she shook her head. No way. Hyun had no reason, and Hyun would never betray her.

But what did it matter how? What mattered was the devastation. How would she manage it?

She couldn’t.

Hands trembling to practical impotence, she struggled to lift the phone from her leg, then slid off the bed to sit on the floor, eased to her side and lay on the rug. It took great effort to move the phone where she could see it, her arms—her whole body—aching and seized like she’d been infected with rabies.

Rabies made her think.

If she could manufacture a tragedy, she could save herself. Bitten by a dog, an infection. No, worse.

As the tears rimmed her eyes, she let the phone fall from her grasp and lay a hand over her stomach. This was Josh’s baby. Josh’s baby grew inside her.

Could that save her?

What kind of man would abandon his wife and child?

Was her crime worthy of excommunication?

She nodded and cried, sniffling and sniveling.

This was how it ended. This was her demise.

She saw it coming a mile away but thought she had control, thought she had a good grip on the wheel.

All those wild and foreign things she did with lovely Hyun soured on her mind’s palate. She was a degenerate. Degeneracy had been the thrill; she was tall and sexy and smart and successful, yet inside she was dark and rotten. But she was commanding. The confidence and her beauty were the armor she wore every day that licensed it all. Her privilege.

The nameless weight that had crushed her when Josh had gone to Rome returned now, heavier still by her insoluble depravity. That’s what it was. Deep down, all she considered to be her command was only a lacquered veneer over the stone effigy erected in honor of her anomie; the gray state where the miscarriage’s tragedy had exiled her.

Resentment.

Blame.

These were her iniquities. Her true deepest, darkest vice.

Not domination, not humiliation. Those were her sin’s pressure valves.

“That’s not true,” she said, her jaw muscles constricted.

But it was true, wasn’t it?

She shook her head no, not wanting to dwell too long in a room with such a bad smell. She tilted the phone toward her face. No return text from Josh. No response.

If it was Josh’s fault, then it wasn’t hers. Was that it?

And, so, if it wasn’t her fault, then Josh deserved punishment.

None of it was true. Nothing about any of this was true. It was no one’s fault. But making Josh suffer made it truer. The more Josh suffered, the truer it became.

That wasn’t it. It couldn’t be it. No, she couldn’t think that.

She hand-heeled wet from her eyes, sniffling, blinking, her vision going tear-warbled.

Only one thing mattered more than anything else. All her transgressions shrank in proportion.

She wanted to know the only thing that mattered. She typed her message.

Kimmy: Are you okay?

Then she watched and waited, and the longer nothing happened, the more her features shrank, the more worry and hurt creased her brow and sank her heart. No response. She sobbed and drew in a long hoarse and shaky breath.

She typed again.

Kimmy: Please tell me you’re okay