Habits

by

Myron Night

Chapter 6

 

That night, M. Vincent slept deeply, exhausted after his long day, worn out by his run.

A dream came to him just before he woke.

He was on a battleship running through dense fog, an ancient battleship with one massive gun barrel projecting from each of its turrets. Though old and crusty, the ship was large and powerful. In the fog it was impossible to tell where the ship was headed, but it kept on at full speed, the decks pounding with the vibration of its powerful engines. Not being able to tell where the ship was going filled M. Vincent with anxiety. He sensed another ship somewhere ahead of them in the fog, perhaps an enemy, and held his breath, expecting a collision.

But there was no collision. Instead, he saw the lights of another huge ship flashing by, steaming rapidly through the fog in the opposite direction. As soon as it had disappeared, he was unsure if he had imagined it.

His crew detected an enemy submarine in the water behind the ship and, aiming one of the huge gun barrels downward, fired a charge into the depths. A clear, gasoline-like substance floated to the surface, caught fire and burned brightly. The crew cheered.

M. Vincent was afraid they had been tricked by the submariners, who could have released the flammable substance to fool them. It was impossible to tell if the threat had been eliminated or if it remained unseen, beneath the water.

Then the sea became a large pond in the bright sunlight and M. Vincent was a small boy, playing with his toy battleship. If he brought the focus of his attention very close, the scale of his toy battleship became detailed and immense. It was as though he could walk its tiny decks just by focusing his will into a point, a locus of perception. Duckweed clung to the bows of the little ship.

M. Vincent looked longingly up the gravel road alongside the pond, hoping that his father, who was away at war on a real battleship, would come home. Then M. Vincent noticed his grandfather, an indistinct presence with silver hair, smoking a pipe and watching from the shore.

In his sleep, M. Vincent realized that he was all three, the boy and the man and the old grandfather, and that he could experience being the man, who churned anxiously through the fog in his powerful battleship toward an unknown destination, and also the boy, who played in the sunny waters waiting for his father to come home, but that the old man remained yet hidden, a stage of life which was still a mystery and filled him with a foreboding of age and decrepitude and helplessness...

He woke, disturbed by the dream of the battleship. He looked at his clock. It was 6:20. Sarah’s warm body lay against him, her thigh over his thigh, her arm over his chest. He was aroused, painfully stiff.


In his mind, he walked through the ritual of washing and dressing which awaited him, clearly aware of each step which, morning after morning, he habitually repeated. Going over them in his mind let him feel as though he had already done them and could go back to sleep, but he knew that would not work.

Next to him, Sarah slept, an inert lump curled beneath the covers. She would, he knew, remain asleep during the time he bumped around the room washing and dressing, went downstairs and slipped out the front door, locking it behind him. He wondered if she would wake then, once she was alone and no longer needed the camouflage of sleep. Would she do something completely unknown to him, open up some part of herself which she could open only when he was gone?

Maybe she masturbated in slow and convoluted ways, using simple household utensils as perverse, unthinkable stimulants to her solitary need. Maybe her eyes snapped open, like the eyes of the Undead, at the clicking of the lock behind him, and then she lay for hours, naked on the bed, her unfocused gaze aimed at the ceiling, her mind moving like a vast oiled machine through dimensions of thought hidden from him, until one morning her essence, like a newly-hatched butterfly, would flutter away into a realm of psychic sunshine and flowers, a realm he could not even imagine, and leave her stiff, discarded body behind. Or maybe she was already out of bed as his car rolled down the driveway, and, careful not to leave any traces, had begun to sift through his books, his notes, papers, letters, his personal things, finding out everything there was to know about him while he went about his daily business believing he remained mysterious.

The truth, he thought, must be more simple. She probably slept a while longer and then got up, dressed, ate breakfast, rinsed the bowls, began her day.

M. Vincent resigned himself to the ordinary. He quietly slid the drawer of his bedside table open, and felt for the tube of K-Y lubricating jelly. His fingers brushed the hard, solid bulk of the pistol in its nylon holster, then found the tube. He squeezed a chilly dollop onto himself and gave it a moment to warm.

He shifted, moving over Sarah, who remained limp as he entered her. She flattened herself under him. He impaled her deeper and deeper, in a quickening pace, until he touched the mouth of her womb.

With the smoothness of a dream, they exploded, unfolding out of themselves in a flurry of involuntary sounds and movements.

He fell back towards sleep like falling into a dark pit but caught himself as he hit bottom, and came instantly awake again. Her body stirred, and he shifted off.

They separated, their sex organs sliding apart last.

It disturbed him that they had not kissed and that, recently, their love-making, what little of it there was, always took place in the dark or with eyes tightly closed. It had not always been that way.

M. Vincent read the glowing red digital numbers on the bedside clock. It was after 6:30.

He got up, bumped around the room, washed and dressed, went downstairs, slipped out the front door and locked it behind him.
 
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