Karen clung to her dream, not wanting to wake up.
Frank, she was in bed with Frank. She loved him so damn much she didn’t care that he’d murdered Martin; she couldn’t care, no matter how wrong that was.
Something caressed her thigh lightly. Then she heard Frank whisper in her ear, “But do you care if I’m no longer alive?”
She shuddered. Was it Frank’s words in her dream, or had someone really moved her sheet a bit, exposing even more of her thigh to a sudden chill.
A scream snapped her eyes open. The ceiling and walls were all so very far away. It wasn’t her storage space. Where was she? She couldn’t remember.
It was night; the room was dark. The wind whistled outside, whipping the shadows of tree branches that flowed across the ceiling into a frenzy of rustling leaves. The curtains over the window had been pushed back. A street light outside spotlighted her exposed thigh and butt.
Karen reached for the sheet to cover herself, but was brought up short as metal clanged and cut into her wrist.
Handcuffs.
The hospital bed.
She thought she caught movement in her peripheral vision. Turning, she saw a broom with a handle long enough to reach between the two beds drop to the floor, its closest end pointing toward her exposed butt and thigh.
Another scream. More metal clanging, but these weren’t her handcuffs. It was all coming from the other bed.
And then she saw it, rubbing her eyes over and over again because she couldn’t believe it could be true. On the other bed was…why had the hospital allowed this?…a man. He too was handcuffed to his bed. She gathered he’d been jerking off but was flaccid now as he stared up at…
Frank. In all his muscular glory. Furious. No doubt because this guy had pushed aside Karen’s sheet with that broom handle. Frank, every bit of him just as she remembered except… He was floating over the handcuffed man’s bed. The same streetlight that spotlighted Karen’s partial nudity was shining brightly through Frank, who was nothing more than a green and endlessly undulating…cloud.
