The Mountain

a short story by Calvin Marty

The next day was Sunday. I woke up early and made a cup of coffee. I sat at the kitchen table and looked at nothing, trying to both remember my dream and come out of the fuzzy half-sleep I was in.

I could only remember a few images and sounds from my dream:  A looming, white mountaintop; a great, building pressure; a woman in a white dress, looking back at me. The dream felt important but for no particular reason. I should have gone back to sleep. I took a long, hot shower, bringing my coffee in with me. Afterward, I stared at myself in the mirror for a long time, hoping my reflection would surprise me somehow. “Figure something out,” I told myself out loud. I put on a pair of jeans, my tennis shoes and a t-shirt, grabbed my keys and wallet and left the apartment. 

Sometimes a long walk without a direction or destination is all I can do. The day was bright and crisp, still quiet. Most people sleep in on Sundays, I guess. It’s nice when it feels like you’re one of the few people awake in the world, a little secret. I walked. There was no song in my head that day and no reason to walk faster, no conscious rhythm. There was a slight breeze. A dog barked. My shoes squeaked as they rolled over the sidewalk. 

About an hour later I was in the Bucktown neighborhood. I stopped into a cafe and bought another coffee. The man behind the counter was probably in his fifties, disheveled and tired. We exchanged meaningless morning greetings.

I sipped my coffee as I walked on, heading further East. I got off of Chicago Avenue and onto some side streets, quiet and residential. It was as silent as the city can get. 

At some point I felt some movement in my peripheral. I turned and looked left and up at an apartment. There, inside an old brownstone, in front of the main, large front window, was a naked woman. She was probably about my age, early thirties, with long, brown hair and beautiful everything. We locked eyes. Her expression was passive but piercing. Time slowed and I felt at risk of being drawn right into her eyes and down into some deep, dark, black hole. I don’t know how long we looked at each other, seconds probably, though it felt much longer. Then she raised an eyebrow, broke the spell, and looked down. I took note of the address of the woman’s home, gave her a slight smile, and walked on. 

I was definitely aroused by the experience. The woman had been quite beautiful. She had had a small nose, a lovely jawline, and those cavernous, blue eyes. Her nipples had been perfectly hard. She was curvy but aggressive in some way, soft but edgy. Before I noticed, I had turned around and was heading back toward her apartment. When I did notice, I didn’t stop myself. 

When I arrived back at the apartment, the woman was no longer in the window. I hesitated for only a moment and then opened the front gate which was not locked and stepped up the front stairs. It was a house, not an apartment, and there was only one doorbell. I rang it. A minute passed and the door opened. 

The woman was now wearing a robe, silk and dark maroon. Her hair was softly tied up in a haphazard bun. She appraised me. 

“You’ve some nerve,” she said. Her face was stern and did not change expression.

“I guess I do,” I replied. 

“Is there something I can do for you?” she asked. 

I hesitated again and then thought, Fuck it.

“Maybe. I thought perhaps there was something I could do for you,” I said. 

The slightest hint of a smile passed over her lips and was gone. 

“I’ll need to frisk you,” she said. 

I looked in her eyes. She was not joking.

“I see,” I said. 

I had empty hands as I must have tossed my empty coffee cup at some point. I raised my arms above my head. The woman patted me down, starting with my arms and torso and moving down to my waist, crotch and legs. She seemed to have done this before. Not finding any weapons, she pulled my wallet from my pocket. She opened it and checked its contents, staring at my driver’s license for a moment. The woman looked back up at me and held my wallet out for me to take. 

“Coffee?” she asked. 

“I’d love some, thank you,” I said. 

She stepped aside, her back barely touching the door as she held it open for me. I walked into her home. 

The woman closed the door, locked it, and walked past me into the kitchen. The house was old and austere. The floors were well-worn hardwood, the banister of the staircase a true relic. The furniture I could see from a quick glance from the foyer were antiques of heavy, dark wood. There was a piano to my left in the front room. The place was a little dusty, maybe, but otherwise clean and tidy. I followed her into the kitchen. 

“Please, sit,” she said. 

She pulled a small mug out of a cabinet and filled it with steaming, black coffee. 

“How do you take it?” she asked me. 

“Black, please,” I replied. 

She set the mug down in front of me, filled her own and sat down across from me. 

“Stephen is your name,” she said, obviously having remembered it from my license.

“Yes. And yours?”

“Caroline,” she said. She was certainly lying. “You are single?”

“Yes.” 

“What do you do?”

“For a living?”

“Yes, for a living,” she said. 

“I’m a bartender,” I said. 

“That sounds fun,” she said, letting that tiny smile onto her lips again.

I chuckled. “Not as fun as most imagine, but I guess it’s better than many other jobs.”

“You meet a lot of women, I’m sure,” she said. 

“I meet a lot of people,” I replied. 

She laughed. 

“Most are not worth talking to,” I said. 

“No, no. I suppose not. It’s like that in any profession. Fortunately for me, I work from home.”

“What do you do?” I asked. 

“Not important, Stephen. Stephen or Steve?”

“Stephen, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t.” She looked at the clock on the wall and then back at me. “I think if this is going to work for me, I’m going to ask the questions, you’re going to give the answers.” She was not smiling. 

“Sounds good to me,” I said. 

“What are you doing today?” Caroline asked. 

“Walking.”

“Walking.”

“Yes. Just taking a walk.”

“If the address on your driver’s license is current, you’re taking a long walk.”

“Yes. It’s a good day for a long walk,” I said. 

“You’re lucky you’ve strayed so far from home,” she said. 

“Indeed.”

She looked at my hands. I looked at her neck.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

Why I’m here, why you let me in, whether or not I’m crazy, how crazy you probably are, your incredible body, what you were doing in the window, if I can even get it up anymore. Fuck. A lot. I’m thinking about a lot, Caroline.

“Your neck,” I said. “And your breasts.”

“Good,” she said.

Caroline, or whatever her name was, sighed softly. 

“There will be no choking,” she said. “And if you plan to murder me, you will fail.”

Jesus.

“Understood,” I replied. “But I have no plans to murder you. Or anyone.”

“Plans.” She smiled. It was a fuller smile than I had seen yet. I wondered if that was as full a smile as she gave. 

The woman stood up, took both of our mugs and set them in the sink. She then returned to the table and took my hand. She led me up the staircase and into a bedroom. The bed was unmade. 

—————————

Caroline was a talented and distant lover. Sex for her was not, it seemed, a way for her to feel close to another human being. She was skilled and could please me easily, but I have had more passionate sex. This just made me want her more, though, I think. She was above me. She seemed closer to God or something. She was distant because I was simply not on her level. I was but a tool for her, which became clearer the more we fucked. 

She did seem to enjoy sex and said as much. Most of her orgasms happened when I went down on her, though. For whatever reason, I went down on her almost every time we slept together, but she only put me in her mouth once. The sex we had was most certainly about pleasing her, not me, as if she were a queen and I some new servant, chosen at random to please her majesty before lunch. This fact, of course, just made me want to get closer, to be taken seriously, as an equal. 

Caroline seemed to be searching for something or performing an experiment. I didn’t understand it until much later. 

That first day, after I orgasmed quickly and pleased her until she came (or seemed to), she kept her eyes closed and lay on her back. Her breathing was steady for awhile. She soon became so still I thought she was asleep. 

“You can just let yourself out,” she said.

“Okay,” I replied, too curious to be offended. 

“You may come back tomorrow, if you like,” she told me without sentiment.

“Okay,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. 

I did as I was told and let myself out the front door. It was raining. I considered calling a cab but decided to walk home. I had nowhere to be, being wet was not a problem, and I needed more time to soak this woman in, or wash her off. 

—————————

  The next morning I woke up early, made a pot of coffee and read the news. I had nothing pressing to do, as usual, and mostly had Caroline on my mind. I took extra time in the shower, attempting to make myself cleaner and smoother than usual. My body needed to be a blank slate. If I could have painted my body white and covered my eyes with Xs, I might have done so. 

On the long walk to her house, I felt as if everyone I passed knew where I was going and why. There was something foreboding about this woman but I couldn’t put my finger on it. By returning to her house on purpose this time, I felt that I was complicit in some shadowed plan, some dark and liquid life-force. But I craved it. I craved her eyes on me. I wanted her skin and its scent of lavender and woman. I wanted to please her as many times as she’d let me. 

When I arrived, the window stood empty but alive, breathing at me. I opened the gate and climbed the stairs slowly. I took a deep breath, myself, trying to calm my nerves. It felt so different this time, not as overtly sexy - less of a leap and more of a fall. I rang the doorbell. A few minutes passed before the door opened. 

Caroline stood in a blue kimono, or something like one, wrapped tightly around her shapely body. Her dark hair was tied up in a ponytail. She was barefoot and her legs were shaved and a little shiny. I thought I could smell her from the stoop. 

A slow and subtle smile crept across her eyes and disappeared. She opened the door fully and walked into the kitchen. I stepped inside and closed the door behind me. I hung my jacket on one of the curved hooks on the wall and followed her. She was pouring two cups of black coffee when I stood near the table. 

“You’re early,” she said. 

“I didn’t know we had a set time.”

She put the coffee cups on the table and sat down. She motioned for me to do the same. 

“We’ll have to set one before you leave today,” she said, crossing her legs. One side of her kimono fell sideways and revealed most of her thigh.  That was enough to arouse me. 

“I’m glad you decided to come back,” Caroline said, sipping her coffee. 

“I have a feeling you’re very hard to stay away from,” I replied. 

“It all depends on who you are, really,” she said. 

She studied my face for a minute or two maybe. 

“I want to ask you something, Stephen.”

“Ask away.”

She stared at me for just long enough to make it slightly uncomfortable. She seemed to be considering whether or not to ask whatever it was she wanted to ask me. 

“What?” I asked.

Then she laughed. Such an out of place laugh it almost scared me. A nervous laugh? It was hard to tell. As time went by, I learned how rare it was for her to laugh at all. When she did, her whole being seemed to light up and her eyes changed dramatically as if suddenly someone else’s. 

“Let’s go upstairs,” she said, the laugh completely gone from her face.

She took my hand, again, which I found surprisingly gentle and intimate. The act made me feel like we were much more familiar than we were, but it also made me feel like a small child. I couldn’t figure out why I was so nervous. Excited, aroused, into it. But nervous. Like I was a virgin again.  

Caroline led me up the stairs as she had the previous day. The stairs were carpeted in a thick, red design that you don’t see much anymore. I hadn’t noticed it the first time we had ascended. At the first landing was a stand with a small statue of a cat. The cat was looking up and in a position that suggested it was about to leap into the air. It was startlingly lifelike and looked ancient. 

At the top of the stairs was a hallway with three doors: one on each side and one directly in front of us at the end of the hall. All of the doors were solid and heavy, dark wood and beautifully carved. Once again, she led me to the door on the right and opened it. 

The bed was made this time. 

She walked to the window and drew the burgundy red curtains so that there was only a shaft of light leaking through the part in the middle. She turned to face me and untied the fabric belt of her robe. It parted like the curtains and exposed her cleavage and belly and manicured pubic hair. Walking up to me, she took my hand again, led me onto the bed and laid on her back. I unwrapped her body, letting each side of the kimono fall to her sides. 

What happened this time was the true beginning. After going down on her for awhile, as we always began, we made love - if I dare call it that. At some point, Caroline still on her back, I noticed that she was not moving or responding as much. Her eyes were closed and her breathing very slow. I slowed down and said something to her. She did not respond. I lowered my torso down on top of her and kissed her neck and said something in her ear. She did not respond. 

I froze. 

She was breathing, I could tell. She was warm and wet. She was not dead. It seemed insane to me that someone could fall asleep during sex. Anyone would take that personally and I certainly felt a pang of that. But this did not feel like sleep. It felt like she was simply not there. I got up on my knees, no longer erect. I looked down at her face for another moment. Fuck.

“Caroline,” I said. 

…

“Caroline,” a little louder. 

…

“Caroline!” I shouted. 

She moved, her eyes snapped open, and she inhaled a deep and sharp breath. She looked at me as if she had no idea who I was, or where she was. It was ten seconds maybe. Then recognition passed over her eyes. 

“What the hell?” I said. 

She looked as if she were trying to remember something important she had forgotten long ago.

“Were you asleep?” I asked. 

“What? No. No. Of course not.”

“What was that?”

She looked to the window. 

“Caroline.”

She seemed to consider telling me something but decided not to. 

“See you tomorrow, Stephen.”

—————————

Two weeks of daily sex with Caroline and I was probably already hooked. For her, it was all business, which was fine with me. I didn’t have room for anything else in my heart, anyway. It was exhilarating and different, weird but arousing and pleasing in a way I had not experienced before. But that thing happened a few more times: she’d stop moving and seemed like she was asleep. It took awhile to rouse her and she’d always be out of sorts. I asked her again what was going on. 

“I went somewhere,” she mumbled.

“You went somewhere?”

“Yes. Just…for a moment.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. “Did you pass out? You fainted?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Daydreaming? Meditation?”

“No, no,” she said. 

Her eyes seemed to root themselves more fully in the room as she came out of it. She softly rubbed her hand over her chest. 

“I left my body,” she whispered. 

I felt a brief offense to this idea.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. 

“I had an inkling the first time we slept together. It’s been building. I have to work on it.”

“Work on…what are you…leaving your body…?”

“Yes.”

“During sex?” I asked. 

“Yes. Apparently. There is something about you, in you, that allows me to do it when we have sex. I think. I don’t know. I can’t explain it well.”

“Should I be insulted or complimented?”

She thought for a moment. 

“I wouldn’t know,” she said. 

I rolled to the side and laid down beside her on my back. Her fingers curled some of her hair and pushed it to the side of her face. She stared at the ceiling.

“There’s another place,” she said, “another realm. It’s some other plane of existence. And for some reason, when I’m having sex with you, I can reach it. Only when you’re inside of me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because you’re inside of me…keeping my place.” 

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“The pleasure…the feeling in my body…I don’t know. It allows me to float above it. To untangle the fibers that connect me to my body and let go. I can either sink into the physical feelings or I can just float away from them.”

“So you are experiencing pleasure?” I asked. 

She looked at me like I was crazy. Which, considering the circumstances, was incredible.

“Yes. Of course. I love sex. And sex with you is great so far. In fact, I think it is this fact that allows this to happen at all. Or maybe it’s because I don’t know you. I’m not sure.”

I tried to take it all in.

“So what do we do, now?” 

Caroline closed her eyes, then opened them. 

“I’d like to try it again,” she said. 

—————————

Every weekday, at 10am, I would arrive at Caroline’s house. I would always be clean and well-rested. I would eat a small breakfast beforehand and I would always wear basically the same clothing. I would enjoy the walk in silence and arrive on time, always ringing the doorbell. She would always answer in some sort of robe. We would have a cup of coffee at the kitchen table and speak briefly or not at all. Then she would take my hand and lead me up the stairs, past the cat statue and into the bedroom. The other doors were always closed and I never attempted to open them. She would draw the curtains to the same position and then open her robe to a similar one. She would take my hand and pull me to the bed and I would unwrap her soft body and begin. 

Weeks passed. I went to work four nights a week. I slept in my own apartment. I paid my bills and occasionally talked to my distant brother on the phone. I had broken up with my girlfriend just days into the arrangement, fortunately. Somehow I quickly knew that I was not going to stop seeing Caroline and I was unwilling to be a cheater, to hurt my girlfriend that much. It’s true I had already betrayed her and though I did feel bad about it, I wasn’t riddled with guilt by any means. The arrangement with Caroline felt completely separate from my real life. Which is absurd, of course.

As time passed I found myself unable to think about much else. I gradually lost interest in my job and aspirations. I stopped going out and withdrew into a little room in my chest with no doors and only one small window. I just wanted to be in her kitchen in silence, in her bedroom after she came back into her body. My appointments with her were consistently kept; I was always on time. 

After about a month, Caroline asked me to try to continue having sex with her after she had left her body. 

I found this to be difficult, obviously. It felt so much like she was dead. I knew she wasn’t and I knew this is what she wanted. But…fuck. She said I had to keep her place - that my presence inside of her was a beacon, the tether that allowed her to find her way back. 

“But why does sex allow you to do this?” I asked. “Why can’t you do it...not during sex?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

For me it was very lonely when she left. I felt dirty, scared and guilty. I felt like a rapist. She assured me that was not the case; it was by her request and she was always going to return. I tried looking away; I tried closing my eyes; I tried talking to her. But I felt like I was fucking a dead person. Sort of. It wasn’t quite like that. It was more like a warm, sleeping person who stayed warm and had asked me to do this. The main thing was that the whole time I was silently begging for her to come back. I just wanted her to come back. When she was there, everything felt so good. When she left, it was like a cold wind had entered my lungs. I wanted her to find what she was looking for and stop all the nonsense and just enjoy making love every day. 

I did my best. For a very long time I couldn’t go much longer than a couple of minutes before I had to stop. But slowly, I built up my tolerance.

Caroline told me that when I stopped, she could feel a hole closing, the hole that led her back to this world. I was keeping it full and open for her and when I left she had to rush back so as not to get stuck. 

“Where are you when you leave?” I asked. “What does it look like? What’s happening?”

Her eyes went soft and she did something with her tongue. 

“At first I’m here, in this room, sort of. And I can see us, both of us.”

“You…”

“I watch us.”

I found this both arousing and disturbing.

“Okay…then what?”

“Everything is a misty blue and white and, if I want to, I can sort of fade this room out, and everything in it, and enter another version of it. Then I’m here in this room but it’s different, empty and cold and quiet. It’s as if it is always cloudy or the very moment after sunset. Sometimes I can’t control it and I have to simply watch as I pass between each place. But gradually, I gain control. I’ve been getting better at it.”

She touched her face.

“Then I leave that second room.”

“You leave.”

“Yes. I seem to travel a great distance in a very short amount of time. It feels like falling and rocketing upward all at once. When I’m traveling, it’s like I’m in some realm without time or space, an in-between or an everything place. All time and space, and no time and space.”

“And that’s it?”

“No,” she sighed, biting her fingernail. Her eyes looked far away.

“I always seem to land in the same place. It’s an enormous, frozen plain, similar to some of the pictures of Iceland I’ve seen. There are green mountains in the distance, though, and I always walk toward them. I’m never cold because I am without a body, I guess. But I am walking. It’s a strange contradiction of feeling and not feeling.  When I look behind me I see a bright and colorful city sparkling and shimmering. I always get the feeling that I’ve come from that city, though I know I haven’t. I’ve considered walking toward the city but the mountains seem to call to me. There’s something I’m supposed to find there. There must be, otherwise I’d travel somewhere else, I think.” 

She bit her lip and searched the air.

“Why is it always the same place, I wonder?” she asked herself.

“Why can’t you just travel to the mountains like you traveled to the frozen plain? The rocketing thing?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. It’s like I only have access to that one spot, like there’s a tunnel between here and there, but nowhere else. I can’t travel like that once I get to the frozen plain. Maybe I’m just not good at it yet.”

She looked at me. 

“But I get closer to the mountains every time.” 

Caroline looked down, then at me. She moved her hand to my cock. 

“You are getting better too,” she said. “As you last longer, so do I.” 

“I do my best,” I said. “But it...it can feel…very empty.”

Caroline sighed. 

“I can imagine,” she said. She turned her body and got on top me, straddling my thighs. “Let’s do it here, this time. This place only. Make love to me, and I won’t leave, I won’t go anywhere. I’ll stay in my body.” 

She kissed me softly, her hand on my face. She might have honestly been trying to show true affection, and it did feel warmer. But I also felt silly. She was doing it for me, not because she necessarily wanted to make real love to me. But I relaxed into it. I decided not to think that way and to just enjoy her. We made love for a long time that night and she never once left her body. It was the closest thing to passion I had felt from Caroline. A shaft of moonlight came through the crack between the curtains and lit up the side of her face and body while she was on top of me. For a moment, she looked like a moving painting, her straight black hair falling softly on her breasts. Even here, in this version of the room, she was on some higher level. But when she looked in my eyes, I thought I saw a glimmer of her heart, the smile of a little girl or the coy wink of a true lover. But then it was gone and I wondered whether I had actually seen it at all. 

—————————

That winter, Caroline asked me to move in with her. She said she was getting closer to the mountains and wanted to be able to have our sessions multiple times a day and whenever it felt like the right time to have them. She asked me to leave my apartment and quit my job. She assured me that she had more than enough money for two people to live comfortably for a long time, that I need not worry about having a job at all. 

I thought about it for a day and then agreed. 

I didn’t have many things to move, really. Just some books, a few records, some keepsakes and my clothing. I decided to get rid of most everything else. Caroline’s house was furnished with beautiful old pieces I could never afford and there was no need for any of mine. Somewhere in me I knew I was leaving my old life behind and that my belongings didn’t fit into my new one. 

I thought she would put me in one of the locked rooms upstairs but instead she insisted I would be sleeping with her in the bedroom. This was surprising, but a welcome surprise for me. The other rooms were never unlocked and we rarely spoke of them. One night I did hear her unlock one with a key, enter, and close the door behind her. I heard the door lock. I lay in bed and listened but could hear nothing. She was in there for about an hour and then returned quietly to bed. 

I made breakfast every morning and dinner every night. I had to contribute in some way, for the sake of my own self-worth. I went out and did the shopping and the laundry. I took a long walk every day while Caroline did whatever it was she did. There was a lot of snow that winter and I found the quiet of it peaceful and familiar. I let it fall into the little room in my chest through the small window I had apparently left cracked open. 

Caroline went into the center, upstairs room once a day for three or four hours. This was her work time. She never told me what it was she did and I never asked. It was obviously a private matter, as I had learned that first morning. Sometimes I wondered if she worked at all. She had a lot of money and I thought perhaps it came from someone or somewhere from long ago. Maybe she just sat there or read books or wrote letters. It didn’t matter. It didn’t take up much of her time nor did it much affect me. We fell into a pattern: she would work and I would walk. If I returned from my walk or my shopping and she was still in the office, I would read or plink around on the piano. Some days I made us a light lunch, a salad or a sandwich or something. 

By February we were having sex between four and six times a day. The sessions were long at that point as I was able to stay erect for longer and longer periods of time. When I had trouble, I would go to my own special place in my head in which Caroline was madly in love with me. We’d go on trips together and eat meals at fancy restaurants. We’d make passionate love during which she’d scream out in pleasure and never leave her body. She’d tell me she loved me while she orgasmed and then wrap her arms around me and hold me while we slept. None of that would ever happen, of course, but imagining it kept me going. 

Once a week, she would, in real life, make love to me while remaining in her body. It was an addendum to our arrangement, a little gift for my hard work. Those days were what I looked forward to throughout each week. They felt like crying or laughing or both. I like to think that Caroline enjoyed them, too. We had become much more familiar, if not somewhat intimate, and there were occasional moments when I felt her relax and get closer to me. They were rare and short-lived, but I relished every one. 

I was exhausted, if I’m honest, and slept for great amounts of time. I ate an exorbitant amount of meat. Walking turned into running and I started to get into very good shape. It was the only way I could keep my body prepared for the requirements of our day. I did squats and push-ups and my own version of yoga. I wasn’t any less tired but my performance was able to increase proportionately to the schedule. It was strange to watch my body change and by the time the next Fall arrived I barely recognized myself. 

After a year had passed Caroline promised she was almost there. 

“I can almost smell the mountains,” she said one night before we fell asleep. “They’re so close.”

“Do you think you’ll find what you’re looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I think so. I can feel some great power there, drawing me in. The closer I get the stronger the feeling is. I can almost hear it humming.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, closing her eyes. “It’s alive, I think, or is connected to my life-force in some way. But it’s bigger than me. Not in size, but…it’s…it’s just huge and powerful. I think it gets excited the closer I get and starts vibrating and expanding in anticipation. I think it might be trying to reach me, too.”

She sighed.

“I’m so close, Stephen.”

“What if something bad happens to you when you get there?” I asked. 

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” she said. “I guess it could. But why would I be so drawn to something evil?”

“Isn’t that what evil is?”

“What?”

“I mean, something evil draws you in. It tricks you into thinking you want it.”

She did that thing with her tongue. “I don’t know. I guess so.”

“What if it’s drawing you in only to take you, to imprison you or kill you?”

“I don’t know, Stephen,” she bristled. “It doesn’t feel like that. That’s all I can tell you. I think I would feel some sort of danger.”

I dropped it. The idea was only angering her. 

Caroline was distant that night, not eating much and not talking at all. I let her stew and went to the back porch to read. At some point I looked up and outside. Across the alley was the rear of a large apartment building. In one of the third floor windows stood a woman with dark hair wearing a black shirt and black pants. Or maybe not. The room she was in was fairly dark. She seemed to be looking down at me, into the house. But it was too far and too dark to tell. After a moment, she disappeared. 

—————————

That night I dreamed that I was awake. Or rather, I woke up and could see the room around me: the bed, the walls, the window, Caroline, my own body. But I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. It didn’t quite feel like being awake or asleep, but both, maybe. I sensed someone in the house, coming towards the bedroom door. I could feel them, coming, slowly. I looked toward the door, utterly terrified. Some enormous weight was on my chest, preventing me from breathing, but I saw nothing. The feeling of terror that I felt, the overwhelming sense of someone or something coming through the door, was unbearable. It was the slowest and most frightening feeling of absolute dread I have ever felt. I could not move, I could not breathe, I could not close my eyes. 

When I did awake fully, the room sort of jolted, or shook. The world blurred completely for a second and then refocused. Caroline was on top of me. I was hard and inside of her and she was rocking back and forth, her hands on her own breasts. 

“Caroline…wait…” I stammered. 

“What?” she asked. 

And then I ejaculated inside of her. 

“Stephen,” she whispered, surprised and somehow not angry.

“Sorry, I…I was asleep,” I stammered. 

“Shhhhh,” she said, and lowered her face to mine. She kissed me more passionately than perhaps she ever had. I was instantly fully erect again and flipped her over. I don’t know what got into me; I rarely had multiple orgasms or was able to continue to have sex after orgasming. For some reason, I felt only half in my own body, only half in control. I still felt a bit like I was sleeping. 

It was only a few minutes before Caroline left her body. She murmured the word “yes” and was gone. I kept going, for a very long time. At first I thought maybe I could go with her. It already felt like I was halfway there. But I went nowhere. I remained in the room, with her body, as she required. 

This time I had no problem staying erect, had no issues with the situation or feelings of loneliness or moral self-questioning. I just kept going with a natural flow of energy I had never experienced. My body felt like it had always been in motion, had been meant to be there from the very beginning. It felt like this had always been happening and would go on forever. I closed my eyes and imagined the frozen plain. I imagined Caroline walking, myself following behind. I watched her take each step and saw the mountain looming in the distance. With each step it got closer and larger. I tried to call out to her, to close the distance between us, but I was unable to make a sound or move any faster. But when I stopped trying we both sped up. Walking became floating and the air turned cold. Pushing closer and closer, we were almost there. The mountain was enormous and the peak stood miles above us. The energy she had told me about was everywhere, pulsating rhythmically and powerfully. It was hungry and sad and almost had a sound to it. It wasn’t a sound, though. It was more of a great pressure that filled my ears and head and melted any thoughts I may have had. It built and built and built until I was sure my ears would bleed. I tried to call out again but no sound emerged. 

Then, suddenly, Caroline was sucked into the side of the mountain and was gone. 

My eyes shot open and I was still inside of Caroline, ejaculating again. It felt like my entire being was emptying itself. I was drenched in sweat and breathing hard. I looked down at Caroline. She had not yet returned to her body. The light had changed from a morning blue to a late afternoon orange. I looked at the clock: hours had passed. 

—————————

I went down to the kitchen and poured myself a large glass of ice water. I drank it quickly and poured another. Then I took a long, cold shower and tried to shed the bad feeling I had in my stomach. It was different this time. Caroline had reached the mountain, she had been sucked into it. Something told me she wasn’t going to want to leave. 

I took hot towels and dry towels to the bedroom and proceeded to clean Caroline’s unmoving body. As I did every time, I put my ear up to her mouth and listened for the sound of her soft breathing, felt the gentle air on my skin. I pushed her hair back from her face and kissed her forehead. 

“I hope you found what you were looking for,” I whispered. 

Then I carried her downstairs to the living room couch and put a blanket over her. I went back up to the bedroom, stripped the sheets from the bed and put them in the wash. I picked up clothing and pillows and wondered why the washing machine was so loud. Then I realized it wasn’t the washing machine, it was raining. I opened the bedroom window and let some damp air in. But the wind picked up and the rain turned into a full-fledged storm. I closed the window and went downstairs to make some coffee. 

As I reached the bottom step, the power went out. The storm raged around the house, which was almost completely dark. The shutters rattled and sheets of rain slapped against the glass and siding. I checked on Caroline, hoping perhaps the storm had roused her, but nothing had changed. She looked to be peacefully sleeping. But of course, she wasn’t there. 

Thunder pounded away, each eruption followed by intense lightning. I sat next to Caroline in the dark, waiting for the flashes. Each time the lightning flashed her face would appear for an instant. Twice I thought I saw her move, thought I saw an expression and her eyes open, but it was only in my mind. 

I’m not sure how long the storm went on, but eventually it faded back into a light drizzle. The power remained off and I didn’t bother to check the breaker. I went to every window in the house and threw them open, letting in the post-storm smell, then went back to the living room and sat in the chair across from the couch and cried. 

—————————

Caroline never returned to her body. 

Though I knew in the pit of my stomach that this time everything was different, there was some desperate part of me that held out hope. I clung to that tiny thread, wrapping it around and around my mind until I had all but convinced myself that she’d be back at any moment. 

After a couple of days had passed, I realized that I was going to need to either take her to a hospital or figure out how to care for her myself. Her body was functioning, although at a much slower pace. Somehow, in two days, she hadn’t experienced any private bodily functions. 

I thought about the hospital. What would that mean? What would they think had happened? And would her body just remain in the cold, bright hospital until she returned? And what would she think of me bringing her there? I assumed she’d be angry with me once she came back. No, it didn’t seem right. Caroline would want to be here, in her comfortable home, when she returned. I also imagined someone would attempt to contact next of kin, if there was any. No one would understand what was happening here. I imagined everyone deciding she was in an endless coma and not going to come out of it and eventually deciding to end her life somehow. It gave me chills. 

Instead I looked online for in-home nurses. 

I called a few services, but each one needed to speak to a doctor in charge of Caroline’s care or see a written order from such a doctor. I told each one that I would get back to them and never did. Instead I spent two more days researching how to care for someone in a coma. It still surprises me what you can find on the internet. I was lucky that Caroline was breathing on her own. I didn’t have to procure an oxygen machine or deal with anything like that. But I would have to find a way to feed her. Her body needed nourishment to stay healthy until she returned to it. 

I ordered the equipment and had it delivered. I also bought a new bed that would fold up automatically, just like they had in hospitals. She needed to be sitting up at at least thirty degrees when being fed. I also bought the equipment to check her levels of sodium, potassium, magnesium, calcium, phosphate status and a bunch of other things. All of this was new to me and I knew I was taking a big risk attempting to do it myself. But I didn’t know what else to do. All other options seemed like the wrong ones. No one was going to understand what was really happening. 

I watched hours and hours of videos, read and read instructions and went over everything multiple times. The first feeding was a bit rough, but nothing bad happened. Eventually I was confident I had the tube in the right place and administered her carefully measured meal. Bed pans were in place, everything in order. It all went fairly smoothly and after the first few times I stopped sweating when doing it. 

A couple times a week I gave Caroline a bath. I also would pick her up and move her to the couch or the kitchen or near a window. I knew she’d get bed sores if I didn’t move her around and I like to think that her body benefited from movement, sunlight, different areas of the house. I mostly just carried her in my arms. But I also bought a wheelchair that held her somewhat upright. 

At some point I realized that I had been talking to her out loud. I would wake up next to her and turn to check on her. 

“Good morning, my love,” I’d say. I’d stroke her face and listen for her breathing. “Come back.” 

I talked to her about nothing throughout the day: news I had read, dreams I’d had, books I was reading. I asked her questions she had no answer to and imagined her responding. It got to the point that I was responding to the responses I imagined her giving. 

Sometimes at night I would read to her. One night, after finishing the book I’d been reading to her for a couple of weeks, we had a strange conversation. I closed the book and looked out at the bright moon that was lighting the room through the window. 

“What’s it like inside the mountain?” I asked her. 

It’s perfect.

“Perfect?”

It’s warm and safe and comforting. But it’s bubbling with energy, too.

“What do you mean?”

It feels like sleeping and waking up, like resting and running. I imagined her smiling.

“Are you happy there?” I asked. 

Yes, but I don’t think I can stay here forever, she said.

“When are you coming back?”

“…”

“Caroline…”

She didn’t respond. Sometimes she just stopped responding. 

I missed her.

—————————

That night, after I’d made sure she was comfortable, I closed the door to the bedroom and stood outside the room in the hallway. I looked at the two locked doors that I had never opened. Why had I never tried opening them? It had been months since Caroline entered the mountain and it hadn’t even occurred to me to enter those rooms. I tried both doors in case they were unlocked and I hadn’t realized it. But they were still locked. I thought about keys for awhile, if I had ever noticed any, if I had noticed what Caroline did with the key after she locked the center door. I couldn’t think of anything. 

I walked back into the bedroom and stood over Caroline, looking at her. I thought I saw a faint smile on her face for a moment, but then it was gone. It was getting harder and harder to define what was just my imagination and what was real. 

It’s in my closet.

“What?” I asked. 

The key, Stephen. It’s in my closet, in a small box, in the back, on the top shelf.

I went over to the closet door and opened it. The closet, which I had never looked in before, was immaculately organized. My eye was quickly drawn to the section devoted to Caroline’s kimono’s and robes. Subdued and sensuous colors, soft fabric and her familiar smell. I could have gotten lost in those kimonos for hours, I thought. But I looked up at the top shelf, instead. I pulled over the ottoman from the bedroom chair and stood on it, sliding my hand between a few stacks of uniform shoe boxes and perfectly folded scarves. Running my hand along the back edge of the shelf, I found it: a small wooden box, basically the size of a jewelry box. I opened it. Sure enough, there was a small, metal key. 

I climbed down, turned off the light and closed the closet door. 

“Thank you,” I said. She didn’t respond.

I put the key in my pocket, went downstairs and made a drink. I sat down at the kitchen table and set the key down in front of me. I sipped my whiskey and stared at the key, considering whether or not it was right for me to open the doors. But I decided that Caroline would not have told me where the key was if she didn’t want me to see inside the rooms. 

After finishing my drink, I walked back up the stairs, past the cat statue, and stopped at the top of the stairs. Something about the view of the three doors at the top of the stairs had always made a deep impression on me. The doors. They looked old and grave. When standing in that spot, every time, I felt a need to make an important and completely random choice, as if I were an explorer on a great quest and which direction on the forest path I chose would inevitably decide my eternal fate. 

They were just doors to rooms in a house. 

I walked up to the door on the left, the one that stood across the hallway from the bedroom, placed the key in the lock and turned it. It clicked open. I took a deep breath and opened the door. 

The room was the same size as the bedroom. I’m sure it was meant to be used as one. The window on the outer wall in front of me was letting enough moonlight through to light the room in a pale blue glow. Lining every wall were beautiful floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. But they did not contain books. Instead the shelves displayed clay pots of varying sizes and colors, grouped in pairs. Some were dull and brown, some were glazed and shiny in blue and red and yellow and all sorts of patterns. They were beautiful pieces and looked handmade. The shelves of the walls on my left and in front of me were completely full. The ones on my right were almost full and the shelves behind me were empty. All the different colors, finishes and patterns, when viewed as whole, made for an impressive effect, like a less intricate, clumsier version of pointillism. 

I walked up to one of the full walls and looked at some of the pots up close. Some were smooth and others were rough. None of them had labels or signatures that I could see, and Caroline hadn’t labeled or marked the pots themselves or the shelves in any way. Slowly and carefully I reached out to touch one of them when a heavy feeling enveloped my body and I had a single thought: These are not just clay pots, these are urns. Shivers rippled down my spine and I stepped back into the center of the room. All of the pots, though of varying sizes, were generally the size and shape of the kind of urn one uses to keep ashes. 

Why would Caroline collect cremation urns? Maybe it was some sort of dark obsession. Or maybe she made these and that was her business? No, no, I thought, this felt like a collection, not storage for future sale. They were too lovingly placed on the shelves for viewing. Plus, she didn’t leave the house often and there was no kiln here. Maybe they weren’t cremation urns after all. Maybe too much time alone was starting to wear on me. I breathed out. It felt like I had been holding my breath for hours. Okay, I told myself, calm down and look in the other room.

I left the urn room, carefully closed the door behind me and locked it. A great feeling of relief spread through me and I relaxed a little. I was pretty nervous to open the other door, but I couldn’t help myself. I walked up to the door of the center room and put the key in the lock. This was the room that Caroline went in almost every day for a few hours. This was her office. I turned the key, then the handle, and slowly pushed the door open. 

I was confused, to say the least. What lay before me was more of a surprise than I could have imagined. The room was obviously meant to be the master bedroom. It was bigger than the other two and had three large windows, across from the door, that were on the front of the house and faced the street. The windows were huge and let in an incredible amount of moonlight. I’m sure the room was very bright during the day. The floor was the same incredible old hardwood as the rest of the house but was even more impressive in this room. 

The room was completely empty.

Actually, there were exactly six things in the room. In the very center was a pillow. It was a large, deep red, square pillow, that I assume was meant for sitting on. Surrounding the pillow were five candles. So, this was Caroline’s office: a meditation room? That’s all I could think. Caroline came up here almost every day, sat on the pillow in the center of the room, and meditated. I’m all for a healthy meditation practice but I had envisioned a large wooden desk and a couple of computers, maybe some books and a nice chair. We had always referred to the room as the ‘office.’ My mind searched through all those interactions and I realized that actually, Caroline had never called it the office, I had. Whenever I had referred to the room as her office she had simply never corrected me. And, I suppose, she may have liked the term. Maybe she considered meditation her work. But, of course, it wouldn’t make her any money. How did she make a living? Maybe she was just sitting on enough money to last the rest of her life. I had access to her money with debit and credit cards but was certainly never allowed to see bank statements. 

I closed the door to the room, locked it behind me and put the key in my pocket. I started back down the stairs and stopped at the landing and looked at the cat statue. 

“What the hell?” I asked the cat. 

It looked at me and did not respond, thankfully.

I poured another glass of whiskey and sat at the kitchen table again. So the second floor had three rooms. The center was a meditation room, presumably. The one on the right was the bedroom in which Caroline and I had sex while she left her body to seek out a mountain in another plane of existence. And the one on the left was full of beautiful funeral urns grouped in pairs. What the hell was I doing? Why was I here? How had I fallen in love with this woman? 

The house suddenly felt cold and lonely and way too quiet. I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone outside or listened to music or turned on a television. I stood up, went into the living room, turned on the classical station on the radio and laid down on the couch. A soothing string quartet wove a blanket around my brain and I fell asleep. 

—————————

I awoke in the morning to the dull sound of the classical DJ on the radio slowly reading an advertisement for life insurance. I got up and turned it off. I made a pot of coffee and sat at the kitchen table waiting while it brewed. Perhaps it was time for a long walk, I thought. I needed to get some fresh air and decide what to do next. I poured a cup of coffee and sat in usual silence drinking it. Figure something out, I told myself. 

I needed to tend to Caroline for the morning. Setting the coffee down I got up and walked up the stairs. 

“Good morning,” I said to the cat statue.  

At the top of the stairs I stopped and looked at the two doors I had unlocked the night before. I had pretty much no interest in seeing the urn room again but considered looking at the meditation room in the morning light. But first I needed to check on Caroline and feed her. 

I opened the door to the bedroom and walked in. 

“Good morning,” I said to Caroline and pulled the curtains open. “Time for breakfast.”

I walked over to raise the bed up and stopped by its side. I bent down and kissed Caroline on the forehead. 

Her head was colder than usual. I placed my hand on it. Then I put my ear in front of her mouth. 

She was not breathing. 

I placed my fingers on her neck. No heartbeat. I placed my fingers on the inside of her wrist. Nothing. 

She was dead.

I stood by her side, staring down at her cold, still body. Somehow, I didn’t cry. I didn’t panic. I just looked at her. She looked smaller now, and sadder. Strangely, I felt almost relieved, then guilty, then completely and utterly alone. 

I began thinking of what to do next and a massive feeling of dread descended upon me.

Then the doorbell rang.