― Neil Gaiman
Sarah in Dreams
After the beach party, I drove Ella home and simply wanted to just fall into bed―I was that exhausted.
I forced myself, however, to stay up making notes on information about Brock Ferguson I gleaned from the partygoers. It was a damning indictment of his moral failure as a person but was hardly criminal.
Nobody liked Ferguson, including me, but I wasn't seeing him as a serial killer―more as a morose, entitled simp who had way too much money and time to do anything of consequence other than being a nuisance.
There was nothing in his background that qualified him as a suspect―no military service, no criminal record not even a speeding ticket. I was beginning to feel frustrated.
It was just after two when I finished and set the security alarm and headed to bed.
I was tempted to fall into the bed fully clothed but forced myself to change into pyjamas, well at least the bottoms and to put on a clean tee shirt.
I glanced out the window to check the weather and saw stars above the trees and also the stealth vehicle of my security team.
I felt a pang of guilt about Sarah, but quashed it immediately. That was a stress I didn't want to handle―what I wanted was to go to sleep.
Sleep was my plan but I spent an hour lying awake staring at the red digits projected by my weather clock on the ceiling.
Just after three, I fell into a deep sleep and dreamed of Sarah.
I had never had a dream like this before. I dreamt we were both lying together on the bed talking and it was so real, I could inhale her perfume.
"I can't believe I allowed you to get to me," she was saying. "I actually lied and told Ross you preferred to deal with me, so he'd back off. I feel so pathetic and needy."
"You're not pathetic at all," I reassured her, reaching across to touch her cheek.
I shouldn't have done that because it ignited a conflagration in me that seared my insides and made me thirst for her lips.
"We shouldn't be here," she said, reading the desire in my face.
"If not here, then where? I don't know where I belong since I came home, except in your arms."
"You've always said that, no matter what life we lived."
The room darkened and she grew faint and distant as if withdrawing into a mist.
I remember feeling distraught and desperate as I stretched out my arms in an effort to draw her back.
My mind and body felt numb and I was consumed with an overwhelming need to shield her from harm, but couldn't shield myself and couldn't reach her and was left blindly groping in the dark.
I awoke just after four, hair damp with sweat, shivering and alone in bed.
Yeah, it figured―this was my fate. Confused and alone, anxiously pondering the meaning of what life was trying to teach me.