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Of course, I gave him my number before we parted ways that night, and during our first phone call, he dropped the bomb—he was married but separated. He and his college sweetheart, the woman who’d carried and lost three children for him, were over, but she was ill. Chronically ill with some disease with a name Marlon couldn’t pronounce, a condition comprised of a collection of ailments. The disease was the reason for the miscarriages. She couldn’t work. She needed insurance; hence they split but didn’t divorce so she could still receive the care and medications she needed.
It was a sweet gesture and a heartbreaking story.
I instantly called bullshit until I actually met said wife, a frail shell of a woman who was obviously once very beautiful. She confirmed his story, said she wanted him to be happy, to live, and since I did like him, I gave him a chance. Together, we built a life in her house. The one with her name on it. She’d left to live with a sister who cared for her, but his house was still hers as well. On top of his marriage looming over our relationship, he’d decided he didn’t want kids because he thought it would be unfair to her—his wife—for him to have children when she couldn’t. I accepted that, too. For a time, a long time, I was happy, so happy with that man. Downright gleeful, but things change. People change.
I changed.
Years passed and I found myself feeling hopeful when a call would come in the middle of the night informing the man I loved that his wife was being rushed to the hospital. Three times during our relationship she’d ended up in ICU on a ventilator, and each time she recovered, I felt let down. Why? Because my man had made it clear that once he was free, it would be my turn to wear his surname.
That shit was monstrous! I felt like a damn ghoul for anticipating this sweet woman’s demise, no matter how involuntary. It ate away at my soul, and eventually, I just couldn’t do it anymore. I hated myself, the desperate Lilith King I’d become. So, I left, but as right as that decision was—and I was positive it was—that didn’t buffer the pain or assuage the disappointment that had me sitting up in my bed in a pitch-black bedroom staring down at an empty alley. Nights like these, I wished I’d never met Marlon Archer while at the same time wanting him between my legs.
Fuck.
I flopped back on the bed and groaned, thought about fingering myself into exhaustion but decided against it. I’d tightly shut my eyes when I thought I heard something. I lay still, eyes now open as I strained my ears. I kept the bedroom window cracked at night—something my mother would do when I was little because she believed it rid the house of the day’s negativity—so, I could tell the sound was coming from the alley. Shuffling, a grunt, sounds of a scuffle.
Rolling onto my side, I soundlessly moved closer to the window, lifting my head just enough to see two men locked in a battle. One, I recognized as the frequent-flyer vagrant, AKA “The Pisser” because of his clothes—worn, baggy blue jeans, a tattered grey hoodie, and a black beanie that looked like it’d seen better days. He was frail and walked with a shuffled gait. The other man was foreign to me in his black jogging suit and baseball cap—tall, big, imposing. The vagrant was backing away from the obviously younger and larger man, each step a stumble as he tried to put distance between them. The other man shook his head, said something I couldn’t make out, and punched the vagrant, causing him to fall backward onto the pavement. Then, the bigger guy hit the vagrant again…and again…and again…and again. Over and over and over and harder and harder until the felled man stopped moving or grunting or…anything.
My eyes were wide; my stomach gurgled, and my heart raced. Had I just witnessed a murder?
Did that man just kill the other one?
What should I do? Call the police?
As my thoughts scurried in every direction, I was rendered frozen, in shock, and scared completely shitless. Paralyzed with raw, tangible, and cloying fear, I didn’t move. Not when the man stood erect, harking and spitting on the…corpse. Not when he kicked him, making the body move only in the way a lifeless one does, and not when he lifted his head, allowing the moonlight to illuminate his face—dark skin, chiseled features, and narrowed, inky black eyes locking with mine.
4
It was a dream.
That realization hit me the next morning when I shot up in bed and promptly peered out the window.
No body.
No blood.
There was blood. I remembered there being blood. Yet, there was none. There were no remnants of the scene that was replaying in my mind. No dead man, no killer, no nothing.
Yes, a dream.
It had to be a dream. Otherwise, I certainly would’ve been dead by now, wouldn’t I? The man saw me, looked directly at me. Our eyes met…in the dream. I was a witness. He wouldn’t have let me live to call the police if it was real. Plus, I slept. How the fuck could I have fallen asleep after seeing that if it was real?
The gentle buzzing of my cell phone on the bed beside me made me flinch and caused my heart to begin galloping. I quickly answered it, sitting on the side of the bed, my back to the window.
“Hey, Daddy.” My voice was groggily shrill.
“Hey, honey! Just checking to make sure you haven’t been mugged or shot or something.”
I might’ve laughed if that dream hadn’t freaked me out. “Not yet,” I muttered.
“What you mean by that? You planning to get messed up? You depressed over that boy or something?”
“No, I just…I had a really strange dream, a nightmare, really. Still feeling the effects of it.”
“Humph, you know what your mama used to say about dreams…”
I nodded, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. “Yeah, she said they either explain the present, remind you of the past, or warn you of the future.”
“Mmhmm, and it’s up to you to figure out which one applies.”
