“THE SUBURBAN HOWL” – Chapter One: ‘A Letter in the Mail’ [MFM, Mystery/Suspense]

**”THE SUBURBAN HOWL”**
*An Erotic Mystery in Three Parts*

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**PART ONE:** *The Draw*

**Chapter One.** *’A Letter in the Mail’*

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It read, simply:

> *Your names have been drawn. Tell no one.*
>
> *Your requested appointment will be on November the 24th, at midnight.*
>
> *Leave your front door unlocked.*
>
> ** ~ The Wolf**

The couple who lived at 5381 Mulberry St. spent two weeks trying to decipher the meaning of the strange letter — they studied the brisk handwriting and the messy spatter of spilt ink; they felt the thick paper between their finger-tips and wondered who on Earth would have bothered with such exquisite stock — before finally letting the letter rest at the bottom of a kitchen drawer, unsolved and buried beneath a pile of unpaid bills. There was, after all, more important things to worry about; like keeping the electricity on, for instance…

Months passed. Spring became Summer and Summer became Fall. The mysterious letter had been brought up a few times during conversation, mostly when the couple had been laying together in bed with the lights turned off, but it had never been dug back out from underneath the stack of bills and reinspected. The sense of urgency surrounding the matter had seemed to diminish gradually, like sand slipping through the stem an hourglass, even as the date on the cryptic message had drawn ever closer. The couple eventually agreed that the letter must have been some bizarre form of practical joke, and didn’t speak of it again.

That is, not until early November, when the Husband suddenly remembered: “It was from *’The Draw’*…”

“What are you talking about”, the Wife asked, rolling her head over on her pillow. Her sleepy voice conveyed an irritability that she couldn’t disguise.

“We got the letter in the mail”, the Husband whispered breathlessly, “because we put our names in *that* draw…”

“What *draw?* I don’t know what you’re talking ab–”

The Husband sat up in bed. “–Three years after we first got married, we went to that underground sex club in LA.” He spoke directly into the darkness of the bedroom, unblinking. “Remember?” The Husband paused, letting his memory catch-up with his recollection. “*The Wolves’ Den*, that’s what it was called. Your friend told us about it, then she convinced us to go with her one night.” He’d paused for another moment, breathing a little steadier now. “It wasn’t much more than a glorified tent set-up out in the desert; looked like a circus, but there were only adults, and no one was laughing.” Then, the Husband’s expression twisted suddenly. “Oh, *Jennifer!* I can’t believe I almost forgot *her* name…”

The Wife recoiled with shame at the mention of the name. Her Husband didn’t notice. He was still staring forward, into the dark, as if seeing something she couldn’t. Eventually, the Wife whispered in reply: “Yes, I *do* remember… but–”

“–but that was nearly twenty years ago,” the Husband interrupted. “*Yeah?* …Because that’s what I thought at first, too.”

“*Yeah*”, the Wife replied, feeling wide awake now. “Except how would they even have our address in the first place? We only wrote our names down on that slip of paper. *It was just a stupid game!*”

The Husband sat up straighter. His eyes still seemed glued to the wall of black in front of their bed. “The handwriting on the letter wasn’t familiar to me, but I *did* remember that paper-stock. It, just… it has a *feel* to it — *like silk…* It was the same paper we wrote our names down on. I’m convinced of it.”

“Okay then,” the Wife snapped. She could feel the panic raising up in her throat. “Even if we *did* write our address down on that bloody slip of paper and then forgot about it — *somehow!* — we’re still on the other side of the country now!” Her voice quivered, threatening to break. “They couldn’t know where we are!”, the Wife pleaded, straining now to control her volume. “The whole thing is ridiculous!”

“We have the same names, though,” he replied quietly. The Husband blinked rapidly, as if following his own trail of thought in real time. “Like, just hypothetically speaking, that’s enough to find us. They’d only have to pull up some records — maybe the deed to the house, some utility bill, our marriage papers — and… Well, *right*?”

The Wife’s eyes widened. She opened her mouth to speak, but her tongue was too horror-stricken to move.

The Husband continued, glancing sideways at her now: “There’s records, someone could find them. We’re hardly living off-the-grid out here in the suburbs… I mean, *what else* could that letter have been about? It’s the only think that makes any sense.”

“That’s… *no–*”. The Wife felt her skin begin to goosebump, even though she was still covered beneath the bedsheets. “*–C’mon!*”

The Husband said nothing; there seemed to be nothing more that needed saying. He could tell from the look on his Wife’s face that she believed him — that she remembered now, too. The puzzle of the mysterious letter had been solved, finally; and in its place, a new riddle had presented itself: *What to do about the appointment with the Wolf?*

There was a long, heavy silence shared between the couple. Neither of them moved an inch or spoke a word, but somehow, it felt as if the conversation had never really stopped. While the Husband wordlessly recalled the night that Jennifer had convinced them to go to *The Wolves’ Den*, the Wife remembered her only marital sin in detail for the first time in decades.

*What the fuck were we even doing in a filthy fucking whorehouse like that,* the Husband thought. It was inconceivable somehow. He wondered how they could possibly be the same people *now* that they were *then*. This inward uncertainty came with a bitter sense of sadness, which the Husband tried to ignore. *–What had we been thinking!?*

*Oh– …Jennifer,* the Wife remembered, feeling the shame clump together in her gut, forming a ball of dread. *That bitch… That fucking slut… Jennifer: the whore who tried to ruin my marriage. That How does a person like that ever manage to slip my mind? How could I have forgotten someone… like her.* The repressed memories continued to curdle the Wife’s thoughts, making it so that she couldn’t think about anything besides *that night*; she couldn’t even bring herself to think about the looming prospect of meeting ‘the Wolf’.

*I should have never let Jennifer put that bloody blindfold on me,* the Wife scolded herself. *–What was I thinking!?* It felt as if there were a storm of butterflies inside her chest, tickling her lungs and making it hard to breath. *No, no, no, hold on– Thats wasn’t my fault,* the Wife reassured herself. *I was drugged!*

*Only after you agreed to the game,* a cynical voice argued inside the Wife’s head. *…And besides, you enjoyed it. You enjoyed every moment of it. You dream about that night once a month, and you can’t admit it to yourself… You wake up in a sweat and you call it another ‘nightmare’, because you can’t admit it to yourself…*

The Wife closed her eyes. After a long moment, the two competing voices inside her mind seemed to merge into one, harmonious revelation: *Yes, I did enjoyed it. Every moment of it. It was the best experience I’ve ever had.* Somehow, this inward confession relieved her guilt, instead of amplifying it. The Wife took a deep breath, then experienced the strange sensation of being in a very different bedroom from the one she’d been in only moments ago. Nothing had really changed, of course. The bedroom was still the same bedroom, cloaked uniformly in the same darkness; but now, in some odd way, the room seemed illuminated by a light which the Wife couldn’t see. She could *feel* it though, radiating out from her body and filling the space around her. *We’ve been lying to ourselves for too long,* the Wife decided.

Outside, the neighbourhood was deathly quiet. Aside from the occasional gust of wind, which scratched the giant elm tree against the side of the house, there wasn’t a sound to be heard.

“What do we do?”, the Husband finally asked. The moonlight flickered across his sweaty brow, making the fear in his eyes electric. “He’s going to come to the house, right? Do we just tell him… *no*?”

“Does it work like that?”, the Wife asked. Her voice sounded far too comfortable to his ears. “I mean, we–”

“–We *what?*” The Husband’s eyes opened wider, becoming too silver pools of fright.

After a wordless hesitation, the Wife settled herself back into bed. “We should think about it”, she said.

“Think about *what to do?* –Or think about… *it*?”

“Maybe… *both.* –Maybe, we just sleep on it. I’m too tired to think about anything right now. That’s all I mean. We can talk about it all in the morning. Okay?”

The Husband sighed — it was the sound of an exhausted and disoriented man — before lowering himself back into bed. “*Okay.* Yeah, we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

But not another word was said about the appointment with the Wolf. When it became evident that neither of them possessed the courage to bring up the subject again, pretending to have a mutually-shared case of amnesia became the path of least resistance.

And so, the couple briefly reverted to their ideal, *perfect* suburban-selves. All the while, the mysterious letter laid at the very bottom of their kitchen draw, solved and comfortably repressed. There was, after all, less painful things to worry about…

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Source: reddit.com/r/eroticstories/comments/75lsu2/the_suburban_howl_chapter_one_a_letter_in_the