To the Cabin

“Volunteers?” The man said.

I looked over to my coworker Beth, whose hand was trembling and imagined her son Grant over her bleeding body crying in the unselfconscious way only six-year-olds can. I didn’t raise my hand, but I raised my eyes and that was enough.

Suddenly a gloved hand was gripping me by the shoulder and forcing me up and shoving the small of my back so I took a stumbling step forward.

The man who had spoken earlier walked around to stand in front of me and I found myself staring through the black eye holes of his deranged pumpkin mask. My hands were roughly shoved behind my back and cuffed together with zip ties.

In the Night

You sleep naked and leave the window open at night, feel the smooth cold of the sheet rub against you breasts and down the flat of your stomach as you slip into bed. You hope someone moves a ladder up late at night, climbs softly, removes the screen and slips through. You hope he lands on the bed softly and, in a deep slumber, you only barely stir. You hope he waits there for a moment, watching the pattern of your breathing, running a hand over top the comforter, tracing the shape of you before pulling it back slowly, and covering your exposed skin with himself. You hope that, still dreaming, you register the warmth and weight of him and fall into an easy sense of comfort as he removes layer and layer until you are both skin to skin. You hope that he moves inside you and, in your dream you’re making love with the ocean, riding atop it, wave crests bearing you up from between your legs, water touching every part of you smoothly, knowingly. You hope that in a fit of passion you reach for his shoulders, grab onto his hair and draw him closer until you come then, sated, fall back and curl to your side to bunch up the fabric of your bedsheets in one hand and settle into the softness again. You hope that in the morning dream half-remembered and line between reality and imagined blurred the only evidence you find is a wet spot on your bed and a certain jiggly sort of spent tiredness running through your thighs.