Upside Down by Liz Gavin Read Free Book Online

I controlled the urge to do that. Barely.
    “Yes, mom, of course I can.”
    “Great. I’ll tell your father you’re coming. He’ll be so thrilled.”
    “Me, too. Talk to you then.”
    “Drive safely, honey,” she hesitated and I almost hung up but I stopped when I heard her voice again. It was little more than a whisper. “Thank you, sweetie. It means a lot to me.”
    “ It’s no big deal, mom. Stop worrying. Everything will be fine,” I had trouble speaking because my throat was tight but I meant the words this time. “Goodbye, mom.”
    “Bye, Carol Anne.”
    I put the phone down and sat there staring at it as realization dawned on me. Not for the first time in my life, I had to face the fact that my parents were mortal people just like everyone else. More than ten years ago, my father had been diagnosed with cancer. He had undergone extensive treatment and he was apparently in remission. I had faced the possibility of losing him back then and it had been tough but I must have been living in denial since. Facing a parent’s death, or the possibility of their death, forces a person to face their own mortality. I hadn’t been ready for that ten years earlier and I surely was not ready then. I stood up and went to bed.
    “I’ll think about it tomorrow.”
    * * * *
     
    In the middle of the night, I sat up on the bed, gasping and sweating. I opened my eyes wide and looked around unable to tell the difference between dream and reality, still feeling hands pressing my face down, legs immobilizing me and a body pressing hard on me from behind. I put a hand on my throat as if I could calm my wild heartbeats with that gesture. I couldn’t, though. I reached over for the thermos bottle on the nightstand and took a sip of water from it. The refreshing feeling soothed my parched throat and dried lips. I lay down again, threw one arm over my closed eyes and sighed.
    “ God, these dreams have got to stop or I’ll go crazy.”
    I tried to go back to sleep but disturbing flashes from that last dream kept popping up in my head. I had never been more scared in my life – sleeping or awake. I had been having strange dreams over those last few days. I wasn’t able to remember them in details and what little I did remember was confusing. At first, the dreams were some kind of foreplay leading to a sexual scene. Although the situations weren’t clear, as so often happens in dreams, I remembered feeling attracted to somebody, then being teased by this person and getting excited by what seemed to be a naughty game of hide-and-seek.
    In th ose dreams, I would never see the person clearly. I saw only a profile, or an arm, or a leg, or a mouth. Always in close-ups which made it hard to see enough of the person to identify them. The dreams had escalated and I would feel a hand touching me or lips kissing my cheek or my neck. Gradually, the scenes got more intense and the touching got rougher. But still, I couldn’t see who was groping me. Until that night, at least. That last dream had been the most violent one and the first one in which I saw my attacker. But it made no sense at all. In that last dream, I had been sexually attacked by the last person who could ever have done anything like that to me. How could a woman force herself on another one like that? And more importantly, how could a sweet, gentle person such as Cindy O’Rourke be so ruthless?
    “I am going nuts ! All this is absurd!” I chided myself. “I’m feeling burnt-out. I’ve been stressed out over the economical situation for quite some time. Today, I found out about my dad and snapped. That’s got to be it.”
    I turned over to lie on my stomach , stretched my arms out and buried my head in the pillows. I fell asleep again but there were no dreams that time.
     
    * * * *
     
    The next day started like any other day until I got out of the common elevator on my office’s floor and saw Cindy standing behind the counter talking to a delivery man. She seemed