KSDH 12
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KSDH 12 |
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By Steve Duffy © 2008
The sun had long set: sudden rains, wind, lightning, an unexpected break in the summer. Kate Stanford was wide awake. It wasn't the storm. She needed to be asleep. How else could she save David? Kate needed to get inside her desperate dream — and quickly. But she could not. The day had been interminable, the night was becoming so. The lower temperature and steady drum of summer rain should have been soothing. Used to be. Not now. Kate Stanford should have been sleeping, doing something useful, but all she could do was pace the room. The others had left before the storm. They'd be asleep by now, they'd be there. The thought both soothed and chilled her to the bone. She paced from the bedroom to the loungeroom through the kitchen and back again. Never along the hall. She wouldn't, couldn't, go near the box room tonight. The mere thought of the hall was distraction enough as she tracked a path that led always back to the bedroom where David lay quietly snoring. Where she couldn't help him. Kate failed not to clock-watch. Almost three in the morning. The rain had stopped, unnoticed. Kate stood halfway between kitchen and loungeroom, determined this time that when she next lay beside her husband she would finally fall asleep and be able to rescue him — but her right foot began to sink into the floorboards. She was suddenly too angry to scream. Kate heard a chuckle somewhere in the distance, and her left foot sank to match the right, as if into quicksand. She waded, desperate for purchase, toward the couch, but it too began sinking into the floorboards before finding a buoyancy point and coming to a precarious rest. When Kate arrived, it rolled in the ooze at her touch, but righted itself. Breath held, couch steadied — the coffee table sank out of sight: sucked to the bottom of whatever her floorboards had become. Not good. The floor looked solid enough, the beautiful wood-grain boards clear, the geometric red and blue shapes on the rug that had just swallowed the coffee table no less textured than they should be — but where was the coffee table now? Yet the couch floated, buoyed her, gave her time to think. She had to get to David, now in the next room. She'd been there with him only moments ago. For how many hours now? How could she be so stupid as to miss this opportunity? How had she not known? She screamed, loud and long. David. In the next room. So close. Why weren't the others here? Where were they? A Cavalier King Charles Spaniel trotted from down the hall into the loungeroom, and paced over to the centre of the rug where the coffee table had disappeared. He sat and watched her watch him. After a moment of silence the Cavalier King Charles said, "He's not there anymore. Better luck next time." Kate woke up. It was almost three in the morning. More than enough time to fall asleep and try again.
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Steve Duffy lives in Penrith NSW. He is a regular contributor to AntipodeanSF.
In 2005 he self-published Journeys, a collection of poems and short
stories which is still available from his website <
