Free The Gorgeous Naked Man in my Storm Shelter (Erotic Suspense) by Aphrodite Hunt

visions and dreams have always been
crimson.
    “Because of the
different colors?” I venture, rolling the car to a stop.
    “Not only that.”
    I kill the
engine, and we both get out. We walk to the lakeside. The wind
whisks my hair behind me, bringing with it the smell of fresh
water. There’s a pensive look in Don’s eyes.
    “ I can’t quite
describe it,” he says, waving his hands around, “but it’s like visiting somewhere that you
know really well and you can describe the look and feel of it to
someone else, because you’ve lived here and it’s imprinted in your
head. Then returning to the same place twenty years later and
remembering everything the way it was, only it’s not the way it
used to be because there are differences. Am I making sense to
you?”
    I must admit what
he’s saying is a little garbled. But I think I do understand. A
little.
    “So you’ve been here
twenty years ago?” I say.
    “I don’t know.”
    “What’s different
then?”
    He throws his
arms up helplessly. With the wind buffeting his dark hair into
rippling tendrils, he’s carelessly marvelous to look at.
    “ I don’t know.
Everything. This blade of grass, for instance.” He bends over to
pluck it. “It’s different. Wrong .”
    “ Wrong?” I’m
starting to get worried about his seeming lack of articulation.
    He shakes his head,
frowning, as he gazes upon the errant blade of grass.
    “The water . . .
it’s all wrong too.”
    “ Why is it
wrong?” I touch his arm, hoping he will calm down. My own heart has
begun to race rather painfully as though the ‘wrongness’ of the
place is seeping in, affecting me as well.
    Then I feel
it. A presence behind us. I
swing round, seeing a little girl with pigtails come out from the
trees. She wears a plain cotton dress with smudges. Her feet are
bare.
    She pads towards us,
her eyes never leaving Don’s face.
    “Hello,” she
says.
    “Hello,” I reply
cautiously.
    She points a
dirt-streaked finger at Don. “You’re John.”
    He’s
thunderstruck.
    “I am?”
    I’m equally as
shocked.
    “Yes,” the little
girl says. She has clear blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles on
her cheeks. “How did you get down here?”
    “ W e drove,” Don says. I
can tell that he’s majorly startled.
    “ Did
you jump out of the picture?”
the girl says. She couldn’t have been more than five.
    “Uh, no.”
    “ I’ll go
hom e and look. If you’re not
in the picture, then you’re here.”
    She happily
turns tail on us and scampers away.
    “Wait!” Don calls
after her.
    My pulse
quickens as we both run after her. I’m aware of how rapidly Don can
gait, of course, but he doesn’t utilize his supersonic speed this time. He’s possibly afraid
of scaring away the little girl and losing me in the dust. We catch
sight of her as she vanishes through the trees and into the open
front door of a little house.
    We stop short
as we approach the two-story
house.
    It’ s a little ramshackle,
made out of wood slats that are frankly rotten at some places. The
wooden beams of the doors and shutters are vertical, and the whole
house is painted in a dirty white. Or maybe it was a clean white
once, and it has gotten dirty over the years, I don’t know. A
little driveway leads to its rickety porch, connected to a lane
that vanishes beyond the trees.
    I exchange glances
with Don.
    “Is this familiar to
you?” I say. My stomach is fluttering. This is the truth, I tell
myself sternly, and there’s no way you can deny him the truth.
    He wears a puzzled
frown on his perfect features. “No.”
    We hear the
pad of footsteps. I tense as a
shadow emerges from the depths of the house. An older woman frames
the doorway.
    She takes one look
at Don.
    And screams.
     

9
     
    The old woman can’t
seem to stop screaming. Don takes a step towards her, but she backs
away.
    “ No, no,
i t can’t be.”
    “ Madam.” I
hold up my hand to appease her even though I’m frightened as anyone
has a right to be