Sweet Love of Mine

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

 He knew it was a dream.

He knew it was the dream, the one that beckoned the shadows invitingly. The one that made his skin blot with anxious sweat and writhed his limbs in the sheets uncontrollably.

Even in his dream he knew it wasn’t real, wasn’t happening, but he couldn’t dispel the tremors that racked his body or the maddening terror that sent his heart into a furore. The pounding was deafening, roaring, like the rush of the ocean as it crashed against the shore perpetually but louder. An inexplicable weight moved his limbs, settled on his chest, constricting his breath as it gushed from his lungs in frantic, shallow bursts.

Everything was dark and heavy and dank. A slither of golden light permeated from a narrow seam under a partly open door. He sidled towards it, his feet dragging along the floor as if they were weighted with boulders. His knees wouldn’t bend, wouldn’t cooperate, nor would his body still, stop, halt the inevitable advance.

Suddenly the wedge of light was upon him and he felt his hand reach out, a young hand settling on the solid, cool wood of the door, fingers splayed wide. Not his hand- a young hand, devoid of masculine sinew and ridges that thickened the fingers and enunciated strength. A boy’s hand.

Slowly, the slither thickened as he carefully pressed the door wider. His eyes adjusted tentatively to the light, blinking back the shadows, as his father’s study slowly came into focus. The sight tingled with fondness, with memories of contentment of that past now converged with blackened cocoons of rage and fear of this present, swirling with ferocious animosity in his breast. He knew he didn’t want to be here, anywhere but here, that he shouldn’t be here, but in his dream he was. He was remembering, feeling, the blithe unawareness of what was about to transpire.

He tried to stop himself but his body wouldn’t obey. His disobedient limbs moved of their own accord, of their own cumbersome volition. If he could, he’d willingly saw off his own legs to keep from moving forward, to keep from seeing what he knew he was about to witness. But the boy in his dream didn’t know any better, hadn’t known, couldn’t possibly know what the man knew now.

Every vein in his body pulsed with the incessant need to retreat and withdraw, to flee. The shadows hovered in the corners of his vision, blurring the edges, their fingers licking tentatively across the image before him, and he caught his breath. Illuminated by a series of oil lamps, one on the desk in the centre of the studious chamber, the room burst into images before him. His father had swivelled his high-backed chair around so that it faced the rectangular bay window behind him and all that was presented to him was the ridge of a profile, hidden partly by the ominous threads of shadow.

Unnoticed, he crept into the room and prepared to make his father aware of his presence, silently hoping he’d lift him up on his knee and show him the ledgers, as he always did. He opened his mouth and paused, his eyes catching on the luminescent glint of something clasped loosely in his father’s fist. Light from the lamps exploded against the polished barrel and he froze, trepidation trickling down his spine. His father always told him not to touch his pistols, that he’d have ample opportunity as a man to make use of the sport but as a boy he was not to touch them. Why was his father using them now, at night and alone in his study?

Panic thrummed woodenly at his heart as the ascent of the pistol lead to the side of his father’s face in a hand that did not tremble even though his own body quaked with palpitations, writhed with the urgency, the nauseating clarity of what was to happen-

“Sebastian?”

He awoke with a yell on his lips that never vocalized, his breathing hitching precariously against his lungs. Startled and disorientated, Sebastian lurched upright and the icy air of his chambers touched his feverishly moist skin lovingly, like an eager lover. A shiver rippled over his muscles involuntarily. Shaking the remnants of the disturbing dream as the shadows inched towards his conscience, he glanced about, searching for the source of his arousal.