When I woke up I laid in bed for a long time, crying to myself, holding tightly onto the pillow. I could almost smell Pru's perfume, feel her body against mine, and I missed her so bad it made my chest hurt deep inside. I rolled over, staring at the ceiling, wiping my eyes. I lit a cigarette and laid in bed, the light from the dawn slowly getting brighter in the bedroom as I smoked the cigarette.
The smell of the smoke pushed away the lingering phantom scent of Pru's perfume.
More than once I went to get up, then just flopped back and laid in bed, staring at the ceiling. There was really no reason to get up. Nobody to talk to, nothing that really needed doing. The house wouldn't collapse if I spent one day not dusting, vacuuming, and doing other household chores.
But I knew that if I let myself start down that road, it might be days or weeks before I could come back from where that led.
I forced myself up, walking naked from the bedroom to the bathroom and taking a cool shower. Nothing too cold, just enough to wake me up and get my heart pumping. I dried off quickly, standing in front of the mirror and looking at myself.
My appearance now was enough to banish the dreams where I had been only twenty.
I dressed, taking my time to put on a bolero string tie and then my cowboy hat. I stared in the mirror at the man staring back at me. I stripped down again and redressed. Button down shirt and slacks. I shook my head and stripped down before dressing in just jeans and boots. When I looked in the mirror I just stared.
God, I looked like Hell warmed over.
I made myself breakfast, well, another slice of Miss Mary-Beth's casserole to be honest. I just cut it from the whole and thew it on a plate, not bothering to heat it up. I plopped the plate down on the table, sat down, and dug in. When I was done I got up and stared at the table. Did I want another slice?
No. I couldn't remember how what I had eaten tasted anyway.
My limbs still felt heavy, my body weird feeling. Like I'd been exposed to anesthetic or something.
Something was wrong with me, but I didn't know what.
I thought about calling the shrink, thought about calling Doc Rutheford, but pushed the thought away. I was just having the effect of dreaming of Pru all night, dreaming of watching our son play in the school playground on his first day of school. Pru had been worried, afraid for him, and to calm her I'd parked the truck outside the playground and we just sat and watched.
The cop that showed up, probably summoned by the fact a man and a woman were sitting in a truck for over an hour watching the kids play, understood completely and had chatted with us about how he and his wife had been nervous during each of his children's first day of school.
I pushed the memory away, almost savagely, by biting the muscle in between my thumb and pointer finger, then concentrated on eating.
Afterwards I went through the house, checking the locks and door knobs.
My breakfast done I went and sat in front of the computer and staring at it.
I fired up the game, playing, losing myself in the digital world to run away from the memory of Pru and the dreams I'd had all night. I knew when night fell, using the little pop-up clock mod someone had suggested I install to keep track of the time.
I met up with some people and started talking in the chat, listening to the advice they were willing to give someone new to the game and eventually taking them up on the offer of running a couple dungeons to get the hang of it and to gear/level up. They walked me through getting on a voicechat in order to be able to talk to one another. There was some teasing about my voice, a little more about my accent, but it was just shit-talking.
Internet wasn't that different from the military. The more you liked someone, the more elaborate the insults. When I realized that, I also realized that if you got offended or got your feelings hurt, they just mocked you harder.
It was a lot of fun. They were patient with me, explaining what I'd done wrong. When I didn't make the same mistakes on the second run, or the mistakes I made on the second during the third run, they were a lot more forgiving.
It was four in the morning by the time we got done.
I ate more casserole and fell asleep on the couch.
When I woke up I, reaching for Pru, I sat on the couch, weeping. Once I got control of myself I showered, put on boxers, and went back to playing. I switched to the superhero one. This one was a lot more relaxed. I spent time drawing maps, looking at the pages on the internet that argued over what was the best build, and exploring.
I went out, ate some casserole, and went to sleep on the couch again. When I got up, I sat on the couch, crying after the dreams of Pru. I went back to the fantasy one, eating casserole when I got hungry, sleeping when I got tired, and crying over Pru when I woke up.
I alternated between the fantasy one and the superhero one, taking breaks to read web pages, draw maps, or sketch stuff to help me figure out the math. Thankfully, more than a few of the web pages had the raw math behind the game listed down, which let me draw the formula in pen with the variables blank so I could put it in pencil.
I sunk myself into it, twice falling asleep at the computer. The UPS and mail truck kept showing up, bringing me stuff I had ordered on eBay or Amazon. I'd take a break from playing to set everything up or put it away, and made a list of stuff I was missing.
When I wasn't playing either the fantasy or superhero online game, I was sleeping or shopping for the stuff to add to my collection. When I'd get done, I'd eat out of a can or eat some of the casserole, then go back to playing, often talking to people on the voice chat.
One of the times, I woke up and stretched, seeing where Miss Lily-Rylee's notebook had fallen on the floor.
I flipped through Miss Lily-Rylee's notes until I saw something I'd missed.
A way to get a hold of her without a phone.
I booted up the program, signing in, and sending her a message.
>You there? Wanna meet in one of the games?
No answer.
I had mental image of her, sitting up till 2AM, playing a video game, only in her underwear, sweating in the summer heat and cursing into her headset.
The idea thrilled me, more than on a sexual level, but the idea of company, someone alive besides myself in the house.
I started playing the multiplayer game again, exploring the world, keeping an ear out for the chime of the messenger service. I lost myself in exploring the world, marvelling at the details and the little things.
I got in with a group on each side that were willing to do raids of the harder.Once I'd done all the raids I could, on both sides of the game, I started running dungeons. I got with a group that wanted to cruise them, doing them back to back.
We'd finished the fourth run when I heard the chime. I told the people I was running with I had to go then swapped screens to the chat program.
BlackSox> You there?
BlackSox> Hey, KY, you there?
BlackSox> Dude, quit jerking off answer me
BlackSox> Are you all right? what's going on
BlackSox> Fuck it. See u in 20
Crap, that was nearly 35 minutes ago. I missed the sound of the chat program with all the howl and scream of combat and magic in the dungeon.
Just in time I heard the crunch of gravel out front. I stood up, looking out the window I'd cracked over to let the heat out, and saw that Miss Lily-Rylee had just pulled up. When she got out of her little car I saw she was wearing a pair of Daisy-Duke shorts, her Hello Kitty running shoes, and an energy drink T-shirt she'd cut the sleeves off of.
I watched her hustle toward the door and went over to meet her, opening the door just as she reached out to knock.
"I hate that, Sam," she smiled. "Had me worried about you."
I just shrugged, moving over for her to come in. She looked around, then turned back to me, frowning.
"Sam, are you all right?" she asked me. "I haven't heard from you in almost a week."
I shrugged. "Yeah," I told her, closing the door. "I mean, I guess. Been busy."
She walked up and took my hand. "Sam, come here," She tugged gently. When I reached her she wrapped her arms around me tight, squeezing me against her.
For a moment nothing changed, then it hit me.
I started crying, slumping in her arms and slowly going to my knees. I was holding her tight, sobbing, clutching tightly to her like I was drowning. She went down with me, holding onto me and letting me sob against her shoulder. It took a long few minutes for me to calm down and push her away.
Before I cloud push her all the way away from me she pulled me close again, hugging me again.
"Just hold onto me, Sam," She said softly. I hugged her back and after a moment she let me go.
"Gonna wash my face," I told her, getting to my feet. She nodded, still kneeling, and I turned away from her before the thought that started to form could completely materialize. I went in and washed my face.
"Holy shit, Sam, have you been playing straight since I was last here?" She called out.
"Huh?" I headed to the computer room. She'd brought up the character select screen. "What?"
Miss Lily-Rylee clicked on one character, checked the inventory and equipped gear, checked my stats and the rest, then switched out to the other one to do the same. Then she logged out and swiveled the chair to look at me.
"You've got raid gear, you're running high end builds, and you're running a character for each side," She shook her head, reaching out and tapping the character select screen. "You've loaded mods, you've got everything tweaked like you've been playing this game since launch."
I grabbed the other chair, pulling it over and sitting it next to her before picking up my notebook. I flipped it open and handed it to her. "This all helped."
Miss Lily-Rylee thumbed through it, looking up several times. "You drew these maps?"
I nodded. "I drew the party maps. A friend of mine was the GM, he drew amazing maps. It was my job to make maps for us to keep track of where we'd been in our game."
She tapped the maps, smiling. "These maps are interesting," she flipped the page. "Wow, you even mapped out the bases and the dungeons."
"Knowing where you're going is half the fun of figuring out where you haven't been," I told her.
She turned another page, then another. She kept looking at the pages, then up at me. "You took screenshots of your game's internal map, printed them out?"
I nodded.
"Then you redrew them? Damn," She kept going through it. "Wow," she shook her head, leafing through it. "You spent a lot of time on this."
She set the notebook to the side, putting her hand on my knee "Sam?"
I looked at her. "What?"
"Have you been taking your medication?" Miss Lily-Rylee asked me gently.
I shook my head. "I don't know."
Miss Lily-Rylee shook her head, rubbing my thigh. "Sam, you can't do that. Doctor Rutheford told you that it was important for you to take the medication. If you stop, it'll slowly go out of your system and you'll get slowly worse until you have another nervous breakdown."
She put her hand on my chest. "That's odd," She said. She frowned and put her hand on the back of my neck, then on my chest again. "You're actually warmer than you should be. Do you have a thermometer?"
I nodded, starting to stand up.
"Nuh-uh, stud, you sit there," she said. She went into the bathroom then came back in to bedroom holding a thermometer. "Open."
I did it, obediently, and waited for her to finish taking my temperature.
"You've been getting your stuff set up," she said, looking around the room.
I'd bought old 80's band silk posters, most of them heavy metal, and hung them up. I'd bought a few movie posters, framed them, and hung them up. I had maps I'd drawn or found to order online that I'd hung up. She looked at the glass case containing pre-painted by the retailer lead and pewter AD&D miniatures.
"This room is a geek's wet dream," She laughed.
"Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts, Shadowrun, my God, did you buy everything?"
"Mm-hmm," I said, nodding.
She shook her head again, going over to the small table where I had paints and figures set out, as well as a magnifying glass assisted clamp setup to hold the figure stable so I could do fine detail. I had created wash for shadow.
"You painting these?" she asked me.
I nodded and afterwards she took the thermometer out of my mouth, checking it.
"Yeah, keep my fine motor schools good," I told her.
"One oh one," She said, shaking her head. She leaned forward and sniffed. "When was the last time you showered, Sam?"
I shrugged. "Day you were here," I grinned.
"All right, stay here," she told me. "Where's your pills?"
"Bedroom," I told her.
She sighed, standing up. "Get up, Sam, let's get you into the shower," She told me. She held up her hand and I took it, letting her tug me to my feet. She looked down. "You're just sitting in your boxers, playing Warcraft?"
"Yup," I told her as we went into the bedroom. I reached out and grabbed my bottles of pills, taking them with us into the master-bathroom. There was a can of iced-tea and I grabbed it too, following her.
She looked around. "Wow, this is a hell of a bathroom, Sam."
"Thanks," I told her. She held out her hand and I handed her the pill bottles.
She opened the bottles, getting out one pill at a time and handing them to me. I cracked open the tea and swallowed them one at a time with a swig of tea.
"Shower time, champ," she told me when I was done. "Sam?" I looked her and she grinned.
And stripped off her shirt. "BOOBS!"
I flushed, turning around, and she laughed at me.
"Off with the shorts, Sam," She said. Before I could react, she pulled them down around my knees. They fell down and she pushed me slightly. "Move."
I took a couple steps forward and she opened the frosted glass door, starting the water.
I tried to ignore that she was bent over, the positioning spreading her cheeks open as well as her puffy outer lips.
"Like the view?" She asked, looking back at me.
I flushed and looked away.
After a few moments she spoke again.
"Water's hot, Sam," she said. She reached out , grabbed my hand, and tugged.
I turned around, blushing, and trying not to look at her. I closed my eyes and she giggled, guiding me into the warm water. She handed me the soap, and I washed off.
"Wash yer balls, Tex," she giggled.
"Um," I said.
I felt her step forward, those soft breasts of her pressing against me. "Would you like me to do it, Samuel?" She asked softly.
I tried to say something, but her hand took the soap from my mine.
"Hold still," She said, barely audible over the water. Her hand cupped me, softly, gently, and began gently washing me down there.
Which made me react.
"Oh, my, Sam," she said, gently. She started stroking gently and gave a deep sigh, almost needy sounding. "I should stop."
I opened my eyes, looking down at her. She was looking up at me and leaned back slightly, letting me see her water covered breasts fully.
"Oh, you liked that," She giggled.
She stepped back. "I think you're clean," She smiled.
I groaned, and looked away from her.
"Come on, let's get you dried off," She said, opening the shower door and stepping out. "Turn off the water and come on."
I followed her instruction, seeing that she had a towel wrapped around her. She waited till I was done then took my hand, leading me to the bed. She helped me over to the bed, climbing onto it, giving me a view of her plump ass and gash again. She sat down and just as she held her hand out I yawned.
"There you go, Sam," She smiled. "I knew putting you in a warm shower would help."
I climbed onto the bed, letting her pull me onto the bed.
"Roll over," She said. "You're poking me."
I rolled over, letting her arms go around me.
"Just sleep, Sam," She said.
I yawned.
And slept.