A Guest at Dinner

Erika got dressed in her usual office attire, a short skirt, heels, and a dangerously low cut top. Then she stood up and walked over to where I was sitting on the edge of the bed. She looked angry as she stood over me and said, "Did you just play with yourself during a therapy session?"

"No, Dr. Erika, I would never do that," I said, lying intentionally as I assumed we were starting another role play adventure.

"Why do you insist on lying about your deviant behaviors?" she said, sounding far too angry to be realistically playing a psychiatrist/patient fantasy.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Erika, I'm just embarrassed is all."

"There will be no more sessions," she snapped. "I will refer you to another doctor for treatment, but it is obvious that our relationship is at an end."

I thought she was setting up some kind of role play where I begged her to keep seeing me as a patient, as so I proceeded to get on my knees and beg the way I assumed she wanted me to. In response she handed me the business card of a psychologist named Mark Jones and then became very serious as she told me she was making the referral because I "needed help" and then walked out of the hotel room.

I stayed there, on my knees, waiting for her to come back but she didn't. I looked around the room, then at the bed, with sheets thrown asunder, and wondered what had just happened.

She refused to take my calls at the office. Her receptionist told me that I needed to stop calling and follow the instructions Dr. Erika had given me, speaking to me as if I were a patient. My calls to Erika's cell phone went unanswered and unreturned. We stopped meeting at the hotel room and I did not see her again until she accepted Bella's invitation to dinner and showed up at our door.

"It's really coming down out there," I heard her telling Bella, who answered the door while I waited in the living room in front of the fire I had started.

"The fireplace is going," Bella told her. "I can get you a change of clothes if you want."

It had been over a month since I'd seen Erika, and I'd informed Bella that she had ended our affair. I withheld the details, saying only that Erika had decided to stop seeing me. We both felt that was also the end of our plan to invite her to dinner and turn it into something more. Then, during one of her sessions, Bella casually brought up the idea of Dr. Erika coming to the house for dinner and reported that she had responded by saying, "I think it would be a good idea to get a better idea of the environment you're living in. It might answer some questions I have."

Erika walked into the living room wearing a long black raincoat. Her blonde hair was drenched. Her face was wet and pink from the elements having their way with her exposed white flesh. Bella brought her a towel, which Erika used to dry her hair while standing in front of the fire. Her beauty, highlighted by the flames around her, made me long to be with her again the way we had been so many times before.

Bella again offered Erika a change of clothes, but she refused. Once she felt her face and hair were sufficiently dry, and she'd been warmed enough by the fire, Erika took off her raincoat, revealing that she was dressed in the much same fashion as she dressed at the office. She wore a tight white sweater of thin material, unbuttoned to midway between her breasts, a short skirt with a slit that ran well up her thigh along with five inch heels.

"I'm sorry you had to come out in this mess," Bella told her.

"You can't control the weather, Bella, no matter how hard you try," Erika told her.

Underneath the raincoat, Erika had stayed relatively dry. She sat down on the antique armchair beside the fireplace and used the towel to dry her shoes and lower legs. Then she handed the towel back to Bella, thanked her, and then turned her attention to me after Bella took the towel to the bathroom.

"How have you been?" she asked.

"I've been good," I told her as I unapologetically looked longingly at her beautiful legs, now crossed in front of her on the chair with the slit in her skirt riding up to her hip.

"Did you start seeing the therapist I recommended, Mark Jones?" she asked, sounding very serious.

"No, I haven't seen him," I said, betraying a tone of annoyance in my voice.

"I really wish you would," she said, maintaining a very professional tone. "I think you'd really benefit from some counseling, and he's very good."

I was openly annoyed with Erika, feeling she was playing some sort of sick game with me, pretending we'd never been embroiled in an affair, refusing to take my calls, and insisting I see a therapist. I got up from my chair and stormed off to the kitchen.

"Are you getting the wine, honey?" I heard Bella call out after I got to the kitchen.

"Yes, darling," I replied, trying to conceal my annoyance with Erika.

I came back with the wine, placing the three glasses on top of the coffee table, an antique of unspecified background made of mahogany. It could be unsettling if one noticed the intricate and very detailed posts at all four corners. The posts were carved to look like medusas, scowling in different directions with snakes that grew out their mouths which appeared to move with every crackling of flame from the fireplace.

I poured the wine from the bottle into the glasses, handed one to Erika without looking at her, and then smiled at Bella as I handed the second glass to her. I joined Bella on the sofa while she chatted with Erika.

"So, none of this is your furniture or artwork or anything, you said?" Erika asked Bella.

"It belongs to our landlord," Bella told her. "He made it a condition of the lease. We have to leave everything exactly as it was."

"Some of this furniture is worth a lot of money," Erika said. "The problem is you've got so many different styles and eras all mismatched up together. I mean, you've got a Chesterfield sofa that I'd guess is from the 1920s, a ribbon-back chair from sometime in the 18th century... but it doesn't matter. Your home is very charming and extremely eclectic."

"We like it," Bella told her while squeezing my hand tightly.

The sound of thunder rattled the light fixtures, causing Bella to jump and squeeze my hand even tighter as she gasped, "That was really close! That's bad!"

"It's just thunder, honey," I told her, trying to be reassuring while squeezing her hand back.

"Bella, it's normal to be startled by thunder, many people are," Erika told her after she'd shown no reaction to the thunder whatsoever.

"It is a sign that He is coming," Bella told her. "I don't like when He comes."

"Who is coming, Bella?" Erika asked her.

"It's just a delusion," I told Erika. "She knows it isn't real."

"I think you need to let Bella answer for herself," Erika said to me sternly, before looking back at my wife and asking, "Bella, who is coming?"

"I don't know his name but he rides on lightning and arrives with the thunder. He comes to judge the wicked and the evil."

"Do you think you are wicked and evil?" Erika asked Bella.

"No," Bella told her plainly. "He has already judged me and found that I was good and worthy of his mercy."

"Why don't you like it when he comes?"

"He tells me things," Bella explained. "He tells me things and I have to do what he tells me or there will be consequences."

"What kind of consequences?"

"I don't know. I always do what he tells me so I've never gotten any consequences."

Bella tended to shift into a being like a frightened child when she felt threatened by something, especially when it came to her delusions and believing they had taken form in the house. I wanted to change the subject, to distract her from obsessing about this entity she'd told me about before. Whenever there was a thunderstorm, she'd tell me "He is coming" but "He" never seemed to actually arrive.

Erika uncrossed her legs as I looked over at her. I was trying to signal with my eyes and expression that I wanted her to drop the subject. Instead of any acknowledgment of my concerns, I was greeted with a clear view of her smooth, hairless vagina before she slowly re-crossed her legs. She wasn't wearing any underwear under her skirt, and now I was distracted from the subject at hand.

"I tried shaving down there once," Bella said very matter-of-factly. "I ended up with really bad razor burn so I never tried it again."

"You can't just take a razor and shave it like you do with your legs," Erika said in response, not even breaking a smile as she kept her cool and professional demeanor. "There is a process involved. I get a regular waxing done by a professional. I could give you her number if you like."

"What do you think, honey?" Bella asked, turning towards me. "Would you like it if my cooch was all smooth like Erika's?"

"I like you just the way you are," I told her, "but if you want to try that, I think you should."

"It's just that Dr. Erika has such a nice looking cunt," Bella said. "Don't you like her cunt, honey?"

Bella's use of the word "cunt" took me by surprise, along with what she was saying, and I could not hide the discomfort in my reaction.

"Baby, come on, I think you're being rude," I said as I scrambled for something to say in response to her question.

"She's the one showing us her cunt," Bella said, sounding annoyed with me. "The least we can do is compliment her on her magnificent cunt if she's going to be nice enough to show it to us."

"Baby, don't you think you should check on dinner?" I asked her, trying to avoid any further comment on the subject she was insistent on pursuing.

"Oh, right, yes, I almost forgot. It should be ready. I made a roast," Bella said, looking at Erika and beaming with pride over her culinary exploits. "I hope you like it."

"She's definitely one of a kind," Erika remarked to me after Bella left the room en route to the kitchen.

"I'm sorry about that," I said. "Sometimes she just, well, you know..."

"She tends to say what she thinks, which isn't always a bad thing, but the normal social conventions seem to elude her quite often."

"I apologize, regardless," I told her. "That was way out of line."

"Oh, no bother," Erika said before uncrossing and re-crossing her legs, pausing long enough in between to give me another unobstructed view of that which had stirred up the controversy. "You didn't answer her question, though. What do you think about my cunt?"

"I try not to..."

"Well, I think I have a nice cunt and so does Bella. I'm sorry if you don't agree."

"I didn't say that. I said I try not to think about it because ever since we stopped seeing each other I've been..."

"Seeing each other? What do you mean?" Erika asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

"You know what I'm talking about," I said. "Stop playing games with me."

"Honestly, I don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you just tell me you like my cunt?" Erika leaned back in her chair, uncrossed her legs and spread them open. "Look at it. How can you not like this cunt?"

"Just tell her you like her cunt, honey!" Bella yelled from the kitchen. "What's the big deal?"

"Okay, fine," I sighed and looked Erika directly in the eye. "You have a nice cunt."

"Do you really think so? Look at it again."

"Fine, I'll look at it again," I said, sounding extremely agitated.

I looked down at her vagina and was about to look back up at Erika and tell her I liked it when something caught my eye. There appeared to be something moving on or around it. I figured it was probably a trick of the lighting, from the flickering flames of the fireplace, and was about to look away when something parted her labia and pushed out from within her vagina.

"What the..."

Erika leaned back further in her chair and began softly moaning, spreading her legs so that she could open enough for what looked like the head of a hydra to peak out from between her legs. The head moved around, as if examining the environment around Erika's body very closely, and while it did, Erika's head moved around in a rhythm that mimicked the movements of the hydra.

"I have such a nice cunt," Erika said as her head moved around and she quietly moaned. "You love my cunt, don't you? You love it."

I didn't know if she was talking to me or the hydra, or whatever it was that was protruding from her vagina. I just sat and stared, in a state of shock, basically hypnotized by what I was seeing.

"You guys can come into the dining room," Bella called from the kitchen. "I'm bringing the dinner out now."

Erika sat up, her head stopped moving, her moans ceased, and she closed her legs before standing up and saying to me, "Shall we eat?" It was as if nothing had happened, or at least she was able to act as if nothing had. I wasn't about to ask. I didn't know what question I could possibly ask pertaining to what I'd seen that would make any sense at all.

Just as we sat down at the dining room table, with me at the head of the table and the two women to either side of me, another crash of thunder shook the house. It sounded very close, so close that I wondered if the house had been hit by lightning. Our basement apartment lacked windows, being completely underground, so we could not see the lightning. We could only hear the thunder.

The food was on the table, and we helped ourselves to portions of roast beef, mashed potatoes, green beans, and squash. Bella poured us all a fresh glass of wine and we began to eat. This crash of thunder seemed to leave her unfazed.

"We should say grace," Bella said after seeing Erika and I pick up our forks.

"Do you usually say grace?" Erika asked.

"Only before the lights go out," Bella said.

Seconds later, the lights flickered and went out. We sat in complete darkness until a lit candle appeared in the center of the table. Bella always kept one handy in each room in case of a power outage.

"Too late for grace; we should get more candles," Bella said. "That one isn't going to cut it, I'm afraid."

"I know where they are, I'll be right back," I said before walking back to the living room, which was well illuminated by the fireplace, and grabbing the candelabra we kept in the antique cabinet by the door. I found it and searched for the matches we kept next to it, but then each of the five candles on the candelabra ignited simultaneously without my having lit them.

I stood frozen for several moments, trying to understand how this had happened, and seeing no one anywhere in my immediate area. The basement apartment, with its ancient furnishings and trappings, had often felt and looked like a haunted house. Bella often reported weird and unusual phenomenon, but I always attributed those to her delusions and paranoia because I'd never encountered anything like she described anywhere in the house, only shadows and illusions easily explained.

There was another violent crash of thunder as I got back to the dining room. I could hear cabinets fly open in the kitchen. Plates and glassware fell crashing to the floor. I put the candelabra on the table and looked at Bella's face, which was as white as Erika's thighs.

"He's here," she said without any fear or concern whatsoever. Bella just stared at me like she was catatonic, not moving at all or speaking another word.

"Has this happened before?" Erika asked calmly as I turned to look at her. "I don't mean the power going out, I mean that," she explained as she pointed at Bella's face.

"Only when something really, really scares her. Once she told me she saw a 'ghost' in the living room. Another time she said a woman was being murdered in the woods outside. Those were the only other times she got like this."

"She needs time to understand, on her own terms, that it isn't real, that this person or thing she's talking about isn't really here. How long did it take her to come back those other times?"

"About an hour or so," I said.

"Are you okay?" Erika asked me.

"I'm not really sure," I told her, looking at the candelabra and then at her. "Is everything okay with, um, you?"

"I'm fine," Erika said, finally smiling but choosing a strange time to do it. "I've always liked it when the lights go out, ever since I was a little girl. You know how everything seems really spooky and you think someone is going to pop out from behind furniture and grab you? I love that feeling, but then you know it isn't real, so you get spooked but you don't get that fear that paralyzes you."

"Like Bella?"

"Yeah, like Bella. To her these things are real and she can't explain them away the way we do."

"Okay, seriously, what was up with the hydra or whatever back in the living room?" I said, no longer able to contain my need to know what I'd witnessed.

"There was a hydra in the living room?" Erika asked, looking perplexed by my question. "Maybe I should be worried about you, now?"

"No, there was a hydra or something, maybe some kind of dildo, I don't know, but it was coming out of you and... well, fuck, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Stop fucking with me."

"You saw something phallic coming out of my cunt?" she laughed. "Damn, talk about projection! That takes the cake."

"Can you please stop saying the word 'cunt'? Every time you say that I feel like I just put a fork in an electrical socket."

"What's the matter with the word cunt? That's what it is, isn't it? A cunt?"

"Fine, whatever, I don't even care, fuck it," I said, throwing up my arms and picking up the lone candle to light my way back to the living room. My official reason for leaving the dining room was to find more candles, but I just wanted to get away from Erika and whatever game she was playing with me.

The candle cast shadows everywhere as the flame danced as if being blown about by wind. I didn't feel any wind. The air felt heavy, damp, and musty. It always felt that way in the apartment, but in the dark it was so much more pronounced.

I felt a presence, as if someone was out in the hallway that led from the living room to our front door. It was possible someone had come into the house. I walked towards the hall to see if someone was there.

"Who's out there?" I asked as I got to the hallway and looked into the darkness towards the front door. "Is that you, Mr. Stein?"

I could only see shadows and what the dancing flame on the candle seemed inclined to illuminate, so I walked cautiously towards the door. When I reached it and held the candle out in front of me, I could see the door was ajar. My first thought was to close and lock it, but upon further consideration decided to open it and look outside.

Our front door did not lead directly outside. It led to a small landing with steps that led up to another door that led outside. There was a flash of lightning that illuminated a figure in the glass windows of the external door. The flash did not last long enough for me to determine its identity.

I took careful steps towards the concrete stairs lead up to the door, trying to hold the candle up in an effort to identify whoever was there. My efforts were futile. The candle did not cast enough light.

Then the tapping began. At first it sounded like a tree branch rapping against the window, leading me to believe one had fallen in front of the door, creating the illusion of a human figure in the darkness. I called out to it, "Who's there?" but received no answer.

As I got closer to the stairs and placed my foot on the first step, I became acutely aware of the sounds of wind and rain outside, drowning out any other sounds that might have been present. The tapping began again, this time in earnest, so I began taking each step slowly, my heart racing, as I climbed steadily towards the door.

The sounds of wind and rain got louder with every step, but so did the tapping. Then I heard the sound of the old metal doorknob scraping against the plate. I hoped Bella had locked the door after letting Erika in, as even though we normally left the interior door unlocked, we usually locked this one before going to bed.