Nightmare

In the dark I struggled to free myself. I kept crying out – screaming – "No… no…please…don't do this to me…let me go…please."

Strong hands held me and my struggles were useless against them. I could not see their faces in the dark, and their voices were indistinguishable murmurs. I only felt hands forcing my arms above my head and holding my ankles.

I had managed to lock my legs together, but it was futile. Whoever my assailants were, they made no effort to stifle my screams, and so I gave out with a piercing shriek as I felt my legs forced apart to expose my sex organ.

A body came over me and a hard pulsating penis probed for the entrance to my vagina. "Please…don't please…"

I woke with a start, sweating, gasping and shaking all over. My fingers were pressing against my vagina. Every night now I had my nightmare of being raped by unidentifiable men…held by unseen hands, always to wake up as a penis was about to be thrust into me, and always it was my own fingers that were being inserted.

It had not been like that at first, not for some time after Clive, my husband, had been killed in a motor car accident, Clive, my friend, companion, lover and other half.

At first it was Clive who came to me in the night. He would come to me in and, like the rapists, just as he was about to enter me, I would awake, not screaming and pleading for it to stop, but weeping, begging Clive not to leave me.

At other times I would dream I heard him knocking at the front door, and it was such a vivid dream I woke up and went racing to the door calling out, "Wait, Clive, wait my love, I'm coming darling." Of course, when I opened the door, there was no one there.

In time he came into my dreams no more, and for a while I slept in peace. Then began the awful dream of being raped. At first it was not every night. It would happen once or twice a week, but over a period of about three months it took place more and more until it became almost a nightly ritual.

At first Edmund my son responded to my cries and screams, coming into my bedroom to wake me up and asking what was the matter and was I all right.

Dear loving Edmund, the pride and joy of Clive and me. We had always seen him as a wonderful gift for our marriage, the fruit of our love. Even in those difficult teenage years he had never, as some teenagers do, sought to reject us. Perhaps that was because we somehow got it right in relation to gradually letting him go – letting him take more and more responsibility for his own life.

Of course, Edmund had enjoyed the favours of some of the girls at high school. The girls had been the sort who prefer the gentler male rather than the noisy macho types. Clive and I did get worried at one point when we learned that Edmund was enjoying the favours of a widow more than twice his age. After some consideration however, we agreed that the relationship, if it did not get too involved, would probably be good for Edmund.

As Clive commented, "She seems a decent sort of woman, and will probably teach him how to please his partner or wife later on."

Before Clive and I met I suspected there had been an older woman in his life. I never asked and he never told me, but even if he had, I would not have had grounds for getting on my high horse, as I had been initiated by a man much older than I. As a result, Clive and I had been able to please each other almost from our first night together.

I had told Edmund when he came to investigate my screams that I was just having a bad dream, without telling him what the dream was. I told him not to worry and to go back to sleep, as he had to get up early in the morning to get to work. He looked doubtful but I urged him, "Back to bed, darling."

After that he did not come to wake me again, but he did raise the matter with me as the nightmare began to arrive night after night. "Shouldn't you see the doctor or somebody?" he asked.

I at first declined the suggestion. I had more than an inkling of what the problem was. At forty I was still a very sexually potent woman. Clive and I had engaged in our love making at least four or five time a week. Once the sharp edge of my grief had been blunted, the craving for sexual gratification had returned.

I masturbated frequently, but this only seemed to stave off my sexual hunger for a very short time. I needed what I thought of as "the real thing." I wanted a man touching my body and declaring his love as Clive did. I wanted to take a man's penis into my hand and suck on his crown until he came, or feel him inside me as he spurted his seed into me as Clive did with such carefree abandon. In short, I wanted love and the things that went with love between a fertile woman and virile man.

I had hoped that the nightmare would go away, but it didn't, and I came to dread going to bed at night and the coming of sleep, knowing that my rape dream would hold me in its grip once more.

Finally I gave in and went to see my doctor. I told him the truth and he listened sympathetically, then with some humming and hurrumping he said, "I think, Zintra, you're right in your diagnoses of the cause. You are the sort of woman who needs a man, and knowing you and Clive as I have done over the years, it isn't just any man you want."

"No," I replied, "With Clive it was all the other things that went with sex, the love and companionship."

"There's not a great deal I can do to help you, Zintra, unless of course you want to go to a psychiatrist, but it's not as if your response to the situation is an abnormal one. I think perhaps we can try a mild sedative and see how that goes.

In the following days the "mild sedative" proved to be a bit less mild and bit more powerful, than I had expected. It left me drowsy and feeling vaguely unwell during the day, and sent me off to sleep quickly at night but it didn't stop the nightmare coming.

After giving the medication what I thought was a fair trial, I stopped taking it. The rape dream was beginning to really undermine me by then. I thought it might not be so frightening if I could somehow enjoy the dream, allow myself to submit as I believe some women do when subjected to a real rape attack.

Even this was no help. The dream simply would not allow me to feel anything but terror as I was held down and the crown of a penis pushed against my vagina. In any case, if it is possible that a woman can enjoy rape, which I doubt, the penis of the faceless assailant never actually penetrated my vagina. I always woke up at the time when, in normal sexual intercourse, one would expect to feel the length slide into the female tunnel.

Edmund still heard my cries and pleadings, and started to comment on how pale I was looking. He also noted that I was not eating properly and now seemed always to have a pain.

He was right about the pain. It was a dull ache in my lower abdomen – an ache that masturbation might disperse temporarily, but even this became ever more ineffective.

The ache was physical, but it was also emotional. I have said that I was still an extremely fertile woman, and one of the regrets that Clive and I had, was that we had only had one child. For some years we went for all sorts of tests, and finally it was pronounced that there was no reason why I should not get pregnant, but that there was something amiss with Clive's sperm.

After that, we accepted the situation, and focused our love on each other and Edmund.

Now, after my recovery from Clive's death, I think the ache I felt was not simply the result of sexual deprivation; it was also a sense of loss for the other child or children I had never had. Ridiculously for a forty year old woman, I wanted to be pregnant.

I was fully aware that I was still capable of bearing a child, at least as far as my fertility was concerned, but I had doubts about the advisability of pregnancy at my age. I had heard it said that a woman should not get pregnant after she was around thirty five or six.

On a visit to my doctor I casually asked him about this, and he laughed and said, "I suppose that they are right up to a point, Zintra, but I have known women in their forties to get pregnant, and thoroughly enjoy it." Then laughing again he said, "I read recently of a woman of sixty two giving birth, but I wouldn't advise it. Why do you ask, do you think you're pregnant?"

"No," I replied a little unhappily, "I just wish I was sometimes."

"Well, perhaps you'll find someone, Zintra, before it too late."

That closed the subject, and I went home to try and get some temporary relief for my ache by masturbating.

Edmund's increasing concern for my appearance and health began to zero in on my dream. He realised, I think, that I had come to terms with my grieving for Clive. In trying to understand why I looked so pale and was eating so badly, he concluded that the dream was the source of the problem.

He wanted to know the content of the dream, and for a long time I held back from telling him. I pushed his questions away with, "It's only a dream, darling."

Edmund was no fool; he understood that dreams can carry meanings beneath the actual content as the dreamer perceives it. So he pressed me to tell about my dream.

If I was right about the underlying meaning of my dream, then I was too shy or too ashamed to tell my own son that I was craving for love and sex, and the dream represented a battle going on inside me.

That battle now seemed to be, my longing for sex and pregnancy, but it had to be with someone I loved – loved deeply as I had loved Clive. In my hunger the dream allowed me to go so far – the moment of entry into my vagina – but then woke me up, thus saving me from some feelings of guilt.

I began to wonder if I was being too fastidious. Perhaps I should find some man who smelt clean, and start having sex with him. Certainly there was no lack of men who would have willingly bedded me, many of them husbands of my friends, but I could not bring myself to do it. Perhaps I was being greedy, but I wanted more.

I started to have fits of crying, yet could not properly distinguish what I was crying about. A general depression seemed to take hold of me, and I passed my days in gloomy despair. I can best describe it as an objectless fear or dread, and I started to wonder if I was going out of my mind, and began to consider the idea of going to a psychiatrist.

Before it came to that, a critical moment arrived. Edmund and I were watching a television documentary that included a segment on people plagued by dreams or nightmares. I felt the tears coming and tried to fight them down, but I finally broke out into agonising sobs.

I made to flee from the room, but Edmund took hold of me round the waist and pulled me back on to the couch where we were sitting together.

"Come on mother," he said gently, "Don't you think it's time for us to talk about those dreams of yours? You've hidden them long enough, let's have it out in the open."

He had caught me in a vulnerable moment, and I leaned against him, at first hiding my face against his chest. As my sobs diminished I started to open up to him.

"It isn't really dreams darling, it's always the same dream." I not only went on to tell him of the rape dream, but perhaps foolishly told him of my interpretation – of my waking need for love and sex, and the desire to have a child before it was too late.

When I finished Edmund was silent for a long time, as if he was trying to digest what I had revealed to him. He did not remove his arm from me, but I feared he would feel disgust at his forty year old mother wanting sex and a baby.

When he did speak it was very softly, almost a whisper. "I know how you and dad loved each other," he said. "I was witness to it because of the affection you always showed each other. I also heard you at night…"

"Edmund…!"

"Sorry mum, but it's a fact. You two made quite a bit of noise when you made love. I often laid awake listening to you, almost envying your passionate love for each other. I used to think, 'One day I want to find a woman I can love with like that'. Mind you, I had no cause for complaint. You and dad always seemed to have enough love left over for me…"

"Of course we did, Edmund, you were part of our love – a result of it."

"I know, mum, and it's a beautiful thing…and the love you and dad had for each other was beautiful, but you're still a woman with a woman's needs, and the more you try to fight against them, the greater the pressure those needs will exert. I think you must find that love again, with someone else."

"Where am I going to find someone Edmund? Oh, there are plenty of men willing to fuck me, but it's not so easy to find the love your father and I had."

"No, it isn't," he replied thoughtfully, "but at least you could stop fighting your needs, accept them, and who knows what might happen?"

He was saying nothing I had not thought about for myself, and I had not told him much more than I had told my doctor, but to hear him say it, to realise that he accepted me as a sexual being, I found to be an enormous comfort. I understood then, that in future I could be open with him. There was no need to hide what I had thought to be my guilty secret where Edmund was concerned.

"Thank you, darling," I said. "Thank you for being so accepting of what I have told you, and for your comfort."

He smiled and said, "Shouldn't we always be ready to accept the ones we love?"

That seemed to be the end of the conversation, so I kissed him softly on the lips, said good night, and made my way to bed.

That night, as always, I masturbated soon after I got into bed. At the point of my orgasm I had, in the past, fantasised about faceless men penetrating me. Now I found myself fantasising Edmund loving me.

The strange thing was, I felt neither repelled nor guilty, and it simply felt like the most natural thing in the world.

When I finished I felt a peace I had not experienced for a long time. I slipped into a calm sleep, and the next thing I knew, I was coming to in the morning.

I could hardly believe it. I had passed the night without my rape dream. For the first time in months I had been without my nightly visitation. I felt refreshed – almost a new woman. I rose and after showering went into the kitchen for breakfast.

Edmund was already there eating. He looked up as I came in and smiled, saying, "I didn't hear you last night."

"No darling, I didn't have my nightmare."

He looked at me strangely for a moment, and then said quite simply, "Good."

He left for work soon after, kissing me as he departed. I proceeded to eat a breakfast the size of which afterwards made me admonish myself, "You'll put on weight if you go on like that, Zintra."

My admonition made no difference, and I later ate a hearty lunch. After lunch I lay on my bed to masturbate, and instead of the almost despairing attempts to relieve myself in the past, this time it was a joyful, exultant event. Once more I fantasised Edmund, and rejoiced in doing so.

I told myself that this fantasising of Edmund was the result of his tender treatment of me the previous night, and the fact that he looked so like Clive. Feeling no guilt about it, I decided that I would simply go on enjoying it.

Throughout the day I actually found myself singing and even felt like dancing. I told myself I was behaving like a teenage girl who had fallen in love for the first time, but this admonition did no more good than the others. I felt wonderful.

In the course of the afternoon I began to think about Edmund. I reconsidered why I was fantasising him in my masturbating, and found myself, as it were in cold blood, wondering what it would be like to make love with him.

I recalled the widow he had, and perhaps still was, having sex with, and felt a pang of envy. Then I remembered something he had said the night before that had passed almost unnoticed at the time. He had said that he had envied Clive and me when we made love.

Did he mean this in a general way, or was he really saying that he envied Clive because he could have me? I was mentally suddenly pulled up short. Why was I thinking like this? Why should I wonder in which way Edmund had meant that word "envy"?

"My God, was I thinking about being fucked by my own son? Of course I was, and I decided I'd better stamp that fire out as quickly as possible. The result was my joyous mood of only a few minutes ago started to be overcast with dark clouds.

I began to accuse myself, to call myself a filthy incestuous woman. I even felt I should be punished in some way for harbouring sexual thoughts about my own son.

The tears came, and this time there was no Edmund to comfort me, and if he had been with me, I certainly could not reveal my thoughts and feelings to him. Damn it, there was no one I could reveal them to. To do so would make me a pariah, an outcast from decent society.

I tried to absorb myself in preparing the evening meal, but the confused jumble of thoughts and emotions kept bursting into my head. I wanted to run away, but knew enough to realise that what I thought and felt would run away with me.

Edmund detected my mood within minutes of his arrival home.

"Mother, you seemed so happy when I left for work, but you look absolutely miserable now, what's happened?"

I muttered something about having a bad day, everything going wrong, and did so in a manner that suggested no further questions would be welcome.

During the meal I found myself looking speculatively at Edmund, once more weighing him up as a male…as a sexual being.

After we had cleared up Edmund said, "I'm going out this evening, mum, I might be home a bit late."

He had said something like this countless times, but this time I snapped, "Going to see your sexy widow, are you?"

He looked surprised, but responded quite calmly, "Yes, I am."

"I hope she comes across for you," I snarled.

Edmund looked at me for a moment, and then said very quietly, "I have a lot of reason to be grateful to her, and although you don't know it, so have you."

With that he turned and left the room.

A while later I heard him in the shower, and soon after the front door opened and closed, and he was gone. I hated myself for what I had said and the manner in which I had said it, and wondered how I could apologise.

By the time I was ready to go to bed Edmund had still not returned. I showered and got miserably into the bed. I masturbated, but it was not the joyful release of the previous night. As my climax came I moaned desolately, "Edmund, oh Edmund, my love…"

I fell into a restless doze, coming to at intervals as I thought I heard Edmund returning. I ended up crying myself to sleep and then, some time in the early hours of the morning it must have been, I dreamed.

It was not my rape dream this time. It was of Edmund with her, the widow. I saw her plump sensuous body laying on a bed her arms extend to Edmund, and her legs open and drawn up, ready to receive him. He came upon her, his throbbing blood infused manhood seeking her vulva, and she, taking hold of his shaft guiding him into her.

He was just about to penetrate her vagina, when I cried out, "Edmund…Edmund…no my darling…please Edmund…no..."

"What is it, mother?"

It was Edmund's voice waking me. He was standing beside my bed in his night shorts, looking at me with deep concern.

I held out my arms to him, "Oh Edmund, Edmund, darling…"

He came down to me, putting his arms round me and holding me close.

"What is it? What is it? I heard you calling my name. Was it the nightmare again?"

"Not the old one, darling, it was worse, much worse."

"Do you want to tell me?"

"I can't, darling. It was too…too… shocking."

"Surely it couldn't have been that bad, mother. After what you told me the other night, it can't too hard to tell me about this dream? You were calling my name, was I in your dream?