A SLEEPLESS NIGHT

Lorna is most confused...

There was never going to be another day like this largely because there was never going to be another day…

That was what Lorna thought as she lay on her bed watching the sun slowly sinking as it peered through her window and winked at her.

“Well, lovely lady, this is almost it,” it said, its rotund voice beautifully clear as if it had just sipped good red wine from a celestial glass.

“I know,” she snapped back at it, “there’s no need to rub it in! I’ve been dreading this day since the day I was born more than eighty years ago. I know I was going to die one day and, well, I know that today’s the day.”

“No need for you to be so moody. What’s wrong with you?” the twinkling rays seemed to murmur, orange and red, as they sank closer to the horizon.

“I need love,” she replied, “human love. I need a man here with me, and not just any man because I need Lance and all the things we can do together, things that make me tingle with life rather than this morbid ending. I never did like endings, and this is the worst ending of the lot.”

“I have endings too,” remarked the setting sun, looking peevish, “every bloody day; see how I sink down until you can no longer see me. Out of sight and I guess as far as you’re concerned, out of mind. And when I’m gone you get on with such mundane things as the love you were just wittering about, and Lance. Look at me: I have no partner, nobody to cuddle up to, just a black sky to try to heat up so that you mortals don’t freeze to death.”

Before she could reply, his last shaft of light was gone, behind the cathedral where Lance’s ashes been scattered.

Lance had been a life-long lover, his life rather than hers because he had died on the young side of seventy, taking all his passion and the things he could do to her with him, leaving her so terribly alone, especially at night after the sun had set.

And he could do some things. All of them good things, none of them smutty, because, as he said, if you love someone there’s no such thing as smut…

Unless death is.

It had been promised to her for ages. Tonight, the thirteenth of December, which was one of the shortest days and longest lonely nights. Madame Priscilla had read it in the tea leaves for her, what, years ago, before even Lance had died. The thirteenth of December in your eightieth year, she had promised her. And thst was now, as sure as eggs are eggs.

Then the vicar had confirmed it, sort of. He had called in to see her, she being in his parish and one of the oldest ladies there. She liked the Reverend Tobold because he was very understanding. He knew the essence of loneliness because, he said, he was in the church and nobody opened their minds completely to him because they assumed he wouldn’t understand such things as human love because it was said that he loved a bearded fairy in the skies, and that sort of being isn’t remotely human. Not at all. It’s a creator and a million times superior to two bodies thrashing together at midnight after a jug of good ale, which is how he assumed non-church people lived. Or so Lorna thought.

“You know that we’re all mortal,” he had said, ignoring the way she stroked his hand as it hovered within easy reach of her bosom, “and just as thirteen follows twelve so death follows life…”

It hadn’t made sense at the time, which hadn’t mattered because his hands had one or two better things to do to her cringing flesh before he went.

But she remembered it now. Just as thirteen follows twelve so death follows life…

Blast the sun! Couldn’t the old thing spare her a few more minutes to confirm the prediction for her? And why had the Reverend Tobold had to die? The very same day as he had chuntered about thirteen following twelve, he had passed to what he thought might be Heaven, though she had her doubts about that.

Never once, in her many conversations she’d had with the sun, had it mentioned Heaven, which it surely would have had it been anywhere near such a place with that name. But the sun merely warbled about eternity and the magic of light years together with the mysteries of humanity when it could be bothered to mention anything at all. No overcrowded Heaven filled with corpses had even appeared as a possibility on the edge of its eternal perception.

Maybe the ancient Egyptians had it right. The sun was God so where it wandered in Earth’s orbit round it and it’s orbit through the solar system was Heaven. That must be it. So during the day Heaven was here. And at night? Love had been heaven, hadn’t it?

Sod Lance for dying. Wasn’t it the very pits to leave a loving wife without a hand to caress her or lips to whisper sweet nothings in her ear? Like “I’ll love you for ever and a day, sweetest lady in the whole of the big wide Universe…” That sort of thing. She had liked hearing it, and not even the Reverend Tobold before his own premature demise had equalled the thrill such words gave her.

“Shift across, then,” said Lance.

Now where had he come from? Nothing’s right tonight. The sun’s gone away, and now the dead are fidgeting next to her in bed all of a sudden and all she wants to do is sleep, and in sleeping die.

“You’re bloody cold,” she muttered.

“You try spending year after year in a draughty old coffin and see how you’d feel,” he said to her, allowing an icy finger to trail across her stomach like he always had.

“You silly boy. You were cremated!” she laughed.

“So?” he smiled, “let’s make love like we used to, gloriously and lasting half way until dawn.”

“Lance,” she said coldly, “you’ve left it too late. I’m dying myself tonight according to the best evidence that Madame Priscilla had produced from the dregs in her tea cup.”

“That’s too bad,” sighed Lance, tickling her where she hadn’t been tickled since before he’d had his last heart attack. “I thought I’d pop in and collect you. I’ve been having a gay relationship with a dead vicar, but I’m bored with that and want to get back with you, just like we used to be.

“But we were alive then,” she pointed out.

He might have replied to that and even showed that he saw the logic of her words, but the sun decided it was a new day and it ought to put in an appearance, there not being much in the way of clouds about..

“December the fourteenth,” it announced as it washed her face with a sparkling ray of light, “and all is well.”

“No it isn’t!” she snapped, “I’m still alive!”

“I’ll be going then,” breathed Lance, “see you when the end comes, and then we’ll make glorious love like we used to, from dusk to dawn. If I can get my ashes excited enough, of course…”

“I wonder what the new vicar’s like in bed?” thought Lorna, closing her eyes, “it’s been a long night…”

© Peter Rogerson, 13.09.23

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