The Ghostwriter's Words

Sara: Trouble with Travel

"What can I possibly be thinking?" Sara muttered to herself as her bed partner recovered his breath and his fingers resumed their insistent exploration of her body. She rolled beyond their reach and onto her feet with the sudden urge to rinse out her mouth, which she'd sworn to Claire had never been a concern of hers. Then a flood of foreign emotions washed through her like some awful poison.

What is going on?

What are these awful feelings? Guilt? Shame? Regret?

She'd done her best to leave these behind with the clothes she dropped on her father's floor. Shame? Well, she'd allowed herself no shame associated with nudity since that moment, nor guilt with having sex with a multitude of people, mostly men, over the years, with groups, multiple partners, and often spectators – especially those perverts from the Faith that she'd sadistically and regularly provided a show. No, she'd left shame well and truly dead on her father's floor. While guilt, she'd argued, based on her observations, never accomplished a single beneficial thing. If allowed to fester, it was crippling to the one experiencing it. And it never seemed satisfied reserving its damage for those infected alone but insisted on spreading itself to friends, family, and lovers, like an insidious disease.

Sammy, for example, was filled with guilt and regret. Eve's suicide and his failure to save her still gripped his soul centuries after the fact. Although, she'd never sensed that guilt spreading to infect her. Eve's suicide had nothing to do with her. She was only a child when Eve took that final step from the cliff, and Sara hadn't seen her often enough or spoken to her at all to have formed any memories of her own before that awful day. What she knew of Eve was what her mother had told her all those years ago. And the memories that Sammy had shared. Although she felt sadness for Sammy's pain, her efforts had been unable to heal.

Wait?

Was that regret?

Was that a tiny smear of guilt that she'd subconsciously allowed imaginary fingers to spread across her lips for her to ingest? Oh, for fuck's sake, stop! Sara snapped silently at herself. She'd been in an emotional tailspin for the past week between Claire, Sammy, and now, whatever he said his name was, which hardly mattered.

Sara did feel the occasional darkening shadow of Sammy's guilt related to herself, even though she'd vehemently disagreed that he'd ever harmed her and pleaded with him for centuries to stop claiming that he had. To no avail. Then there was the Professor for him to fume over. Sara still didn't believe she and the Professor had done anything wrong, but if Sammy insisted on assigning blame, it should be hers alone, and she couldn't help but feel sorry for the pain he'd allowed what they'd done to cause him.

She'd also had no part in her mother's death. But her failure to do more to have prevented it had left a specter lurking in the shadows, incessantly trying to convince her that she could and should have. She'd done her best to ignore it whenever she'd sensed its presence again until it slithered back into the darkness from which it came. Now that hideous creature was back, clear of the shadows, clawing at her conscience for her to open her arms, embrace it as her own, so it was free to gnaw at her soul.

"Go away. Why are you bothering me now?" Sara silently hissed in frustration. What she'd done a few minutes earlier was far from the first time she'd pleasured a man before he was fully awake in the morning. And that had been far from limited to only Sammy or the Professor. Morning wood was one of the joys of her life whenever she woke to discover it pushing up the sheets or trying to escape pajama bottoms, briefs, or shamelessly rising in plain sight. Wasn't that a bit of magic to observe? Although, yes, she would prefer that morning's wood had been Sammy's and that she'd have made it home to wake with him with that special Happy Birthday surprise.