After The Storm (Chapter-5)

The meal was good and Paul was not doing anything to raise any red flags. He was grateful for what Carissa had done for him and he knew that most women who lived alone wouldn’t have taken the chance to stop and help. Paul knew that Carissa was a strong woman and some of that was because of her father. They pushed their plates back and just sat and talked for the next two hours. Carissa was the first to feel the chill of the night air blowing over her skin.

She pointed at the wooded area behind her house and said, “There is a storm coming in, but it doesn’t look like it is as strong as the last one.”

Carissa stood and began gathering the serving dishes that still contained some food and Paul grabbed the plates and everything that was left. They felt a few sprinkles before they got completely inside and that was followed by a much harder rain.

Carissa said, “It looks like we are done outside for the evening.”

There was a chill in the air now from the wind and the dampened air. They made their way into Carissa’s den and Paul said he would build a fire to warm the room up from the chill. It could have been construed as a romantic move, but it was clear that Carissa still had all of her protective walls in place and Paul had too many questions about himself to get involved with anyone else at the moment.

The sun had long since gone to sleep and the rays that illuminated the room through the back windows had gone with the sun. The fire roaring in the fireplace and some light filtering in from the adjacent rooms, were the only things that prevented total darkness. Paul sat in a large low back chair with an ottoman, facing toward the fire and Carissa sat in a rocking chair next to Paul, also facing the fire. It was a warm feeling and Carissa appreciated the company. The fire crackled with an occasional pop and once in a while one of the smaller limbs would burn into smaller but separate pieces, allowing half of it to fall down into the ashes that were still dotted with red.

The warmth of the fire against their skin contrasted with the cold chill from their time on the deck and the still damp clothing they wore after coming inside. The rain was still falling outside and the droplets hitting the windows ran down making little trickles behind them. The thunder sounded in the distance and occasionally a clap loud enough to startle them would hit and attract their attention for a while. The lightning flashes were blinding and Paul seemed to react with each one but not too overtly, mostly just subtle flinches. Carissa stared into the fire, watching the flames, once brazen, now slowly shrinking to just a glow.

Paul stood up and said, “The day has been an adventure but it has also been demanding, especially for someone who is supposedly dead, so I think I should go and call it a night.”

Carissa replied, “Goodnight. I think I will be going to bed soon myself. Maybe we were just cooped up so long that we overdid things when we had the chance.”

Paul went into the room where he had slept ever since Carissa had pulled him into her SUV seat out of the highway and drove him to safety. Paul knew that was what happened, but he couldn’t even remember that.

Paul settled into bed and as soon as Carissa saw the light go out, she got up and headed for her own room. For the first time since the rescue, she didn’t stop by to check on how Paul was doing. From the indicators she had seen today, he was in pretty good shape. She went into her own bedroom and took the pistol out of the pocket she had kept it in and locked the door out of her new habit. She went in to take a shower and let the warm water wash the fatigue off her body and down the drain.

After drying off she put on a clean pair of pajamas and laid a robe right next to the bed in case she needed to get up in the middle of the night. She wished she had a decent book to read, something to take her from reality for a while but all she had was the one she had attempted to read when Paul was unconscious for so long. It was a romance novel and she was afraid to read much of it, afraid that it might have an effect on her mood.. She didn’t want any drama, she needed to keep things cool. It was laying open but face down on her nightstand. The right page had the familiar bent down triangular edge she was so familiar with. She picked it up and read down the marked page but quickly lost interest.

She knew the story too well. The couple always got together, and the woman never held her ground and kept up her defenses. That was the book she wanted to read, perhaps she would have to write it herself. In the room next door, all was quiet. There was no rustling of book pages and no moans of pain. She would guess that her patient was asleep. The one thing she had learned being a nurse for so long, was that women had harder times going to sleep.

Paul had fallen asleep, almost as soon as his head hit the pillow. It may have been a benefit that he had no memory, there would be nothing bothering him enough to prevent him from sleeping. He wasn’t laying quiet and still however, the lightning flashes had registered in his mind and his dream director was queuing up some memorable clips. He was taking deep breaths as the action played at a steady rate. The clips playing were all about flashes and he could feel the fear he had at the time.

He could visualize the storm and the wind blowing the rain, flinging it against a house. It wasn’t a house he ever remembered seeing. It was dark and gloomy and the only light against the darkness was the lightning flashes. He was walking around the yard but then he was banging on the door trying to get in, while the storm raged outside. He didn’t feel very tall and that confused him until he noticed the face looking back at him through the window of that house. It was his fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Marshal. He hadn’t thought of her in years.

There was a big clap of thunder, both in real life and also in his dream. It was enough to jar Paul awake and he lay there on the bed drenched in sweat and his body trembling. It was a scene from his past, but Paul was unclear as to what it was exactly. It was a tiny piece of memory and just enough to tie him to the past. He wasn’t sure exactly what it was, but it was the first bit of real memory he had been given and he was holding on to it. He didn’t want to forget it again so he sat up and walked over to some drawers looking for some paper and a pen to write down all that he saw.

Paul was still shaking when he made his way back to the bed and slid under the covers. He needed some rest but as far as he knew his subconscious was trying to communicate with him. He fell back to sleep and followed the previous pattern of tossing and turning under the cover. He was seeing the flashing of lightning and a storm coming in toward his house. He could see his mother working in the kitchen hurriedly trying to get dinner ready. He ran through the house and made circles around the table and then ran to the door as his father got home and walked through the entrance.

Paul never remembered greeting his father at the front door, but that certainly was his father that walked through the entrance. He woke up again, but no sweat this time and no shaking. He was at ease seeing his father, it was a good memory and he wrote down what he had seen in the dream. He had no idea why he was having the dreams, he hadn’t had any dreams since he had been in this house until tonight. It was becoming clear that no matter how sleepy he was his night was destined to be filled with dreams.

He got out of bed and found his way to a chair that overlooked the bed. It was a chair he knew, where Carissa had spent some nights wondering if he was going to recover or not. He could see the storm raging right outside the bedroom window. He got up and looked out. The trees that surrounded the house obscured most of the view that was out there. He couldn’t see down the road but he saw the fallen limbs that had been broken in the high winds of the storm.

Paul sat, thinking about the dreams and wondering what meaning he could draw from them. Maybe they were just dreams, but they were part of his past. He had finally remembered what his mother and father had looked like. He hadn’t seen any siblings, at least not yet. Perhaps he was an only child. That would explain why no one had been looking for him. No siblings and both parents dead. He didn’t have any memories to substantiate that, but only the pieced together dreams to make the story.

He certainly had more questions than answers and he couldn’t ever remember being particularly close to his fifth grade teacher, but he had no memory of her preventing him from coming inside a house. None of it made any sense, it was like watching a bad movie on the television. It seemed like someone else‘s event and not his. Maybe he had witnessed someone else being locked out and replaced his own image for the one that was witnessed.

Paul sat there in the darkness, filled with only the lights from the storm flashes. He sat trying to analyze his dreams but not having all the pieces to put the puzzle together. Paul sat in the chair, staring out the window until the storm subsided. With things more quiet than when he first lay down, Paul decided he would again try to sleep. He knew he wanted to and his eyelids were heavy enough to stay put if he closed them.

Paul walked the few steps and sat on the edge of the bed before swinging his legs up and getting them under the covers. He slowly and a little reluctantly slid his head in place and closed his eyes. Sleep came quickly and Paul rested in the quiet of his room. He was calm when he fell asleep and had no other visitors that night. The dreams were responsible for giving him small pieces of his past however they didn’t present him with any answers and he really needed them.