Seeds of Fear

FIVE SECONDS J. L. Comeau

Jane Hodges sits knitting furiously behind the wheel of her parked rental sedan while a tedious patter of autumn rain pummels the slick gray streets of downtown Washington, D.C. Intermittently she looks up from the flashing aluminum needles to dart a glance toward the dripping Spector Building, a ten-story Gothic monstrosity where her current lover is em ployed.

Lover. A sweet tingle spreads through her chest, making her vaguely sick with its intensity. Dorian.

Jane's fingers tremble at the thought of him, and she has to put her knitting down before she botches the intricate cable pattern of the sweater she is making for her sister's child, Patricia. Jane is childless, and knows that a niece is as close as she will ever come to maternity. She adores children, and tries her best not to be jealous and bitter; truly, she does try.

Jane turns her thoughts back to her lover, her beautiful Dorian, and wonders what kind of child they might have produced together. A son, she imagines. A tall, rugged boy with wavy dark hair and a strong jawline, like his father. Blue velvet eyes, quick smile. Dorian's features, not hers. Never hers.

Jane would not want a child like herself, no. Not a child who would be teased and ridiculed, shunned by other children. No, no, no. She knows what that's like. In her bones, she knows what that's like.

She squints through the lenses of her thick trifocal glasses at the large black numerals of her Timex wristwatch. Almost noon. Almost time for her tryst, her assignation, her affaire. Within minutes Dorian will emerge from the revolving doors across the street and she will be with him. In just a little while, she will become his entire world.

Jane picks up her knitting and sets the needles chattering again, letting the pale beige wool skein out across her nimble fingers, wondering why it is that doomed romances are the most sublime. Her relation ship with Dorian has been like a piecrust from the beginning: made to be broken. Dorian has a wife and three small children. Married. Jane lets the word surge and ebb through her mind and wonders at the com plexities besetting a secretly passionate nature such as her own. To date, all of Jane's romances have involved married men exclusively.

She sighs, working a complicated turn of stitches that will form a cabled buttonhole when the next row is finished. Why married men? Is there some malfunction of her spirit, some wicked anomaly in her make up, that draws her toward forbidden delights?

Her colorless cheeks twitch with sudden mirth. Wouldn't the rest of the female faculty at Dearborne Elementary School gasp with shock and disbelief if they knew how dowdy little Jane Hodges spends her lunch hours? Plain Jane. That's what they call her behind her back. That's what everyone has always called her for as long as she can remember. Plain Jane. Poor plain Jane, can't get a man, poor old spinster plain Jane, ha, ha. Wouldn't bed her, wouldn't wed her, plain old Jane.

How Jane burns to tell them, all those smugly symmetrical faces painted up like common whores, high-heeled sluts who think their wedding bands give them license to feel superior, to pity poor little Jane Hodges. Click-clack, click-clack, strolling the school hallways, their conversations muting to whispers as they pass Jane's classroom. Flitting glances inside and looking quickly away, never inviting Jane to join them in the teachers' lounge, never offering to include her in their impromptu faculty planning meetings.

If only they could imagine what passions stir in Jane's soul, what elaborate hungers beset her, drive her. If only they could know what illicit acts she is capable of performing to experience those blissful five seconds she craves so much.

One, two, three, four, five.

Jane's heart hammers against the delicate bulwark of her breastbone just thinking about it. It's been too long, too long, and now her desire has become a raging hunger that demands satisfaction. Now.

The slender shafts of Jane's knitting needles become a blur of motion and her breasts rise and fall, rise and fall, her breath quickening with the increasing tempo of her heartbeats. Again she twists her head toward the Spector Building. Men and women dressed in suits and coats have begun to stream out through the twin revolving doors and into the ebbing rainfall, popping open umbrellas or sheltering under newspapers as they take to the wet city sidewalks.

Where is Dorian? Jane squints through the misty window glass, blinking. He's usually one of the first to exit, dark head bobbing as he strides along, chest forward, chin aloft.

Jane's thighs tremble as memories of their first meeting drift past her mind's eye. It was just three weeks ago that Dorian Webster came to Jane's classroom for a routine parent-teacher conference about his son, Erik. The moment Dorian entered the room and sat down in the chair opposite her desk, Jane knew they were going to be lovers, that Dorian would be the next married man to slake her forbidden thirsts. Her entire being had vibrated like a high-tension wire during their initial meeting; she hardly remembers what was discussed. By the time their conference ended, Jane was already in love with Dorian. She'd seen it in his blue velvet eyes: Soon, very soon, she would become his entire world.

It always happens like that, just like that. A word, a look, and she knows.

And now Dorian is her lover. How many others have there been? Thirty? Forty? The numbers blur with time, their faces growing indistinct once the trysts have been consummated and the affairs are over.

Jane giggles. How mischievous I've been, she thinks, both frightened and amused by her wholesale promiscuity. What would Daddy have thought?

Whore.

The word stabs into her consciousness, hurting, making her flinch. The voice that says the word is not her own. The voice adds: The ones that like it are whores.

Jane's knitting needles click in precision machine-gun bursts. I am not a whore, Daddy! I'm not, I'm not!

The ones that like it are whores.

I don't like it! I don't! Stop, Daddy, please stop! You're hurting me!

Jane rights to push out the images crowding into her mind, but her efforts are useless, always useless when Daddy decides to batter his way into her head the way he used to batter his way into her body.

Jane drops her knitting into her lap. "Stop!" she shouts, ripping a handful of hair from her scalp. "Go away, don't touch me!"

But Daddy won't go away. Daddy won't ever go away completely. He always comes back. Even from his grave, he is still able to violate her mind whenever he pleases.

Jane begins to cry. "No, no, no," she burbles wetly.

Jane knows it is useless to beg. It never stops him. The scenes unwind, unstoppable:

Jane is fourteen years old, asleep in her bed. She is awakened by the weight of a hot, heavy body crushing her down into the mattress. It's Daddy. He's been drinking again. He always comes to her when he's been drinking. He fumbles with her nightgown, pulling it up over her face. He kisses her mouth through the thin shroud of cotton fabric.

"You 're my whole world now," he mumbles drunken ly, sobbing. "Now that your mama's run off, you 're my whole world."

"No, Daddy. Please, "Jane begs, knowing it's useless to beg. "It hurts, Daddy. I don't like it."

"The ones that like it are whores," he grunts.

Jane clamps her eyes shut and bites down on her tongue, trying to bear the pain. She swore she wouldn't let it happen again. She made herself a promise to make it stop. But now she is afraid to act.

Jane forces the fear back, making her hand slide beneath the mattress where she's hidden a long, slender Phillips screwdriver. Her fingers close around its cool plastic handle.

She hesitates, terrified by what she's about to do.

"You're my whole world, my whole world, my whole world," Daddy grunts, hurting her, hurting her.

A black tower of rage rises up in Jane, taking control of her, directing her actions. Her hand rises, dreamlike, silvery gleam of moonlight on the screwdriver's metal shaft gauzy through the fabric of her nightgown. And then —

Jane's head falls forward against the steering wheel as the vision releases her. It always ends at the same moment. She has never been able to recall the rest of it, although the therapists forced her to say she remembered before they allowed her to leave the hospital and go to live with her aunt Ellen. All she has ever been able to recall is the anger and the shame. And counting:

One, two, three, four, five.

Jane rests against the wheel for several moments, gasping for breath, trembling.

Suddenly she remembers where she is and why: Dorian.

She jerks her back straight and sits up in the passenger seat, rubbing a clear circle into the misty glass with her quaking fingers. It has stopped raining and the sidewalk outside the Spector Building throngs with lunchtime office workers.

A rattling moan rasps in Jane's parched throat. What if she's missed him? What if he's already gone?

"No," she groans, gathering up her knitting and stuffing it into her handbag. She can't bear the idea of missing this meeting with Dorian. Jane needs him too much. She needs to be Dorian's whole world, if only for a few stolen moments.

Shaking with mingled desire and terror, Jane steps out of her car, her sensible lace-up shoes touching wet pavement just as she catches sight of Dorian pushing through the revolving door.

Jane's breath snags in her throat at the sight of him, so tall and strong and handsome. Quickly she works her way through halted rush-hour traffic jamming the street, never letting her lover out of sight. Breathless and shivery as a schoolgirl, Jane watches Dorian's figure as it moves through the crowd. She angles recklessly between the stream of cars and trucks to place herself on the sidewalk just ahead of him as he heads down K Street. He will be so surprised to see her. She is going to be his whole world.

She centers herself on the sidewalk, waiting, just able to see the crown of Dorian's dark head bobbing up and down as he walks in her direction. Soon, soon.

Jane stands still, letting oncoming pedestrians stream around her, knowing they won't notice the mousy little woman in their midst. Nobody will notice her but Dorian, and that is just as she wishes it.

The moment has arrived. As Dorian surges toward her, Jane shifts to her left and positions herself directly in his path.

He stops, looking down at her with blue velvet eyes.

"Hello," Jane says breathlessly, smiling.

"Hi there," Dorian returns, studying her with a quizzical smile as if straining to remember something. His smile deepens, a flicker of recognition. "You're Erik's teacher, aren't you?"

"I'm your whole world," Jane whispers.

He leans toward Jane. "I beg your par —»

Jane does not give Dorian time to finish the thought. With a quicksilver movement, she plunges a glistening knitting needle deep into the tender tissue of Dorian's brain with one deft thrust into his right nostril. Just as quickly, she withdraws the instrument and replaces it in her handbag.

Dorian sways slightly on the pavement before her, still standing, a thin trickle of blood coursing down his chin, blue velvet eyes wide in a silent shriek that consumes Jane entirely, body and soul.

Jane has become Dorian's whole world.

Dorian staggers forward a step, placing a hand on Jane's shoulder to steady his failing legs. And then he falls, crumpling down onto the sidewalk, his eyes never leaving hers.

As she watches Dorian's final spasms, a volcanic orgasm wracks Jane's body, coming in a shock wave that roots her to the pavement, paralyzing her for the full count.

One, two, three, four, five.

And then it's over.

Jane turns away from her lover's lifeless body and passes through the gathering crowd of spectators like a ghost, transparent and unnoticed. As she wends her way across the street toward her rented car, she hears the first shouts of comprehension. A shrill scream. Someone is calling for an ambulance.

Jane eases the car out into traffic and drives away. She glances at her watch and smiles, realizing she'll have time to stop at the bakery for cupcakes on her way back to school.

Won't the children be surprised?