Couples Activities for Sound Sleepers

Couples Activities for Sound Sleepers

Freddy stopped his car before the house and admired the porch. That alone was likely bigger than his apartment. There was a rocking chair there but nobody in it. He got out of his car and walked to the house, his shoes rustling on the dirt road. There were hoof prints among the tire marks. He climbed up the steps to the front door and knocked. No answer. He looked around and spied a gazebo. There.
Making his way to the gazebo Freddy thought of what to say, how to make his business known properly without embarrassing himself or Carrie. A faint scent of apple pie wafted to his nose. That hadn’t been there before. The sun was lower than before, that didn’t make sense either. Where there’d been a house was now a field of corn. If he hadn’t know it for a dream he’d have been alarmed.
“Well hello there sugah,” came a voice from the gazebo, and there Freddy spied what he’d come looking for. Who, rather. The horse-woman wore a blue dress with frills and waved a fan that made her red curls flutter.
“Would you care to sit down? Mah pie’s much too big for a lady with a delicate figuh to eat by herself.”
Freddy was of a mind to point out that the horse-bits probably couldn’t be considered delicate, but he was much too delicate to say something so un-delicate. Delicate was a funny word and he thought about it while finding himself seated at a table and picking up a fork. There hadn’t been a table here before.
“Thanks,” he said and broke a piece of the pie for himself. Crumbly, but good.
“Don’t sweat it none, sugah. Now what fool idea got you to come by me, if you’re not just being neighbourly?”
Ah. There it was. But she’d asked right when his mouth was full. A pitcher of milk was on the table and he poured himself some into a glass, and didn’t question the appearance of either anymore. He was getting used to it. He swallowed and made his case.
“I’ve got this girl, Carrie. She’s uhh, she’s wonderful really. She just doesn’t get out and about much. See she’s one of them things.”
“One of what, sugah?”
“Dormice. Is that the correct way to say it? I don’t want to be racist or nothing. Dormouse is the singular though, I know that.”
“Them’s sleepy mice.”
“Yes’m. Very sleepy. I try to get her more active and, you know, just more engaged. Isn’t really taking though.”
The Nightmare nodded sagaciously and refilled the cup of tea he hadn’t been drinking but now realized he must’ve been.
“Now you wouldn’t be planning to ask me to do nothing untowards to this Carrie of yours, would you?” she asked.
“What? No, no. Why would you think that?”
“Just making sure, sugah.”
“Right. No, what I want is to be able to go with her.”
“Now where would that be?”
“In her dreams.”
The Nightmare giggled.
“Don’t that just take all. I reckon a handsome young man like you’d be in her dreams plenty already, and with no help from a nag like me.”
Freddy blushed a little and wiped the jam from his lips with a napkin. Jam? Strawberry. From pancakes?
“I meant more in the way of going as myself.”
“I know you did, darlin’. I’s just yanking your chain. Here, hold out your hand.”
Freddie did so, and the Nightmare dropped a length of beaded necklace in it.
“Ya’ll wrap that around yer wrists when it’s bedtime and when you fall asleep, you’ll wake up together.”
“Fall asleep and wake up, huh?”
“So it is.”
Freddie grasped the beads tightly.
“What do I owe?”
“For what?”
“The necklace, the food?”
“Ain’t no cost on dreams, sugah. They’s free for rich and poor alike. But they ain’t forever so maybe you’d better go wake yousself up.”
“Ah, yeah. Yeah. Thank you ma’am.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Freddie stood up and walked out of the gazebo and to his pickup which wasn’t parked by a house or a field of corn neither but at the crossroads under a willow like it had been when he’d fallen asleep, just like they’d told him to do to meet the Nightmare. He got in his truck and got comfortable and as soon as he fell asleep he woke up to a bright afternoon sun shining on him and the birds were singing and the crickets chirping and the summer heat was making a mirage of water appear on the asphalt some ways ahead and making him thirsty.
“Guess it don’t slack your thirst none to drink in dreams,” he said to himself and checked the beads he’d gotten from the Nightmare. They were still there, so he put them in his pocket and drove on back home, with every intent to go out of his regular habits and take a second nap. He parked the car, nodded to McCarthy on the bench who was reading some kind of science journal and then climbed upstairs and went inside the apartment he shared with Carrie.
To his surprise she was wide awake and on her feet. In the living room was their couch and their television, and sometimes Carrie would fall asleep while watching it, which Freddy assumed to be the case today as well on account of the undead Billy Mayes on the screen selling some kind of polish for dragon scales, and there was his little English mouse, her skinny tail slipping from the extra hole in her jeans that only reached halfway down her thighs, her tight little derriere in the air as she rummaged for something under the couch pillows.
“Whatcha doin’ there, Carrie?”
“Ah done felt summin’ on my back and couldn’t sleep a wink!” she whined.
“That a fact?”
“Yah, and dontcha go taking that tone with me Frederick Douglas Leavensworth! Ah said not a wink and ah meant what ah said!”
“Sure you did.”
Freddie snuck up on the petite thing and grabbing her by the waist lifted her in the air and gave her a little twirl as men deep in love are wont to do to females as are light enough for their strength to twirl, and Carrie sure was that.
“Put me down ya rambunctious yahoo! Ah’ll faint!”
Freddie plopped himself down on the sofa, holding Carrie in his lap. She didn’t protest too much, nor struggle any, so he took that as permission to hug a little tighter and nibble on a round ear.
“Guess where I was,” he said.
“Doing some fool thang.”
“Not so fool, I don’t think.”
“Oh no? No beer or possum racing for Monsieur Leavensworth today?”
“You wound me, that you do.”
“Well out with it then!”
“Whaddya reckon this is?” he asked, pulling out the beads.
“Some trinket,” Carrie said, inspecting it, turning her head to do so and as if by accident settling her buttocks more firmly over that part of him that reacted most strongly to it. He chose not to dignify such snuggling with an answer on account of it being a fool attempt at changing the dynamics of the conversation.
“This here trinket, little Mrs. Leavensworth, is the solution to a little problem I’ve been having.”
“That there going to fix the icebox?”
“No.”
“Then that there thing going to tell you where them orphaned socks’ pairs went?”
“Not that neither.”
“Well ah’m stumped.”
And to emphasize the stumpedness of her condition, Carrie lifted her buttocks a little and dropped it down again.
“This’n here is some kinda dream magic,” Freddie said, seeing as there was no use keeping the girl guessing.
“Magic, is it? Like that time with them enchanted roosters?”
“Nah, real magic this time. Locally sourced.”
“Ain’t you a big enough dreamed without it?”
“That’s big talk coming from Sleeping Beauty.”
A decidedly unladylike snort escaped Carrie’s lips.
“What?”
“You done called me Sleeping Beauty again.”
“Well ain’t that the truth?”
“Ah ain’t that purdy.”
“Yeah? Wanna bet?”
“Bet what, fool?”
“I’ll bet all to nothing that you’s the purdiest dang thing in the world and I’s got the proof for it too.”
“Ain’t no proof for what ain’t true.”
“Sure there is. Looke.”
Freddie took her left hand in his and lifted them both up to her eye level.
“See them rings?”
“Ah’d have to be blind not to.”
“Well what done put them rings there if’n you weren’t the belle of the ball?”
Another snort, followed by a giggle and a yawn.
“A cad is what you are, Frederick Douglas Leavensworth, and a var-vaaahhhhmnt”, Carrie tried to berate him some more, but there was another yawn in the way and her head fell limp against his shoulder.
“Them’s nice words to say though.”
“And true, every darn one of ‘em. Here, let’s get you lying down.”
Freddie tried to settle down on the sofa so they could take a nap on it, but Carrie began to squirm again.
“No, it just ain’t in the cards today!” she said, jumped on the floor and began digging around in the couch again.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“There’s something.”
“Something.”
“That’s what I said.”
Before he could ask her what that something might be, she pulled it out. A little coin, likely fallen from his pocket, and he hadn’t even known.
“Well, there it is,” he said.
“Honest Abe don’t let good folk get their beauty sleep,” Carrie said.
“Well, toss him and c’mere.”
She did so, and they wrapped the beads around their wrists like the Nightmare had instructed, and so they fell asleep and as soon as they did they woke up with the beads still connecting their wrists and they grinned and dreamed the dreams of lovers until morning.