Mr. and Mrs. Schmidt had been married for eight years. Mrs. Schmidt, née Rogers, had met her slightly older husband at a college party, and only two years later the two had been married at a lavish wedding. A few years of marital bliss ensued, but eventually the newness of their coexistence wore off and the two adapted to the mundanity that was to be their lives. The Schmidts had no children of their own, so they lived in the quiet harmony of their townhouse duplex.
When the night came, Mr. Schmidt would read in bed as his wife prepared herself by the dressing table, brushing her silky hair in her white translucent negligee. This done, she would casually take her place in bed next to her husband, falling asleep near-instantly like a well-trained dog. Eventually Mr. Schmidt would set aside his book and reading glasses and follow her to the land of dreams, where they would remain until morning. This was the routine: this is what took place every night.
Yet one night, instead of sleeping placidly until the 6:30 alarm as per usual, Mr. Schmidt was stirred from his sleep to witness something out of the ordinary. He had found himself feeling oddly uncomfortable and soon traced the problem to the woman lying next to him: she had begun squirming and tossing her arms in her sleep.
This was quite unusual, he thought, as he studied her. Her eyes were closed tight, her mouth slightly open. Tiny whimpers escaped from her throat. In the pale moonlight Mr. Schmidt noticed little pearls of sweat that had formed on her forehead. Her lips and cheeks glowed red as if she had been struggling with fever.
Alarmed, Mr. Schmidt was about try and wake her from her dream when suddenly she let out a long, tortured moan, a sound Mr. Schmidt had not heard in many years, but which he instantly recognized. His wife was having an orgasm.
Mr. Schmidt gazed at her in wonder as he watched her gasp for air. Her hands were tightly grasping and pulling the blanket over her, as if it was her violent lover.
Her eyes flew open. She jolted on her bed, looking everywhere around her with a frightened look on her face. Her hands hurriedly felt over her breasts and chest as if a woman who had just been robbed of all her possessions.
Mr. Schmidt assured her that everything was fine and that it had just been some kind of a terrible nightmare. Mrs. Schmidt’s breathing was uneven.
“It was terrible!” she cried in panic.
“What was?”
“A monster! It was all over me.”
“A monster?”
“A terrible slimy monster!” Her eyes were like plates. “Like a large… insect. It was covered in black eyes… the eyes…” her breathing quickened with terror.
“Listen, it is just you and me here.” Mr. Schmidt explained her, as if to a child. “It was merely a nightmare, I saw your tossing and turning.”
It took some time to calm down poor Mrs. Schmidt. She was afraid she might fall back into that horrifying dream. Mr. Schmidt distracted her by talking of all things banal: the neighbours, the upcoming dinner with his boss, their car that needed washing. Eventually Mrs. Schmidt could once again feel the sleep creeping in and eventually fell into a dreamless sleep. Mr. Schmidt watched with interest whether she might get restless again, gently rubbing his hard member at what he had just witnessed.
When Mrs. Schmidt woke up in the morning, she had completely forgotten about her nightmare. Indeed, she looked well-rested. There was a beautiful glow on her cheeks that had not been there for quite some time, and when Mr. Schmidt complained of the coffee being too thin to his likening, she was not disheartened but quite lovingly made him a new pot that she served with her sincerest apologies.
Mr. Schmidt was certain that the previous night would remain an isolated incident. He was, however, terribly wrong.
The very next night the scene repeated itself. Once again, and Mr. Schmidt noted that it was about 2:30 am, Mrs. Schmidt was tormented by her nightmares. While Mr. Schmidt considered waking her up, his nature got the best of him, and he began rubbing himself off to the spectacle that was his wife’s delirium. When she came, so did he.
In her disorientation, Mrs. Schmidt did not notice how flustered her husband was or how he seized the duvet hastily in order to cover his lap.
“It… That thing. Again!” she panicked.
“Darling, there was no one, nothing, here.”
“It was slithering all over me! All of its eyes watching, watching…”
After some assurance by her husband, Mrs. Schmidt was eventually able to return to sleep. Once Mr. Schmidt was sure of her quiet snoring, he sneaked into the bathroom to clean up after himself. In the morning, Mrs. Schmidt was once again completely oblivious as to what had transpired.
This was the new routine. Every night, between 2 and 3 am, Mrs. Schmidt would have her orgasmic nightmare and Mr. Schmidt would join in the delight. He would learn to anticipate it, waking only minutes before her rapture would begin. Once or twice, when he was growing impatient, he considered touching his wife to encourage her dreams to come sooner: rubbing her soft thighs or caressing her nipples through the white silk of her negligee. He never put these musings into action.
He noticed changes in his wife. Every day she appeared more radiant. She looked well-rested; her disposition was sunny. Mr. Schmidt thought she was looking as beautiful as the day they first met, fuelling his desire.
Her dreams returned to her every night, with frightening regularity. But as time went on, her reactions to these dreams changed. The terror in her sighs lessened and gave way to new emotions. Mr. Schmidt would notice her smiling in her sleep as the dreams would begin. As she still kept waking up with violent jolts, he would ask her if it was the nightmare again.
“A horrifying creature with hundreds of eyes,” she would mutter every time. To Mr. Schmidt’s confusion, she sometimes looked wistful as she spoke of her dreams.
One night his wife didn’t wake up from her slumber at all, despite her orgasm-inducing dream making her roll on the sheets and dig her nails into her pillow. For some reason, Mr. Schmidt found it quite upsetting how peaceful her face looked as she quietly breathed by his side. Slowly he realized that he had rather liked how she’d clung to him for safety during those first nights. He began to feel robbed, as if his wife’s nightly visions and his pleasure in them had been an arrangement the two of them had mutually agreed upon.
Her dreams persisted regardless, sometimes the orgasms being so powerful that Mr. Schmidt would have sworn that he witnessed his wife’s eyes having flashed open and staring at the invisible creature on top of her. She would speak, encourage her invisible lover to go on in something that Mr. Schmidt first thought was unintelligible gibberish. But as nights went on, Mr. Schmidt realized that she kept on repeating a single word:
“Marnahthul.”
The nonsensical word made Mr. Schmidt curious. He searched for it online but found nothing that seemed remotely relevant. He wondered if his wife was possessed and speaking with tongues or pretending to do so, since Mr. Schmidt did not believe in such nonsense, but aside from the “oh yeses” and the “please noes”, “marnahthul” was the only foreign word that her sweet tongue seemed to relish. He demanded his wife provide him with an answer as to what it meant but she acted ignorant of anything odd happening during the nights.
It had been almost a month since Mr. Schmidt first woke up to his wife’s whimpers. He had just about had it. What had first been a source of mutual pleasure now left him deeply annoyed, and he would now go for a piss and a glass of water rather than take pleasure at his wife’s bliss.
He had tried waking her up once. She had merely looked at him confused, asking him what on earth was the matter that he would so violently need to shake her awake. The dream would only resume as soon as she’d place her head back on the pillow.
There was no stopping the dreams, and it seemed they were only getting longer, her latest episode having lasted for 30 minutes. Mr. Schmidt was beginning to consider the idea of separate bedrooms, so inconvenienced was he by his wife’s nocturnal activity.
One night, Mr. Schmidt woke up again. It was 2:42 and he knew from his wife’s squirming that she was bound for another night of orgasms in only a couple of minutes. He got up, took a leak and went outside to check the mailbox for the morning paper.
When Mr. Schmidt returned to the apartment he thought the atmosphere changed. It was as if the air had become somehow heavier and his vision was blurred as if his apartment was covered in a heavy mist. His wife’s moaning, while still present, seemed somehow changed: more rhythmical. And it was now accompanied by the sounds of a bed rattling.
Mr. Schmidt, rational as ever, thought he must be dreaming. Yet he couldn’t shake off the feeling that something was incredibly wrong and that he was just about to find answers to the questions that had been plaguing him for weeks now. Like hypnotized he took one step towards the bedroom door. Then another.
“Mmmarnahthul…”
The door opened with a crack. His eyes searched for the familiar shape of his marital bed, but he was unable to discern it in the misty darkness of the room. He heard glass break against the wooden floor; something had knocked off the lamp on the bedside table. Something large was moving. Slithering?
Mr. Schmidt felt his heart in his throat. He wanted to call his wife’s name, have her assure her that all was fine. His voice failed him.
His wife was about to climax. She was screaming from the top of her lungs like a swine being butchered. Then the release came, and Mr. Schmidt could hear her contented sigh as she collapsed heavily on the bed like a ragdoll.
Mr. Schmidt flipped the switch.
He wanted to scream but the air was trapped inside his lungs. The dark giant creature that was mounted on Mrs. Schmidt turned to look at him. Its head was covered in black beady eyes that glinted in the darkness like those of a spider eyeing its prey.
It crawled its way in front of Mr. Schmidt, who had frozen still out of terror. It had many legs, sharp looking arms that looked like those of a centipede, only they were too stub for its bloated, gargantuan body to move on. Instead, it inched forward half a meter at a time, making horrible rubbery sounds as it did. In its slimy trail it left Mrs. Schmidt’s exhausted body that was now covered in slime. She had a sickening smile on her face.
“You can see him now too. My Marnahthul.”
The creature towered in front of Mr. Schmidt, its numerous eyes all hungrily looking at him. It rose up to stand in front of Mr. Schmidt, revealing its underbelly to his horrified face, the legs bending towards him invitingly.
The last thing Mr. Schmidt ever saw was its gaping mouth of numerous teeth as the creature fell over to feed on his head.