The Morning After

Thomas woke with a start.

A gasp clung to his throat, as though he’d surfaced from deep water. His body jerked upright—then froze.

Light streamed through the tall windows. Soft, golden morning light that painted the faded wallpaper in gentle tones, dust motes dancing through the beams. Birds chirped somewhere beyond the walls. The house, that house, seemed quiet now. Perfectly ordinary.

But he wasn’t.

His breath came shallow and uneven. A film of sweat clung to his skin—cool now, drying. The blankets were tangled at his feet. His cassock was nowhere in sight. He looked down.

He was naked.

And he felt… sore.

Not wounded. Not bruised. But undeniably used. His body bore the unmistakable signature of pleasure spent and spent deeply. His thighs ached. There were faint red marks on his chest, as if gripped too hard. And between his legs—evidence. Irrefutable. The sheets stained and damp.

“No,” he whispered. “No, no…”

He pressed his palms into his face, as if to rub the memory back into place—or away.

But memory wouldn't come.

Just fragments. Fleeting impressions. Her laughter, close and breathy. The weight of someone atop him. The sensation of fingers sliding down his ribs. Lips—not quite real—moving against his mouth. A rhythm. A surrender.

Then her body below his. Her legs wrapped behind his back. His loins thrusting forward.

Images too real to be mere imagination.

He jumped out of bed and stood, staggered by the shock of it. His legs threatened to betray him. He gripped the bedpost, panting. “It didn’t happen,” he told the silence. “It couldn’t have. It was a dream.”

Was it?

He fled the house. Barefoot, his hair tousled, his shirt buttoned askew. He never found his cassock.

From that day onwards, parishioners said that he had become quieter, distant and often lost in thought.

Many times he returned to Wyndgrace House. He followed the winding path to the front door, which was never locked for him. But the manor was silent and empty.

No candlelight, no laughter, no tea.

No Eleanor.

He walked the halls where shadows clung stubbornly to corners. He stepped carefully across warped floorboards and opened doors he had not dared to before. Each time, he expected something. A voice. A breath. A whisper at his neck. But all he found was quiet decay.

The drawing room had no fire. The mirror bore dust.

The bedroom was always made. Immaculate.

He lay down on the bed, alone and lonely. And when he perched on the narrow line between waking and sleeping, he smelled the scent of roses. Faint. Impossible. Lingering just beneath the air. He heard laughter, soft as wind, coming from nowhere.

And the trace of a kiss he could feel… somewhere between beatitude and sin. He gasped her name.

"Eleanor."

And his body responded every night, as if it were the first. His hand would reach instinctively to his loins, feeling the throbbing hardness, gripping it. His gasping turned into moaning, the moaning turned into crying, and the crying turned into screaming.

"ELEANOR!"

In that one unguarded moment afterward, he smiled. A smile full of sadness and longing, and something suspiciously close to satisfaction.

And if you were walking close by—if you were quiet enough—you might swear you heard her laugh.