If You Promise To Behave

Follow-up to "Kitchen, 5 AM".

Disclaimer: All characters belong to Stephen King and the filmmakers.

Warnings: Rated NC-17 for slightly graphic adult/minor sex. Or not, depending on what country you live in. ;) Annie is 15.


If You Promise To Behave
Ulrika 2003


It took a long time - months, I think - for me to understand or even fully remember what happened that morning in the kitchen. At first I was half convinced it had all been one of the house's little jokes or some kind of fever dream. So much of my earlier life feels like a fever dream. Since then, I've had invaluable help, and now everything is so much clearer.

I didn't know much about sex back then. I knew there must be both a man and a woman to make babies, and, of course, had been instructed what to do when the blood came each month, and why it came. But that was it, really. The mechanics of it all I had never had properly explained to me, and so had only a very vague idea about it. Perhaps they thought the knowledge would traumatize me somehow. Or perhaps they simply didn't bother, figuring I would never need the knowledge anyway. Probably the latter.

The point I'm trying to make is, I really didn't know what I was getting into that night. I only knew the ache, the itching, the strange chills along my spine whenever the blond man looked my way. I lay awake in the strange bed beside my sleeping sister, hand straying beneath the covers and into my panties, cheeks flushed and body tingling with the need to be touched, kissed... and something more.

I had never really wanted someone to touch me before.

The memory of the hour that followed is clearer now than it used to be, but still mostly in flashes - him squirming, trying to pull away from my kiss. Me, reaching out with my mind and pinning him into place. The incredible smoothness of his finally naked body. Sitting on the floor, propped up against the wall, shivering and moaning as he crouched between my thighs, tongue moving in and out of my wetness. The cold floor against my back, his fingers breaching me, then his cock, the pain and then the heat. The swelling of my insides, legs cramping, squeezing my eyes shut and whimpering as the hot pressure rose and finally broke. Sweat dripping from his shoulders onto my bare breasts, his face twisting into a mask of animalistic rage as he pounded me and pounded me into the floor, clenching his teeth against his roar as he climaxed inside me.

I don't remember how I made it back to my bed.

Perhaps I ought to have been scared, or at least a bit nervous, approaching him like that, but I don't think I was. He really was no match for me. His mind was sharp and his words could bite, but he had the kindest blue eyes I'd ever seen, the sweetest laugh, the most comforting hands. I trusted him.

I trust him.

***

I told Sister, finally. I had to. I had gone for two months without bleeding, and while I wasn't exactly throwing up in the mornings, I was nevertheless feeling faint and vaguely ill most of the time. I may not have known much, but in the neighborhood there was always someone or other who was pregnant, and I had learned to recognize the signs. And asking mom or dad for advice was out of the question.

I didn't tell her everything, of course. Just the symptoms. We were sitting on her bed, and her back turned very stiff and her eyes dark, and she grabbed my arm and asked with forced calm if I'd "done something I shouldn't". I just looked away and shrugged. She grew pale, immediately picking up her phone book and dialing the number to her own gynecologist.

She never asked "who". I suppose, in her shock, she simply forgot, and I am thankful.

She patted my hand absently in the waiting room, cursing quietly under her breath. It's the first and only time I've ever heard Sister curse.

But there was nothing inside me. We sat with the doctor in his office after the tests were done, and he explained how my missed periods and constant queasiness were probably stress related. "And did you perhaps lose a bit of weight lately?" he asked, eyes wandering over my body with that dirty-old-man glint as he dragged a spidery hand down my now rather thin left arm. Ugh. I flinched away and the glass on his Rolex wristwatch shattered. I didn't get to see his reaction, because the next second Sister was dragging me out of the office by the sleeve of my shirt.

We had tea in an empty diner near the clinic and she gave me a big lecture on protection and how I really was far too young anyway and how she was puzzled as I'd never seemed to express any interest in sex before. She was still pale, but visibly relieved. "Let this be a lesson, now," she said sharply as we left the diner. But when we arrived home she stopped me outside the front door, smiled faintly in her usual Sisterly way and said: "You must be so relieved."

But that night, alone in my room, I wept, for the first time in many, many years.

***

The night after they had finished tearing down Rose Red, Nick came to my room. I walf alf asleep when I felt a touch to my forehead, opened my eyes and saw him sitting on the edge of my bed. He said nothing, just got into the bed and took me into his arms. He was colder but otherwise felt competely human, and his hands warmed quickly against my skin. He pressed me back against the pillows, slipped his hand inside my pajamas and touched me and touched me until I came, shuddering, and fell asleep.

The second night, he came again, but this time, even I couldn't warm him, and his form was vaguer, seemingly paling with every passing minute. When he touched me, I barely felt it. When I went to touch him, my hand slipped right through his chest. Without a home, and bodies and minds to feed on, he was soon going to fade away. I want to stay, he said. For a while, anyway. But I don't want to hurt anyone, especially you.

Poor Nick. Even in death, kindness ruled him. I backed him out through the window he'd come in, told him I needed to think.

And so I did. I stayed in my room all next day. And thought. And thought.

That night when he came, he was little more than a man-shaped, milky shimmer, and I had decided.

"If you promise to behave," I said slowly, smiling as I held out my hands to him.

"Same for you, dear," he said. I nodded.

"Well, then," he said, and although he was quickly fading into nothing, I'm positive I saw him grin and wink.

"I promise."

***

Half a year has passed since they tore down Rose Red.

I'm still the creepy girl with the creepy doll down the street.

Ill dll do things I shouldn't.

But I can talk now. Engage in conversation. Laugh at jokes and tell my own. I can read, write, spell as well as anyone.

They are still keeping me in retard-school, of course, until they are certain my improvement isn't just temporary. Whenever that may be.

The questions are neverending, naturally, from ordinary people as well as experts. Did you just wake up well one day? What happened, who lured you out of your shell? they ask, faintly religious look on their faces, expecting to hear some fantastic story.

I just smile and say a good friend helped me. And it's the truth.

Nick Hardaway helped me. Nobody will ever see his beautiful face again, but he is very much alive. He lives on in me. He is looking through my eyes right now, reading every word I type, helping me with the difficult parts. Smiling at my story, laughing softly at our mutual memories. It tickles.