Phillips bolted upright in bed. His wife did not stir, but he wouldn’t have cared if she had. His erotic dreams of Vanessa always made such a mess. It was as if he were back in junior high. But the embarrassment that consumed him then had long since crusted over and been washed away. He smiled as he remembered the first dream where they had made love. Vanessa told him about the in-between she now occupied. Though not technically purgatory, it did buffer Heaven from Hell and Oblivion. She had powers in this state that the living dared not to comprehend. But to be incarnate again, she needed to bargain with the creatures of this twilight realm.

In the eight years since she’d died so tragically, she never withheld from him. She gave herself to him as she’d never done in life. And she seemed to have forgiven him for all the harassment with which he’d burdened her. She was so beautiful in face and heart. She seemed to understand how her loveliness had over-powered him. How he could not help the passion that boiled in him liked some wicked potion in an over-full cauldron. In the dreams, she’d been clear. The demon Soul-Eaters of this middle realm were bottom feeders. They required the unclean souls of remorseless sinners. If she gave them souls to satiate their rapaciousness, they would clothe her in flesh for twenty mortal years. She’d never have the warmth of the living. No blood would flow in her veins. But she’d have a body with which to live out the years stolen from her by violent death. She’d shown him scenes of rapists and murderers mid-crime; the faces of their victims distended in terror. But he just couldn’t bring himself to dispatch them. One murder on his conscience was enough. Besides, even if she would finally transition from his dreams to his bed, what good would it do him if he were in prison. No, no matter how evil, he could not kill a stranger in cold blood. It was impossible. Years ago, he decided that the dreams and the mornings of his soaked sheets sticking to him like a rain drenched shirt would just have to do.

But tonight, the dream had been different. She’d showed him how Allison had throttled Rose Davidson and just left her like an unmade bed. Allison Winn had a coldness about her that truly irked him. He intuited it the first day of class. The slides of his most compelling photos had impressed all the other students. Some had actually cried at his award-winning photo of a mother at the scene of a house fire. Allison yawned. He didn’t like her. And when Vanessa actually revealed her to be a murderer, he glowed inwardly that his trusty intuition had returned to him after its eight-year absence. His eyes narrowed in the dark bedroom. ‘Yes,’ he thought, ‘I can do this. Allison’s a sociopath. The woman has nothing behind the eyes. And she’s not a stranger. She should die.’ He brought both his hands up to his face and rubbed them vigorously against his cheeks. Then it occurred to him. The cops might suspect him if there was a second murder the darkroom. He’d have to make it look natural. A soft, pensive grin spread his lips. He wondered how it would feel to penetrate Vanessa’s cold, solid form. He gently laid his head back onto his pillow and closed his eyes. It was still hours before daylight. Still plenty of time to dream.