2. What Sleeps Behind the Wall
What Sleeps Behind the Wall
Markus stood in the middle of an unfamiliar living room, dark and stuffy.
The room was unknown to him, yet disturbingly familiar. The wooden floor beneath his feet was dull and creaked with every movement.
He looked around. It resembled the apartment he lived in, except everything was older. More worn. Stranger.
Why am I here? Where am I?
The questions drifted through Markus’s mind, but no answer came. His thoughts were clouded, as though buried beneath a thick fog. Then wet sounds reached him from somewhere deep in the narrow hallway.
Clack… creak… slap…
An old bed frame groaned under heavy weight, rhythmic and rough.
Markus started walking. The hallway of the old apartment seemed longer and narrower than it could possibly be. Old-fashioned floral wallpaper covered the walls, giving off the smell of dust and years of stale cigarette smoke. A man’s raspy, broken panting grew louder with every step.
The bedroom door stood slightly ajar.
A pale strip of light cut across the opening. Not warm, soft nighttime light, but washed-out daylight spilling through a dusty window and illuminating everything far too clearly.
Markus stopped outside the door. His instincts told him to turn away, but his gaze was already fixed on the gap.
Inside, the sheets and blanket were tangled across a sagging mattress. Two bodies writhed together on top of it.
Karl Seifert was unpleasantly easy to recognize.
The skinny old man hunched his narrow shoulders; his skin was wrinkled and mottled with age spots.
His sagging belly shook with every hard thrust. His body was old, ugly, worn out.
Yet there was something greedy and driven in every snap of his hips.
He sucked in his stomach and drove forward again.
A young woman lay beneath him.
Markus couldn’t see her face. All he could see was a naked white back curving downward in an achingly beautiful line.
A narrow waist. A full, round ass that bounced with every rough impact.
Her pale skin stood in stark contrast to the gray, blotchy skin of the man taking her from behind.
Her thighs were spread wide. Her wet sex disappeared beneath Karl’s bony pelvis, then came back into view every time he pulled away.
Karl withdrew briefly, then drove deep into her again. The wet slap of skin against skin echoed through the room. Her body bowed beneath the force of the thrust, completely exposed under him. The scene was vulgar and filthy, like some cheap porno Markus should have despised.
But he couldn’t look away.
“… your pussy… so fucking good…” Karl’s voice filled the room, hoarse and lustful. “… I’m gonna come…” “… so good…”
The filthy words were crystal clear now. The woman beneath him had buried her face in a crumpled pillow, letting out choked, quick, helpless sounds.
Markus’s throat tightened. Hot arousal pooled in his groin. His breathing turned shallow and fast. Beneath the fabric of his suit pants, his cock had gone rock-hard, so swollen it almost hurt. He knew how sick it was to watch an old man fuck and get turned on by it.
But his body no longer obeyed him.
Without realizing it, Markus’s hand slid down and gripped his erection through his pants. In the dim hallway, he began rubbing himself while his eyes remained locked on the savage rhythm of the bodies on the bed.
The old wooden bed groaned harder. Karl’s breathing grew heavier, rattling in his chest. His old hands, knuckles thick, dug into the woman’s hips and left red welts across her white skin. The woman moaned louder. Her voice broke apart and mixed with the wet, smacking sounds of their bodies.
Then Karl let out a rough, deep growl. His body jerked hard.
Everything suddenly seemed to slow, as though the scene were playing out in slow motion.
Karl slowly pulled all the way out of her. The strip of light from the window fell directly between the woman’s spread thighs. Markus saw his semen spill from her, run over her reddened pussy lips, and drip onto the sheet.
The obscene sight made his hand move faster. He was about to come.
But at that exact moment, Karl toppled sideways and lay there breathing heavily. At the same time, the woman on the bed slowly turned over.
Markus froze.
The woman lifted her head and looked straight toward the door.
It was Nadja.
Not some woman who resembled her. Not a blurry trick of the mind.
It was Nadja.
His wife.
Her brown hair was disheveled and soaked with sweat. Her lips were swollen, red, and wet. Her ash-gray eyes were wide open, piercing the darkness and boring straight into Markus.
Time froze.
Markus stood outside in the hallway with his hand still wrapped around himself. All at once, he became painfully aware that he was standing there jerking off while watching the woman he loved get fucked raw and dirtied by that filthy old man.
The lust inside him died instantly, replaced by ice-cold horror. He wanted to let go, to back away, to scream her name, but his legs wouldn’t obey him.
Nadja looked at him.
Then her swollen lips slowly curved into a smile.
It wasn’t the soft smile she greeted him with at home.
It was cold. Strange. Full of pity.
As though she had known from the beginning that he was standing there. As though she had deliberately moaned that loudly and surrendered herself that shamelessly just to force him to watch this filthy spectacle.
“You saw everything, didn’t you?”
Her voice was bright and so icy that a chill ran down his spine.
Markus shook his head violently.
“No… no… Nadja, no…”
He tried to force the words out, but they broke weakly and hopelessly in his throat.
Beside her, Karl Seifert pushed himself upright and let out a dirty, rattling chuckle.
He bared smoke-yellowed teeth, opened his mouth, and latched onto Nadja’s full breast. His wrinkled hand roughly kneaded her soft white flesh, tugging at the reddened nipple while Nadja continued staring at Markus without looking away.
That pitying smile never left her face.
Markus stumbled backward in panic. The floor beneath his feet suddenly turned soft as mud. The room tilted and began to spin. The pale light on Nadja’s soiled skin suddenly flared blinding white.
The smell of stale cigarette smoke and the old man’s sour sweat mixed sickeningly with the familiar, clean scent of lavender.
“You saw everything, didn’t you?”
The sentence echoed endlessly through his head.
Then a sharp pain shot through his arm. Not the dull pain of a dream. Real pain.
A firm, determined grip shook his upper arm.
Markus jolted. His eyes flew open.
The familiar white ceiling of his rental apartment was above him. No grimy bedroom in Karl’s apartment. No old creaking bed. No old man with his stomach sucked in hanging over his wife’s white body. No harsh, milky light exposing his betrayal.
The clean scent of lavender filled his lungs and finally pulled him back into reality.
And Nadja was leaning over him.
She was wearing a thin sweater, her brown hair hastily pinned up. Obvious concern filled her gray eyes. Her hand was still resting on his upper arm.
"Markus? What’s wrong? Are you running a fever?"
Markus fought for air, his chest rising and falling at a frantic pace.
His face was pale and slick with sweat. For the first few seconds, the boundary between nightmare and reality had not completely faded.
He stared into Nadja’s face, searching every feature as though he needed to make sure she was truly real.
When his mind finally understood that this was reality, a wave of relief swept through him.
He sat up abruptly and pulled Nadja into his arms.
Nadja’s body jolted slightly, then went rigid with surprise. Markus wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, buried his face against her neck, and pressed his wife’s tense body hard against him.
He held her with desperate force, as though afraid that at any moment she might disappear again into that filthy room on the other side of the wall.