Chapter 5

For all that her memory had huge gaps in it, Claire and John settled back into a lifestyle remarkably like that before the accident. It was easy for John to avoid further confrontation (or working on the problem) by simply going back to his TV shows. Claire didn't remember what she had done with her free time before the accident so, if she wasn't sleeping, she wandered around the house, trying to learn more about "herself."

That might sound fruitless. If you look around your own house, you might think nobody could tell much about you from the appearance of it. I'm not talking about the traditional, "My house is a mess! People will think I'm a slob!" Everybody fears that, but the truth is that the vast majority of us, if invited into a "messy" house, don't notice that at all. It just looks lived in, as opposed to the sterile habitats of the rich, who hire maids to keep everything ship shape so people will be impressed. Maybe people are impressed with the display of wealth, but those places don't look lived in. They look like what they are - showcases.

The fact is that you can tell a lot about the occupants by casually examining a given, average residence.

For example, when Claire explored the stairs that led down to the basement, she found a small, but efficient, home gym down there. The equipment wasn't dusty, but other surfaces were, suggesting the equipment was used on a fairly regular basis. The kind of equipment was interesting too. There was an 80 pound punching bag hanging from a rafter at one end of the room, and a speed bag mounted on the wall at the other end. In the middle was a kicking dummy, fastened to a stand bolted to the floor. A Karate gi hung on a peg beside the speed bag, with a black belt casually looped over a hook next to it. A pair of grappling gloves lay on the bench of a weight set against one wall. She wondered, briefly, why she remembered they were called grappling gloves.

An examination of the gi suggested it was her size, rather than John's. And the grappling gloves were partially pink. So she was the one who worked out down here.

That explained that kick. It had been instinctive, and executed with the exact amount of force to knock him senseless without breaking either his jaw or his neck. It was the kind of kick she had apparently practiced hundreds of times, maybe thousands.

As she picked up the gloves an image flashed through her mind. She recognized it as having been during college. She was in a room with others, all dressed in gi's, working out.

She slipped on the gloves and went to the bag. She gave it a few exploratory punches and realized she'd gone into a crouch without thinking about it.

"Humph," she thought to herself. "I'm dangerous when I want to be."

She remembered warning John away when he'd been drunk. Her subconscious must have been ready to defend herself, and issued those warnings.

In the kitchen, a cupboard stuffed with cook books suggested an omnivorous interest. There were books on vegetarian cooking, and others on how to prepare various meats. A bread machine stood on the counter, next to a toaster. Next to both of those was a Keurig machine, but all she could find to put in it were various kinds of tea and a box with three hot chocolate K cups in it, mixed in with three cups of spiced cider.

There was no other coffee maker, and there was no coffee.

"But I like coffee," she thought to herself, puzzled.

It was at times like that that she approached John, if he was home.

"Hey. Do I like coffee?"

"You did in college, but you gave up caffeine when we were trying to have a baby."

"We tried?"

"We didn't so much try to have a baby as we stopped trying to prevent it," he said. "That was a long time ago. I hadn't noticed that you never started drinking coffee again."

"Why weren't we successful?" she asked.

"At having a baby? I don't know," he said.

"Didn't we talk to a doctor about it?"

"You wanted to, but then you got a new job and I guess we had other things to think about."

In a sense, these little conversations were very positive, in terms of the tentative relationship they were having. They spoke with an easy familiarity, but it was more like people who have worked together for a long time, rather than a mating pair. He was always willing to talk, and didn't seem to mind imparting information about her past.

In other ways, it wasn't so good. Again and again, John made it clear that he was self absorbed, self centered, and self serving. It wasn't that he didn't care about anybody else, such as a sociopath might, but that he didn't seem to pay any attention to the needs of others, and therefore rarely did anything to make anyone else's life any better.

She didn't know if she'd ever studied psychology or not, but it seemed odd to her that she had ever been attracted to the man.

Still, he was harmless, insofar as being in the house with her. Not once did he approach her sexually. He didn't even offer any simple touches or phrases that suggested he missed any intimacy they'd lost. He never said he loved her, or hated her, for that matter, and he never again said he was glad she hadn't been injured worse than she was.

Cindy came over every night at first, to check on her. They sat in the breakfast nook, sipping tea, and talked. Claire wasn't comfortable at that point telling Cindy about what had happened with John. Instead, she tried to learn more about her life. Cindy gave her information about herself, and Martin Industries. She also told Claire things about herself and Danny. The third night she came over, she apologized for having to leave early, but said it was date night.

"We're going out to eat and then things might get kinky." She grinned.

"Do I want to know?" asked Claire.

"I'll tell you about it later if it works out," said Cindy.

"I'm doing fine. You don't need to come over as often as you have been. Don't get me wrong, having you here makes life a lot less boring, but you have your own life to live. Go get kinky. If I need something, I'll call you."

Cindy had made her promise that she'd call every few days, and then left. She hadn't been back since, but they were in regular contact on the phone.

It was during one of her exploratory wanderings one day that Claire investigated all the drawers in her bedroom. She already knew that she enjoyed wearing undergarments that were made of soft materials, rather than scratchy lace. Her former self had gone to the effort of finding panties and bras that were comfortable to wear, but which were also delicate, and sexy.

When it came to what she thought of as "work clothes" there was variety, but all of it was very tasteful and conservative.

The drawers she hadn't gone through entirely revealed a mixture of items that were of little interest, with two exceptions.

The first was an item that consisted of elastic straps, attached to a sheath, inside which rested what her mind casually identified as a push dagger. The blade looked to be between three and four inches long, and was made of stainless steel. She realized the sheath was designed to be worn on the upper thigh, under a skirt.

The second, she found in the nightstand.

It was the dildo.

When she saw it, she felt her eyes widen in interest, and a surge of something in her chest. She liked this thing. Claire liked this thing.

She picked it up, gingerly, holding it between her thumb and forefinger. It was heavier than she expected, and she had to depress the soft, yet firm, material it was made of, to keep control over it.

It looked harmless enough, but what she was feeling inside told her it wasn't harmless at all. Her body had a visceral connection to this thing.

Cindy had told her she'd used it the night before the accident. She tried to think back about either this item's use, or any other sexual experience this body she was in had engaged in.

Nothing. The errant thought came into her mind that, for all intents and purposes, she was a virgin. Again. Sort of. Psychologically, at least.

The inanimate nature of the device was comforting somehow. She reached with the other hand and, using both, rearranged her grip so that her fingers were wrapped around the shaft. She squeezed. Butterflies began dancing in her belly.

She lifted it to examine the balls, which were fascinatingly detailed. That was also true of the shaft, clear up to the tip, which had a permanent sort of hood that, if it were a real phallus, would be movable as the foreskin was shifted by pressure. She wondered why she'd chosen one with a foreskin. John was circumcised. She'd seen that when he was preparing to rape her.

She held it out. It was big. She didn't know how she knew that, but she did. Most men didn't sport this kind of attachment in real life. But it wasn't ridiculous, either.

Claire must have thought she needed something larger than life. Thinking about John made it understandable. Any woman would want more than John had to offer. Of course she wasn't thinking about John in physical terms, but maybe Claire had tried to compensate on a physical basis.

"I must have been an interesting woman," she mused, aloud. "I can kick butt, and run a marathon, and I like a big, hard dick inside me." She grinned. "I can get used to this."

Something popped into her mind, and she searched the rest of the drawer carefully. Then she went on to any other place people might store a condom. There was nothing. Nor were there any condoms in the bathroom. The few medicines in the cabinet used to store them didn't hold any birth control pills either.

She went to get her purse. She hadn't gone anywhere, and so hadn't needed to take it anywhere. She also hadn't dumped it to see what was in it. She did that now.

No birth control pills.

And only one tube of lipstick, in a clear color.

So Claire wasn't advertising anything, but she also still wasn't trying to avoid having a baby.

With John?

Claire shook her head. Something was wrong here. This woman had a lot to offer. All that was on hold at the moment, because of the circumstances. But she'd had a lot to offer both the world and her husband before the accident. Why had she put up with John's self absorption?

She remembered talking to Cindy and saying she had taken her marriage vows seriously. Where had that come from? She thought about it. That concept seemed comfortable ... normal. The fact that John had patronized a prostitute offended her. And not just because she'd been lying in a hospital bed when he did it. The whole concept of marital infidelity offended her.

So that must be something that was bone deep in her, both before the accident ... and now.

Except that now it was conditional. She didn't know how Claire would have felt about it before the accident, but now she knew that he had voided those vows.

From what she could deduce based on her explorations, Claire had been trapped in a loveless marriage, but had endured it because she thought that was what was required of her on a moral basis. She'd stretched the bonds of that morality by procuring something to deal with her physical needs, but that was as far as she was willing to go.

Hadn't Cindy said she'd only used that dildo once, before the accident?

She went back to the bedroom and stared at the artificial penis, lying inert on the bed. She tried to imagine how she'd feel if she used it.

There was nothing. No guilt. But also no particular drive to pick it up and put it to work. Those flutters in her belly only told her that, when she had used it, it must have been a positive experience.

She tried to think like she assumed the old Claire would have thought. She was a good girl. She suffered in silence the fact that her marriage had gone downhill. She had been driven to buy this thing. She had used it. The next day, while talking about that with Cindy, she had become so upset that she bolted.

Maybe it hadn't been so positive.

Then she remembered the wording Cindy had used. Claire had said that she thought about another man while she used it.

That was the problem. It wasn't the thing. It was her fantasy about cheating on John that had upset her.

Claire sat, trying to find some kind of guilt in her mind about such a fantasy. There was nothing. Of course it would help if she knew what man she'd thought about. Was it someone she knew? A friend's husband? A celebrity?

Nothing came to the surface, where she could see it.

She sat down on the bed, feeling helpless. Her hand landed on the dildo.

She looked down at it, and then picked it up again.

She thought about that flicker of memory that had returned down in the home gym, of her sparring with others in college.

She stared at the rubber penis in her hand.

"What the hell," she said, aloud. "Maybe trying you again will spark a memory too."

She took off her clothes, unashamed to be naked, and lay down on the bed.

She teased herself with the tip until she felt her natural lubrication appear.

Then she slid the thing inside her, to see what would happen.

Claire lay there exulting in the feelings of bliss that coursed from her pussy through her abdomen up to her breasts. It was the first time something other than pain had dominated her body.

At first, she just pushed it in and left it there, letting her internal tissues spread and become used to the intrusion. Without knowing she had done this before, she turned the mass until the balls became a tool to put pressure on her clit.

She relaxed. It felt like the first time she'd been able to relax since that bath. She wondered what doing this in a hot bath would feel like, and determined to find out. But not now. She didn't want to take it out so she could draw a bath.

She let her arms flop to her sides, lying with her legs spread, feeling like she was floating on top of a soft, salty sea.

She used internal muscles to squeeze the thing inside her, and her right hand came to grasp the balls and pull, twisting slightly. A groan of happiness escaped her lungs.

Eventually she began to experiment with moving it in and out, pushing and trying to apply more pressure to one side of the tip than the other. There was a place where, not fully inserted, the bulbous head rubbed a special place deep inside her. By moving only her wrist, she used that protuberant tip to massage that special place, and had her first orgasm.

The only external sign she was there was a drawn out, "Ohhhhh fuuuuck," as what felt like little fingers of some kind played inside her, tickling something that loved to be tickled. It was a small one, but she didn't know that yet.

She rested, leaving herself impaled, and then tried moving it a lot, in and out. That made her hips want to move and soon as she slammed it in, she raised her hips to meet the thrust. She went deep and used the balls to bump her clit, not rubbing it, but hammering it gently.

The orgasm she had while doing that was even better.

She lost track of time until she was just stroking, making herself feel good, not even trying to have another climax, and the bedroom door opened. She'd been so absorbed in the pleasure that she hadn't heard him come in from work. John stood, frozen, as he took in the scene.

She was unashamed. For some reason she was unafraid as well.

"Shit," he said, softly.