Ash Wednesday by Chet Williamson, Neil Jackson

asked him to make love to her.
    "I'm on the pill now," she said. "I knew you were coming home and I wanted it to be so good for you, so I went on the pill."
    "That was nice of you," he said, giving a small laugh that startled her.
    "What's wrong?" she asked.
    "Why? Something seem wrong?"
    "You just seem . . . funny."
    "Funny," he repeated. He looked down at her for a moment before he asked, "Do you still love me?"
    "Oh, yes," she said, making her eyes as soulful as she knew how.
    "And you want me to, make love to you?"
    "Yes."
    "And you want us to get married?"
    "Yes. I do. I want that . . . so much."
    "Okay, then." He sat down next to her, but he didn't touch her. "I'm going to tell you some things. And if after I tell you you still want what you want now, then I'll want it too. All right?"
    Terror ran through her. She fully expected to hear of every sexual escapade Brad had had in Vietnam, of teenaged whores and older mama sans, or whatever they called them, trained in how to please men in a hundred different sick ways, ways that she could never hope to compete with. She made herself smile and nod just the same, and sat up and listened as he spoke.
    But his words were not of sex and whores and strange diseases. Rather, to her surprise, he spoke of jungles and narrow caves, of grim things done in the middle of the night, couched in words and concepts she did not understand. Yet he painted scenes for her that parts of her mind could dimly comprehend—scenes of blood and fire, agony and death, glimpses of Brad, khaki-clad, tinted with red, eyes gleaming in orgasmic fear, doing things that she could not dream of anyone doing, not in real life, not in life as it was and had always been lived in Merridale. These were other dreams, the dark dreams, the dreams that would sometimes come to her unbidden in night's black heart, the same kind of things of which Brad spoke now, trying to gnaw their way into her sleep; but she would not let them, for they were filthy , worse than the worst things the whores of Saigon could ever bring themselves to do. And those dreams would turn from her and fade back to where they came from, and she would awaken from her effort and lie there sweating, thanking God that she had escaped from that confrontation with shadow.
    And now Brad was saying, wasn't he, that those dreams had been real, that he had lived them.
    It couldn't be. That was all. It couldn't be. And the words struck her and moved, not through her, but around her, like a stream parting to either side of a great rock, to be deflected, divided, weakened. If she heard now, it did' not matter.
    Brad finished. His face was solemn but not shaken by his tale of horrors. His cheeks were still ruddy, his hands steady. He looked at her coldly, appraisingly, and she smiled.
    "But were you faithful?" she asked. "Were you true to me?"
    He laughed as though he could not believe what she said, laughed and embraced her. "Oh, yes." He chuckled. " 'I have been faithful to thee, Cynara ! In my fashion!' "
    She did not ask who Cynara was, though she wondered about it.
    ~*~
    They decided to get married in June. When, in a moment of doubt, she asked him why he wanted to marry her, he told her that he needed her. Not loved, not wanted, but needed, and he did. He longed for normality, stability, even mediocrity. He wanted to drown himself in dullness. Though his parents suggested returning to college under the GI Bill, he told them that he had had enough of college. "I already learned too much," he said. "It's not easy to learn things." His father didn't know what he meant, but did not press him for an explanation. Since his return from the service, it was difficult to talk to Brad. He would speak readily of inconsequential things—baseball, television, movies—but on more serious matters, such as politics, he seemed to have no opinions at all, and of his own past and future he would say nothing. When his father or mother broached such subjects to him, he simply