Egyptian Nights

The sensation of a rocking boat and lapping water caused her open her eyes.  Before her sat the man who said she was his wife, the father of the child she had died trying to deliver.  A canopy placed over her thwarted the strong sun and a gentle breeze blew past.  He smiled at her, but Victoria was unable to keep her eyes open any longer and she dreamed. 

In the oblivion she forced herself to have in sleep, to escape the life of torture she lived, the void she was left with was too easily filled with dreams that weren’t hers.  Victoria may have studied Ancient Egypt in college, but she didn’t think enough knowledge was in her own head to create a world this detailed.  In some dreamlike way, Victoria asked who this woman was and she was answered.  It was like watching a movie that someone had spent years creating so that every detail had been seen to.  Even the smells were there, flowers in the garden, the damp musty smell of the river, the sounds of the birds and animals that made the Nile their home.  As if she was there, Victoria walked through the fields with her husband at her side.  The inside of several houses paraded before her, cats slinking about inside, houses that were surely that of a wealthy person.  Soon the pictures focused on one house in particular.  It wasn’t very large, with pastel walls and few decorations, but it was surrounded by gardens that were magnificent.  That was her house or maybe her favorite one.   

The memories flooded in from somewhere else all together too private it seemed even for sharing a body.  Victoria could see nothing else that explained what was going on.  Mayati had been recently deceased when Victoria had asked for help and her husband’s words had drawn Victoria’s soul across time to fill the void that had been left.  Could there be anything else that explained all this?  Even hardly conscious Victoria knew that she was looking out through different eyes, from a shorter vantage point than she was used to.  The hands she had seen looked different. 

“Come to me Khaemhat the night is long and the servants have gone.”  Mayati was saying as she dropped the diaphanous linen covering she wore.  The man Victoria had seen for the few moments she’d been awake obliged her in the magnificent garden Victoria had just been shown.  Before she could even think about clearing her mind of the dream he was poised above her.  Victoria hadn’t the energy to wake up.  His erection throbbed between her legs as he entered her again and again.  The background changed with every thrust as she was shown what seemed to be every mating the couple ever had.  When she felt tugs of want and need from her own body, for she knew it was hers now, she only grew angry at being shown all she had been denied in her own marriage. 

Victoria felt it only fair and willed her own memories forth.  Terror grew inside what was left of Mayati, stronger than Victoria had ever felt in the face of her demon.  Victoria was not the one horrified - that feeling came from the one who’d had this body before her.  When Victoria couldn’t hold the feeling any longer without it consuming her own soul, it fell away.  Even in sleep, she could feel the tears running down her cheeks.  They were wiped away with a tenderness that shamed her.  She was intruding on what was meant for another.