STORY: ‘The Threshold’

Nora sat on the edge of her chair in the middle of her office and read the message again.

When are you coming home, it said. And then: Are you coming home?

She studied Rob’s profile picture. Around her, in the building where she worked as an editor, the corridors hummed with life as bright young things wandered between offices, wisecracking about their cats and their novels.

Nora heard them not. By now she was swiping through her photos for someone she knew, for a man – any man – whose name she remembered.

Abruptly, she shut off her phone and caught sight of her face in its empty screen. Pinched and pale and undeniably pretty. Lips big and glossy, bracketed by laugh lines that laughed no more.

But it was the eyes that shocked her most of all: their hard icy emptiness and the tiny pupils coiled tight like an addict’s.

Nora shuddered, skidded the device away across the desktop and sat back in her chair, its pliant vinyl fingers instantly pressing into her. Stifling a cry, she stood and stumbled to the window, where she dragged down on her skirt and tried to steady her breathing.

The sun flashed off the building across the street, blinding her.

There was a knock at the door and Callum came in, laptop in one hand, coffee in the other.

Morning, he said, giving her a lopsided grin that widened as he looked her over. His teeth shone white in his tanned face, and his black curls half-hid his right eye.

Nora smoothed her skirt. Got it in one, she said, returning her desk. Morning it is.

Callum passed her a cup and dropped into a chair.

Well, Nora said, as they drank. What’ve we got so far?

Callum opened his computer. Some half-interesting stuff, he said, and launched into his report. He talked about tears and how they might be used to generate electricity, about breakfast and how skipping it might hurt the heart, and about the brain and how it forgets details to make sense of the bigger picture.

Nora toyed with her cup, wishing she could lick the froth from around the rim.

Sounds fine, she said, when the talking stopped. You write up the first two and Viv can have a go at the third.

Callum nodded and licked the froth off his cup. Sorry, he said. Couldn’t resist.

One last thing, he went on, with milk on his lip. Something for the pseudo-science section. It’s about monkeys and, er, sex.

Nora watched his lips move, fascinated by the smear.

Cheeks reddening, Callum peered at his screen. A study published in Experimental Zoology, he said. Researchers injected sterilised mangabey monkeys with aphrodisiacs and let them, er, copulate for a whole year. Found that, compared to a control group, the sex-mad monkeys died much sooner.

Sooner?

Yeah, younger than their celibate pals.

So what are they suggesting. That sex kills?

I guess so, Callum said, squirming a little in his seat. That’s what makes it so funny, don’t you think? The paper talks about a sexual threshold that, once reached, increases an organism’s chances of dying from natural causes.

Natural causes?

Heart attack, that kind of thing.

Nora took a long, slow breath. Sounds crazy, she said.

Perfect, huh. So should I write it up as a pseudo piece?

And the threshold? What happened there?

Callum scrolled down the screen. Abnormally high level of sexual arousal, he said. Obsessional, risk-taking behaviour.

Crazy, Nora said, shaking her head.

I’ve even come up with a title, Callum said. ‘Loving yourself to death: multiple orgasms and the end of the organism’. What do you think?

Terrible, truly terrible.

I know. Ain’t it great? So I’ll write it up?

Sure, Nora said, why not. Write it up.

Callum rose and snapped his laptop shut. Pausing at the door, he said, See you tonight?

Nora looked at him. She saw his energy, his earnestness, his eagerness, and she sighed. Come here, she said, softly.

Callum crossed the room. Nora turned to meet him, drawing him down. Moistening her thumb, she wiped the milk from his lip.

Now go, she said. Go and write about tears and hearts and sex and a little death. Une petite mort.

He went.

As the door closed, Nora reached for her phone. She sat on the edge of her chair in the middle of her office and read the message again.

When are you coming home? Are you coming home?

She scrolled back through their history – on and on it went – until one of her old replies to Rob pulled her up.

You make me feel safe, she had written. But I need adventure, danger, to bring me to life. I just can’t keep faking it with you. It’s killing me.

Scrolling back to the beginning, Nora tapped out a new message.

 

Image by John Levenson