I stare at the sleeping woman beside me, still reeling from our encounter while the winter storm outside continues.

Seri had curled up against my chest and passed out moments after we disentangled from our very unexpected get-together—unexpected for me, anyway.  As sweat chilled my skin, I brought the blanket up around us and pulled her in close to me.  Crushing the male stereotype, I am unable to fall asleep at all, despite the intense orgasm and overall physical release.

It’s been some time since I’ve had sex.  Unlike most men I’ve encountered, I don’t think about it much.  Spending my adolescence locked up with boys, I’d curbed whatever sex drive I felt as I grew up.  Inmates had very little access to females in general, and I never chose to pair up with another guy though it was occasionally tempting just to get some relief.  I was big enough and apparently scary enough not to get any unwanted attention.  These days, my solitary lifestyle limits my exposure to women.  Aside from a brief, post-breakup encounter with Margot two years ago, I’ve been celibate since I moved out of her place.

It’s not just the sex with Seri that has me baffled.  It’s also the way she approached me.  “Approached” isn’t even the right word.  “Attacked” is more like it.  She came at me the same way she might have if she still had that knife in her hand.  Though certainly consensual, the encounter was practically violent, and I don’t know what to think of it.

Sex with Margot was never like that.  She always liked it slow and deep.  She liked it to last for hours, and she liked it under the covers.  She told me every woman is different, and each one likes different things, but I was not prepared for the extreme opposite.

I also wasn’t prepared for my own reaction.

I take a deep breath.  My heart is still beating a little faster than normal, and I can’t stop myself from reliving the deed over and over again.  She was rough—shoving me down on the bed and taking me however she wanted—and I’d loved every second of it.  I’d always enjoyed sex with Margot, but I was usually on top and often felt awkward, especially in the early days.  This incident had been so fast and intense, I didn’t have a chance to wonder if I was doing something wrong.

Margot had been a great teacher.  However, she is a full decade older than I and quite experienced.  I couldn’t help but wonder how much better her other lovers may have been.  With Seri, I didn’t even have a chance to think about it.

I shake my head slightly and take a few more breaths.  I stare at the fire for a moment, trying to think about something that won’t make me instantly hard again.  A moment later, Solo coos as he jumps up on the end of the bed and walks up the length of my body.  He stands on my shoulder and mews before settling down with his feet pulled under him.

The wind outside continues to howl.

Eventually, I fall asleep.  When I wake briefly, Solo has moved to his box by the fire.  I notice that Seri must have gotten up at some point in the night and put her clothes back on.  She’s sleeping again now, so I nestle my head up against her shoulder and close my eyes.

I wake in total darkness.

As my eyes adjust, I see only the faintest of coals still glowing in the fireplace.  It’s not right at all—I banked the fire well, and it should burn through the night.  My head has a strange, fuzzy feeling that’s similar but not quite the same as general sleepiness.  I sit up, and my head spins.  Something is definitely off.

I take a deep breath, and it feels as if I’m trying to breathe underwater.  The stale air in the small room tells me the rest of what I need to know.

I move quickly—too quickly—and stumble as I climb out of the bed.  I try not to bash my legs into anything as I make my way in the darkness, but the dizziness is worse, now that I’m upright.  I hear Solo’s labored meow coming from behind me, but I can’t think about him just now.  I hold out my arm until my hand hits a wall and then make my way to the corner of the room.  A large pole leans against the wall, and I wrap my fingers around it, gripping it tightly.

I gasp as my lungs try to retrieve what oxygen is left in the room.

It would be easier to find the airholes in the ceiling if I had light, but I don’t know how much oxygen is in the room, and lighting a lamp will just use more of it.  I’m having a difficult time keeping my grip on the pole and doubt I could manage to successfully strike a match anyway.  I need to get the snow off the roof and fresh air into the cabin first.  The fire going out is a bad sign.  Snow must be covering the chimney, and I’ll need to get outside to clear that off.

First, I need to take care of the inside before we all suffocate.

Still unsteady on my feet, I poke at the ceiling with the pole until I hit a spot that makes a deep, hollow sound.  I line the pole up as best I can and then shove.  Snow falls down onto my bare shoulders, and I can see twinkling stars above me.

I take a deep breath of cold, oxygenated air, and my head begins to clear.  I try not to think about what might have happened if I had slept another hour.  If I had woken up gasping for air, I might not have had the muscle strength to get the pole through the hole, but I push those thoughts away as I fill my lungs several more times before I shove open the second airhole.

The blowing wind quickly cools the inside of the cabin, but the air is notably fresh and clean.  Snow falls in, blowing from other parts of the roof, but it melts as soon as it hits the floor.  I’m going to have to get dressed and go outside to get the chimney cleared off and then get the fire going again.  First, I get a lamp lit so I can see what the heck I’m doing.

As soon as the soft red glow of the first lamp fills the room, Seri screams.

“What are you doing?”

Startled, I nearly drop the lamp.  Scowling at her, I set the lamp on the mantle.

“Snow’s covered the roof,” I say as I walk back toward the bed.  “Nothing to worry about now.  I just need to get up there and clear some of it off.”

Seri scrambles out of the bed and backs away, eyes wide.  She nearly hits the wall of the cabin before she stops.

“You’re not wearing any clothes!” she shrieks at me, and the sound of her shrill voice places me on edge.

“So?”  I’m at a complete loss.  Of course I’m not wearing clothes; she practically ripped them off of me!  She should have at least noticed I was still undressed when she got up to put her own clothes back on.

“So, you can’t do that!  What the hell is wrong with you?”

I look away from her twisted, reddening face.  My skin crawls as if her fury is a physical thing, assaulting my body.  I don’t understand the yelling.  I’ve never understood the yelling.

“What the fuck is your problem, you stupid shit?”

“I didn’t do anything!”

“The fucking lamp is broken!  You were playing football in the house!”

“I wasn’t!  You broke it, Dad!”

“You gonna blame your shit on me?  I don’t fucking think so!”  He grabbed me by the back of the neck and dragged me into the garage.  “How about I break your shit, huh?  What do you think of that?”

He hurled me against an upright freezer, slamming the back of my head.  As I sat in a daze on the cold garage floor, he collected all the toys I had in the garage, including my bicycle, and stacked them up in the driveway.  He made me watch as he ran over the pile with his truck, screaming at me the whole time.

I’m starting to shake, and I hate it.  I grip my hands into fists in a lame attempt to control the building tension inside of me, but it doesn’t work.  It never did.  The tightness of my muscles moves up into my head.  My temples throb, and pressure builds behind my eyes.

I lean over to check on Solo, hoping the kitten’s soft fur and purring will ease the feelings inside of me as I cradle him against my chest and make sure he’s breathing okay.  I stare at Seri, trying to figure out why the hell she’s acting like this.  She’s completely freaking out, so I’ve obviously done something wrong, but what?  Margot and I always slept naked, even if we didn’t have sex before we slept.  It helps hold in the body heat.

“What the hell is your problem?” I yell back at her.  My head throbs with the sound.

“You’re naked!”  Seri wraps her arms around herself as if having more coverage over her own body will somehow make me less bare.

I glance down at my naked body.  The cold air makes my dick a lot less impressive than it was when she took it in her hand, but I didn’t understand why that would be an issue now.  Without any other ideas, I settle Solo back in his box and grab the blanket from the bed to cover myself.

“I was naked all night!” I blurt out the only words that make any sense to me.

“My God, Bishop!  I know we had a bit of a moment last night, but this is not okay!”

“A moment?”  I stare at her, now more flabbergasted than ever.  “Is that what it was?”

“I know I pissed you off, but that doesn’t mean you can do something so…so…disrespectful!”  Seri shakes her head violently before placing her hands over her face.  “Just…put your clothes back on!”

Completely confused and trying to prevent my own breakdown due to all the yelling, I grab my boxers from the floor where she dropped them and yank them up my legs.  I retrieve my jeans and a T-shirt from the drying rack and then head toward the front door to get the rest of my gear to go outside and clear off the roof.

Seri uncovers her eyes but remains huddled against the wall and glares at me as I dress in my boots and parka and open the door.

“Motherfucker.”

Snow is piled up to the top of the opening, preventing even the cold wind from blowing snow into the cabin.  I hear Seri gasp, but ignore her as I grab a small shovel from behind the door and poke at the top of the pile of snow, which falls to the floor at my feet.

Thankfully, the snow isn’t much higher than the door, at least here on the lee side of the cabin.  Additional fresh air fills the room as I dig out enough of a hole that I can climb out and onto the snow bank.

The wind whips around me, but the sky has cleared and the snow is no longer accumulating, just blowing around.  It’s drifted up and over the roof and up one side of the chimney.  At least it’s easy enough to climb onto the roof, carefully moving on my hands and knees to spread out my weight and keep myself from dropping too far into the snow.  A thin crust of ice covers it all, making movement a little easier.  I make my way to the small air holes I made from the inside, displace the snow from there, and then uncover the chimney.  Once that’s done, I widen the hole at the entrance to the cabin and create a couple of steps to make it easier to get out again.

  The fresh air and cold have calmed me somewhat, and I hope Seri has calmed down as well as I lower myself back through the hole at the top of the door.  I get the door securely closed again, stomp snow from my boots, and then head to the fireplace to get some warmth back in the room.

Seri is wrapped in the blanket and sitting on the bed, glaring daggers at me, and the look reminds me of the man who brought me into the world.  Just as I didn’t know in my childhood what I did to deserve that look, I have no clue what I’ve done to deserve such a look now, and I tense again as I blow over the coals and watch flames lick around the kindling.

I have no idea what’s happening here.  Women are a mystery to men, or so I hear, and I know less about them than most.  I have no idea what’s happening, and I can’t decide if I’m angry at her reaction, annoyed that she’s giving me orders in my house, or hurt that she doesn’t seem to want to acknowledge what happened last night.

Mostly, I’m fighting the emerging, deep-rooted fear of a man long since dead.  I squeeze my eyes shut for a moment, forcing thoughts of his face from my head.  It doesn’t work.  Instead, I see his face covered with blood.  I remember the wooden axe handle in my hands and how slippery it got toward the end.  With a shudder, I open my eyes, shove a couple of logs on top of the flames, and stare at the fire as it grows.

He is not here.  He is not the one who was yelling at me.

The images dissipate into the flames, and I search my brain for any reason why Seri is acting like this.  Margot constantly told me to look for a woman’s reactions and base your behavior on that.  She mostly meant in the context of sex, but maybe it meant afterward as well.  Just because Margot liked sleeping naked doesn’t mean Seri does.  If I had been more observant, maybe I would have figured that out.

Fuck if I know.

With oxygen and warmth in the room again and me fully dressed, Seri does appear to be calming down.  She looks at the floor with her arms still wrapped around herself, but at least she isn’t yelling at me anymore.  The tension in my muscles releases slightly, and I try to busy myself by adding wood to the fire instead of just standing there like an idiot, trying to figure out what the hell the problem is.

Seri sits on the bed, unmoving.  We don’t look at each other, but I can still see her out of the corner of my eye.  Solo places a paw on my thigh, meowing for some breakfast, and I’m glad for the distraction.

I pick him up and take him to the kitchen with me as I get the milk out.  I rub his head as he walks back and forth on the counter, yowling in anticipation.  Running my fingers over his fur further calms my nerves.

Looking out the window, I see that the snow has only covered it halfway, so I can still see out.  A sliver of light appears on the horizon as the sun begins to finally make its presence known.  The storm seems to be over, at least for now.  I crank up the weather radio, but I can’t get a signal.  Solo isn’t pleased with my distraction and reaches up to dig tiny claws into my forearm.

I pick him up and place him up on my shoulder, only tensing slightly as I have to walk past Seri to sit by the fire and feed the kitten.  He sucks ravenously at the bottle, and I wonder how long it will be before he wants something more substantial.  I doubt cow’s milk is really the best thing for him, but I don’t have any other options, and he’s at least filling out and not looking quite so scraggly now.

“Look,” Seri says but then stops speaking for a moment.  She eventually squares her shoulders and glances at me.  “I know this is your place, and I didn’t mean to react so strongly, but I wasn’t expecting that.  I’m sure you’re used to just doing whatever you like in your own home, and I respect that, but…well, when I woke up…all I could think about were those guys who left me on the side of the road.”

Add guilt to the list of conflicting emotions.

“I’m sorry I freaked out,” she says.

“I wasn’t trying to upset you.”  I rub Solo’s belly as he sucks milk from the bottle.  “We were both a little oxygen deprived anyway.  That can make people act strangely.”

“Like stripping naked?”  Seri mumbles the words, and I choose to ignore them.

It occurs to me that Seri may be embarrassed about how she acted last night.  She has a lot less body mass than I do, and if snow had already covered much of the cabin, she could have been feeling the effects of lowered oxygen levels before I even noticed.

The idea was bullshit, and I knew it, but I didn’t have a better explanation for her behavior.  Her reaction to my nakedness made zero sense, and blaming it on the atmosphere is the best excuse I have.  I’m not one to engage in conflict when I don’t have to, so I’m not about to question her on it.  It would just lead to a fight, and I don’t want to argue with her.

If she can act like we didn’t have sex, then so can I.