The Bear’s Mail Order Menage

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There was a reason Andrew didn’t like to sleep. There were all sorts of reasons, actually. He wasn’t the type to complain, not ever, not even when it would have been the expected reaction, but sleeping was something he wished to avoid if at all possible. He didn’t like to be alone, in the dark. He didn’t like the loss of control. The mind could be a terrible thing, especially a mind like his. He had not led a life of comforting moments, his head was not filled to the brim with sweet moments. There were some, of course there were, but when he slept he lost control of the memories conjured up. There were things he would rather not revisit, at least not when he was awake. His sleeping mind was another matter entirely. It was a mind that could betray.

He twisted in the hot sheets damp with sweat, tearing at them with hands halfway shifted to his bear form. He was locked in a struggle he could not win. It was a struggle that would go on for as long as he lived, almost every time he closed his eyes. If only he could bring the fight out to the waking world! That fight would be fair, or if not fair, at least he would have a chance but in his dreams; in his dreams he felt powerless.

He was made to live the things he feared most without any power to alter them and, although he was grown when he went to sleep, in his dreams he was still little more than a child incapable of effecting any change. How heartbreaking, to have to relive your worst moments in that way, to watch the most devastating and catastrophic of events over and over again without being able to make a single change.

“Cali! Cali!”

It was a lucky thing he lived on his own now and not with Mr. and Mrs. Peters. He had bunked with them for years, every night after Cali found him and led him home just like one might a stray puppy, and for years it had been good. Yes, he had suffered from nightmares. He had suffered from them from birth, as far as he could tell. But in the Peters’ home, there were parents there to wake him and soothe his tears. After Cali’s death, however, things changed. It wasn’t that mom and dad stopped caring about his screams, it was just that he was screaming about their daughter who was dead and gone.

They still came to him to comfort him when they could, but other times they couldn’t even pull themselves out of bed. There were times when Andrew could hear both of them sobbing through the thin walls. Those were the times when he feared the family might never mend. He heard his chosen mother wail that she would die too, that it would be better than going on in a world without her baby girl’s hand to hold. He stuffed his face in his deep, plush pillow and screamed then, for himself and for the family who had so graciously taken him in. They were all broken now, each in their own particular way.

Somehow he had believed that when he got older, when he was something close to an adult, the nightmares would stop. They never had, though, they had only grown more grotesque. The only way to put a stop to it was to get himself blackout drunk before laying his head down, and he had a feeling that he just wasn’t remembering the dreams. He very much doubted that they were actually gone. And what did he dream of? Sometimes it was of the years he had spent lonely and afraid, existing on the scraps he found or hunted after whoever his asshole family was who had left him to die. But the thing about that was, he hadn’t done that for very long, not in comparison with the life he had lived after. Those memories were dark and swirling, more raw feeling and color than anything else. If that had been all, he would have slept soundly, at least a portion of the time. It was Cali that had changed everything. Her death had almost completely undone him.

Little Cali Peters. He had thought she was an angel the first time he saw her with her chubby pink hand extended through the thorny bush he was hiding in. He had been more animal than human at that juncture, someone even shifters were more likely to ignore than to help. Not Cali, though. She had seen him as a boy and she had led him home, changed his life forever. He had loved her immediately, followed her like a pet, and then he had found her body when they were still practically babies.

He and Joshua had been fourteen and Cali only twelve. At that age, love had not been enough for him to bring her along on his mischievous deeds, and he and Joshua had more often than not left her behind. She was most frequently turned away from the swimming hole. . She hadn’t been a strong swimmer and neither boy was interested in teaching her. She had been a rambunctious girl, one fully intent on proving herself and so one night, without telling a living soul, she had made her way down to the water on her own.

She was going to surprise her brother and her dearest friend with her new skills. She never made it out of the water again. Andrew had gone down there as the sun came up the next morning for his ritual morning swim and nothing had ever been the same. That was what he dreamed of now and so he fought as hard as he could to steer himself away from sleep.

“No!”

He woke with a gasp, swiping at the air angrily. Son of a bi*ch. He couldn’t keep doing this, night after night. He would have given his left testicle just to get a sober good night’s sleep. He had loved Cali, he still loved her, but he couldn’t live for her this way and he wasn’t going to die because of her. It wasn’t what she would have wanted. She would have slapped him silly for the attitude he had been sporting in recent years. It was time to shake things up. He just wasn’t sure exactly how.

Very quietly, he slipped out of his studio apartment and made his way down the rickety stairs. Finding Cali the way he had hadn’t stopped him from his morning swimming ritual. Quite the contrary. He never missed a morning, even if he wanted to. Even in the freezing cold. As far as he knew, nobody else in the town even knew about his morning trips. Even Joshua didn’t know how often he visited the swimming hole.

It was a secret he shared with Cali and her alone. Even in this frigid morning air, every step he took down the dimly lit gravel road made his lungs feel bigger, his heart feel fuller. He felt more alive when he was out on untouched earth, and feeling Cali there with him only made it better. It was one of the rare instances in which he felt at peace. He knew it was the place for him to mull over what it was that he should do next.

“So what? What the fu*k are we supposed to do?”

He was talking to nobody, but that tended to be the way he liked it. At least if he didn’t like his own answers there was nobody to get pissed off at but himself. He ran his hand through his thick sun-drenched hair, looking very much like a golden god as he dipped his toes into the frigid water. It was the feeling of being trapped that he hated so much. He knew that was something most men detested, at least that was what he had heard, but he had a feeling that for shifters, it was worse.