After the Dream Read online

  Title Page

  AFTER THE DREAM

  by

  Stan Mason

  Publisher Information

  After the Dream Published in 2013 by

  Andrews UK Limited

  www.andrewsuk.com

  The right of Stan Mason to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998

  Copyright © 2013 Stan Mason

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any person who does so may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Chapter One

  She deftly allowed the soft silk dressing-gown to slip from her slender shoulders to fall to the floor exposing her beautiful slim mature body. Her long legs sauntered smoothly over the body of her handsome young lover before she folded neatly into his ready arms, enjoying the warmth of his lustful intimate embrace. His hand caressed her neck gently and easily, moving up and down sensuously. She felt erotic emotion swiftly welling up inside her. His hands moved slowly to her breasts, stroking each one smoothly touching the nipples softly so that she felt transported to a higher level plane than she had never known before. Suddenly she felt her body becoming moist as her heart beat rapidly in anticipation of what was about to happen, and beads of perspiration began to appear on her forehead. It was so wonderful ....so marvellous...so brilliant...so erotic! His hand moved to the lower part of her body causing her adrenalin to begin to flow fiercely then, without warning, a shock ran through her body as her eyes opened widely to the bright light that pierced through a gap in the curtains, causing her to wake abruptly from her reverie utterly alone and desolate in her large comfortable bed. It was yet another dream...a mirage in her mind. in the depths of her sleep....another figment of her frustrated imagination.

  Diana Templeton was a woman heading slowly towards middle age who preferred to live her life in a dream world. It would be fair to say that it had overtaken her sanity for she worshipped the remarkable gift that had been especially endowed to her. The humdrum life of boredom in a house that was far too big for her to manage alone offered absolutely nothing in the way of passion , emotion, or even a modicum of tenderness....all interest having been lost to the past. This was accentuated by the fact that her husband, who was ten years young, like many others after twenty-three years of marriage, neglected her badly. Indeed, it was far worse than that for he was absent most of the time as a result of his work and had become a conditioned workaholic. She recalled some research carried out that women spoke seven thousand words each day but men only managed two thousand. To her dismay, when she and Charles were alone, the dialogue was negligible. She could not recall any meaningful discussion, debate, argument or decision they had made together over the past ten years. They simply held their silence and very rarely spoke to each other. Subsequently, she began to yearn for night to come so that she could lay full-length in her comfortable bed, with her head lolling on the soft pillow and be allowed to experience such brilliant dreams to relieve the frustration that built up inside her. It was a means of entering another world which was wistful, exotic, erotic and absolutely unreal. The strange part of the matter was that she always enjoyed such pleasant fantastic dreams. There was never any ugliness or situations that distressed her or affect her mind with threats of disaster.....only emotional love! As soon as she fell into the arms of Morpheus each night, a new world opened up to her....to another world that was wonderful...similar to the theme of the book of the thousand tales of the Arabian Nights.

  * * *

  At the age of forty-three, with a wealthy husband and two grown-up children who had left home, she was relatively free in mind and most adventurous in spirit. She felt that there was something inside her struggling to get out but there was no opportunity for it to do so. As with every other woman she wanted to enjoy life to the full and had once set her mind to do so until her husband moved up the promotional ladder at work and refused to allow her to do anything. Each morning, with nothing to do, she would climb out of bed and stand in front of a full-length mirror preening herself for quite some time, thanking her lucky stars that she had an outstandingly slim figure and a beautiful unwrinkled smooth-skinned face. Such was her outstanding beauty that people who didn’t know her believed that she was about fifteen years younger, in her late twenties, and she took great pains not to tell them the truth.

  On one particular evening, she undressed, went to bed, and lay between the luxurious sheets solemnly thinking about the future, but it wasn’t long before she fell asleep to enter into a fantastic dream where she was magically transported to Morocco in Africa with the vast Sahara Desert stretching out before her. She found herself in a Bedouin tent laying nude in the arms of an equally naked handsome dark-skinned young man....one who was younger than herself who she found to be extremely amorous. In the realm where excitement abounded, she found herself wrapped around his lithe brown body, kissing him gently but firmly on the lips before pushing her tongue into his mouth which thrilled her intensely.

  He began to kiss her all over her body with gentle kisses causing her to experience tremendous erotic pleasure. She then moved her body so that the two of them could enjoy a session of pure intimacy. In reality, as her mind wafted through the emotions, her limbs moved up and down under the blankets suggesting that she was undergoing extreme intimate pleasure. The stimulation continued for some considerable time until she gave a series of light gasps and completely relaxed her body. This was the crowning moment of the life she loved to live...enjoying magnificent satisfaction within the confines of her own mind which also seemed to satisfy her physical needs. The exercise was entirely personal and she was not obliged to reveal any details to any other person or offer any kind of explanation to anyone. Certainly it would be impossible to talk to her husband of her great passion...he would never understand what she meant or why she revelled in such a reaction. He was a dull Civil Servant of high-standing within the Government and, apart from being a workaholic, he was often away for weeks on business. No....not only would he not understand but he wouldn’t care to fathom out the reason. Work was all he wanted to do; his wife took second place in his life. If she tried to explain her nightly intimate clandestine affairs in her nether-world to him, he would eye her with an element of contempt or perhaps consider that she was losing her mind. No...this was her secret....her precious private superb secret which she would never reveal to anyone!

  The dream about Morocco stayed firmly in her mind for a very long time and it wasn’t too long before she approached her husband, asking him to take her on holiday there.

  ‘Why Morocco?’ he demanded with an element of surprise. ‘You know nothing about it. What’s so fascinating that you want to go there?’

  ‘It’s just a whim,’ she responded easily, thinking about the young handsome dark-skinned Arab but refusing to give her husband any other reason. ‘If you want, you can say it’s my birthday present.

  He huffed and puffed for a while, examining his diary at length in order to set a date for the vacation.

  ‘I’ll have to get clearance for a trip to that country,’ he muttered indicating his reluctance to leave his work. ‘In any case,’ he went on. ‘I can only afford to be away for one week. You know how my work builds up.’ He turned over some more pages in his diary and then gave a grunt. ‘I can go one week before the end of June!’
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br />   As far as he was concerned, it was extremely difficult to find time to spend on a frivolity such as a vacation but, regardless of any date in his calendar, it was always difficult for Charles Templeton to find spare time away from his duties. Nonetheless, they went ahead and Diana booked the holiday but she recognised that there would be no lascivious or intimate relationships with any young handsome dark-skinned Arab when she arrived there. Despite her boredom and distress at home, she was still compos mentis, capable of defining dreams from reality although it sometimes peeved her to have to do so.

  Chapter Two

  The day of their departure soon arrived and they made their way to the airport to board the aircraft which took off without delay. Diana was in her element, She was on an aircraft flying to the place she had seen in her dreams. However the journey was not without incident. A short time before the plane approached Agadir airport in Morocco, the pilot announced that a simoom was in force in the area and that all passengers needed to secure their seat-belts as he expected a very bumpy landing. When the aircraft descended on to the runway, the fierce wind blew so strongly that it swerved at an angle ramming one of its wings into another plane parked nearby. The aircraft then slewed violently off the runway causing the passengers to scream as it rendered off its course. As it happened, the damage was relatively limited and the aircraft managed to resume its progress towards the main building, albeit the portside wing had been slightly dented. When the door of the plane was opened, Charles Templeton stood on the gangway to disembark and stared outwards at a sea of sand being blow about by the strong wind. As he did so, it ripped open his jacket and swept away the pens and papers which were in his inside pockets, distributing them into oblivion.

  ‘My goodness!’ he remonstrated staring bleakly at his empty pockets looking for them on the open runway. ‘What an awful forceful wind!’

  The stewardess standing close by smiled weakly. ‘The simoom is a hot sand-laden wind in North Africa,’ she told him. ‘It normally lasts for three days.’

  He nodded wistfully climbing down the stairway to suffer a rain of sharp sand which whipped against him. He and Diana raced into the main building to face an immigration officer who held out his hands for their passports.

  ‘Tell me,’ asked Templeton in earnest, ‘How long does it take for this simoom to die down?’

  ‘It has been here for three days long,’ replied the immigration officer in clipped English. ‘It will not last for more than a few hours at most.’

  ‘Thank Heavens for that!’ muttered the Civil Servant dryly with an element of relief in his voice. ‘The last thing we want on a holiday is to suffer a damned continuous sandstorm.’

  ‘But it will still remain quite hot,’ concluded the officer, returning their passports to them.

  The Templetons left the airport clutching their luggage and hailed a taxi to take them to their hotel. The cabbie was extremely talkative believing that the more he told them about the place the larger would be his tip.

  ‘Agadir is growing very fast,’ he informed them, deliberately taking them the long way round to their hotel so that he could continue his lecture and increase his charge. ‘On February the twenty-ninth 1960, we suffered a great earthquake which killed many people. Fifteen thousand people died in fifteen seconds. There were too many bodies for us to handle so we buried them at the end of town in an enormous grave covering them with cement. Money poured in to help us from all over the world and we used it to make Agadir a beautiful place. Over there you can see the Purple Mountains; here you can see the beautiful blue sea.’

  He ranted on about the town, highlighting its features, until they arrived at their destination. After they had unpacked their suitcases, Diana sat on the edge of one of the twin beds considering her views about the holiday. It was on the cards that Charles would buy newspapers every day and bury his head in the text for hours on end. In order to please her during the week, he would arrange a boat trip around the harbour or book two seats on a tour coach so that they could see the sights. On the latter occasion he would go off on his own leaving her to her own devices. She had to face it that nothing exciting was going to happen on the holiday and she wondered why she ever influenced him to come. But then she had only herself to blame because she had really known the situation before starting out. What she needed was the presence of a young handsome dark-skinned Arab, like the one in her dreams, to show her kindness, attention, tenderness and love but she realised that such a situation was practically impossible. Not that she would want to carry on in the same fashion as in her dreams with regard to intimacy or adultery. Not so...she was honest and loyal to her husband and would never consider of engaging in some physical intimate activity with another man. Within this context, she continued to torture herself although she knew in her heart that she could rely on the dreams at night to satisfy most of her physical desires.

  The holiday began exactly as she had predicted. Charles bought a newspaper at the reception desk of the hotel and buried his head in the pages. He would stay reading it for the best part of an hour at least, deliberating on every political story as he lit his pipe and puffed on it. What a change there had been in the man since she first met him. He was tall, good-looking and very attentive towards her. He paid her numerous compliments, bought her chocolates and flowers, took her out for candlelit dinners, and there was a strong physical relationship between them. Of course in those days, he was merely a clerk in one of the Governmental ministries with little hope of glory or rising to elevated heights. Indeed, he did have ambition but work was secondary at that time. However, after a series of promotions, it had taken him over and he changed his attitude to her. He became so wrapped up in his work that he hardly ever saw her, spending some nights and too many weekends in his apartment in London. At one time, she thought that he might be having an affair with another woman, staying with her each weekend but Charles was too dull and too much of a workaholic to be bothered with anyone else of the female sex. Over the past fifteen years, his attention had drifted elsewhere and he forgot to continue buying her chocolates and flowers. There was simply a card and an expensive present on her birthday and just a card on their anniversary. Now, on the holiday which they could have both enjoyed, she was left by herself as usual.

  ‘Are you coming with me to see some of the sights?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘Plenty of time for that,’ he grunted, puffing at his pipe, without taking his eyes off the print. ‘We have a whole week here. I think I’ll finish reading the newspaper first.’

  ‘But we’re on holiday, Charles, surely.....................’

  ‘Despite what you want to do, my dear,’ he interrupted rudely, looking deeper into the newspaper, ‘life still goes on in the world.’

  She mused that the man was hopeless as a husband, even worse as a companion, and complete forlorn as a lover. Shrugging off his neglect, she regarded it as an opportunity to be adventurous...to find out more about the place and enjoy what it had to offer.

  ‘Well I’m going out,’ she told him with a tinge of anger in her voice. ‘You do what you want to do. I mean we don’t want the world to come to an end, do we!’

  Without looking up from his newspaper, still puffing on his pipe, he grunted carelessly. She left the room to descend the main staircase of the hotel, finding it necessary to hold on to the banister as the staircase shifted beneath her.

  ‘There’s something wrong with your staircase,’ she mentioned to the receptionist at the main desk. ‘The stairs keep moving up and down....they’re loose.’

  ‘No, ma’am,’ came the easy reply. ‘The stairs automatically adjust themselves so that if there’s another earthquake it will weather the storm.’

  * * *

  Diana left the hotel duly informed and made her way down the well-made road furnished with palm trees on the pavements of both sides. The simoom had faded away to leave the s
un shining brightly in a clear blue sky as she walked on slowly until arriving at the main square. The entrance was guarded by a raggedly-dressed man sitting cross-legged on the ground playing a flute, In front of him stood a large wicker basket containing a cobra. The snake reached up at the rhythm of the music, swaying from one side to the other, its tongue flickering forwards and backwards in its mouth. It had wicked eyes and would not hesitate to surge forward and bite the man if the music stopped. A shiver ran down her spine as she hurried past the musician and his snake to enter the square. It had become very hot and she waved her hand in front of her to blow away the flies as well as the stench of spices being sold as they wafted in her direction. The place was indeed a paradise and the atmosphere extremely pleasant in the hot sun with the vacant sound of the flute in the distance and the cries of the owners of the snack trolleys trying to sell their wares. She noticed that very few people wandering to and fro wore Arab clothing.

  She decided to rest and sat down lightly on a bench seat closing her eyes in the bright sun, basking happily in its warmth. Suddenly, a shade appeared in front of her cutting off the sun from her body. She looked up to stare into the eyes of a young, handsome, dark-skinned Arab. She blinked twice at the sight of him because he was identical to the man she saw in her dreams.

  ‘My name’s Ahmed.’ he told her in perfect English. ‘You look rather hot and uncomfortable. Can I be of any assistance.’

  Diana had difficulty crossing-over from dream to reality and she tried to adjust her mind to the change. ‘Ahmed!’’ she uttered almost in disbelief. ‘I think I was with you in one of my dreams a short while ago. .’ She bit her tongue for divulging her secret but it was too late to withdraw the remark.

  ‘Really!’ he retorted with interest, smiling as he sat down beside her. ‘Tell me about it.’