“This Mortal Coil” from Peter David, Kathleen David, and Sean O’Shea asks the questions: Wouldn’t it be great to have someone sleep for us, because we have so much stuff to do? But what if a sleep surrogate discovers that one of the people he’s sleeping for is actually a murderer? Would he ignore it, report it …or investigate it himself?

To find out, here’s an early look:

This Mortal Coil

by Peter David, Kathleen David, and Sean O’Shea

My lover, whom I have never met, is dead.

I do not know her name. I have no idea where I might have met her. Her voice keeps changing every time I hear it, its tone shifting depending on what is being discussed. But she is beautiful and she is mine, and I can feel her moving beneath me as I thrust into her in an environment that keeps shifting around us.

Sometimes we are in a bedroom and sometimes on a beach and sometimes in a forest, oftentimes changing while we have sex, because literally anything can happen during that time. She is exquisite and beautiful and everything a woman could ever want to be, and I love her and I hate her. I know I hate her because I can see my hands wrapped around her throat, strangling her fiercely. Her eyes are bulging wide and there is pure terror in them. Does she know that I am about to take her life? What did she say to set me off? What could she have said, because I love her so much, and yet I despise her, the bitch. Continue reading