EPISODE 6 - SACRED SIN
He died when he was inside her. They say the moment you die, your life flashes before your eyes. But for Judd Harper, it was her eyes he saw, wide and trembling beneath him, just before everything went black.
It was a lovely night in December. Their bedroom pulsed with dim amber light, curtains drawn tight against a soft December rain. A jazz record, something old and crackling, whispered from the corner speaker. The king-sized bed was a mess of tangled sheets, pillows askew, and two lovers, sweat-slicked and tangled together like vines.
Judd, 32, lean and wiry with silver creeping into his beard, moved over Susan, 30, her wife, with the kind of urgency only long-time lovers know. Not desperate, but deliberate. Every stroke knew her. Every breath matched. His hand found the small of her back, the place he called her “ignition point,” and she arched, gasping into his mouth.
“God, Judd,” she whispered. “Slower…”
He smiled, lopsided, boyish and obeyed.
Susan, with soft hips and messy dark hair clinging to her flushed face, wrapped her legs tighter around him. She smelled of lavender and rain. She always did when she was happy. And tonight, she was glowing. Some part because of the wine, most of it because of him.
“Say it again,” she murmured, her lips brushing his ear.
“I love you,” he said, breath hot. “I fucking love you.”
Their rhythm grew. Not pornographic but sacred. Real. Two souls clinging to each other like the world might end. Her nails scratched down his back. His forehead pressed against hers. Sweat trickled down his spine. His heart beat like a war drum in his chest.
Then.. a pause. Just a flicker. His breath hitched. He blinked once. Twice.
“Judd?” Susan’s voice was thin, distant.
He froze. Still inside her. His hand trembled, then clenched.
“Baby? What is it?”
And then, like a string pulled from the heavens, he collapsed. Heavy. Silent. Right on top of her.
At first, she laughed, breathless. “You okay? Judd?”
But he didn’t move.
“Judd?”
Stillness. An awful, thick silence.
She pushed him off gently, expecting a smile, a joke, anything. Instead, his eyes were open. Mouth slightly parted. No breath. No pulse. His skin already cold where their heat had once danced.
“No. No no no no—Judd!”
She shook him. Screamed his name. Her voice cracked. Her body, naked and shivering, crawled across the bed, trying to drag him up. Nothing. Just her. Just the silent night outside. Just the record spinning endlessly at the end of its groove. Click, click, click.
Doctors said increased heart rate and blood pressure during orgasm caused the heart attack.
The days that followed blurred into one long, sleepless ache. Susan moved through them sadly. Eating without tasting, answering condolences with vacant nods, sleeping in fits beside the cold side of the bed. The apartment still smelled like him. His half-finished novel lay open on his desk, the last sentence trailing off mid-thought, like he’d just stepped out for coffee and would return any minute now to finish it. But he didn’t. He wouldn’t. And that truth settled in her bones like winter. Some nights, she’d wake up gasping, reaching for him, her body still remembering the heat of that night, how he died inside her, how his love ended and lingered in the same breath.
Two Weeks Later, Susan stood by the bathroom sink, still in Judd’s robe. The sleeves hung loose on her arms. She hadn’t slept. Not really. Just passed out in tears every night, surrounded by his voice in voicemails she replayed until they no longer sounded real.
She looked down at the pregnancy test in her hand. Two bold lines. Her knees buckled. She sank to the floor, back against the cold tile wall. Her hands cradled her belly like a prayer.
“Oh my god…” she whispered. “You… you left me something, Judd.” Her heart broke all over again.
Nine months later she gave birth to a baby boy. It was a difficult birth. Long. Bloody. Alone, save for the nurses and doctors. When the baby was placed in her arms, silent, pink, and blinking those impossibly familiar hazel eyes. She sobbed. Not from pain. From recognition.
“Hi, little one,” she whispered. “You… just look like your father. Aren’t you?”
The boy’s tiny mouth curled into a crooked smile. The same crooked smile Judd wore.
Susan loved her baby boy, Phillip. He was different. Even as a baby, he rarely cried unless it truly mattered. As a toddler, he watched people more than he played with them. At five, he asked questions about death, love, time. Things children weren’t supposed to understand. And sometimes, when she hugged him, Susan swore he held her like he remembered something she didn’t.
By ten, Phillip had developed habits Judd used to have. Like touching the tip of his nose when he thought hard, stirring tea in lazy figure-eights, scribbling sentences in the corners of notebooks like they were puzzle pieces to a story only he could see.
Susan told herself it was coincidence. But it wasn’t.
They were driving back from a weekend trip. The same cabin she and Judd once escaped to every autumn. It was Phillip’s idea to go, as his 16th birthday gift.
As they passed a roadside diner, Phillip turned from the window and said, so casually it nearly made her swerve:
“That’s where you spilled coffee on your white dress. You were wearing that little heart necklace I got you for our anniversary, third one, I think.”
Susan blinked. “What?”
He didn’t even flinch. “Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
She laughed it off. Nervous. Dismissive.
But more came. In fragments at first. Then full, vivid recollections.
A story he told that mirrored a night she and Judd had spent under the stars in their backyard. The same words, the same firefly-chasing game.
One evening, while she was preparing dinner, Phillip stood in the doorway, watching her with a strange expression, half sad, half soft.
“You used to wear that perfume,” he said. “The one in the square bottle with the green cap. It smelled like oranges and summer rain. You haven’t worn it since…”
She turned, slowly. “Since what?”
He hesitated. Then he said, “Since I died.”
Susan couldn’t breathe. She cried. She shouted at him, told him to stop, that it wasn’t funny. That he was just a boy.
But he looked at her and his eyes weren’t 16. They were haunted. Familiar.
“I don’t want to scare you,” he said softly. “But sometimes… I remember things. Not dreams. Not stories. Just… us.”
He named the song they first made love to. The place he first told her he wanted to marry her, under a broken lamppost on 5th Street, drunk on cheap wine and poetry.
He told her about her birthmark, the one no one else had ever seen.
That night, Susan sat on her bed with a glass of wine, staring into nothing. Every bone in her body ached with confusion. When Phillip came to her room, quiet and unsure, she didn’t send him away. He sat on the edge of the bed like a stranger. Like a man.
“Mom,” he said.
“Don’t,” she whispered. “Not right now. Please.”
He nodded. But his voice broke.
“I think I’m him. I think… I came back.”
She looked at him then and saw both her son and her husband stitched together in one impossible soul.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “But why?”
Phillip’s voice trembled, “I don’t know. Maybe I couldn’t let go. Maybe I wanted more time. Maybe… I wanted to see you again.”
They cried together. In silence. Then held each other, gently. Not as mother and son, not as husband and wife, but as two people caught in the quiet chaos of something impossible to explain.
After that night Susan went quiet. Her hugs became mechanical. Her eyes lingered too long on Phillip when she thought he wasn’t looking.
Phillip didn’t push. He just watched. Waited. Hurt silently.
He spent hours writing in his room. Sketching, too, pictures of places he shouldn’t know. A porch swing they’d once made love on. The exact layout of a cabin they’d only visited as Judd and Susan. The way she looked the morning after their honeymoon, hair tangled, wearing nothing but his shirt.
She found the drawings once. She stared at them for a long time. Then burned them in the sink.
One evening, as summer began to melt into fall, Susan made dinner. Spaghetti, garlic bread, wine. A Judd meal. She hadn’t cooked it in years.
They sat across from each other in silence. The clink of forks, the hum of a ceiling fan. And something dense in the air. Unsaid. Dangerous.
“Do you remember this?” she asked, not looking up.
Phillip swallowed. “Yeah. You always burned the bread.”
She smiled. A sad, thin smile. “Still do.”
Then, finally, she looked him in the eye. That same warm brown she'd once kissed with her whole body.
“What are we supposed to do, Phillip?”
His fork froze midair. “I don’t know.”
“You’re my son. I carried you. I fed you. I cleaned your shit and read you bedtime stories. But now you’re sitting across from me telling me you… used to be my husband.”
He nodded, ashamed. “I never wanted to make it harder for you.”
“But it’s real. Isn’t it?”
A pause.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’s real.”
Later that night, They sat outside on the porch, wrapped in blankets. The sky was heavy with stars. A wind chime whispered in the background.
Susan lit a cigarette, something she hadn’t done in years. Her hand shook as she inhaled.
“I only feel motherly love for you now. My body… my instincts… they see you as my son.”
Phillip stared out into the dark yard. “I know.”
“But you don’t feel that way, do you?”
He didn’t answer right away. Then, quietly said, “I don’t know how I feel. I love you. Deeply. Like I’ve always loved you. But I’m not asking for anything, Susan. I’m just… lost.”
“Me too,” she whispered. “God, me too.”
He turned to her. “You ever wonder… why this happened? Why I came back? Into you?”
“All the time.”
“Maybe it’s fate. Or a glitch. Or desire.”
“Desire?”
“Yeah. Of wanting too much time together.”
They stared at the stars in silence. He was nearly a man now. Tall, broad-shouldered, eyes too deep for a teenager. And she? She was a woman who never stopped loving the man who died on top of her.
Weeks later, one night, They watched a film together, one Judd had loved. Some old romantic drama. They sat too close on the couch. Her arm brushed his. Neither moved.
After the credits rolled, Susan stood to clear the dishes. But she paused at the kitchen doorway, back still turned.
“Do you believe in second chances?” she asked.
“I do now.”
She didn’t turn around. Just said, softly, “Then don’t expect anything from me. Just… be here. Be honest. Be patient.”
“I can do that,” he said.
And for the first time in a long time, her shoulders eased.
They didn’t talk about boundaries. Because they didn’t have a name for what they were anymore. But they found a rhythm. Quiet dinners. Shared books. Long walks. Lingering glances neither fully admitted nor acted on.
People started asking why Susan never dated anymore. Why Phillip seemed so... adult. She always smiled politely and changed the subject.
But at night, in the quiet spaces, she sometimes touched the place where Judd had last kissed her. And Phillip, alone in bed, dreamt of hands he remembered but never knew.
Another two years passed and Phillip was eighteen now. His voice deeper. His jawline sharper. His presence, still, intense, the way Judd used to be. He barely spoke more than necessary. But when he did, people listened. Teachers. Strangers. Even Susan.
He had Judd’s hands. The same calloused fingers. The same touch when he handed her a cup of tea one morning, thumb brushing her knuckle just a beat too long.
Susan had learned to look away quickly. But some things you don’t unsee.
She had tried dating. She made herself sit through dinners with men who smelled wrong, talked too loud, asked too many questions about her son. She’d laugh at their jokes. Smile when expected. But always returned home hollow.
Because he was always there. Phillip. In the kitchen. Reading. Sketching. Drinking black coffee with the same silent knowing. Waiting.
Night was stormy. The air was thick, charged. A monsoon evening, rain thrashing the windows, wind moaning through the trees like something grieving. The power flicked once. Then again. And then: darkness.
Susan lit the candles. They sat on the living room floor, cross-legged, surrounded by flickering shadows. The rain softened outside.
Susan poured the wine. A deep red. Heavy.
“To Judd,” she said, raising her glass. Her voice was tight.
Phillip didn’t raise his right away.
“I don’t want to toast to someone who’s gone,” he said.
She looked at him sharply. The candlelight danced in his eyes and for a second, it wasn’t Phillip’s face she saw. It was his. Judd’s. The flicker of candlelight made his eyes glow the same way they used to when he was undressing her with a look.
“He’s not really gone… is he?” Phillip said, voice low, careful.
Her fingers clenched around the wine glass before she set it down, almost too gently. Her throat tightened.
“Don’t do this,” she whispered.
“Why not?”
Her eyes glistened. Her voice cracked. “Because I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Can’t do this. Can’t feel this. I’m your mother, Phillip—”
“But you weren’t always.”
Silence.
The wind howled through the cracks of the old windows like a wounded animal. A candle blew out.
Susan stood. Moved to the hallway. But then he was behind her. Not touching. Just there.
“I remember everything,” he said, voice low. “The way you moaned when I kissed your collarbone. How your thighs would tremble when I whispered in your ear. I remember your body like it was mine.”
“Phillip…” Her voice broke. “Stop…”
“I’ve tried to stop. I’ve begged myself to stop.”
She turned then. Eyes wide. Face inches from his.
“And what do you feel now?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer with words. He kissed her. Soft. Slow. Terrified. Certain. And she, she didn’t pull away.
The world spun. Not violently. Not wrong. Just… full.
Years of grief, confusion, hunger, denial — it all unraveled in that kiss. She clung to his shirt. He kissed her like she was air. And when she whispered “take me,” it was a command, not a plea.
They moved to the bed like their bodies remembered better than their minds.
She lit no more candles. She didn’t need to see. She knew.
She looked up. He didn’t speak. Neither did she. Something had already spoken for them.
Their bodies didn’t collide, they remembered. His lips touched hers softly. Then her breath hitched and she pulled him in. The kiss deepened. Greedy. Familiar. Her hands in his hair. His fingers digging into her waist, lifting her, laying her down onto the bed. Reverent and hungry at once.
“You still remember me,” she whispered against his mouth.
“Every part of you,” he breathed, kissing down her neck. “Every inch.”
His hands moved slowly, almost afraid to break the moment. But she guided him, bolder than she expected, needing to feel it. Him. Judd.
He undressed her like peeling away time. Her breath caught when his lips reached her breasts, not just with desire, but a kind of aching awe. She pulled him closer, arched into his mouth, her nails digging into his back.
When he entered her, it was not shock, it was return. Their bodies moved like they’d done this a thousand times. Not clumsy. Not rushed. A rhythm carved in muscle memory and something deeper, something older than this life.
She moaned his name. “Judd…”
He groaned, forehead against hers, trembling. The storm outside echoed the storm in them. Rising, crashing. She gasped when he shifted deeper, her thighs tightening around his hips, her hands cupping his face, grounding him.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered. “Don’t ever stop…”
Her body rose, wave after wave, her voice turning hoarse with pleasure. It wasn’t just sex, it was grief, longing, love, time. All of it crashing into one furious, blissful collapse.
She came with a cry that broke something open in the room. Years of silence shattered in her scream. Her back arched. Her mouth fell open. And then.. stillness.
Phillip didn’t realize it at first. He was shaking, holding her, face buried in her shoulder. He whispered, “I love you,” into her skin again and again like a mantra.
But her arms weren’t holding him back.
“Susan?” he whispered, kissing her cheek.
No response.
“Hey…” He touched her face, gently. Her skin was still warm.
Then he saw her eyes, half-lidded. Empty. Her lips parted slightly. A final breath held in silence.
“No. No no no no—Susan?”
He sat up. Shook her. Touched her chest. Nothing. His hands began to tremble violently.
“Susan… please.”
He clutched her to him, naked and sobbing, his whole body unraveling. He pressed his lips to hers one last time. They were soft. Still her. But gone.
The storm had passed. Morning light bled into the room. Phillip dressed her carefully. Tenderly. Like someone folding a memory.
He didn’t scream. He didn’t call for help. He just sat with her and waited for the sun. Health officials came and gave a report that increased heart rate and blood pressure during orgasm caused heart attack.
A love that disobeyed the laws of nature.. and paid the price.
He did her final death ritual with his own hands. The flowers. The hymns. The quiet procession under grey skies. Phillip stood alone at her grave, soaked in rain, reading the final prayer from a crumpled Bible, his voice barely louder than the wind. No friends. No family. Just him and her. He buried Susan not just as a lover, or a mother, but as the only woman he had ever known in two lifetimes.
That night, the rain hadn’t stopped. Cold. Relentless. He sat on a splintered wooden bench at the edge of a bus stop, head in his hands, sobbing into his fingers like the boy he no longer was. The world passed behind wet windows. He wanted it to end. Then he heard a cry. Faint. Fragile. Not his.
He froze. He heard it again. A baby’s wail, high and trembling, coming from behind the bench, from the overgrown bushes by the roadside. He stumbled toward it, heart racing. And there she was.
Wrapped in a dirty towel, soaked and shaking was a newborn baby girl, abandoned in the mud. Skin cold. Face red. But alive. Crying.
He dropped to his knees. And something inside him shattered and stitched together all at once.
He didn’t think. He just lifted her to his chest, pressing her against the warmth of his body, shielding her from the rain with his jacket. Her cries softened as he rocked her gently, whispering through tears.
He took her home. Fed her. Rocked her. And for the first time since the night she died in his arms, Phillip felt something gentle grow inside him. Not peace. Not forgiveness. But purpose.
He would raise her not as a lover returned, but as a father born again. This time, to nurture,to protect, to love without crossing.
And in the quiet hours of dark night, as the baby girl slept in his arms, Phillip whispered into the darkness, “This time, I will protect you, Susan.”
* * *
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Gujarati translations of "Babes, Blood and Bots" is also available now in Matrubharti.
