The Shuddering

break into my car out here ? I swear to god…” He forced himself to his feet, blearily stalking across the room to the window. Parting the slats of the blinds, he squinted into the night.
    “If it’s so unlikely, why are you up?”
    “So you’ll go back to sleep,” he insisted, letting his hand drop from the window. “There’s nothing out there, like I said.”
    “I’m telling you, I heard something.”
    Pulling his hand across his face, he gave a frustrated sigh.
    “Fine,” she said. “Whatever.” Throwing herself down onto the mattress, she yanked the sheets up to her shoulders.
    “I’m sure you heard something,” Sawyer told her, trying to be compassionate despite his irritation. April was the lightest sleeper he’d ever met. Since they’d moved in together, he’d had to stop using the ceiling fan in the bedroom because it rattled, the space heater because it ticked; he’d gone so far as to remove the wall clock because she insisted the click of the second hand was equivalent to a sledgehammer when the room was quiet. “We used to hear animals out here as kids all the time,” he told her. “I can’t exactly go out there and ask them to shut up.” Leaving the window, he started to move across the darkened room. A moment later, a flash of pain ignited his senses, the sofa bed shuddering against his impact. Sawyer rolled onto the mattress in muffled agony. “Fuck!” he hissed, his right pinkie toe throbbing beneath the pressure of his hands.
    “Christ,” April whispered, crawling across the bed. “Are you okay?”
    Sawyer didn’t reply, too busy fighting back reflexive tears of pain. His toe was throbbing like a tiny heart.
    “Is it broken?” She pulled his hands away from his foot. “Turn on the light,” she told him. But just as he stretched his arm out toward the lamp, a loud thump sounded overhead.
    Their attention snapped up to the ceiling.
    “I told you!” she said, slapping her hand over her mouth as soon as the words burst from her lips. Sawyer shushed her, his eyes pointed skyward. They sat motionless for a good thirty seconds, both of them holding their breath, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the next noise to rouse them from their stillness. But the sound didn’t return.
    “There were these guys at the lodge,” April told him after a moment. “They were talking about how the ski patrol found some blood in the mountains. Like, I guess they were worried that someone was eaten by wolves or something.”
    Sawyer allowed himself to fall back onto his side of the bed, his eyes shut tight against the gnawing burn of his foot.
    “Do you think that’s what that stain was?” she asked. “The one we saw in the snow on the way back up here?”
    “No.”
    “But what if it was?”
    “Then there would have been cops.” He sighed. “Right? Cops? Because there would have been a dead body. But there weren’t any cops up on the mountain, Ape.”
    “How can you be so sure? The mountain is huge.”
    “I’m just sure.” Rolling over, his face pressed into the mattress. “Jesus Christ.” He cursed the pain, his words muffled against the sheets.
    But April was too wrapped up to worry about Sawyer’s toe. “What about the noise?” she asked.
    He pressed his hands over his face at the amount of throbbing heat radiating from his foot. He’d probably broken the damn thing, and now he’d be grounded for the rest of the trip. Ryan was going to be pissed, and Sawyer would be stuck in the cabin for the rest of the weekend. “Goddamnit,” he whispered.
    April went quiet for a moment, then eventually spoke again. “Are you okay?” Her hand slid across his shoulders, rubbing his back. “Want me to get somebody?”
    “I’ll be fine,” he said through clenched teeth. “I just need to sleep it off.”
    Again, April paused in thought before replying. “You’re right,” she said. “It was probably just an animal.” Crawling across the bed, she slid on top of him, rolling him over to straddle his hips. “And now we’re both wide awake.” He could make out the outline of her raised arms as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, tossing it aside.
    “Ape,” he said, his throat dry. She silenced him by pressing her mouth to his, her teeth tugging at his bottom lip.
    “Let me take your mind off that foot,” she proposed. Wriggling on top of him, she caught the hem of his shirt, then gave it an upward tug.
    “They’ll hear us,” he insisted, trying to roll her