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My late submission for Vermillion Plaent’s 12/03/07 Monday Morning Mayhem
Current mood: Medicated, but still in a world of pain.
Category: Medicated, but still in a world of pain. Writing and Poetry
This is my late submission for Vermillion Planet's 12/03/07 Monday Morning Mayhem. Would have had it done sooner but I have been in a world of pain and between that and my meds have not been ablt to concentrate. This is my first successful attempt at a short story in over ten years, so I hope you enjoy.
Lady-In-Waiting
I remember when the caravan came through Kainborough, bringing with it the oddities, rarities, and mysteries that usually bred one of two feelings in the villages: wild, wonderous fascination or utter disgust. There were the peddlers, the mystics, the minstrels, musicians, the dancers, the magicians of sorts, as well as the gypsies, who always followed this particular caravan each year, but spent most of their time down by the river due to scorn and rejection from those who call themselves good and just. It was on my usual venture to the river, to the spot where my Misha, and the child she carried, had been taken in the flood two years prior, that I encountered Lyuba.
I visited the place at least once a week, coming to lose myself in melancholy and talk to my lost love. I was referred to as "touched" by the residents of Kainborough, the local village I visited once a month for my meager essentials. They could not understand just why I returned to this place so often to speak to the departed. It was never for them to understand, for only my lost love and I had ever heard the words exchanged the night before her demise. "Speak to me on the wind, my love," she had said, "for no matter how great the distance between us, the wind will carry you to me, and I will find my way back to you."
There would be no conversations with the winds of loss this night, however, for as I reached the small clearing on the bank, there was another there, naked in the moonlight, shining like an angel engulfed in white fire. I could not move, transfixed on such beauty, hypnotized by ghostly reflections upon flesh and water, and the dark presence of a scarab tattooed in the center of her chest. I do not even remember breathing, until the entity turned slowly towards me and began to hum the same melody I had created for my lost love so long ago. The dream-like figure began to advance towards me, slowly and seductively, swaying hair and hips gently, maddeningly, until she was embracing me, staring deeply into my eyes.
"I am Lyuba, and I have been searching for you for some time now, Kalen," spoke an impossibly sweet and painful voice as delicate as a lost whisper. "I have been empty for so long now, waiting for a heart so full of love and pain."
"How do you know m..."
"We all know of you," she so delicately interrupted, motioning to the line of firelights in the distance, no doubt pointing out the gypsy camp. "The winds tell of such a love lost, and carry the words you speak to your Misha, and they fall upon our ears by the way." I myself have devoured every word your heart has bled upon the wind, and have become captive unto you. I cannot live unless I can make your heart mine."
Hands feeling soft as the very breeze began to stroke my shoulders along my arms until they reached my hands, pulling them around her nakedness and drawing her ever nearer. I could feel her flesh upon my own as if I had been naked myself, and realized that I now was, clothes nowhere to be seen. I let myself fall into her as she fell into me, and we collapsed as one, filling each other, devouring each other, tasting and breathing each other. Sweat became sweet oil, and her sweet flow becoming heaven upon my tongue. Ages passed, worlds fell away, and darkness took us into oblivion.
I awoke the next morning to find myself alone, naked upon the riverbank. The smells and tastes of a thousand instances of ecstasy still filled my senses, but my angel was nowhere to be seen. I could not think about the chill now covering me more completely than any blanket could, nor could I think about the absence of my clothes. Thoughts of angelic euphoria consumed my every thought, my every breath.
I rose, looking about me, and could make out small dances of light through the morning mists haunting the river. She had motioned there saying how they had heard my voice upon the winds. Surely she had returned there.
The camp was void of life. Fires still burned, although low as if not tended for some while now, and cups and bottles still lay about as if the night still played on, but not a soul occupied the area. Then small, almost non-existent sounds began to play upon my senses. Sounds of shallow, ragged breathing, and babies at the suck. Advancing towards the sounds, I came upon a sight totally opposite of the night before.
I came to the edge of a washout hole just beyond the edge of the last wagon, and the sight that befell my eyes was horrendous and shattering. Bodies lay everywhere. Pale, silently screaming faces turned up to the sky in final, painful thought. And upon the center-most soul, crouched in cowering, cannibalistic majesty, was my angel in true form. Muscles were twisted masses, incoherently covering bone, and death seemed to be her very essence. She raised her head towards me, grinning even as razored fangs still chewed flesh from bone. There, in the center of her chest, the scarab still shown as before, but a blood red now instead of black as the night before. The look in those hollow black eyes spoke one word loud enough for my soul to hear it's endless echo..."Welcome."
"Where do your intentions lie?" I asked the creature before me. I was somehow untouched by anything my mind had taken in thus far.
"Why, your heart, dearest Kalen. Have I not already spoken my intentions clearly?"
"My heart in what form and fashion, oh angel of deception?"
A pause in chewing, as if considering an answer, and the smile ever widened. This demon that seemed not long ago of alternate origin then slowly began to rise, revealing haunches fashioned much like that of a wolf, and claws almost as long as the fingers they claimed. "Why, in it's present form, dearest Kalen, and fashioned into my own chest after I harvest it from your own."
"Why do you call me dearest Kalen, demon?" I was surprised at my own lack of fear, despite the events unfolding upon me. "How is it you are familiar with me?"
Taking a step closer, treading ever so lightly upon the quickly cooling carcasses, the entity raised its hands towards the sky. "I have heard your words upon the wind, every one. I have followed them back here to you once again."
"Once again...?"
"You mean you do not recognize your lost love?"
Horror finally began to set in as the reality of circumstances began to unfold. I took a step closer, reaching out to it. "Misha?" I managed to whisper, and nothing more would come.
"In the flesh, so to say," it said with an ever-widening grin, which now seemed to consume the lower half of its face. "Did I not tell you I would find my way back to you if you spoke to me on the wind?" With this, it closed the gap between us, caressing my shoulders as the night before.
"Why have you come for my heart, Misha?" Fixed upon the blackened eternity in its eyes, I felt tears begin to form.
"Because it is love that has kept me imprisoned in this curse, and I need a heart full of love to break free."
"Curse?"
"Lady-in-waiting." It raised one hand to stroke my hair.
"I do not understand."
"Neither did I in the beginning."
The hand fell away from my hair and it turned from me, lowering its head. Memories came flooding back in, lost the instant Misha herself had been, and anger began to fill me once more.
"I was with child the night I was...lost, in the flood."
"I remember well." Memories flowed...
"What you do not know is that I had been to the village two days before and had chanced upon a young man who was obviously one of the gypsies who were down by the river. His eyes were hypnotic, and I could not take my eyes away from his."
I lowered my own head as the events unfolded in my own mind, filling in the empty spaces in my own memories.
"I began to walk towards the young man, not even knowing why I was doing so, and walked into the path of a cart. The woman behind me screamed for me to stop, and her voice spooked the horse, sending it wildly off and tragically into a beautiful young woman who was standing on the other side of the way. She was trampled by both horse and cart, and the severity of her injuries gave her not a chance. I went to her, but the young man was already at her side, clutching her in his arms and saying something I could not understand. I tried to speak, but he raids his face up to mine, and the hypnotic element had gone from his eyes and was now replaced with pure hatred. And he simply said, "She was a lady-in-waiting, and it was to be our first child. Now they are both lost unto me." He then pointed one trembling finger towards my belly and then towards my face and said in a horrible groan, "Lady-in-waiting.""
It turned back to face me, tears running down and mingling with the blood still adorning its jagged mouth. I now knew the whole story, regained from the depths of my mind, despite this thing that once was Misha telling me the side it thought I did not know.
"I couldn't do anything but stand there, frozen, and watch as he lifted her up and began walking back towards the river. Once they were out of site, I turned, oblivious to those who were gathered about me, staring me down. I started for home, and grief overcame me. It was more than I could bear. So, I turned and went back, but past the village, to the gypsy camp. I tried to explain things, but everyone pointed at me and groaned, "Lady-in-waiting." I fell to my knees and began to cry, begging them, but they all turned their backs on me and I became invisible to them."
I watched expressionless as it cowered back down and wrapped its arms around my waist and placed the side of its head against my stomach, embracing me tightly.
"It was only after my death, as the river carried me to a hell unknown, that I learned that lady-in-waiting meant something entirely different than an expectant mother to those fiends. I found that I was not dead, yet I was in a living hell of death just the same. The water had done my body in, and when I came to, I knew not of where I was, only that I had a maddening hunger. I had fed upon the first travelers I had passed before I knew I had even resorted to such cannibalistic nature, and only to find that my hunger was never quenched, for the life inside my belly was now serving the same punishment I was, and I was still nourishing two appetites. I found out soon after that feasting upon human flesh returned me to human form, but as the embodiment you saw last night. I also learned through rumors, tales, and gypsies themselves that the curse placed upon me will not allow me to die unless I can find a heart filled with love unending, and ours was the strongest love I knew, and I knew your love had not died for I truly heard your words upon the wind, every one."
"So you came back to me not out of love but out of desperation," I asked coldly. It's eyes widened, and it stood quickly.
"I am here for love, Kalen!" it exclaimed. "I know your love for me is strong enough that you would do anything to set me free, even if it meant sacrificing yourself to do so. You do not know what hell I have endured these many years, trying to find a way to be free, only to become more of a monster all the while." I turned away, saying, "You were a monster in your own right before your demise, Misha. I know all of the details you are failing to tell me."
Horror fell over its face like night, and it drew back a step. I turned back to face it, now angrier than ever, exclaiming, "I know all of what you have told me, for I was in the village on more occasions than you know. I saw you and this young man of yours, whose name was Plamen. I saw you two together more than once, including several times along the river where we ourselves used to make love." I began to advance towards it, and in response and fear it began to retreat, matching me step for step. "I know the baby you were carrying was not ours, but spawned by your wickedness, and that when he found out you were a lady-in-waiting, and with is child nonetheless, he broke his ties with you and returned to his love, who was also carrying his child. It was no spooked horse that did her in that day, for it was not even in the village as you have said, although there was a near miss there with another young woman, as I have since been told. You came upon her at the river and drown her as she bathed there, killing her and her unborn. Plamen came upon you before you could hide your crime and brought his lost love back to his camp, and that is when they placed the curse upon you, the lady-in-waiting; waiting to die, waiting to birth your child, but never to do so."
It stopped retreating, realizing it had lost its chance to break the curse and live again, along with its child, because the loving heart it thought it would harvest was not a loving heart at all. I was not finished, however, for I had planned this day all along.
"I had plans of my own, and the day you were lost to the river in the flood, I myself pushed you in, Misha, for bedding another man and taking his seed. I did not know of the curse at this time, unfortunately. It was several days later I was visited by Plamen, who told me what had happened, and of an additional curse he had placed upon you. He would not tell me anything save that you would be returning for me, because I was the only way you could break the curse, but it was the irony of it all, he said, that you would be coming after a cure that did not exist."
The demon, which was once Misha, roared an unholy cry of pain and anger. It then stood before me, staring me down, and I knew its only thought now was to kill me, and slowly.
"Plamen did, however, teach me something that can help you."
It suddenly knew something horrible, that it might not get revenge upon me after all, and lunged, claws extended, jaws opening impossibly wide...
"Wait no longer!" I shouted. It stopped in mid-air, as if striking an invisible wall, and fell to the ground in a smoldering pile. As the flesh burned away, it revealed Misha within, whole as the day she had died, and still very much pregnant. I knelt down and lifted her into my arms, returned home, and began to dig.
I continued to do as told, emptying out the chests from the cottage that contained Misha's old clothes and the clothes she had made for her unborn child. I brought them outside next to the new graves. I then took my knife and slit open Misha's lower belly, revealing a tiny creature identical to what Misha herself had become. I lifted it out, making sure to keep away from the jagged mouth, and placed it in the smaller of the two trunks. It raised its arms up towards me, as if it longed to be held, and I whispered, "Wait no longer." It did not fall to ashes like Misha had done, but faded into a human baby, beautiful enough that Plamen himself would have shed a tear. I however, did no such thing. Closing the lid, I placed the chest into the smaller of the two graves and turned back to Misha. I began to separate her arms and legs from her torso, as Plamen had instructed, and placed her as carefully as I could into the largest chest.
"Rest," I whispered. Plamen didn't instruct this, but I felt it was needed nonetheless. I covered both graves, leaving no markers of their existence, and returned to the cottage and bathed so I could finally dress myself, for it was fairly chilly.
Later that evening, I returned to the river, watching the waters flow, talking to my lost love, letting the wind carry my words away.
Freak Morbidity
(Daniel Smith)
December 3, 2007
12:10 AM
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7 Comments - 14 Kudos
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