No one is going to believe me anyway, so fuck it, right? Might as well just go for it. I killed my wife. There. It’s probably not how people will think, but people might be pretty close.
I’ve never discussed what happened at Aunt Mary Jane’s house that night. I always thought she was made up by my Grandma, or maybe Grandad. Just a name to give the house and make it scary enough not to play there. I figured no one named Mary Jane had ever lived there until I found her picture and the thin memory of the grave marker came flooding back. Either way, my grandparents were in cahoots and they had me fooled. It took me years to figure out the truth and I bet they shared a few good laughs about it.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents when I was a kid. My mom was 16 when she got pregnant, 17 when she had a “shotgun wedding” as they called it back in those days, and she was 19 when she divorced my deadbeat (and I suspect, abusive) dad. She needed support, and they helped. I don’t know if my mom was determined not to move back home or if she wasn’t allowed to by Grandad, but paying all the bills was difficult for us. The result was I got to spend a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and I loved it.
I remember Grandma telling me spooky stories. Sometimes Grandad too, but mainly he would sit around with us and chime in to add a detail or two, making her stories even scarier. One favorite story was about the ghost of Redbeard Pete, a pirate who was known to be stubborn in life, and too stubborn in death to move on. That’s not what this is about. I’m trying to delay it. Or avoid it altogether. If you saw her the way I did, especially then, when I…when I did what I had to do.
What I need to say involves Aunt Mary Jane’s house, and I will only speak of this once. I need to say it, and after that I’ll never speak of it again. If I’m going to tell the story, I need to tell it all and say everything I need to say about it. How I came to know the house is part of our history. It might not seem related to what happened that night, but everything I know about it is relevant to me.
My grandparents lived in a yellow house on a corner lot in rural Virginia. The Northern Neck of Virginia, to be exact. Big yard, the neighbors were family, woods out back, and everyone was a farmer, hunter, or a fisherman, and more likely they were all three. The main road there didn’t have yellow lines until recently. Their house sat in the corner crook where an even smaller side road turned off and led to who-knows-where. It was paved, but just barely. The narrow kind of road where folks usually just drove down the middle until they met another vehicle, then both would wave as they squeezed past one another and tried to avoid the ditch. And if someone ended up in the ditch, you already knew you’d stay and give them a hand getting out. Their house faced that road.
My Grandad’s workshop sat near the edge of the property and barely spitting distance from the smaller road. (Forgive me, it’s been so long that I can’t recall the name of the street. Probably Route something or other.) About a hundred yards down from his shop was an overgrown lane - an old driveway. Aunt Mary Jane’s house.
As kids, my cousins and I rode our bikes past there all the time and never even noticed the house. The lane, yes, but not the house and the dirt driveway was so overgrown with weeds that none of us ever thought to go investigate. In hindsight, maybe there was another reason.
Anyway, the property was overgrown with pine and locust trees, and a few pecan trees. The house was situated among a stand of trees closer to the road than you might expect. It was invisible from the street. The house was hidden, not because it was buried deep in the forest, but because the property was being devoured by weeds, blackberry brambles, and neglect.
The reason I knew about it is because Grandma told me about Aunt Mary Jane. She explained that’s just what everyone called her, and told me to my dismay that she was not my real aunt. Later, she and my Grandad would scare the hell out of me and for years I was oblivious to the truth.
I can’t remember what kind of story Grandma concocted, but I remember it was about Aunt Mary Jane and how mean she was - when she was alive before she turned into a ghost. And how she got even meaner as a ghost. Her story spooked me and I’m pretty sure it was meant to keep me from finding it by accident one day. I used to play in the woods all the time and I guess I might have. It was more visible from the woods on my grandparent’s property than it was out front. Saplings grew through the tottering, tumble-down floor inside, the droopy roof sagged down, bulging into the kitchen, and the dry-rotted old window frames had panes of jagged glass sticking every which way. Needless to say, if our group of cousins had ever discovered the place on our own, there would have been a lot less glass in the windows, and a lot more rocks being thrown through the glass that remained. The house was a donkey mile beyond repair, and far too dangerous for anyone to horse around in or to explore.
Despite my fear, I had trouble believing her story at first, and I told her so. All this time, how could I not know about a ghost who lived right next door? A nasty, bitter old ghost who was a nasty and bitter old witch when she was alive? I would know if there was a ghost, I thought.
She reminded me about the tooth fairy and how I didn’t know about her until I had a loose tooth. This was different, I told her, because I hadn’t always had a loose tooth, but Aunt Mary Jane’s house had always been there.
She told me she would take me over there and prove it. She may have been bluffing, but this was more exciting than the State Fair. I wasn’t calling her bluff, I was dying to see a real life ghost. She put on her shoes and that’s when I got scared. I wanted to chicken out, but she wouldn’t let me, so she promised she’d hold my hand the whole time, just in case we ran into Aunt Maru Jane. And off we went, walking out to Route whatever-it-was and down the road about a hundred yards.
Grandma picked our way through the blackberry briars that sprawled across the lane, holding back the pricker vines I wouldn’t get too scratched up. I ducked under the last tangle and emerged onto the sparse but overgrown lawn in front of a dilapidated house. It looked like every ramshackle haunted house in every movie you ever saw. The paint, which used to be white and probably lead-based, curled back in thick peels, revealing the sun-bleached wood underneath the layers. Reptilian scales to armor old bones. A massive locust tree grew at one corner of the house. One of its limbs thrust into a room on the second floor through a side window. Inside, it angled like an arthritic elbow, and stretched back outside and rested on top of the porch. The front door was partially opened and stuck like that. The rood sagged so badly that a deep slouch had developed in the ceiling and now its weight wedged the door in place. Not wide open, but enough so you could stick your head through to sneak a look. The porch had held up fairly well.
She told me if we were extra careful, maybe we could peek inside, but first she wanted to look around and check if there was a better place than under a collapsing ceiling.
The backyard was also overgrown, but the shade of the house and the tree canopy above kept the weeds sparse enough so it wasn’t difficult to walk around. We were picking our way through the overgrowth when she stopped and shushed me. Then she pointed toward the rope swing.
“The swing?” I was just a little kid and even I could tell that rope wasn’t safe.
She shook her head and pointed again, but lower, and then I saw it. A headstone, beyond the swing, near where a fence might have stood once.
“Is someone really buried there?” I had seen cemeteries before, but discovering a grave anywhere else felt unusual.
She nodded and we walked a little closer, but she stopped me before I got too close. “See? That’s where she’s buried,” she whispered. “Don’t walk on her grave because she might, snatch your ankle and pull you down to hell.”
“MJW” was all I could see. The dates, if there were any, were too low and hidden by the grass and moss that grew in a thicker patch above the grave. I was amazed thinking that a spooky skeleton was almost right under me.
So, a little explanation - it wasn’t unusual to be buried on your own on their property back then. This house was, I imagine, built sometime in the late 1800’s, so these types of grave markers were fairly commonplace for the area. The other thing to know is that this area is full of country folk, real salt of the earth types. My family was Southern Baptist (but not me), so hell was a very real place. Not a metaphor for eternal suffering, but a specific locale full of sulfur, brimstone, and fire. I did not walk on Aunt Mary Jane’s grave. Turns out that when I returned as an adult, it wouldn’t matter anyhow.
Grandma said she was worried we might disturb Aunt Mary Jane, so we could have a quick peek, but we weren’t going to stick around long. Plus, she was worried about the broken glass and rusty nails or something else hiding in the grass. You never knew when you might have an unfortunate encounter with a copperhead. I was more scared the house might turn into a monster and come alive with a front door for a mouth to eat me. I was terrified and I loved it. I might have felt differently, but at the time I couldn’t imagine what came to pass.
She told me the rules. Hold her hand. Don’t go any further than she does. If she says to stop, stop and don’t move. Don’t touch anything. Don’t make too much noise in case there’s a raccoon or opossum who lives inside. That was fine with me. I didn’t want to be too loud and get a ghost angry at us.
She poked at the boards with her toes, checking if they were rotted, but they were okay. The porch window teased an easy look inside, but curtains and the ceiling bulging down blocked it, so she took a peek inside. It was all clear. No sign of ghosts, she told me, so I peeked in and looked around.
I didn’t see any ghosts and it looked mostly empty. Kinda boring. Just a lot of dust, a dried out mouse, a few pictures left hanging on the wall.
“Shh! Do you hear that?”
I hadn’t heard anything/ “What is it, Grandma?”
“Sh. Hear it?” she had a hand to her ear, listening. “I think I hear her coming. I think it’s Aunt Mary Jane!”
I didn’t hear it at first, but that didn’t stop me from being afraid. I still held her hand tight. Then, I heard it. It was quiet at first and I strained to hear it, but after a moment, it got louder. There was no missing it anymore. Spooky moans and groans that rolled through the house like swelling waves, growing louder, then soft, louder, softer again. Grandma got scared and I was already scared. We reckoned Aunt Mary Jane was giving us a warning so we probably ought to listen to her and be on our way. If she didn’t have a grip on my hand like she did, I would have already been tearing through those berry brambles like a dozen wild rabbits.
Next time my cousins came down, I told them how I saw Aunt Mary Jane’s gravestone, and how I almost went inside a haunted house. I was the youngest and they didn’t even listen at first, but when I told them how we heard Aunt Mary Jane spooking around, me and Grandma both? That got their attention alright, but they didn’t believe me. I told them how Grandma went with me and I told them they could go right ahead and ask her if they wanted and they did.
She said it never happened and I must have dreamt it. I cried because everybody thought I was lying and nobody believed me because I was just a little kid. Later, when nobody else could hear us, she explained that, if the rest of the boys knew, they would want her to take them too. She said the last time was too scary to go back. She asked me if we could just keep it between us whenever we heard a ghost. That was even better to me.
After that, Grandma or Grandad would walk the hundred yards or so down Route whatever-it-was and we would stand by the old mailbox to listen for the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane. Sometimes we heard her wailing, sometimes not. We didn’t get too close after the first time.
The following year, Grandma got sick and she died exactly one year after her first trip to the doctor in Richmond. Life moved on and I mostly forgot about Aunt Mary Jane’s house except for the odd occasion when friends start trading ghost stories. Now, I don’t talk about it at all. Not anymore.
Another few years passed and my Grandad Curtis died. It was the day after my 11th birthday and he willed the house to mom. We never lived there and I barely saw it again after that. It sat empty, neglected, and full up with Radon as far as I knew. After a while, the roof sagged, a stripe of tall weeds grew down the middle of the driveway, and the ceiling sank lower and lower until it finally jammed against the front door.
Years passed and eventually, so did my mom. I always figured she had sold the property, and I was surprised to learn she kept it and now I owned it. I can’t say I felt much joy about it, but I guess I wasn’t upset either. It was briefly disturbing, like when you feel something slither against your foot and nearly die from a panic, then realize it was just your dog’s nose. That odd moment when you experience something hideous but the realization comes so quickly after the sensation you aren’t capable of feeling relieved yet. That’s what I felt.
This is where it gets difficult to talk about, but like I said, no one is going to believe me anyway and I need to say it out loud and get it off my chest. If I didn’t have the scars and the medical bills to remind me, I would wonder if I hadn’t hallucinated it. It was real though, and I do have the scars and the bills. I just can’t share what happened with anyone, or I couldn’t before now, here. I can’t tell anybody I know because there’s two ways it happens - One. They don’t believe me and assume I’m crazy. The bad kind. Or two. They do believe me. In that case they don’t have an option and things might be worse. Either way, it could end with me behind bars, with or without soft walls. The truth? Well it doesn’t matter that the truth is because it’s impossible to believe! Trust me, I know how far-fetched it will sound, but listen. I’m the one with trauma, with a broken heart I can’t make sense out of, and a hole in my thigh so deep the doctors filled it with a solid chunk of my rear end the size of a baseball. I lived through it. I know the truth. I know what happened. That doesn’t mean anybody will believe me, or believe the whole truth.
It was a couple months before I made the trip to the property. The thought of my grandparents’ home looking anything like Aunt Mary Jane’s house felt wrong to me. Disrespectful. Like knocking over somebody’s headstone and leaving a bag of garbage on their grave.
Nearly 20 years after my Grandma held my hand and showed me the inside of a real haunted house, I was on my way there. Nearly 20 years after we scurried through the weeds and briars, terrified, running away from the ghost of Aunt Mary Jane’s, it hit me. All this time, my entire adult life and suddenly, on the ride there, I realized it. Only one of them usually walked me over to listen as she wailed at us from the haggard old house. Occasionally, the three of us would go but we didn’t always hear the ghastly groans. It seemed obvious now that I saw it. How could I not see it?
Grandma walked me over, Grandad snuck through the woods. She distracted me while he found a good hiding place. I like to imagine the smile they shared the first time she peeked her head in to be sure “the coast was clear”. I’m sure they loved it, and I love them for the memory, despite everything else.
When I got to their old yellow house I found it looking much better than I had expected. Better than I remembered from before, actually. I distinctly recall the ceiling had reached down to the top of the door and jammed it so you could barely rattle it back and forth. I remember it reminded me of a door that might grow teeth and a house that might eat me.
I walked around the house, peeking through each window. The house had been in such ill repair last time I had seen it, I couldn’t trust it was safe to enter, regardless of the straightened roofline and a door that now looked completely functional. As I went, I became more amazed and more confused. Inside, it looked just like when I was a kid. The same carpet, the same Jesus painting with eyes that opened and closed depending when you looked, the same coffee table I hid under to play, the same television, same sofa, lamp shade, recliner, everything was exactly the same. It couldn’t be. This couldn’t have come about from repairs. None of it made sense. I was bewildered.
I called Leslie to tell her I made it there and to see if she had any rational idea what could be going on. Mom didn’t have the money to stage an elaborate prank like this. We’d always been poor, and she hadn’t sold the property. None of it made sense. Leslie couldn’t think of a logical reason either. After the amazement wore off a little, I asked if she remembered the story of Aunt Mary Jane’s house. She did, so I told her about my epiphany on the ride down. She responded with, “Yeah, I know. You really didn’t know until now?”
At least we had a good chuckle. Sometimes we believe it because we perceive it. I had never had a reason to reconsider the reality of it, or to think about it much at all.
Not until it got up close, in your face, and bared its teeth.
After we hung up, I grabbed a burger from Fermin’s place down the road and had dinner sitting at Grandad’s work table in the shop. I hadn’t gone inside the house yet - I was unsettled by the whole thing. I ate my burger and, on a whim, I took a walk. I went down the barely paved side road side road that led to who-knows-where.
Sure enough, about a hundred yards down, still visible, same as it looked two decades ago. It was the same dirt driveway grown over with brambles, briars and weeds. Further back, a stand of tall hardwoods and pines, a dense crown of leaves to guard the roots and shadows below. It looked just how I remembered it. Surely the walls had given up by now and fallen in on themselves, I thought. The old house should be an overgrown heap of rusted nails, broken glass, and sawdust by now.
I’m not sure why I did it. I wish I could go back and stop myself, but I can’t, so I gotta live with memory. For whatever reason, I was compelled to go on, to see it again. I worked my way through the thorns and found myself standing on the unkempt lawn, staring at Aunt Mary Jane’s house. Thick peels of paint were still there, curled back like scales covering bones. Around back, the headstone sat undisturbed. The jagged glass remained in the dry-rotted window frames, still sticking out every which way. The front porch was still sturdy, the ceiling still hung low, and the locust still made a pass through two of the upstairs windows. But things were a little different than I remembered.
The front door hung open like it always had, but the ceiling, as low as it was, no longer dragged the top. The door wasn’t jammed now. I nudged it open with my foot and it swung easily. I’d had no thought or desire to come see this place or to see inside again, but there I was, tugging the door open, stepping inside. I didn’t know why. I don’t know why.
A pall of dust and sticky cobwebs lay across everything inside. If not for that, the place would have been immaculate. The kitchen was like a time capsule, a snapshot of the mid-1970’s. Teacups hung from hooks under the cabinets, the green toaster had a braided power cord, the linoleum matched the toaster, and the whole room smelled delicious, like someone had a roast in the oven. That was the point when I stopped questioning things and just accepted it. It may have been strange but it wasn’t my concern. It smelled delicious, the home was warm and cozy, and despite my head feeling slightly foggy, I was energized. I felt great, actually.
I noticed a small grandfather clock on the sofa table, its pendulum swinging back and forth. It worked. I accepted it. Sunlight angled through a crack in the curtains and raced across the room. It made me think of sharpened gold and I accepted it. Sunset was less than an hour from now, and through the spotless windows, it was morning outside. I accepted it. That’s how it was, and that’s the way that it should be.
I wandered back towards the kitchen hoping the roast was ready. A teacup swayed on its hook, drops of water on its pattern, curved and magnified, washed clean and hung to dry.
“Honey, could you give me a hand up here? I think my zipper is stuck.” Her voice was melodic and I could almost recall her singing, I couldn’t catch hold of the thought yet.
“Of course dear, I’ll be right there. How’d you get your zipper stuck?” I answered her, of course.
“Oh, I don’t know. It’s this dress. It happens every darn time. I think Mr. Sanderson knows which zippers tend to stick and picks them out on purpose and gives them to me.”
“Now why would Mr. Sanderson do a thing like that?” I was at the top of the stairs.
“Well, because of Marge. Don’t you remember?”
“At the party?” I saw her. She stood with her back to the open door where I now stood. She wore a rose-mauve dress with an ivory lace detail on the shoulders and cuffs. The back of the dress hung in an open V, waiting for help with the zipper. She faced a mirror, and I could only see the angle of her cheek bones, but I knew she was beautiful.
“Yes, at the party!” It was mock exasperation, and of course I remembered. Who could forget a scene like that?
I recalled the stairs, the top of the stairs, standing at the door, and now she was close. Her perfume was familiar. It smelled pretty and I thought it suited her. I have no memory of walking closer, but I was glad to be there. We had never met, but I knew that we had. I knew her intimately. I knew that I had always loved her deeply, and that she loved me. I didn’t question it; I just knew.
“Well, yes, but why would he give you a dress with a stuck zipper? That was Marge’s hullabaloo.” My fingers worked her zipper free. The tab felt familiar and I knew this wasn’t the first time I’d helped my wife like this.
“Because he thinks that I’m the one who told Heath about the conversation at the post office. He thinks that’s why Marge was throwing a fit.”
She swung her hair back and forth, then let it settle down her back. I noticed the nape of her neck. I was lost for a moment, she was all I could see. I felt a need to be closer, to touch her, to kiss the back of her neck and to lay down with her. I still held the tab between my fingers, her dress fully zipped, and there was a moment of stillness, of quiet intimacy. I leaned forward and didn’t question if I should kiss her neck. I was supposed to kiss her there. I needed to feel her skin with my lips. I stopped and savored the fleeting anticipation and I could feel her warmth near my lips.
I was finally there to taste her when she spun around, a whirlwind of beauty and hair and perfume and she flung her arms around me, around my neck and she smiled, a brilliant smile, wide and toothy, and it was no longer a smile and she was strong and her arms were too tight, and her grin grew wider and wider and stretched and contorted into a hideous maw. It happened fast.
The pressure around my neck made me sputter for air and that snapped me out of my daze. Whatever this thing was, it was evil. I felt it now.
I struggled to slip out of her grasp. Her arms had become gray and mottled with purple stains, like old bruises, misshapen. Her hands were large and the proportions looked wrong. Its fingers spindled into hooked claws, sharp, dangerous looking. The thick smell of mold and rot filled the room and I would have struggled to breathe with or without her squeezing me this way. All the air had been sucked from my lungs and they burned. I wriggled back and forth to find any small gap my chest could expand, to breathe.
She spoke again. “What’s wrong dear? Don’t you want a kiss?” This time, her voice was different, no longer melodic, no longer the voice of a woman. Her words came out in a quick raspy growl that reminded me of worms and insects, and as it hissed out that last word, thick fluid strung across its rows of elongated teeth, not saliva, some disgusting mucus that clung like stringy threads over sharp and serrated teeth. Teeth meant for tearing flesh. A few tiny drops of the fluid broke free as I fought against its strength and burned the skin of my cheek where they landed.
I needed air. Now.
I struggled until I was almost convulsing, then when I looked back at the creature…well, there was no creature. There was only my beautiful wife, befuddled, concerned about me.
“Are you okay? Please, you’re scaring me. What’s the matter?” What was wrong with me? Why had I frightened her that way? My chest ached inside hearing that tone in her voice, hearing how it slipped out, how she meant to keep it hidden. The tone that said she was scared. Scared for me, maybe. But her tone said she was scared of me, too.
I embraced her and pulled her to me. I needed to comfort her, to make it right before it was too late.
It’s no small miracle what happened next. If not for plain old dumb luck, the thing would have had me. Eaten me, I guess. Taken my soul, tortured me, I don’t know what, but I’ve never seen anything like that creature. True evil, the deep down core of evil.
The room had looked like a tastefully furnished and decorated bedroom moments ago. An ordinary bedroom for an average husband and a normal wife. And then it was a room with holes through the floor to the room below. The stout limb of a locust tree grew through the busted out window, into the room, and elbowed and angled its way out through the other window.
As I embraced this woman, my wife, desperate to soothe her hurt, desperate not to wound her more, the awful thing with hungry teeth was there again, chirping its unsettling clicks when it lunged. The mouth worked back and forth, scraping teeth together. The mucus had become thicker, and foamy. It had begun to leak and drip from its grotesque mouth. It was a split-second, that I noticed. Only an adrenaline fueled mind could have registered all of it to sort and file them into compartments of how deadly they might be.
I needed help, and somehow, it came. A small miracle, also a creature, but wildly different from this enormous lunging, fang-toothed monster. A miracle that arrived in the form of an opossum who made her den in Aunt Mary Jane’s dilapidated, ramshackle house.
It was all a blur, but I suspect she was a mama opossum, or maybe she was upset at the commotion. All I know is that it snapped and I barely reacted in time. I felt the unnaturally sharp point of the thing’s tooth followed by the searing burn of the mucus foam. It nicked me just under my jaw - way too close to my throat. At that moment, the opossum charged down the locust limb and hissing so loudly that it stopped us both dead cold for a split second. I was overflowing with adrenaline by then and my body was running on autopilot. I felt my body react without my input, and it shot into motion. I lurched away from the thing, trying to go anywhere I could to get it off. It had my leg, but I managed to grab hold of the tree limb and held it tight. The opossum didn’t like how close I got and she reared back on her hind legs. She was ready for a fight to the death.
I kicked and pulled, but I couldn’t shake the nasty thing off my leg. It was too strong and too quick for me to do any more than hold on and to keep trying to pull free. It didn’t work.
It felt like a full block of hot knives plunged into my thigh. I heard myself yelp from the shock of the pain. It hurt something awful, but it got worse. The creature had its long teeth buried in the meat of my leg and then chomped down. The jaw snapped shut and tore out a chunk. I think I felt it hit bone and I could see strands of muscle and fat inside. I almost passed out. Everything turned to gray and quiet nothingness, then the world rushed back in like a full alarm. I knew I had to make it count, right then. If not, this creature was going to have its way with me however it wanted.
I shook and pushed and yelled and pulled and tried to whip loose. I was losing too much blood, too fast. I could smell it, but I didn’t understand until later what it was I smelled. I heard the wet sound of it pouring onto the floor, before it drained through the cracks and holes to the floor a story below us. I didn’t register that it was my blood. It only registered that liquid was leaking and making a mess somewhere.
Both legs were soaked with red, but fortunately the blood made me slick. I yanked hard and jerked loose from its claws a little. Not much, but enough to gain some leverage. I let him pull me towards him, then sprung away, using his momentum against him to slip free. I grasped for anything I could reach, any weapon at all.
Sharp claws raked through my shirt, ripping jagged tears into my back. I ignored it and stretched toward the window and tried to grab a shard of the glass. The things must have had barbs somewhere because when I reached for the glass, I felt a sudden sting and felt the barbs grab and dig even deeper as I fought against them. I ignored that too and shoved myself as hard as I could.
They ripped gashes into my calf. I heard the sound of my body tearing as they pulled through. I got hold of a piece of that glass, though. I knew the glass would cut me too and I ignored it all. I felt it slide through the meaty part of my hand but I just clenched down even tighter. The deeper it was in, the better my grip was.
I whirled around and went after the thing. I had the glass with both bloody hands and swung the shard high over my head, then down as hard as I could. The glass jammed it into whatever part of the creature I could reach. I stabbed it. And stabbed it. And stabbed it.
It screeched and clicked and made odd, wet sucking sounds, then suddenly it was kicking, trying to get away from me. It didn’t last. It was only trying to gain an advantage.
I was no longer choosing fight or flight and there was no logic, only survival. If I had retained any logic, I might have launched myself out the window. Instead, I went after it.
I knew the blood loss might kill me, but I knew if I didn’t do something now, I was dead anyway. Some deep-down, instinctual, snake-brain took over and I leaped on it. I felt it doing things to hurt me, but I felt nothing except animalistic blood-rage. I felt claws and barbs and teeth push through my flesh with a soft pop, but it didn’t matter. There was no pain.
I don’t know how many times I stabbed it before it finally went weak. It wasn’t dead, but I’d hurt it. I was on its chest, heaving and out of breath. I was suddenly weak. I was too cold, shaky.
I looked down at it, ready to finish it. There was a waft of perfume, sexy and feminine, all around me. I noticed how the mirror was trimmed with gold leaf on its scalloped edges. The mirror my beautiful wife had been staring into when I worked her zipper free. I loved her so fully, so completely.
She was beautiful and it pained me to see her look at me the way she did. I’ll never forget that look. I wish I could take it back, to change things, but I can’t.
I had no choice. I understand that. I apply that logic every time I remember, which is everyday. But the logic doesn’t matter to my heart.
Our eyes met and I saw it. I saw that she knew what I was about to do. I saw that she wasn’t afraid, she was hurt. I hurt her beautiful heart because she knew what I would do. And I did it. I knew the creature wouldn’t show its true self. I knew it would be this woman who felt so familiar to me whom I’d never seen before now. The creature made sure it stung me back as it died.
I kept hacking for I don’t know how long. Eventually, I raised myself up off the body. It was barely recognizable anymore. My arms were limp, and there was no part of me left dry. I was drenched in our blood. Somehow, I lurched across the patchwork floor and down the steps. I hadn’t noticed on the way up, but most were rotten or missing. I maneuvered down on the framework. I got myself to the door but didn’t know if I could make it back through the briars but the human spirit is amazing I guess, because here I am.
On the way out, I noticed a small, ornate picture frame that hung near the front door. A photo of her, my beloved. It was tinted with the brass sepia of old photos. Later, when I got home from the hospital, I looked it over more closely. There were two letters and a date written on the back with a flourish. It said, “MJW” and “1906, April”.