Tag Archives: love

Short Story: Shards

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The look in Timothy’s eyes said it all. Grace saw him as he rounded the corner of the aisle as she stocked the shelves of the toy department. She had dreaded seeing in him for some time, dreaded the look he was now giving her. Her hands instinctively went to her belly, protecting her baby from his anger, though he was never prone to fits of outrage. His reaction was all the worse for it.

With one glance at her pregnant form, she could see waves of shock and surprise fighting with jealously and anger. She thought there was revulsion in there where, but she wondered if she was reading her own feelings in his eyes as they stared silently at one another. Her customers walked by them, oblivious to the awkwardness of the reunion.

“His?” Timothy muttered at last, once he found his voice.

She nodded. “Yeah, sorry I didn’t tell you. Me and Ken are, well…”

“I can see that,” Timothy said as he grappled with the unexpected feeling of betrayal. “You and him, huh?”

Grace nodded again, rubbing her belly absently, regretting the chain of events that led her to this moment, and not for the first time. “It was an accident, you see. Didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“Didn’t mean for it to happen,” he sighed quietly, closing his eyes as he tried to make sense of everything. “I thought he was only a bit of fun after your divorce. Wasn’t that why you and me didn’t happen?”

“I know,” she whined. “I know. He was only supposed to be someone to  play with before I settled down with someone a little more stable. I’m sorry. I know we were supposed to, but,” she shrugged helplessly. “You disappeared, and I know we kept in touch, but I thought I would never see you again.”

“I moved an hour away,” he retorted angrily, losing control of his emotions. “Promoted and moved one fucking hour away. I tried to call you, but you never answered. I text you, and the same. Oh, and you blocked me on everything. I guess you didn’t want me to know what was going on.”

“That was Ken’s doing,” she protested weakly. “Didn’t want me to get any ideas. He’s kind of controlling, and he’s always been jealous of you. You know how he’s like.”

“Oh, I remember Ken. Spent his whole marriage, or all three of them, controlling them, cheating on them, and just plain treating his wives like crap.”

“I know, but he promised it would be different this time.”

“Different? This time?” He said inquiringly as he pieced it all together. “You and Ken are married?”

“Well, no,” she shook her head, “but we’re supposed to get married in a month, once his divorce is finalized. “I don’t want to raise this baby without his father.”

“But you had no problem raising your other ones without their father,” Timothy argued heatedly. “What makes him so special.”

“I don’t know really,” she furrowed her brow in concentration, trying to explain the unexplainable. “It just is, you know. We’re together now. We’re going to have a family.”

Timothy scoffed, shaking his head in disbelief. “I must be the biggest fucking idiot.”

“No you’re not! Why would you even think that?”

“Because, I was hoping that maybe me and you could, but now this,” he pointed at her pregnancy. “I mean, holy fuck woman! You’re having Ken’s baby. And you’re marrying him? How fucking stupid can you be? How fucking stupid am I to hold on to the hope that maybe you’d finally decide to give me a chance. I mean, you said you loved me. You said you were in love with me.”

“I was,” she cried. “I still am, but it’s complicated.”

“No,” Timothy shook his head. “It’s simple, or at least it was. You chose him over me,” he said, tears streaming down his face. “Funny how everyone says I’m a nice guy, but it’s always the asshole that ends up with the girl. Either no one wants the nice guy, or maybe I’m really not as nice as everyone pretends I am.”

“You are, and I’m sorry,” Grace pleaded, sobbing into her hands, longing to fall into Timothy’s arms once more. “I fucked up. I should have picked you, but now I’m having his kid. I’m sorry.”

“No,” he shook his head. “Don’t be. I’m the one who should be sorry. I wasted all this time hoping that you’d give me a chance, but of course it was just that. I colossal waste of time. I – I have to go. Um, see you around, but probably not.”

He turned to walk away but Grace grabbed his arm and turned him around, pulling him towards her and kissing him. His resolve melted as he kissed her back, his need pulling him towards her in spite of himself. He ached for her and now there was nothing for him to do but walk away, but he couldn’t tear himself away.

Finally he wrenched himself from her grasp, unable to control the sobs tearing down his pride. “I love you, but I can’t do this. Not again. I’m sorry, but – goodbye.”

Without giving her a chance, he raced away. Grace stood there, rooted to the spot as he disappeared back around the corner, watching the man she was in love with get away, and she died a little.

***

A little over a year later, Timothy walked around his store, making sure the workers were busy with their tasks when he got a text. “It’s Grace. I need to see you. Can we meet?”

He stared at his phone the rest of the day, not knowing how to respond. Once he was home, he picked up the phone and replied. “I guess. I’m off tomorrow.”

“Okay.”

They agreed to meet at the city park. He waited on the bench by the pond as Grace walked up pushing a stroller and followed by her two other children, a boy and a girl.

“Thank you for meeting me,” she said timidly. “Can you guys go and play? I need to talk to Timothy for a minute.”

Her children ran towards the playground, not bothering to wonder why they had driven more than an hour to meet the strange man. She watched them for a moment before turning around and taking a seat next to Timothy who sat impassively watching the ducks waddle by.

“You wanted to meet?” He said in a cold voice.

“Yeah, I did,” she replied timidly.

“Ken know you’re here?”

“Me and Ken are getting a divorce,” Grace replied, picking up her baby from the stroller.

“That him?” Timothy pointed.

“Little Dexter,” she said lovingly. “He’s turning one next month.”

“Time flies doesn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“So why are you here?” Timothy asked at last. “I mean, I don’t mean to be rude, but why bother driving all the way up here just to tell me you’re divorcing that sack of shit. I suppose you caught him?”

“Three times, the last time in my bed, while the kids were sleeping,” she whimpered. “That was the last straw. I kicked him out. That was last month. He doesn’t care enough to call to see how Dexter is doing.”

“Okay, but why are you here?”

“I fucked up, okay?” Grace choked. “I choose the wrong guy and let the right one walk away. I should never have decided to play with him and lose you in turn. That was not what I wanted.”

“But it’s what you did, and what you got. You can say sorry all you want, but it’ll never change the fact that you picked him over me. He was the one you wanted, not me. Why should I give a shit that you’re here apologizing?”

“Because,” she begged, “I was hoping you’d maybe give me another chance? Please?”

Timothy laughed. “You’re fucking unbelievable. You expect me to take you in after what you did?”

“I expect you to tell me to get lost,” she shook her head wearily, resigned at the idea of losing him for good. “I had to try anyways. I have to see if you’d give me another chance.”

“I don’t know,” Timothy shook his head slowly. “I’m tired of always coming in last. I’m never anyone’s first choice.”

“You’re my first choice now.”

“No, I’ll never be your first choice. You made sure of that the moment you went with him. I’ll always come in after that asshole, no matter what you try to say on the contrary. He married you, and you had his baby. No matter what, you’re linked forever. I can’t compete with him.”

“You don’t have to,” she cried. “He gone. Out of the picture. He moved in with that whore of a homewrecker.”

“As I recall, you broke up his last marriage. Don’t get mad that he treated you like he treated everyone else. You knew what he was like, and you choose him over me anyways.”

“You made your point. I guess I drove out here for nothing then?” She looked at Timothy, and he could feel his resolve slip away. She had a way of doing that when no one else could.

She stood and he joined her, looking deep into each other’s eyes. He had forgotten the striking blue of her eyes, or the dimple on the corners of her smile, or the way she’d squint when she smiled, as she did right now.

He had to have her, but he knew it would end in heartbreak. He also knew his heart would fail if he allowed her to walk away. Either way he’d end up hurt. It was a no-win situation, and he hated no-win situations.

They fell into each other’s arms before their lips met. She fit perfectly in his arms, and she felt it too. They were perfect for each other. They held on for a minute or two before they broke their embrace. He had to answer her. Yay or nay? Either way he would end up broken, and he wondered if he should bother. He looked at her, ready to give her the answer, wondering to himself as he spoke if there would be enough shards of his broken heart to put back together again.

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Short Story: My curse

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There’s a certain inevitability to the whole endeavor. Writing it down, it appears as though I may have given up, which I wish I could say wasn’t the case, but for honesty’s sake, I have. I don’t mean to make my plight sound more grand than it is, though for me it comes as a bittersweet epiphany, that in spite of my heart’s desire, despite what other’s may say in contrary to my own belief, I am destined to be alone.

I know. Maybe I’m not qualified to speak in matters of the heart. I admit that I’m too close to see my situation clearly. All I have to speak from is my own experience. So, after searching and hoping for someone, of fighting for and losing countless times, of having my heart pulled out and my emotions drawn out on public display so that the world could see me at my most vulnerable, I have decided to retire. I cannot stomach another heartbreak.

Love. We call most profanities four-letter words. So many are and I’ve come to regard love as another profanity. Many see it as a blessing, but I’ve grown bitter as each subsequent betrayal and rejection tore me down that all I see is a curse. Love is my curse. I am accursed. My heart has been damned.

My issue is that I’m not free to love. My love comes with conditions, though ironically I fall in love freely. I fall in love too easily, and the pain of not having that love reciprocated haunts me. Once I tried in vain to forestall that misery by only becoming involved with only the facile and the shallow, and it worked at first. I gave in to companionship of the body, but my mind and soul desired more.

I wanted someone complex, subtle of mind and spirit. I needed someone to compliment my own desire for knowledge, and perhaps someone who surpassed me in order to force me to grow. But the price is that those who I desire need someone who compliments them, and those types have demands of their own. Most don’t subscribe to keeping secrets, at least the kinds of secrets I have in my closet, but to open myself to them has only ended in being rejected, no matter how delicately they try to do so.

I am not my own man. I don’t know how others like me have found love and kept it. I try, and when I fall in love and desire that sort of intimate connection, the type that compels me to give myself completely, I have no choice but to tell. I’m met with the same response, so often that I’ve come to believe myself defective in some way, unworthy of love and companionship.

I look into the mirror and it has become an abyss. I no longer see the man the world sees. I see a hollow man, a vacuous shadow. I have become more and more of the other sort, the one who believes to his core that he should have been born a girl. I don’t care what people say about gender and sexuality, that women don’t subscribe to needing a man. My experience is that they do expect their men to be men. I seem to be neither, though I wear my mask well enough to fool most.

The last rejection was the final blow, my last hope. I fell in love despite my precautions. I gave in to her when I knew well that allow her to see me would doom us before we had a chance. I told her and before I knew it, she gave me the tired excuse that she wasn’t’ ready to date.

So I give up, ready for a change. I think I see a curtain fall in the future, though I hope to delay it as long as possible. I had hoped to live long enough to maybe find someone who could tolerate me, even revel in my absurdity, but hope can only go so far.

I’m exhausted, and the hour has grown late. Love is fickle and I suppose it has passed me by. I’ll go quietly into oblivion’s outstretched arms. Perhaps in the nothing I will find a measure of peace. At least there, there will be no need for pretense any longer.

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Short Story: Open Secret

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The house was as enigmatic as the woman whom I would have the pleasure of interviewing. Gloria Kirkland is the last living icon of a forgotten age, wife of the infamous financier, Rutherford Kirkland, matriarch of family that has touched almost every aspect of American life, yet she is relatively unknown to the masses. That’s the way it has been since she married into the Kirkland family, and the way she wanted it to stay.

But with the unauthorized biography of her late husband hitting the shelves next week, she felt the need to step out of the shadows. The family had enjoyed anonymity for decades, living right under the radar, but were well-known and beloved within the upper echelon of American, and indeed global society. They were power players, make no mistake, and the powerful play by their own rules.

But the new media no longer cares about playing by the rules of the elites. They seek to tarnish the legacy of the powerful, to tear down legends and role models. Ms. Hoff appears to be part of the new media, not content to impugn the members of the elite, but the power hitters of a bygone time. Her target is Rutherford and the family he left behind.

Gloria received me graciously into her home. She calls it home, though she rarely stays there. She usually stays in a penthouse in New York, or else the ranch she own in Texas. The Estate, as she call her home, was the first home she made with Rutherford after they married. Sixty years later, and she still calls it home, and it’s easy to find his influence throughout the mansion.

“Why don’t you take a seat,” Gloria says, pointing to the sofa nearest the door. She takes a seat in an arm chair nearest the fireplace, in which a fire is blazing in spite of the near eighty degree day outside.

“Thank you, Ms. Kirkland. We can begin whenever you’re ready.”

“Proceed then,” she encouraged me with an airy wave.

I pulled out my phone, hit the record button on my recording app, and began the interview. “We can do this however you want,” I stated. “I can ask you a series of questions, or you can tell your story uninterrupted. I’ll be able to put together a coherent narrative from either.”

“I’ll just tell you my story then,” she says. “You’re here at my invitation after all, and I think we should be playing by the house rules.

“As you like,” I replied genially.

“You’re probably wondering why I asked you here,” she started, not bothering to wait for an answer. “The memory of my late husband is being besmirched by that beast of a woman, and I thought it best to clear the air and state the whole truth, the unabridged, painful truth, as we lived it.

“Ms. Hoff wants to paint a picture of an effeminate man, one who had no control of his cuckoldress of a wife, a woman who she claims kept company with the rich and powerful, men who controlled the destiny of a nation, politicians and celebrities alike. But there’s more to it than that.”

“More than infidelity?” I gasped, interrupting her story, scandalized by the implication.

“I don’t know if I would categorize it as being unfaithful, Violet,” she replied, unconcerned by my interruption. “Every man I bedded I did with his blessing. Indeed, he encouraged me to enjoy the company of every man I invited to my bed. You see, Rutherford was not an effeminate man. He was manly, a man’s man, an avid outdoorsman, hunter, fisher, and camper. He enjoyed manly pursuits. He just didn’t enjoy the intimate company of women.”

“Are you saying that Ms. Hoff’s assertion that he was gay is correct?”

“I am,” Gloria nodded matter-of-factly. “It was an open secret within our circle. He was already in a long-term relationship with his partner and lover by the time we got married. I was to be the trophy wife, you see. I was young, beautiful, and desirable. Our parents set it all up. His father needed to see his heir in a stable marriage with a woman from a good family, and my father wanted to move up the social ladder. It was arranged, and though I didn’t know what I was getting into, I accepted my lot in life.”

“An arranged marriage?”

“Yes. Don’t get me wrong, I cared for him. He was good looking, charismatic, and a wonderful man. I grew to love him quickly enough, and in time he grew to love me. We married in an intimate ceremony at the cathedral, wedded by a cardinal no less. We consummated our marriage that night, and it was as awkward as you can imagine. Adept as he was in making love to another man, bedding a woman left him utterly flummoxed.

“But we managed it that night, though it wasn’t the only time we shared a bed. He needed heirs, after all, so we started having sex on a regular basis. His lover didn’t like it, but he understood the social requisite of the era, and he accepted it with good grace. I bore him three sons, and a daughter during our first five years of marriage. Afterwards, he visited my bed once a year, on our anniversary, to perform his required husbandly duties.”

She laughed at the idea, but I was left speechless. What had seemed from the outside to be a solid, Christian marriage was nothing more than a sham, or so I thought. Gloria looked at me shrewdly and smiled. “Does it shock you? You have to understand that the rules are different for those in our social class, at least it was that way with old money.”

“It does, yes!” I exclaimed.

“I need you to know, and I need you to relate to your readers that our marriage was a loving and respectful one. I became his partner and confidant, though only his annual lover. But I loved him all the same, loved him like I have loved no one else. I believe he loved me the same way. The only defect was that we lacked the romantic component most associate with love.

“He had Edgar’s bed for romance. Edgar’s wife was not as understanding as I was, but she accepted it like the devoted wife she was trained to be. She took no lovers other than Edgar, so she had a loveless, and sexless marriage. Other than a pro forma consummation of their marriage, they bedded only one other time, and she conceive a son for him. She grew embittered fairly quickly, deprived of a husband to care for, and a lover to care for her needs.

“I had no such qualms. Like I said, Rutherford encouraged my dalliances with other men. He was quite proud that I was desirable. I used that to our advantage, bedding the right man in my husband’s quest to gain control of one business or another. More than once, I slept with an influential senator at his insistence, gaining the support for a bill he wanted passed, or defeated.

“I wasn’t too keen on politicians, but celebrities were another matter. I must have slept through a who’s who of famous men, starting from the late fifties when we were married. I’m over eighty, and let me tell you, I still manage to get some of the fresh faces into my bed.Having money is a potent aphrodisiac, and the young are willing to trade favors for a little money. I’m not ashamed to have pressed my wealth to my advantage, but it has kept me young.”

I nod in agreement. She still looks beautiful in spite of her advanced age. She sat in front of me, with a short skirt the showed beautifully toned and tanned legs. She was thin and regal, with high cheekbones, and flowing silver hair. Her hazel eyes were piercing. I admit that I felt an attraction towards this woman.

“I can’t help but wonder, with your husband sleeping with men, did you ever dabble with women?”

“Why? Are you curious?” She laughed knowingly. “I’m familiar with your reputation, Violet. You’re not shy when it comes to lovers, are you?”

“I’m openly bi,” I confess, feeling ashamed for the first time.

“I’ve tried it a few times during the free-love sixties. I enjoyed it, but I realized fairly quickly that women were not my taste.”

“That’s understandable,” I say , trying to keep the disappointment from my voice.

“Oh dear,” she grinned, and I felt a pull of magnetism from her. “Were you hoping to score more than the story of a lifetime?”

“Well, no,” I flushed. “I hadn’t considered it until just now.”

“I think we should continue the interview at a later time, once you’ve come back to your senses.”

I nodded in agreement, and I picked up my phone and stopped recording. Gloria rose and pulled me to my feet, pulling me into an embrace and kissing me like I had never been kissed. She surprised me by how good a kisser she was. “It’s been awhile since I’ve been with a woman,” she confided with a wink, “but I think I’m willing to try again. Feel free to use this in your story, if you want.”

I would love to relate what came next, but I will keep that part of the interview to myself. I will note that I was not disappointed by her skills in the bedroom, as evidenced by the fact that I ended up spending the night there that same night, and several more after that. If that unauthorized biography threatened to cause a scandal, I don’t know how the world will react to our own secret love affair, and frankly, I don’t care.

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Short Story: Shattered

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I wish I could pinpoint the exact moment my heart broke. There has to be a moment when it’s whole and well and in the next it’s shattered beyond recognition, beyond hope of ever being whole again. In my mind’s eye, I picture a high-speed camera recording it happening, and then when I replay it time and again, I can see the seismic event as my heart flutters and contorts violently, before the trauma rips through the organ, shredding it into uncountable pieces.

I replay the event constantly as I try to sleep. I try to divine meaning or purpose from it. I wonder if I had missed any warning signs. I pray for healing, but I’m left barren, an unbeliever in a miserable dark night of the soul. I’ve been hurt before, but never like this. Never have I been left questioning even my own identity. Maybe I should tell you what I’m talking about.

I met her a few years ago at a 5K event, a fundraiser with proceeds going towards cancer research. I lost my mother to breast cancer the previous year, and I wanted to do something to honor her memory. I took up running, hoping to help the cause. Sandra had also lost a loved one, in her case her favorite aunt. We met at the sign in table, and we started to talk. She was actually one of the first women I initiated a conversation with. I felt a pull from her, a well of gravity that captured me and placed me in her orbit, though I hadn’t recognized it at the time.

We exchanged phone numbers, and within a few days I called her, wanting to hear her again, needing to see her. The sensation was unlike anything I had ever experienced. It was utterly intoxicating. We went out for dinner, and then the next week to a movie. Soon we were dating fairly regularly. I’m not even certain when we became a couple.

All too soon, we ended up moving in together. I, who had spent a lifetime taking things slow, never wanting to rush into anything, fell headlong into a relationship. I realized quickly that I was attracted to her, that I felt a rush of emotions when I was with her. The heady feeling of euphoria clouded my judgement, but I didn’t care. I was in love with her, and she told me constantly that she was in love with me. It was bliss, or so I thought.

There were signs the entire time, of course, but I ignored them. I was too in love to see clearly. I cast my doubt away and allowed my heart to blind me. She, I believed, could do no wrong. She would never betray me, yet there was a nagging suspicion in the back of my head. I shouted it down, but the voice became louder. Still, I ignored it. I was, after all, in love.

As time wore on, however, the little signs became clearer. Maybe it’s because she became emboldened by my refusal to see what was in front of me that she no longer felt the need to hide it from me. I accepted her fidelity as a given, but her actions clearly betrayed her. Even my friends could see what was going on, and though they tried to warn me, I ignored them as well.

We were together for a year before the truth became brutally clear. Sandra, in her arrogance, started being careless. I would read texts between her and her friends. They were clearly romantic in nature. I’m not sure romantic is really the word I’m looking for. There were explicit, but I tried to rationalize it. I wasn’t giving her my full attention. I was clearly working too hard and not being available to her.

So I left work early ond day, wanting to surprise my lovely girlfriend. I got home, noticed several cars in the driveway, cars that I didn’t recognize. Curious, I crept quietly into the house. That’s when I heard her. From the doorway of the house, I heard her moaning, moans that I had never heard escape her lips. It sounded ravenous, guttural, with a kind of savage ferocity that I had never thought possible to issue from a woman’s mouth.

My heart seized in my chest, but I was still in denial. I had to be imagining it. I hung my jacket in the closet before sneaking up the stairs. The moans became louder and clearer as I crept up. I heard the voices of several men, in addition to hers. I heard her utter words I didn’t even know she knew, profanities and invocations to a deity I was beginning to lose faith in.

I opened the door, hoping not to see what I knew very well was happening within. On the threshold into the bedroom, I felt my very soul torn asunder. Something in my mind broke the moment my heart was shattered. When I came to myself, I was surprised at what I saw. I was covered in blood, the bodies of two men strewn along the floor, their bodies broken by my hand, and the wooden bat I must have picked up from the coat closet by the front door.

Sandra cowered in the bathroom, having witnessed my break from sanity as I swung against her lovers with an anger I had never displayed in my life. The aggression that had built up during a lifetime of submission washed over me, like a dam spilling over after a flood. Nothing could hold back my anger, and in those moments she came to discover that even the meek can only by strung along for so long.

I felt the power pulsing in my veins as I drank in the fear from her eyes. I must have looked mad, drenched in the crimson life force of the lovers with whom she had mocked my own manhood. At that moment, my tenuous grasp at sanity was fleeting and I felt a surge of hatred overpower my control. This time, however, I was fully aware of what I was doing. I knew what I had to do to regain my battered manhood. I would have to kill her.

I lifted my bat above my head, relishing the terror etched onto her face. I thought my love for her was intoxicating, but having control of her life, and now her death, was empowering. I laughed a mad laugh as I walked towards her, watching her shrink back against the vanity, having nowhere to flee. Her life had been forfeited for having been a treacherous bitch.

In my righteous anger I hadn’t heard the muffled, pained breathing of one of her lovers. I was deaf to everything but Sandra’s pleading for mercy. I didn’t hear anything until the loud pop from behind me, then the eerie warm sensation of something viscous pouring from my side. Then the searing pain as another bullet ripped through my body and I fell onto the floor, my consciousness floating away.

I’ve been told that I failed to kill those two bastards, but that the one who shot me lost the vision in one eye, and the other may never walk again. No one will tell me what happened to that bitch of a girlfriend of mine. I hear precious little in here, and the nursing staff will not talk to me. My therapist is trying to put my psyche back together, but I don’t think there’s much left of me to fix. The man I was is dead. The woman I loved killed him with her betrayal. I wish I didn’t miss her. I don’t understand how I can still love her with my shattered heart.

 

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Short Story: Sacrificed Death

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I celebrated my 181st birthday yesterday. I call it a celebration because that’s what people say, but my longevity is not a blessing. It’s a punishment for daring to seek immortality. You may not believe it, you probably don’t want to. There’s this fear of death that permeates through this society. A fear that I find ironic considering the state of the world.

You won’t find my name listed on any record books. I’m not a celebrity, though I was briefly a well-known actor on Broadway and Vaudeville. I starred in few early films, all during the silent age, before disappearing for an age, returning to enlist in the Great War, hoping that death would find me on the battlefield. He saw me and turned away, my sacrifice an insufficient penance for my act of insolence those many years ago.

I was born on a plantation in 1834, the son of wealthy landowner who grew tobacco in the fields, along with a few other crops. He also owned a distillery in town which brought enough money that we would never know want. We had it all, the extravagant home on the rolling green hills, an army of slaves to tend to everything, from the fields to our home. It was a simple time, one that seems idyllic in a sense.

Of course looking at it from our current vantage point, our family were the oppressors of a people, though we treated the help well when you consider the period. I didn’t understand it at the time, but we owned actual human beings. How grotesque is that? I’m ashamed of that history.

Some have the benefit of being separated by generations from that abominable age, but I don’t. I lived it. It’s because I lived it that I’ve come to my current situation. While it wasn’t uncommon for the white owners to sleep with the slaves –  with or without their permission, consent being a modern invention – I went a step further and fell in love with a girl.

Maybelle was a beautiful girl of fourteen. I was a few years older at nineteen. When you apply modern age differences, it would seem to be scandalous, but people matured younger in those days. You had to. The concept of adolescence had yet to be invented. Lives depended on growing up. It was a harsh world, but we were strong. We had to to survive.

So our ages weren’t what caused a scandal, but the color of our skin. I was a free white man. She was a servant of color. It didn’t matter that I loved her, nor that she loved me. What mattered was race. Miscegenation was considered by some in our community, reason enough to be killed. Our preacher taught it was an abomination against the Lord for the purity of the race to be diluted by inferior blood. I began to deplore my family, and my race, and my God.

Maybelle would often speak frankly to me, believing that a time would come when a man and woman could marry regardless of the color of our skin, but lamented that it wouldn’t be in our lifetime. An obsession was sparked in me, to defy the laws of Heaven and Earth, to deny Death another mortal trophy. I sought a way to prolong my life, and in so doing prolong my beloved Maybelle’s as well.

I dabbled in the occult, I confess. If God would deny me the woman I so loved, I would turn to his adversary. I sold my soul to the devil, though at the time I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t consider that evil would betray me with a worse fate than death.

“Please,” Maybelle pleaded with me, “don’t you dare do it. I would rather die than live with the shadow of the betrayer looming over us. Let’s run away. Let’s get married. Let men kill us if they want to, but please don’t sell yourself to that fell demon.”

“Don’t worry,” I smiled. “It’ll be alright.”

I walked away that night, to a clearing outside of town, hidden from the prying eyes of the living. In that copse the shadow walked towards me, and I swore my allegiance to him. “For ever after,” he grinned, “Death you pass you by, but know that I demand a payment in kind.”

“That wasn’t part of the bargain,” I cried. “You swore you could forestall death. You never stated that there was a price to pay!”

The shadow lowered its hood, and I looked upon the visage of Death. He smiled, his eyes alight with mischief. “You turned away from life and I granted you passage into immortality, but your Maybelle will never go for it. She’s too pure of a woman for that.”

“She will,” I protested fiercely. “She has to!”

I ran away from the copse and all the way into town and to the other side, several miles, until I reached the plantation. I had been so desperate to get Maybelle to swear allegiance to Death that I hadn’t noticed that I was not out of breath. I ran past the house, and to the shacks where Maybelle and her family lived.

“Don’t you come into this house, boy!” Her father yelled at me, fear dancing in his eyes. He had never spoken to me like that. He had never dared raise his voice at any white man and I knew then that something evil had happened.

I pushed my way in, and her family shrank back. There on a cot on the floor laid an emaciated woman, old and and feeble. Her breath came in raspy bursts, with fits of coughing that spewed blood onto those who attended to her during her throes of death.

“Who is she?” I demanded. No one spoke. No one dared speak to me. The cowered before me and I didn’t know why. Finally she opened her eyes, and her eyes spoke to me. Her body was dying but her eyes were bright with the raging fire of youth. Maybelle looked at me, and I could tell though she wasn’t angry at me, she had chosen a noble path instead of my choice.

I watched in horror as her face contorted in pain as she convulsed and shrank again, wasting away until only a skin-covered pile of bones lay before me, and the light in her eyes dimmed until they went out.

“You did this, boy,” her father shoved his finger in my face as the family wailed in anguish. “You, the devil’s child. You killed my girl. Now I’m going to kill you.”

And he did. Then buried my body. My father found out about my murder and had me dug up. Her father was hanged and buried in the shallow grave he had buried me in. Then I was given a proper burial. Only I was not dead. I could see everything. Death had not taken me, like he promised.

I dug my way out eventually and left town. I wandered the countryside until the first horrific war began, and I traveled north. I fought for the union to end slavery, and I died to save the union. I died so many times it became a game of how-long-can-I-last.

I lived, and I never forgot my Maybelle. I got married eventually, had a family, and watched them all die. I married again, and again, and each time I watched as they withered before me. Sons and daughters passed away, as did my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

I’ve been alone for fifty years now. I’ve seen and done everything imaginable. I conquered the unconquerable, and I’ve mastered everything. I’ve become a poet, a writer, a musician, and an actor. I’ve fought for what I believed in, and sought to find that path back to mortality, but there’s the price I have to pay.

Maybelle’s death was not the payment I had to pay. Far from it. She chose to die instead of renouncing that gift like I had. The price I bear is to never see her again in my lifetime. Sacrificing my life means nothing, I suppose, since I can’t die. I sacrificed my death, and that is a fate worse than I could ever have imagined.

Short Stories

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