Twilight Nightmares (Twisted Tales Special Edition Book 1) (9 page)

Within the golden bars of light,

Nestled just outside in the frigid day,

I found me wanting, where some thoughts

Led to perseverance of wicked dreams

Slithering as whispers from my blue lips.

And
I sat there, drinking from the ground,

Coffee as thick as mud, steam billowing forth.

That's when she exited through the door,

And
all seemed warm, though the day had mingled

With the nightmares from wintery demons.

I smiled warm, and she rightly back.

A new sip of my brew seemed so much colder now.

I said, how do you do, thoughts full of life,

She replied with her temperament—delighted and fair.

I
was enamored
by her comity to my brevity of courage.

She neither acquiesced nor ignored, simply answered.

That was the day I met my wife, a future of love,

Where dreams no longer seemed somber, even when

The darkness gloom hung in the blackest of nights.

Fifteen long years, a marriage slowly torn asunder.

Not by the demons of the night nor by dragons of dreams,

Only by the dissonance of lives unequaled entwined and

Embittered by angelic reveries never to be resolved.

With tattered smiles of lives lost, gone without a trace,

Where does one begin battling desires enriched by
serpents,

To seek true happiness even when nothing can
appease?

And fight we must, but not for each other or for others,

But
to find a simple place, give reason for our union—

One too fast for us, anyone could show to be true.

For days had gone by where expensive words
were spent

Cultivating the brilliance of emotional companionship,

Yet hollow were the many debts that we paid.

And so under the dying sun and rise of a traitorous moon,

I drank in the blood of the stars, holding them close,

So that the dearest of emotions to tether and stay me

Would linger no longer than soft smoke in a heavy breeze.

To hell, to hell, that where I'll send my wife.

A dream I've been dreaming, perhaps a nightmare for her.

Oh, how I wish I could see before I could see

What attempt I could make to deter the inevitable.

Sight unknown to a bastard thought freed and loosed.

Oh, how I wish those warm nights were no longer cold and

The empty rooms
were filled
once more

Not by an ethereal presence, too cold for me.

No, by the warm body of evidence; living, breathing,

And
not eaten by the worms or the digestive ground.

Oh, how I linger and lumber, from room to room

Dreading the moments, and I wish upon my wishes,

Double
them
further and perhaps the Lord might hear,

A recant to my deeds to bring forth the woman I adore.

Not just as a dream or a visage but her as life—

A new birth of her life into mine, can it please be true?

Silence among the soft ticks of the clock in my chest,

A reminder that all had been lost to that wicked beat.

I wonder if my dire desire
could be fulfilled
once more.

A sharp edge reflects everything I want and need
;

This is how I manage to find my way down, down, down.

Drinking in the darkness as light gave way,

My passion brought me, no, dragged me to a place

I had only recognized once, in those wicked dreams.

Once before, long before I met her that morning,

I had envisioned a death as intimate as the skin.

Somehow, fate brought me here nevertheless,

And
never a thought did I give, when I figured

I might find her here to bring her back

So we can live and love, never be lost in a day

Nor a week, nor even a year, but forever in love

And within loves embrace; but there I was

Before a horned beast, who welcomed me
with

Gangly arms and a blackened face, no eyes nor ears,

No smiles nor tears, a jagged visage of death itself.

A voice arose from that wicked beast, and it told me

This story of a man who tried to send his wife to hell;

But
to grace she went, to sing with blushing seraphs.

Lo! There I was, among those of the same evil breadth,

To scream with the demons, an eternity, rightly just!

The moon hung high in the sky, casting a blue gloom upon the marble headstones. A soft fog lingered at her feet, and it languidly danced in swirls as she moved about the plot. The cemetery was exactly as one might find in some cheesy horror, which was terrifying, but even if it
had been packed
with zombies, Sicily would still be there. She
had
to be there. It was the only way.

She thrust the shovel into the ground, and kicked it into the earth. As she levered a chuck, the roots cracked and popped. She lifted it, and tossed the loose earth into a pile. Another thrust, another plop on the pile. After a short while, she uncovered a small three-foot-by-two-foot coffin.

It was a lovely handcrafted wooden enclosure that she painted herself. It wasn't by any means a stellar design, she'd only painted the entire thing white and stenciled in several orchids at the edges, but the love she put into it more than made up for it. As gorgeous as it was, though, she knew of the occupant, and it made her nauseous.

After climbing into the grave and checking to make sure the lid was secure, she began to wrestle with it to get it out of there. It was much heavier than she expected, and she was sure she might throw her back out, but after much effort, as much as any hopeful mother might have, she managed to push it out and onto the grass above.

Once she escaped the grave, she stood for a moment to catch her breath. The thickening fog seemed to avoid the freshly dug hole and the coffin as if it wanted nothing to do with what she had planned that night. She didn't blame it, either. She could barely believe what she was about to do, but the more she looked upon that small coffin, unable to imagine anything other than a tiny bent, broken, and worm infested body, the more she became sure she made the right decision.

Sicily closed her eyes, and a few tears leapt from her eyelashes. She turned away from the coffin, and when she reopened her eyes, she was looking upon a man with rage. He looked back at her from the orange dolly to which she'd tied him.

She walked toward him, and he shook his head. His black hair plastered against his forehead from the sweat of the warm night. She picked up the handle end of the dolly and struggled to move him to the edge of the grave.

From her dirty white pants, she pulled a small Swiss Army knife. Part of the company’s label had rubbed away, and just below it was an engraving: To Adam—Love, Mom. Her eyes continued to shed tears as she opened the knife. She placed the sharp edge of the blade against the
pillowy
flesh of her right palm, and as she pushed and pulled, the skin parted.

The man moaned loudly, and wondered if she was out of her mind. Sicily balled her bloody fist, and held it over the grave.

She said, "Six months... six months without my baby. Do you know what that does to a mother? Of course you don’t. You’re just a pathetic drunk with no family."

The blood dripped from her hand, wetting the disturbed earth. He looked at the coffin and then at the woman. He wriggled and tried to rip through the bondage, hoping to hell that he could muscle through and break free.

"For a long time I thought I would never get over it. I thought I might kill myself if only to join my baby once more in the afterlife. It was the only thing I could see." She said, and moved next to him. "But I knew I could never have him without first having revenge on you."

She knelt down and his breathing became laborious. In-out-in-out, deep breaths as she moved the knife closer to his side. This was it, he thought. She was going to stab him and it would all be over.

She placed the knife at the edge of the tape holding him to the dolly, and began cutting through it. A second separate layer bound his arms, wrists, and legs, so she didn't worry that he might jump up and attack her. No, it wouldn't serve her purpose wisely at all to have allowed that to happen.

When she freed him from the metal mover, she stood and said, "Then I got to thinking.
Why not get two of the things I always wanted?
My mother, as you're probably not aware, dabbled in black magic. Well, she didn't call it black magic. That's for movies, but explaining it to you, I suppose that will suffice."

She placed her foot on his hip. He looked down at her mud-covered flats, the skin slightly filthy. Despite the mess she'd made of herself, she still looked as motherly and homely as any other loving mother did.

"I never believed in the things she tried to teach me about my ancestors.
All those wasted years—you know what?
I could’ve protected him from you. It doesn’t matter now, because I know what I need to do. A life for a life, an eye for an eye." She said, and pushed on him a bit. "You’ll not hear a spell, because there’s no such thing. My intensions to the earth and her spirits are transferred on a plane separate from this one, and are
very
clear."

She pushed him into the hole, and he landed with a heavy thud. The air rushed from his lungs, causing him to cough, and as he coughed, he breathed in dirt that irritated his lungs, which continued the cycle.

She watched and waited, and then a soft cracking rose from the blackness below him. The ground softly vibrated, and following it was the squish of wet dirt. From below the man, vines pushed their way through the mulch and wrapped around his body.

He screamed but the gag muffled him. The roots of some unknown plant, like the tentacles of a mythical beast, tightened around him. Tighter and tighter, he felt the pressure squeeze him. He felt a pop, and she heard bones breaking. He screamed as the pain increased in intensity, now more audible.

Sicily looked down upon the man that killed her son. The vines tightened around his body, slowly crushing him. He blew blood from his nose and sharp bones pierced through his skin. His scream became a wet garbled rasp, which ended soon after. The vines pulled his mutilated body into the dirt. It left only small scraps of skin and bone behind.

Her heart pounded in her chest, and she felt a thick sickness begging her to vomit. She closed her eyes and swallowed with the hope she might not purge, but she did. She fell to her knees, and let loose that evening's dinner along with whatever bitter bile stringed out after all the food had vacated. When she finished, she wiped her wet eyes, spit the last bit from her mouth, and licked her now gritty teeth.

She stood upon weak knees, and looked at the coffin. She had her doubts at the beginning that any of it would work. It wasn't until she watched the earth consume the man that she'd began
to truly believe
. Even still, as the coffin sat quiet in the darkness gloom, she felt as if nothing would bring her son back.

Thump.

Startled, Sicily reared back as fear washed her body with a cold sweat.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

She ran to the coffin, and put her hand on it. Three more thumps vibrated the surface, and then the cries of a child called from within. She scrambled to open the coffin, which seemed impossible to open. When it
was finally freed
, a sickening stench blew into her face, which threatened her gut to purge whatever traces of acid was left in there, and she looked down. Nestled on the silk pillows was her son. His cheeks turned rosy red, and he looked up at her with eyes bluer than a crisp cloudless morning. A life for a life.