APOCALYCIOUS: Satire of the Dead (8 page)

             
Heather’s most stunning feature used to be her smile, something she rarely wore these days. She didn’t like her smile, it always felt foreign on her lips, it was something like putting twenty dollar wrapping paper on a two dollar gift; it just didn’t belong.

             
Guilt, a gift from her mother, was her greatest flaw. She tortured herself for events in her past that she’d had no control over; things that hadn’t been her fault. It had been a guilt that had left her sleepless and crying at night. She felt like a failure. Even worse she felt that she deserved the pain. Maybe this life was a form of purgatory. A time to live and maybe make amends for sins repeated; a punishment of sorts; a penance that she could never get quite right.

             
But there were times that eased the ache inside her and sitting in her grandma’s old rocking chair and listening to the haunting chorus of the winter wind was a Godsend.

             
Night was a friend that cradled her in its shadowy arms, shielding her as no human ever had. She felt less vulnerable, less ashamed of her scars and her physical appearance when day grew dim. No one could see the sorrow that burned in the depths of her dark brown eyes. It was a private pain and darkness kept her secrets safely hidden.

             
Heather reached to the window sill and switched on a portable radio. A song that she had danced to at her junior prom filled the airwaves and she was immediately struck with a melancholy that astonished her.

             
Had it really been her wearing that black evening gown with a corsage tied around her delicate little wrist? Had it been her that had danced in small circles with her cheek resting on the lapel of her boyfriend’s tuxedo as she daydreamed that it was her wedding day?

             
She switched off the radio and felt like crying. She didn’t need to be reminded that she was twenty-eight years old, overweight, divorced and alone.

              Heather closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around her knees that were drawn against her chest. She inhaled the lingering scent of lilac that hung like ghosts throughout the house. Her grandma, her smell; Heather had always loved the way her grandma smelled.

             
But that floral scent reminded her of weddings and funerals too. Whether you were getting married or getting buried, flowers were always there. It was strange how certain scents triggered old memories that were as fresh as yesterday.

             
She remembered the first time anyone had given her flowers.

             
She had been thirteen with a smile that glowed with the innocence of youth. A neighborhood boy had picked her a bouquet of tiger lilies that grew wild along the side of the gravel road she lived on. She had worn them woven in her hair; a crown for a waif princess. She remembered how the boy had chased her around the backyard of her parent’s house until she collapsed in the cool evening grass, exhausted from running and laughing. Fireflies flashed their beacons like desperate S.O.S. in the twilight and she remembered he had one stuck in his hair. He had fallen down beside her and for a moment he just looked at her nervously, his face blushing. His shaggy blonde hair tousled and littered with blades of grass. She knew he wanted to kiss her, so she reached over to him, touched his face and smiled that brilliant smile of hers.

             
That was all the incentive he had needed.

             
It was the worst kiss she’d ever had. It was clumsy and inexperienced, but it was also the sweetest her lips had ever tasted. She remembered how her cheeks felt hot, her heart had beat like bird’s wings, and that it felt like her whole body was tingling. She remembered that he smelled like fresh cut grass and Big Red chewing gum. That smell was a whole lot more appealing than the buckets of cheap cologne that the Don Juan’s in town bathed in.

             
It was one of her favorite memories, and she replayed it often in her mind.

             
But that had not been love.

             
It had been a childhood crush, or so her parents had told her. It seemed though, that looking back, her parents had been wrong. She thought that maybe that was how love was supposed to be after all; young and fresh and innocent. It made more sense in all its naivety than her sham of a marriage had been.

             
She had lived with eight years of wearing makeup, sunglasses and making excuses to cover the bruises beneath. She lived with the guilt of a miscarriage. She could still see that pale, pink body lying in a pool of amniotic fluid and blood that had landed there in the bathtub with a wet smack and a massive cramp, just because her husband had ‘one of those days’. She remembered him yelling at her to clean up the mess even as she mourned the loss of the child she would never know.

             
Of course, the next day he had bought her a new dress. A peace offering, apology and token of his undying affection all rolled up inside a plastic K-mart bag.

             
Small comfort that
,
but she had guiltily accepted the offering in fear of receiving another beating, and had modeled the dress for him like a good little wife.

             
She could feel the self-loathing brewing within her as the scenario played out in her mind. How could she have been so timid, so gutless to have let him treat her like she was some kind of play toy/punching bag. How could she simply allow him to murder their child and do nothing in response?

             
She had stayed with him through four mistresses that she knew of, because marriage was what love really was; a love, that, would eventually, make everything alright.

             
Now she knew better.

             
Love had been a cruel joke and her husband had always delivered the punch line.

             
Still, even now, she caught herself daydreaming, induced from too many romance novels and made for TV movies, thinking ’what if?’, and she hated herself for it. As hard as she tried, she could not stop herself from hoping, and maybe, that was the worst part.

             
Then there was jealousy. It was like a disease that gnawed at her from the pit of her stomach. It was always there; ready to discredit anything that she didn’t have. Seeing lovers walking in the park with their hands slipped in each other’s back pockets, weddings she had attended with all their beautiful vows… it all reeked of lies.

             
It made her want to slap the starry-eyed expressions from their faces. Maybe give them a punch line of her own; just walk up to a couple of newlyweds, say ‘stop me if you’ve heard this one’ and
WHAM!

             
She shook her head in disgust. She was feeling sorry for herself again and thought that a bowl of ice cream might ease the pain as she wiped tears from her eyes.

              The snow had stopped falling and the skies had cleared and the morning sun shined against the snow and looked deceptively warm. She wasn’t sure how long it had been since she had left the house so she decided to get her coat, go outside and just stare at the beauty of it.

             
Bundled in her down-filled coat she thrust her hands in her pockets and made fresh tracks in the snow. She looked back to the bright blue sky and thought her favorite constellation... Orion; the hunter. He had obviously not succeeded either; he still had his arrow nocked but had never let fly. She could relate to that.

             
She was startled when she heard footsteps crunching through the snow from behind her, the smell of lilac wafted past her in the wind.  She knew that smell, but it masked another smell that was not as sweet. There should not be anyone here. She had been the only living relative and she worried that the Lifetime movie she had watched the night before had come true.

“Hello?” she asked, her voice wavering as she began to step back toward the front of the house.

Heather listened, but the only response was a groan.

She peered into the blinding white of the deep snow that hung heavily from tree limbs in that part of the yard. There at the back corner of the house she saw a form staggering toward her.

“Who’s there?” she asked again, and again came the groan.

Heather stepped down from the porch and walked slowly toward the silhouetted figure. The dark figure was skinny and hunched over. She could see the material of a dress billowing behind her. “Grandma?” she asked with her heart racing. She knew it couldn’t be her grandmother; the woman had been buried three days ago.

There was another groan, louder this time. It sounded almost like a question, but what had it asked?

Heather cautiously made her way slowly toward the woman, but when the form began to stagger forward Heather stopped, filled with an unnatural fear. She felt the wind picking up and it blew down the neck of her coat. She shivered, unable to move as she watched the figure move clumsily toward her.

The figure weaved left to right, lunging forward and as she emerged from the shadows of the house and into the light of the sun, Heather saw her Grandma. Her Grandma reached out to her and Heather saw the old woman’s hands. It appeared that every finger of her hands had been broken and splayed out in odd angles like the branches of a bush; the skin of her hands was hanging in ripped tatters that blew in the wind.

“Oh my God…Grandma…what did they do to you?” Heather whispered and began to cry.

Her grandma moaned and it sounded to Heather like she was calling her name.

Heather’s paralysis broke and she ran to her grandma. Grandma clawed at the air as Heather came forward, her motions becoming more and more enthusiastic and frantic with each step. Heather threw her arms around her grandmother’s neck and squeezed her tightly, almost knocking the elderly lady backwards. Heather could feel the broken fingers on her back, sliding up her neck.

             
“Oh Grandma…let’s get you in the house and warmed up, you’re freezing” she said, tears streaming from her eyes. She heard her grandmother groan again. To her, it said that her grandmother loved her and when her grandma’s jaws distended into a lion’s maw her dentures fell out of her mouth and into the snow. She gnawed into Heather’s soft neck and tried to rip chunks of flesh from her granddaughter’s throat. Heather tried to pull away, but the old woman set her jaws. They squeezed together clamping both sides of her neck and pinched off the blood flow of her carotid arteries and jugular veins. Her peripheral vision began closing in, fading to black as she struggled to remain conscious.

Tears streamed down her cheeks as she grew weaker and weaker. She lacked the strength to fight off the old woman and she silently cursed the slothful rituals that had stolen her strength and left her a bloated remnant of who she used to be. Her grandma’s jaws squeezed harder, compressing her windpipe and she couldn’t catch her breath. Above her she saw Orion sparkling in the night sky…
but it wasn’t night was it?
Heather’s vision blurred and she thought that she saw him release his bow. She felt a piercing pain in her soft belly as jagged fingernails tore into her flesh. Fingers hooked into her intestines, pulling them free from the red warmth within. Heather was faintly aware that she could see steam rising before her, and her oxygen starved brain wondered if the Hunter had hit his mark this time or would he circle the planet again, still searching for his prey.  The stars sparkled then disappeared, sparkled and disappeared. She wondered why lightning bugs were flashing their beacons in December. Maybe they had been cast out from a very cold heaven for their rebellion. The sky of velvet smoothed the darkness and the stars shined no more.

         
Chapter 3 - The love of Crystal Beth

Cincinnati
, Ohio 

Bethany Ann Van Heusen was a stripper; at least that was what she told everyone. The truth was, more accurately, that she
used
to be a stripper, but that had been six years, two kids and three years of using meth amphetamine ago. These days, the dime-sized scabs that dotted her face, body and arms kept her from making those fat stacks of dollar bills from the richer clientele. These days she was reduced to servicing crack heads when their welfare checks came in for twenty bucks a pop.

             
When she had first taken the stage six years ago and had wrapped her legs around the chrome plated pole she had been young and slightly plump, but the brothers had seemed to like the extra jiggle. Ironically, one of the very patrons that had liked her junk in the trunk had given her that first dose of meth. She thought smoking it was the cool thing to do and in appreciation to the drug’s effects she had assumed the stage name of Crystal Beth at the Foxy Box Gentlemen’s Club. Just exactly how many ‘gentlemen’ actually attended the black lit bar remained open for speculation. The owners ended up changing the black lights out because the semen residue around the exterior of the dancer’s orifices showed up as a glaring glow in the dark patches on their flesh. They had replaced them with a much more classy red rope lighting scheme that allowed the girls to, at least, appear to be somewhat sanitary.