Dead Love

“It is over Valerie - finished. J'ai fini. Ich bin fertig. Consummatum est. Dead.”

You look up at your husband with your cold blues, licking bright blood of your lips. His well tailored back is to you. Letting the love sick fool of a boy slump to a heap at your feet, you sweep pale curls off your neck and slowly piece your hair back together. It wouldn’t do to leave here unkempt.

“ Oh Philip, your so dramatic. Using a dead language to tell me we’re dead? Your better than that, darling.”

Your husband sits brooding out the window, into the ice storm ravishing Paris. You watch him over bare shoulders as he slouches arm on knee, top hat low over marble features. Dinner lays at his feet untouched, staring up adoringly. But this does not surprise you, your alluring husband is very sought after. The lady on the floor possesses more meat on her bones and curves than you, more Philips style, but you take great pleasure watching him rip into these woman. You are frozen this way by your husbands whim, and will never grow like these ladies, but neither will you die like them.

Your ruffles dance in the fire light as you sweep across the sitting room to join him. The night is an icy white flurry; death to any out there, but nothing to the dead in here. Your heart is as cold by now, as too Philips by the sound of things.

“Oh dear, sweet Philip, we are never through. Not only, maker, did you steal me away at six and ten, but my love, you chose to marry me not these ten years past. You found God! Remember? And he so does frown on divorce.” The last you say in whisper, as if God might hear.

In an instant your husband has you thrust into the wall by your throat; nails deep into your cold flesh. Black eyes bore into you encasing a more fearsome storm than the one a muck outside. “You mock my faith, as you mock the love I gave to you.”

Your laugh is like bells at Christmas; fanning human emotion is still easy to you. “Love? More like poison, darling. You took everything from me, yet call it love? You reap what you sow. I am yours eternal; till death do we part - and yet death are we chained. Aeternus Eternus.”

He regards you like dinner, nails digging in all the more. You smile up, your only reflection seen in his eyes, and boy are you perfection. You wait as you dangle there, wait for the fight you long for, the end only he can give. But the storm inside blows over. Your husband looks at you like before, like the first time, like something he loves.

“I am so sorry, Valerie. Nunc liberi sumus.”

He sits you back on your feet as gently as crystal, then kisses your forehead tenderly. Your eyes flash to his again, seeking the change, but he is already gone.

“Philip?”

Nothing answers you. Blood starts to pool around your white hem as it releases the life from the lady on the floor. You have been left with the dead.

“Philip,” you whisper.

He is really gone. Your legs have forgotten their function and you sink into the ruby pool below. It eagerly starts devouring your white lace, staining it forever red. You sit there replaying the way he just looked at you, over and over in your mind. A wetness starts to gather at your eyes. Your guts feel hollow, like a hole is in your stomach letting cold air flow in and out at its leaser. You can hear the whistle it makes in your guts, but then remember it’s the sound of the storm outside. Even the smell of blood is not boiling your desires as it runs intimately over your body. You don’t understand, blood is the only thing all these centuries that can stir anything out of you. Even your humor is but a mimic of past years. And yet now, nothing?

You are finally free from your master, and yet you find yourself incapable of simple movement. Long ago Philip erased the beating of your heart when he claimed your life, but you always feel its presence under your breast. Until now, now that human part of you feels stolen indefinitely. You have fought before, but this is more resolute. And you do not like this as your should.

You take a breath, rolling the smells and tastes around your tongue until you find him - your husband. Your eyes flash fire. He made you, claimed you as his, he can not just leave you at his pleasure. You run out into the wall of snow; crimson shoe prints the only evidence of your passing, and you begin your hunt. Till death do you part; than death or you shall he keep.







C.L.Snyder