Iremyn

         Waving his dead wife’s femur, Iremyn staggered through hell.
         A foggy trail lay before him with arms spread in opposite directions. With all the nonchalance he could muster, Iremyn trekked casually through the abyss. A bottle of uncorked Merlot dangled from his left hand, sloshing red streaks down his hand.
         Tapping the femur upon the terrain, Iremyn pulsed his way down the right artery of the trail. He just hoped it was the right artery.
         The wool suit he wore was stained, the remaining buttons were fastened with mismatched partners, and the knotted tie that hung from his neck felt more a noose than an accessory. There were no laces on his shoes and his socks didn’t match. The eruption that was his hair performed contortions and quirks any thicket would envy. A browned selection of teeth hung here and there in his mouth.
         Iremyn cocked his head aside, hearing a silent question. "I damn well remember where it is, Mary. I buried you for God’s sake."
         Blind, he lived a life plagued with helplessness. At least that is the way Iremyn saw it. He never worried, for Mary, his loving wife had dedicated her life to serving his every need.
         "Mrs. Monotone and her damn kindness," murmured Iremyn.
         Iremyn didn’t know what Mary looked like, but he could well imagine. Soft at every angle with enough curly hair to cushion her from a substantial blow to the head. A liberal coat of red lipstick would coat her pursed lips to accentuate her complexion. Her wardrobe, at least the portion of it she fit into, consisted of a moomoo with different patterns for each day of the week. Iremyn knew she saved the white moomoo for Sunday and he hated it the most.
         And her eyes. The cursed eyes. Mary and her damn eyes had always been eager to offer assistance, and that, Iremyn reasoned, was his justification for killing the bitch.
         Iremyn was only sorry he’d waited so long.
         A lithe woman glided beside him shrouded in an ebony hood. Iremyn could hear the thump of a walking stick just beneath the shuffling feet, the grating rustle of her garment dragging upon the dirt. She never strayed far from Iremyn. Even in death Mary lurked, always at arms length, exuding concern.
         "I killed you with every good intention, Mary. I hated you. The sound of your voice made my life a living hell."
         Iremyn slapped a tree with his white stick. He stumbled on a loose rock, but quickly stabilized himself with the femur.
         "Your incessant offerings to help me get my wine, help me get here and there, and even to lend a hand when I had to piss pushed me to do what I did. The blindness is bearable, but you... goddamn if you weren’t the incarnation of evil sent to torture me. If only I’d been deaf too."
         The leaves of an oak tree brushed Iremyn’s brow as he passed beneath. He lifted his hands and caressed the dangling fingers, awash in bloody dew. Probing the trunk of the oak with his ivory stick, Iremyn located the notch that indicated his path.
         "If you’d just once gotten angry, perhaps said "get it yourself, Iremyn’ it wouldn’t have been so aggravating. Your lack of animosity and derision, your complete immunity to anger was worse than an abundance of them all. I taunted and poked at you, but never could I provoke a reaction. I don’t even think you were upset with me when I murdered you."
         Foliage stretched across Iremyn’s path, pulling his trousers, catching his feet, and a few gnarled thistles even took hold and followed. His scrambling feet struggled for purchase, but he dared not use his hands least the poison oak lick him.
         "Follow me until the end of eternity, Mary! I care not. I may have been hung and sent to hell for what I did to you, but I have never been happier now that I don’t have to listen to your voice. You could say this is my own private portion of hell. Here I am Satan."
         He glanced in the direction of the silent apparition he felt behind him. "You’re badgering again, Mary! Stop with the stupid questions already. What now? Hardly. It’s not Chardonnay. I’ll tell you once more that it is far more than wine. It’s the blood of God. My only possession since they hung me. Bastards!
         A single leaf caught Iremyn across the cheek.
         The femur and blood of God slipped from his hands as Iremyn brought his hands to his face, cleaving away trails of web he’d passed through. He could feel a slight tickle whisper along his neck. Something moved on his back, scratching and stilting. Tangles of his hair caught and shuffled with the passage of tiny scrambling legs.
         Iremyn tried to scratch at everything at once, but only managed to crack open his lip. In one panicked instant, he slapped at his neck and tore a hand through his twisted locks and freed himself of the creature.
         He leaned down to retrieve the bone and blood. "This isn’t so bad, Mary. If I’d known hell was as lenient as this, I would have killed you years ago. Don’t look so goddamn offended. I did kill you after all."
         Iremyn patted and groped through the weeds, brush, veins, rocks, cartilage and dirt. He tore through the foliage until he discovered his walking stick in a pool of Merlot. Iremyn took the bone. He tried to lap up the wine, but found it a bit salty for his taste.
         Iremyn stood. The apparition watched him a few paces away. "Get away from me."
         He sauntered up the path, trying to appear oblivious to his silent companion. Since Mary’s burial he’d visited her grave once and that was only because he’d forgotten his shovel and didn’t want to have to buy a new one. But something remained that he needed from his wife.
         "Here’s the fork, Mary. Left or right?"
         Iremyn chuckled.
         Mary’s death had been brutal, for the shovel that buried her was the same shovel that killed her. Mary hadn’t been a lean woman and he’d missed vital organs six times. Once he’d tied her up, gagged her, and held the shovel poised over her quivering mass, he’d simply asked, left or right side first?
         Iremyn cackled. "I thought you would appreciate that, Mary. I still remember your answer. ‘Ples dot, Irmn.’"
         Iremyn’s boot skipped along an outcropping of granite and he knew that he’d found his destination. Squatting over the scab of rock, he probed about the formation with the white stick. Discovering the engraving he sought, Iremyn walked in the direction it pointed.
         Six steps, six inches down.
         Iremyn stood above his wife’s grave. Her coffin had cost him six dollars and one grueling hour to drag it out here and assemble it. It was a respectable coffin, save the fact that the lid was rotten and lashed down with her shoe laces.
         Iremyn dropped to both quivering knees and started upon the moist soil with the femur. He didn’t dig long before he found the cracked lid. Iremyn plunged the bone into the wound and thumped against the coffin’s lid. After three firm stabs the rotten wood snapped.
         Iremyn reached into his wife’s coffin so his face sat flush against the dirt. His nails slid along the stomach of his dead wife. A soft substance caught beneath his nails.
         Iremyn felt his wife standing above him, watching his efforts.
         Iremyn heaved on a rib and the brittle bone gave way. His arm flung out and a pulpy soup splattered down his face and shirt. Wiping it away, he couldn’t help but notice how much it tasted like wine. Within an hour, Iremyn produced a pile of flesh, broken bone, stringy veins and the remnants of the clothes he’d buried her in.
         "At last" Iremyn called with glee.
         Taking up her skull by the bottom jaw, he pulled it up toward the hole.
         "Damn," he cursed. "I can’t pull it free. Well, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t want the skull anyway. It’s the eyes. I want the eyes."
         Iremyn rolled the head around until he found the jutting formation that would be her nose. It suddenly occurred to him that the flesh should have withered away by now. As he poked a finger into an eye socket, he felt the pliant orb.
         "Of course your skin would still be intact, Mary. If flesh did decay here, I wouldn’t be around much longer myself.
"I have yet to find something daunting about this hell."
         Iremyn carefully removed the eyes form his dead wife. He stood up and took the femur in his right hand. Heaving the bone as far as he could, Iremyn said, "Won’t need this any longer. With your eyes I’ll be able to see for myself."
         He was a little timid at first poking at his eye, but once he discovered it didn’t hurt, Iremyn jabbed a finger behind his eyes and popped them to the dirt. Mary’s eyes fit into his sockets with little difficulty. Iremyn simply pressed his face to the bottoms of his hands and the eyes slid in with a pop.
         Then Iremyn looked around with new eyes.
         It took him a few moments to adjust and take everything in. Once he realized just what he was looking at, Iremyn knew that he would never be able to remove the eyes. He would be able to see for all eternity.
         Iremyn never could have imagined hell so horrible.
         "I can see but I’m still blind," called Iremyn, waving his hands out in front of him. "These hands I hold out in front of me I cannot see with your eyes."
         Iremyn smashed into a tree and fell back. Crawling along the ground, he cried "I only see what looks like your heaven."
         And in his mind, Iremyn heard Mary’s reply: "And I can see your hell."
         "Give me back my eyes" roared Iremyn. "I’d rather be blind again!"
         Iremyn heard her reply in his mind again. "I will keep your eyes, Iremyn, so that I can check up on you. You keep mine and always know the price of your deeds."
         "I have no eyelids… I cannot close my eyes. Mary, please don’t do this to me! Please!"
         There was no answer. Iremyn tore at the eyes with little success. It didn’t take him much longer than an hour before he started screaming.