Archive for February, 2019
As I always say, I’m not a romance writer. When I try to write romance, terrible things happen and people die. This is one of my early attempts at failed romance, and also one of my favorites, which is why I post it every year. #ShortStorySunday
Your Heart Will be Mine
You twist through my heart
Like a bolt through a nut
I am a nut
Think twice before you bolt
Megan wept, curled on her side in the tightest ball she could manage.
She had been curled up in the fetal position on her bed for hours – days, actually, doing nothing but cry. Barely moving except to use the bathroom and drink a bit of water. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t sleep and the ache in her chest wouldn’t go away no matter how many painkillers she took.
So this is what a broken heart feels like.
She now understood why they called it heartbreak. What she felt was beyond sadness; it manifested as a tangible physical pain in her chest that radiated down into her belly. It was the most horrible sensation ever, and it was all HIS fault. How could he have been so cruel to her when all she had done was love him? She didn’t know where she had gone wrong. She had given him everything; waited on him hand and foot and catered to his every wish but in the end it wasn’t enough. He took her heart and tore it to shreds and then walked out the door as if the last two years had meant nothing.
She wanted to die.
If I died, you’d be sorry! You’d have to live with it for the rest of your life, knowing that YOU were the one who drove me to suicide!
Died of a broken heart.
That would show him how much she loved him.
Nobody else will ever love you the way I do! You’ll see! One day you will come crawling back to me with your heart in shreds, then you’ll know how you made me feel. And then I can kiss you better. We can heal together.
No, she would not end her life. Life was worth living as long as there was a chance of winning him back.
She would get him back.
Or die trying.
Richard tried to leave her several times during the last year but each time she convinced him to stay. She begged and pleaded and promised to be everything he wanted in a woman but he became cold and aloof nonetheless. He didn’t want intimacy anymore. He participated in sex when she was persistent enough to make his physical urges overcome his mental reluctance but his lack of desire was obvious.
She was willing to accept his lack of enthusiasm in their relationship as long as he didn’t leave. They could work things out. She would make it better. She just had to make him see how much she loved him and he would know they were destined to be together.
The pregnancy changed everything.
The one thing that should have cemented them together forever was the catalyst that ended their relationship. He was willing to stay for the sake of the baby. He even agreed to marry her after much pleading and cajoling on her part.
It would be the perfect wedding. She had already chosen her dress – a high-waisted design that would look stunning even with the bulge in her belly. She booked the church and hired the caterer and sent out invitations. It would be the beautiful fairytale wedding of her dreams. Afterward, he would take her in his arms and carry her over the threshold and make love to her, tenderly and passionately the way a husband should. Their life together would be picture-perfect.
There was just one small detail:
She wasn’t pregnant.
Megan thought she was pregnant, without a doubt. Even though the pregnancy tests (three of them, to be exact) were negative, she assumed it was too early for them to be accurate. She experienced all the symptoms – the missed period, tender breasts, bloated belly, and irritability. She even felt sick in the mornings. When her period arrived late, it was easy to hide it from him since he showed no interest in her physically. Since their engagement Richard had become even more distant, never meeting her eyes and only speaking to her when necessary.
It didn’t matter that the pregnancy was a false alarm. She would be pregnant by the time they got married; she would make sure of it.
She managed to convince him to have sex once during the following month but it did not result in pregnancy. Panicked, she redoubled her efforts to seduce him, but the harder she tried, the less receptive he became. When they did try, he couldn’t sustain an erection long enough to finish.
Four months passed. Then five, and still she wasn’t pregnant. She faked the symptoms, pretending to get sick in the mornings and eating like a horse so she would gain some girth and appear pregnant. The wedding was just six weeks away and she only needed to keep up her charade until after the minister declared them husband and wife. After that, she could fake a miscarriage and he would be there to comfort her and they could try again to start a family.
She began to wear padding under her clothing to keep up the appearance of an advancing pregnancy
* * *
She didn’t hear him come into the house that day.
The past few months, he had been moving around the house like a ghost, silent, never speaking unless spoken to. On that particular day, he came home from work early. Megan wasn’t expecting him. She stood in front of the bedroom mirror; trying on the next size pillow she was going to bind to her belly to make it look thicker.
She had no idea how long he had been standing there, watching her in silence.
He said nothing, but his eyes spoke the rage in his heart.
He refused to speak to her, no matter how she cried and pleaded. He started packing immediately and left that night, taking only the bare necessities. She clung to his leg, begging him to stay but he peeled her off of him in disgust. He walked out of her life without giving a second thought to their future together, leaving her blubbering on the floor.
Megan was not only heartbroken; she was humiliated. He told his family and all of their friends about her deceit and his reason for leaving. Nobody would speak to her.
She was alone.
* * *
A year later, Megan still sobbed herself to sleep but not as often. The pain in her chest had diminished to a dull ache but it never went away altogether. They said time heals all wounds but she knew that in her case it wouldn’t. She still loved Richard heart and soul and would never stop. They were meant to be together. He was hers and no amount of time or distance would ever change that.
She wasted her Saturday afternoons wandering through the mall, gazing at the gowns in the bridal shop, the sexy lingerie in Victoria’s Secret and the endless displays of adorable children’s clothing. From infant to toddler to preschooler… there were too many cute outfits to choose from. She should have been buying clothing for her own child – for their child. Instead, she could only look and dream.
She wandered toward the food court to feed her craving for sweets. She had been living on junk food and had gained a considerable amount of weight. It didn’t matter because she had nobody to stay thin for. At that moment, Cinnabon called to her.
A baby stroller blocked her path as she navigated through the tables to get to the food counters. She edged around it, pausing for a moment to admire the baby, a little girl about three months old, dressed in an adorable pink outfit. The parents, engrossed in conversation, giggled and shared an intimate kiss.
Megan froze.
No.
It couldn’t be!
It was him. Richard.
Her Richard.
Judging from the age of the infant in the stroller, he hadn’t wasted any time after leaving her. He might have already been seeing that woman behind her back! That would explain his lack of interest in Megan. The slut had already tired him out before he got home.
Rage boiled inside her when she saw the engagement ring on the woman’s finger – a large, stunning diamond solitaire. Nothing like the cheap little band he had grudgingly given her.
“YOU BASTARD!” Megan roared, sweeping the food and beverages off the table onto the couple’s laps.
“YOU DIRTY CHEATING MOTHERFUCKER!”
“Richard?” the woman said, her voice fearful. She pulled the baby stroller away from Megan.
“You stay out of it, slut! I’m talking to my husband. You’ve done enough already!”
Richard finally spoke up. “Get the hell away from my family, you crazy bitch.”
“YOUR family? YOUR family?” Megan sputtered. “What about OUR family? The one you couldn’t even give me because your dick was always limp!”
“I never wanted you, Megan. I never loved you. You were a mistake. The biggest mistake I ever made.” Richard’s tone was calm. He spoke the words without emotion. How could he not feel anything after sharing his life with her for two years?
Richard’s bitch had taken her child and moved away from the table. She was talking to the clerk at Cinnabon and a security guard was making his way toward them.
“You think you’ll be happy with her?” Megan yelled. “She’s nothing! You and ME! WE were meant to be together! Nobody will love you the way I do. Nobody!”
The security guard stepped between them.
“I’ll have to ask you to move away, ma’am. Leave these people alone.”
“Fuck you!” she spat, leaning around the uniformed man to make eye contact with Richard once more.
“You can’t escape fate, Richard. You’re mine! One day you’ll come crawling back. You love me. I know you do.”
Two more security guards came from behind and took her arms, leading her away from the food court. They demanded that she leave at once or the police would be called.
Megan left. She had said her piece.
Richard knew the truth.
She would make him see the truth.
* * *
Megan’s outburst with Richard energized her; freed her from the shackles of depression. She felt electrified, filled with new hope. She had a purpose again: Richard, and her future with him. She just needed to take the place of the baby-making whore in the food court and everything would be perfect again.
She would win him back. His heart had always been hers; he just didn’t realize it yet.
Having been banned from the local mall, Megan’s Saturday shopping trip took her to the streets and a new neighborhood where she had never been. Her Obsessive Compulsive Disorder made it difficult to deviate from an established routine. As a result, she seldom visited new places. Occasionally change was forced. This time she found it refreshing instead of disturbing. Her therapist, whom she hadn’t seen in more than five years, would have called it “a positive step”.
The weathered red brick buildings offered a nice change of scenery from the icy-smooth grey concrete downtown. The new neighborhood featured a wealth of second-hand stores, a few hippie bong shops and some dusty-looking used bookstores. It was in one of these bookstores that she found it.
The tattered brown binding of the book caught her eye and immediately she reached for it.
The Joy of Spellcasting.
She chuckled at the silly title.
It sounds like a cookbook. Why not? It could be fun. Megan purchased the book and walked home with a spring in her step.
She opened the book to the table of contents and quickly found what she sought.
Love Spells – page 131.
She noticed handwriting at the bottom of the yellowed page. The ink had blurred over time but was still legible. Megan held it up to the light to make out the words.
“Be warned, ye who goest here. Think ye long on what thou desirest. The spells contained within be those most powerful. What thou desirest, thou shalt receive.”
Megan smirked. It sounded like something out of a low-budget after-school Halloween special.
Good to know. Let’s see if it’s true.
She turned to page 131 and began to read.
There were several love spells and potions but most of them looked complicated. They contained ingredients she had never heard of and took too long to yield results. They ranged anywhere from six months to three years to complete a spell. Megan wanted results now.
She settled on the One Moon Love Charm. It claimed to return a lost love in one month and she had all the ingredients to make it work:
A container made from wood or metal.
A likeness of your lost love. OR
An object belonging to your lost love, OR
A sample of your loved one’s blood or flesh.
Write on a piece of parchment exactly what you desire.
Seal with your own blood or flesh to bond with your lover’s flesh for all eternity.
Bury the container three feet deep in dark soil under the light of the full moon.
Stand over the burial site and turn around three times and then say the incantation every night for one month. When the moon reaches its next fullness, the object of your desire will come to you.
Megan selected a heart-shaped wooden jewelry box Richard had given her when they first started dating – back when he still knew he loved her. The box held no jewelry except the engagement ring she no longer wore. She had been using it to store her favorite photos of Richard, all carefully cropped with a pair of scissors to a heart shape.
A likeness of your lost love.
What better likeness than an actual photo? She left all of the photos in the box.
OR an object belonging to your lost love.
Richard had left most of his belongings behind when he left, so why not add that as well? She selected a watch she had bought him for Christmas that he always seemed to forget to wear and his razor, which he had left in the bathroom.
OR a sample of your loved one’s blood or flesh.
Technically, the razor already had that covered, since it contained beard stubble and probably skin cells as well. She wanted to add as much punch to the spell as possible. More would be better, right? She cleaned the bathtub drain, extracting a slimy hairball made up of both his hair and hers. That covered both samples of their flesh.
On a plain white piece of paper, she wrote the words she had chosen:
Richard Cole, I desire your heart and nothing else.
She folded it neatly and placed it in the box.
She sliced her index finger with a razor blade and let the blood drip over the contents of the jewelry box.
Under the full moon she stood, on the fresh mound of dirt beneath which the box was buried. She turned around three times and then recited the incantation, which she had memorized:
“By the Earth below and the moon above,
You will be my one true love.
Bound in blood and sealed in Earth,
Waiting for our love’s new birth.
Empowered by the Law of Three,
Richard’s heart will come to me.
Three times Three.
So mote it be.”
She repeated the incantation two more times just for good measure. If the Law of Three was a real thing, then it made sense to do everything three times to amplify the power threefold.
The following night she repeated the ritual, chanting the incantation three times. After a pause, she recited it three times more.
She couldn’t stop the pattern once it had begun. Richard had hated her OCD but it was one of the things that made her organized and precise in everything she did. Every night she added three more repetitions to the incantation. When she reached the 29th night she recited it a total of 87 times. When she went to bed at night, the rhyme played over and over inside her head until she fell asleep.
The moon had reached the first day of its three days of fullness. It would be at its fullest the following night. Megan snuggled happily into her bed, confident that Richard would be with her soon.
* * *
“Jenkins! Get in here! You gotta see this!” Ralph Anderson shouted to his assistant.
Jenkins wandered through the double doors of the morgue, stuffing the remains of a tuna sandwich into his mouth.
“I’m still on break. Couldn’t you have waited another ten minutes?”
“No, I need you to see this. You gotta tell me I’m not crazy.”
Jenkins approached the table where his superior was conducting a routine autopsy. The ribcage was splayed open, revealing the inside of the stiff’s chest.
“So what’s the deal? You find an alien in there? Looks pretty normal to me.”
“Look again. Tell me what you see. More specifically, what’s missing?”
Jenkins leaned over the corpse to take a closer look, licking mayonnaise off of his fingertips.
“Yeah, so it looks like you’ve already removed the heart, and—”
“But I haven’t,” Anderson said, almost in a whisper.
“Sure you have. It’s not in there.” Jenkins looked around at the empty stainless steel trays that surrounded the autopsy table. “So, where’d ya put it?’
“I’m telling you, it wasn’t in there when we got him.”
“So, what is this then, a serial killer case?”
“No. Probable heart attack. Sudden death, cause unknown.”
“So, where’s the heart?”
“That is the question, isn’t it? There was no incision in the body, no sign of hemorrhage inside. It’s just… missing.”
“We gonna record this?”
“Who’s gonna believe us? I’m closing him back up and labeling him a coronary.”
* * *
Megan woke the morning of the thirtieth day, feeling well rested and energized. Today, Richard would return. She would take a nice long bath and put on something pretty and fix him a nice dinner. It would be the perfect day – one for which she had worked very diligently.
She stretched and yawned, rolling over to caress the pillow where Richard would lay his head that night.
Her hand touched something wet.
Something rounded, about the size of her fist.
It was warm, and pulsed with a steady, rhythmic beat.
Copyright © 2012 Mandy White
People tell me, “You should write romance! It’s popular… It sells well…”
That sounds great in theory, but the truth is, I’m not that kind of writer. The stories I write are murderous, disturbing, or just plain weird. When I attempt to write romance, something terrible is bound to happen…
Prairie Passion
The verdant sea of prairie grasses rippled in the ever-present breeze; the spring greens had not yet made the transformation to summer’s golden hue. The lone rider in the distance might have been a mirage, shimmering against the endless blue horizon. The girl had been making her short pilgrimage for several weeks, slipping away as often as possible to ride across the plains to the spot near the creek where she had first sighted the boy.
Sarah could shirk her chores without fear of punishment because not much was expected of someone in her condition. Her sisters and cousins glowered at her, jealous at being left behind to do chores Sarah skipped in favor of riding her horse, Sable.
Sarah ignored the scornful looks and whispers as she rode through the settlement. The other teenage girls were hard at work scrubbing pots and hanging laundry.
“She rides that horse with no saddle! How barbaric!”
“She does not look ill. I think she is pretending.”
“No bonnet! Positively shameful!”
In spite of their derision, the other girls were grateful Sarah kept her distance. Nobody wanted to be near her, for fear of contracting her disease. Sarah was content in her role as village pariah; she played in the sunshine without wearing her sunbonnet, rode her horse bareback and exhibited a host of unladylike behaviors without reprimand.
The doctor back in Philadelphia told Sarah’s parents she wouldn’t survive past her teen years, which rendered her useless. Nobody would marry a woman incapable of pulling her weight, who would not survive long enough to raise children. What man would want a wife doomed to die from consumption?
Hard labor aggravated Sarah’s condition. Any strenuous activity triggered a violent cough and rendered her breathless. According to the doctor, fresh air and gentle activity for the remainder of her days was the best thing for her. Sarah was capable of doing light work like sewing but her parents didn’t force work upon her. What was the point? Any time spent teaching valuable life skills to a girl who would soon be dead was time better spent elsewhere.
They had joined several other British families in a northbound wagon train, leaving the city in search of a new life in a new land. The vast fertile plains of Canada offered a wealth of opportunities. After a slow, tedious journey, the Worthingtons and their companions made their homes in a tiny settlement on the plains, in a region that would later become known as Saskatchewan.
Sarah first encountered the boy in early April when she stopped to rest at a pretty little stream during one of her rides. Sable was first to detect a strange presence. The mare was drinking when suddenly her head sprung from the water. Her body stiffened and she spun around, making a whuffing sound through her nostrils. Her ears pointed forward toward the source of the new scent, so much that the tips nearly touched.
“Shh…” Sarah whispered, “What is it, my dear?”
She tied Sable to a nearby bush and went to investigate on foot.
A small hill obscured her view. Sarah crept to the top, staying low to the ground and using the talls grass for cover. As she mounted the crest of the hill she heard the sound of water splashing. She lay in the grass and peeked down the slope.
The creek widened into a small pool as it flowed against the base of the hill. A small grove of trees stood their ground at the water’s edge. A flash of white in the water drew her attention. A horse, mostly white with rust-colored splotches stood chest-deep in the water. The animal wore no saddle or bridle, and appeared to be alone. As Sarah watched, bubbles appeared beside the horse and then a glistening black head bobbed up, breaking the surface with barely a ripple. A person had swum under the horse’s belly while it stood calmly, playing in the water as it drank.
Sarah stifled a giggle at the paint’s amusing antics. The horse submerged his nose in the water all the way up to his eyes and blew bubbles, then tossed his head high, splashing his owner and curling his upper lip in a comical horsey sneer. The boy laughed and dove beneath the surface once again, this time emerging on the opposite side of the horse.
He was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen. His waist-length raven hair and bronze skin told Sarah exactly what he was. He was an Indian, or ‘Injun’ as her uncles called his kind. The government had assured them the savages were under control, confined to sections of land reserved especially for them. The rest of the region was ready for new settlers. Sarah wondered if her father and uncles knew the Indians were in such close proximity to their new home. She watched the boy for as long as she dared, then scurried back to her horse before her fickle cough could betray her. She mounted Sable and rode like the wind back to the settlement, checking over her shoulder several times to ensure she wasn’t being followed.
Sarah didn’t tell her family about the boy. She was afraid her parents would forbid her from riding away from the settlement again. She couldn’t erase his image from her mind: his rich brown skin, so different from her own; the longest, sleekest, blackest hair she had ever seen. She wanted to see him again.
She returned several times to the spot where she had seen the boy but saw no sign of him save for a few unshod hoofprints in the mud of the creek bank. Then one day, he was there. She sneaked to the hillside as she had before, trying to be as stealthy as possible but this time Sable betrayed her. The mare was in season and resented being left behind when she could smell a potential mate just around the bend. Just as Sarah reached the hilltop, Sable let out a shrill whinny, pawing the ground with her front hoof in frustration. The paint horse whirled toward the sound, head high, ears at attention. The boy looked around fearfully, as if expecting an attack.
Sarah knew the best thing for her to do was flee.
Instead, she stood and waved, trying to look as friendly as possible.
The boy looked nervous but clearly relieved to see the intruder was just a girl.
Sarah’s heart thudded in her chest as she approached, descending the gentle slope one tentative step at a time. If she was to be captured by savages, so be it. It was too late to run away now.
Sable neighed again. The painted stallion jerked away from his distracted owner and bolted toward the sound and scent of the mare.
“Sable!”
Sarah turned and began running back to her horse, unsure of how she was going to defend the mare against the advances of a stallion with one thing on his mind.
The Indian boy followed, shouting commands at his horse in a strange language. By the time they reached the horses it was too late; the stallion had already mounted Sable and she wasn’t objecting in the least. It was best to let nature take its course. Sarah turned to the boy, who now stood beside her.
“Forgive me… my horse…” she gasped, gesturing helplessly at the horses. She was unsure of what to say but decided a greeting would be the best way to start.
“Hello,” she said, though she didn’t expect him to understand.
Her jaw dropped in shock when he replied in English.
“Allo.” He grinned, revealing a brilliant mouthful of white teeth. His eyes danced, glittering like twin beads of obsidian beneath thick dark lashes. The boy’s dusky beauty stole Sarah’s breath more than her illness ever had. The elegant lines of his face and high, sculpted cheekbones were unlike any man she had seen. With no sign of facial or body hair, his age was difficult to discern but he had the lanky, lean-muscled build of a young man about sixteen years of age.
“Y-you speak English?” she stammered, nonplussed but pleased nonetheless.
The young man nodded, the playful smile never leaving his face.
“How? You’re a… a…”
He laughed. “I am savage? I still speak. I am like you.”
Sarah blushed. “Please forgive my poor manners. Of course you speak. I just didn’t expect you to speak my language. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Sarah Elizabeth Worthington.” Conscious of her manners for the first time in her life, Sarah bobbed a small curtsy and offered her hand for the gentleman to kiss.
The boy declined to take her hand and laughed heartily, making Sarah’s cheeks flush an even deeper shade of crimson.
“Sare,” he said. “Very nice. I am called Erod.”
“Erod? Is that an Indian name?”
He shook his head, still smiling. “No. Your words. Not Indian. I am Cree. In my words I am called Ka-nen.”
His thick accent reminded Sarah of the way the Dubois family spoke. The Dubois’ were a French family that had joined the settlement a few months back. Sarah had found it difficult to understand them at first, until she became accustomed to their strange pronunciation of English words. This boy spoke in a similar fashion, but the accent was different from that of her French-Canadian neighbors.
“Please forgive my horse,” Sarah said, “It is her time.”
The boy nodded, then shrugged in resignation. “‘Orse… will be ‘orse.” Sarah joined him when he laughed, trying to conceal her embarrassment at the intimate nature of their horses’ activities. She liked the idea of Sable having a foal the following year, especially one as pretty as the Indian (Cree) boy’s horse.
They left the horses to their own devices until their coupling was finished, then Sarah brought Sable to the grove of trees beside the pool where she could watch her.
The two teens sat facing each other on the grassy bank. Sarah, with her legs stretched to one side in a proper ladylike pose and the boy, cross-legged in the style of his people. Sarah was relieved to be off her feet, for she was beginning to tire and didn’t want to succumb to a spell of coughing in front of her alluring new acquaintance.
“Allo, Sare,” the boy said, tilting his head slightly as he appraised her with his eyes. His hair fell past his shoulder in sleek black wisps, brushing the tips of the grass blades where he sat.
“Hello… Erod. Tell me, how is it that you speak English?” she asked.
“L’ecole… school.” He shrugged. “Dey take us away, put us in school. Bleck-robe teach us English. Teach us God and give us new name. Now I am older, school finish and I sent back to family, but family in different ‘ome now.”
“Black robe? You mean a priest?”
“Yes, prrreest.” He rolled his R’s the same way Sarah’s French neighbors did.
“And the priest named you Erod?”
“Yes, from Bible. Hhh – erod.” He struggled to pronounce the H sound. “Bleck-robe say, ‘For even de savage must ‘ave name’.”
“Herod! Truly? That is the name he gave you? How barbaric!” Sarah tried to imagine what it must have been like for those children. Taken from their homes, separated from their mothers and fathers, given different names and forced to learn a new language. It was the complete opposite of what she had been told about the “savages” who had inhabited the land prior to her family’s arrival.
It sounded positively brutal, but she believed him. Even though she had just met the young man, Sarah did not feel that he was capable of lying to her.
“And what shall I call you?” she inquired, “I much prefer your other name. Ka-nen?”
“Den, you call dat.” He beamed, more stunning than sunlight, deep dimples pitting his smooth brown cheeks. Sarah longed to touch his face, to see if his skin was as soft as it looked.
Sarah spent the rest of the afternoon with her new friend, talking and laughing as they lay on the carpet of lush spring greens at the creek’s edge. There was no awkwardness between them and no barrier in communication, even with his broken English.
She stayed as long as she dared, then galloped home as fast as Sable’s hooves could carry her. She hugged the horse tightly with her knees, then dropped the reins and spread her arms wide, pretending they were wings. She felt light as a ball of dandelion fluff, drifting on the wind. She had a secret; one she could not share with anyone. Sarah had a secret new friend whom she planned to see again, very soon.
As spring gave way to summer and the sun’s heat transformed the prairie from green to gold, every fair day saw Sarah mounting Sable to ride away across the plains. The other teenage girls glared at her over their daily chores, spiteful comments passing between them. None of the other girls were her friends; even her sisters barely spoke to her. Their jealousy that Sarah was free to do nothing but play every day overshadowed any pity they may have had for her illness and inevitable early death.
Sarah didn’t care that she didn’t have a close friend in any of the settlement girls. She didn’t need them. She had Kanen. He was her best and only friend. He had become her entire world.
One day he became even more.
As the summer sun’s intensity grew, swimming became a regular part of their ritual. Sarah wore nothing when she swam for fear of alerting her mother to the fact that she had been in the water. Swimming was a forbidden activity because Sarah’s mother believed it was dangerous. Holding her breath underwater could trigger an involuntary coughing spell and cause her to drown. When it came to forbidden territory, Sarah was already well beyond the point of no return, so what was one more broken rule? She felt healthier than she had since she could remember. With regular exposure to the sunshine, Sarah’s skin lost its sickly white hue and developed a healthy brown glow like Kanen’s, though not as dark. She didn’t feel shy around Kanen, who spent most of his time half-naked anyway.
It was just a matter of time before their relationship made the natural progression from friends to lovers. Sarah met Kanen at every opportunity, shedding her clothing as she skipped down the hillside to their secret meeting place beside the creek. He was always waiting, as if he knew exactly when she would arrive.
Every rendezvous was a ritual in passion. She splashed into the tepid pool, falling into his lean, muscled arms. The two devoured each other’s bodies with insatiable hunger, each exploring every inch of the other. Swimming forgotten, they fell to the water’s edge in a tangle of arms and legs, coupling with the urgent fervor of youth in love. For hours afterward they lay, fingers entwined, soaking up the sun’s glorious rays with their unclad bodies. Time stood still for the lovers as they talked and basked in the glow of their union.
Sarah now had an even bigger secret, and it made her feel deliciously sinful.
* * *
It was late August. The hairy tips of mature wheat stalks brushed Sable’s belly as they shooshed through the golden sea at a leisurely jog. Sarah was as eager to meet her friend and lover as Sable was hers, but she held the mare at a slow pace to keep her from overheating in the stifling temperature. They were later than usual and Kanen had probably been waiting for a while. Sarah looked forward to a refreshing dip in the water even though the creek was almost dried up and their swimming hole was little more than a large mud puddle.
When they reached the base of the hill just before their secret meeting spot, Sable raised her head, pricking her ears toward a distant sound. Her trot slowed to a nervous, hesitant walk. Something wasn’t right. Sarah listened. She detected the faint sounds of men shouting and dogs barking. She jerked the mare to a stop and threw the reins over the bush before racing to the top of the hill.
Sarah’s hand flew to her mouth. Eyes wide, she bit her lip to stifle the scream that threatened to escape.
She had suspected a few days earlier that someone was following her but had dismissed it as nothing more than imagination. Now she knew her instincts had been correct.
She recognized the group of men below. They were her uncles and cousins. Her older brother Seth was among them as well. The men gathered around a carcass of some sort, letting their hunting dogs rip and tear at it. The men’s shouts projected a mixture of rage and glee as they rained relentless blows upon their victim. Seth drew his knife from its sheath and swung it down in a forceful arc. Sarah glimpsed bronze skin, then an angry splash of red as the knife cleaved a piece of flesh from the lower body and tossed it to the nearest dog.
She screamed and screamed at them to stop, but her lungs failed her. Her voice was absent. Nothing more than a wheezy whistle issued from her lips.
Seth’s knife swept downward once more and his arm moved in a sawing motion.
Sarah found her voice, then lost her breath as her wail of agony turned into a spastic coughing fit.
Her brother stood, triumphant. His bellow of laughter echoed across the plains. Seth raised his arm above his head in a proud display, holding his dripping, bloody prize by its long raven locks for all to see.
Sarah didn’t remember mounting her horse, and the frantic gallop back to the settlement was but a blur in her memory.
* * *
The cruel prairie wind whistled and moaned around the lone horse and rider as they made their weary trek across the whitening plain.
Sarah’s rough, phlegmy cough worsened by the day. She knew her time was as short as the breaths she struggled to take. She would be fortunate if she survived long enough to give birth to the child that squirmed within her swollen belly. The mare was becoming heavy as well, from her encounter with the paint stallion. Sable would experience the joy of motherhood long after the consumption robbed Sarah of hers.
Even though she had committed the most damnable of sins, Sarah never thought her family would turn against her.
The insults stung like stones flung from the smug lips of the settlement girls, even her own sisters:
“Filthy, unclean whore!”
“Defiled by Satan!”
“Take your cursed spawn away from us!”
She was driven from the settlement into the frozen November wasteland, exiled to die alone on the plains. She was going to die soon anyway, they surmised, so they sent her away before she gave birth to the abomination she carried in her womb.
Sarah’s exile was a blessing in disguise. Living the remainder of her days in the settlement would be a far greater hell than she would experience dying alone on the prairie, near the place where she had last seen her life’s one true love.
She had only one destination in mind. One option.
She prayed and prayed to the Lord Almighty, begging Him for forgiveness for her sins. She prayed they would have mercy on her; that they would see fit to accept his child after what had been done to him.
She spoke to him in her head as she had done so many times since his death.
“Kanen, give me strength. Please ask your elders to have mercy on me. I throw myself at their feet.”
She had followed the creek upstream from their meeting spot, the place where the horror of horrors had taken place, and found the faint trail leading away from the water toward the Indian reservation. Thin tendrils of smoke rose in the distance.
She had arrived.
Copyright © 2012 Mandy White
(Previously published in Passion’s Prisms by WPaD)