The Expiration Date of Daisies
Violet had always hated gardening and the irony of this was not lost on her.
She despised her annual planting escapades. Where every fall she’d have to inevitably dirty her hands, to plant the seeds and watch a beautiful flower bloom. Last year it was tulips, the year before it was marigolds. Her very first time it was daisies. Her annual gardening habits were disgustingly domestic and her choice of flowers entirely unoriginal, and the god awful aroma they produced repulsed her.
What pleased her sinuses was actually the scent of Clorox.
Violet had no patience for anything whimsical or botanical. What she actually preferred were cold, clean, sanitized surfaces. Homes with sharp, defined edges, sparkling granite counter tops and bland neutral tones. Linens and clothes that were always freshly laundered and reeked of soap.
She adored a freshly polished floor and dry-cleaned upholstery. Her evening ritual was to sit under the shower head for an hour and exfoliate and steep in the body wash she had vigorously scrubbed into every nook and cranny so that when she stepped out, and wiped away the condensation with a squeak of a towel on the mirror, she could admire the cleanlily way in which her raw skin sparkled.
No dirt, not a speck of it….. anywhere.
The act of cleaning was rewarding and comforting, giving Violet the same endorphins that sex or a good workout might provide the rest of the human race.
Her favorite perfume was hand sanitizer and her favorite color was white. Because those things were pristine, sterile and pure just like she was supposed to be.
Every year on this night it was exactly the same. If Violet cared for introspection she would recognize her compulsiveness and chalk it up to bold-faced denial.
But there was something remedial in the tradition she had forged …. If it had to be this way every year, Violet preferred it happen in the most clean, regimented manner possible.
Every time she would decline her coworkers’ invitations to late night Halloween parties and dodge her boyfriend’s advances when he insisted he keep her company on the couch with an old-fashioned horror movie.
“It’s been a long day, I just need some rest,” she’d recite these lines convincingly, despite the fact that on November 1st she’d always look more dreadfully haggard than the day before.
She would come home from work, dump a large assortment of chocolate into an orange and black painted bowl and place it on the doorstep of her luxurious home, like a burnt offering to ward off trick or treaters. Then she’d dim the house, the only light emanating from her bathroom where she’d slip into her habitual trance.
Gingerly she’d wiggle into a slinky white dress and fasten angel wings to her back. Then she’d smooth out her inky black hair combing it into a perfect bob and gloss her lips with coral lipstick.
“Divine,” she would whisper once satisfied. The she’d make her way downtown, the clock always ticking closer and closer to midnight.
Every time she chose a dark posh bar where the party was invite only and the attire was as close to black tie as a costume party could get. Since she always dreaded what came next, every year she grew progressively later, flaunting a few hundred dollar bills in front of the bouncer for last minute admission…. Sure there were easier places to meet someone, but she would never meet anyone like her if she went to sloppy dive bars.
Similar to how many view long car rides alone, Violet thought of gardening with reproach and dread, operating apathetically as if under the spell of highway hypnosis where her muscle memory kicked in. On this night, her face always seemed to remember to smile, bat it’s eyelashes and kiss on command, while she mentally retreated from reality.
With her long ivory legs casually folded over themselves, she posted up at the bar. The bartender already delivering her third gin and tonic of the night, garnished with a curly-cued zest of lemon.
Violet gnawed on the edges of her lemon rind and absorbed the throng of people packed into the rooftop party around her.
It was never easy….. her first few years she’d be dripping in sweat by the end of her search, not simply because of the physical exertion of the act, but because it was actually quite challenging to spontaneously win the attention of the perfect person.
The clock was ticking…. only three hours left until midnight. Was she nervous? Never…. By now she had this down to a science… and honestly if she fucked this up there would be some relief in never having to live another year to do this all over again….
But that lie pierced her stomach with the sharpness of a serrated blade, carving into her guts….. She wouldn’t fuck this up. Because there in fact wasn’t relief on the other side of this responsibility. There was only darkness.
As fate would have it, a young Italian woman and what appeared to be her date sidled up to the bar. The man’s eyes roved hungrily over Violet, but she ignored his sexually charged gaze, trying to carry on without detection. Instead Violet studied the man’s date. A frisky brunette whose breasts were bulging from her red corset. Atop her head glowed red devil horns that illuminated her dark chocolate hair which was chopped into a clean bob almost identical to Violet’s. Casting a side-long glance in her direction, Violet caught a glimpse of the she-devils eyes, that glittered like black holes.
Violet felt the corners of her lips pulling into a tight frown. She was growing impatient and disgusted with America’s tasteless and manufactured look of “beauty.” The woman had the most perfect upturned nose indistinguishable from her own. But her face with all of its Botox and filler looked like it had been squished under a suffocating sheet of Saran wrap. And her body, her limbs, her boobs… borderline pudgy when compared to Violet’s , clean, sharp edges.
She will have to do….. Violet sighed to herself, cursing this look-alike’s love for carbs. Everybody knows that to be as beautiful as Violet you needed to take into careful consideration what you put in your body… sure her boobs were the first thing to go, but starvation had given Violet the most haunting sort of beauty that revealed to the world just how dangerously close to death she really was. It was a threatening glamor that her tacky doppelganger could never achieve.
The bartender slid another drink Violet’s way. She was counting backwards in her mind…. The imaginary sound of a clock ticking away each second as her reality raced closer and closer, like the fuse of a bomb burning in her head.
She imagined the woman in the bathroom, probably wrapping up about now. Squeezing her ass back into that faux leather skirt, before flushing the toilet and correcting her lipstick in front of the mirror.
It was time. Violet cocked her head back swallowing the last of her poison in one gulp before sauntering into the bathroom.
She’d rehearsed it in her head as many times as she had in real life. True to form, the she-devil was fixing her rouge lipstick in the mirror…. Ugh how Violet hated the chalky look of blood red lipstick smattered to anyone’s lips, peeling away like a second layer of gummy skin…..
Through the reflection of the mirror the she-devil locked eyes with her predator…. A tiny Italian model in angel wings.
To Violet’s delight, the bathroom was empty. She nodded a silent thanks to whoever was helping her avoid her own treacherous fate for another year.
With a sly smile, Violet glided towards the sink, resting her hands on its basin, just centimeters from the curious she-devil. Distracted by Violet’s proximity, the she-devil’s hands fumbled, drawing a sloping line of lipstick like a crayon across her cheek.
“I’m sorry,” Violet purred. “Let me help you fix it.” Gently she turned the girl towards her watching as her dark eyes got lost in Violet’s hypnotic purple ones. With ease Violet slid the tip of her tongue across the girl’s plump cheek, feeling her shoulders tense up under the weight of Violet’s commanding grip. Then Violet ran a freshly manicured thumb over her salvia, erasing the mistake from the pretty girl’s face.
“All better?” Violet asked watching the girl who had gotten lost in a maze of her own fascination.
Confusion was and always will be the most effective method, Violet was reminded.
“Trick or treat?” Violet whispered playfully cocking a dark eyebrow, keeping her grip on the girl’s shoulders.
Puzzled the girl tilted her head. “Treat?” She ventured still stunned into immobility.
On cue, Violet smirked and delicately parted the girls lips, gently fingering the edge of her tongue, before plopping the pill in her mouth and sealing it with a long wet kiss….
Violet despised the lesbian bullshit, but it was a party trick that worked every single time…
Drunk girls were too polite and too confused to run when someone tried to kiss them. Especially another girl…. Pretty girls preferred to kiss rich men that’s the way it always worked but their senses were too slow to process something so unfathomable until it was too late.
Don’t doubt it had become a last resort. Violet had tried the more conventional methods. But believe it or not, when you pulled out a knife….. drunk girls still had enough motor skills left to flee. Danger was something drunk girls always anticipated, sexual escapades were not.
Instantly the she-devil began swaying, her eyes rolled back in her head as she reeled backward with a thud. Violet watched in boredom not even making an effort to catch her.
She really should have cushioned the girl’s blow. But Violet was distracted by the disgusting taste of cigarettes and cheap lipstick acidic against her tongue.
Carefully Violet withdrew mouthwash from her purse and gave it a few swishes as another woman walked into the restroom.
“Oh my god is she okay?” The girl, dressed as a 60’s go-go dancer gasped.
Spitting out the mouth wash in one clean motion, Violet looked up non-chalantly. “Dumb bitch always gets too drunk… I will take her home don’t worry,” she forced an exasperated smile.
“Goodluck,” the other girl sing-songed obliviously, waddling to the bathroom.
Violet cursed this whale as she dragged her down the fire escape, not even upset when her unsupported head ricocheted against the concrete walls like a pinball. Despite the abuse, Violet’s conscience was eased at the idea that at least the she-devil hadn’t denied herself the simple pleasure of good food before she met her fate. But the smell…. God the smell of her expensive, organic deodorant…. It was reminiscent of her grandma’s rotting spice cabinet boiled in a coconut oil broth.
“But at least body odor is eco-friendly.” Violet sniped to herself, despising their generation’s unoriginal allegiance to insignificant causes.
Once she propped the girl up in the passenger seat of her Benz and folded her leaden limbs haphazardly around her, Violet rifled through the she-devil’s purse. Every time, she couldn’t resist peeking at their ID….. not to put a name to a face or to learn where they were from…. No…. but to find out their registered weight.
“Melanie Erickson…. Not Italian at all just has a killer spray tan….” Violet muttered disappointed, momentarily lost in the black and white photo on the glossy placard. “110lbs?” Violet scoffed, side-eyeing Melanie’s limp body, noting the viscous blood that had begun to dribble from her hairline.
“In your dreams,” she snorted tossing the ID and assessing the remnants of the purse. Sure enough there was her organic, dye-free, hypoallergenic deodorant buried at the bottom of the bag. The scent? “Petunia.”
“That’s not even a real fragrance….” Violet sighed. “I’m going to name you Petunia then… because wearing shit like this is depraved,” she muttered with both distaste and satisfaction, as she abruptly put her little white Mercedes in drive, jostling the she-devil’s body.
“Unfortunately for you Petunia,” Violet mockingly patted the girl’s head. “Everything I plant dies.”
—————–
Every year the dry-cleaner looked at Violet with the same loathing when she brought in a vintage, black Valentino gown that was only stained “with a little dirt and sweat” Violet had always insisted, never mind the rusty colored blood that they unknowingly lifted from the silky, virgin wool.
Tonight, she smoothed the fabric over her bosom and hips in admiration, because every year when she changed into her gardening gear the Valentino gown flowed like new around her silhouette, the stench of sweat and fresh garden dirt replaced with the smell of baby powder and soap.
Even though it made it challenging to maintain her grip, Violet slipped on the silky black opera gloves that slinked up past her elbows, and she strapped on her black Gucci sandals which would inevitably get stuck in the grass.
Violet exclusively wore white. However, when it came to gardening, the color black was preferable seeing as the fabric had already been corrupted…. Besides… everyone knows you can’t wear white to funerals.
With less than an hour to spare Violet began her trek across the field. Behind her the gravel road was completely deserted, the glitter of the city sky-line fading on the horizon, the closest soul a good 30 miles away.
Around her the bronzed tassels of cornstalks whispered on the autumn breeze. Below her crunched withering hay that itched at her bare ankles, her stilettos sinking like knives into the field’s topsoil. Her lower back protested against the strain of Petunia’s writhing body and slung like a cross bow across her bony shoulder blades was a shovel.
“Shut up, we’re almost there,” Violet scolded over her shoulder. Dragging behind her Petunia winced, unable to shield herself from the sharp edges of dehydrated, dead hay that prickled and cut at her face.
Barely intact were the angel wings, once strapped to Violet’s back, now fastened to Petunia’s. She was also bursting out of Violet’s white dress that would barely zip, condensation and dirt staining the fabric.
“Please….” She screeched, her cries muffled by the gag shoved down her throat. Around her the scrape of the sharp hay turned into a gentler browning lawn. A shadow passed overhead, momentarily slicing through the harsh white moonlight that cast shadows around them.
Petunia caught sight of rows of stones, seemingly towering above her, names intricately carved into each. She wiggled and squirmed in panic, causing Violet to momentarily drop her. Like a mother scolding a child, Violet spun around and slapped Petunia across the face. “You’re being disrespectful…. Keep quiet.” She shushed as she dragged her the last couple feet.
The silence was broken by the metallic sound of picks and shovels, grating against the coarse Earth.
“Jesus I thought you’d finally given up,” a deep British voice whispered in their direction.
“No…. I decided I wanted to see your bastard face for another year,” Violet huffed, heaving Petunia’s body to a halt.
Violet stood even with the five other figures, clad in black, laboriously digging graves. The British man to Violet’s left, looked up at her from the 3.5 foot indentation he’d carved into the ground, a ghoulish smile on his sweat slicked face.
“There’s room for two down here love,” he winked at her playfully licking his lips and continuing to upheave the ground.
“Fuck off Benjamin,” Violet rolled her eyes, something desperate and panicked began to overcome her.
Benjamin was also in a black designer suit, devilishly handsome, with a pocket-watch dangling from his breast pocket. It’s open face glinted in the moonlight. The quiet, incessant ticking made her wince. She didn’t need a clock to know her time was limited.
For thirty minutes Violet got lost in the motions, hunched over the handle of a spade, the tendons in her forearms and lower back screaming with the strain of another pound of dirt that she deposited beside the headstone.
Her stomach felt heavy with nothingness. Every part of her rational mind screamed at her to stop… but just like the first time her limbs mindlessly kept working, her body’s own survival instincts taking hold when her mind couldn’t come to terms with reality.
An object in motion stays in motions and her arms moved faster and faster, stabbing the shovel into the earth and using the full force of her weight to churn up the ground. There was a way to end the madness, she simply had to stop. But the icy fingertips of what lay on the other side of surrender clutched at her heart and coaxed her forward.
It would never end.
“I can’t do this,” she muttered under her breath bitterly, flinching with every load of dirt, horrified at how the size of this hole and grown, expanding larger and larger every year.
“I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this….” she whimpered fantasizing about the multiple hours she would spend in the shower when this was done. How she would soak in soap for so long, she’d prune and how she exfoliate and deep-clean until every remnant of topsoil was dissolved from her flesh.
Except that was the problem… it was always there in some invisible film. While the physical evidence had been destroyed, all year long she could feel it squirm like a worm, just beneath the surface of her skin. Hidden under the grooves of her finger nails, wedged between her front teeth, gritty against her gums, snaking it’s way between her legs. It was inside her…. It was part of her.
The filthy topsoil could be bleached, and laundered and dry-cleaned out of the most expensive clothes, but the remnants of her annual grave tainted her soul darker and darker until there were no shades left.
Maybe the world saw a beautiful woman, but even when it wasn’t Halloween Violet could feel she was a monster. It was every other day of the year that she was dressing up like a fool trying to pretend to be someone she’s not, something purer than she ever would be.
“10 minutes left,” a captivating woman with ravishing scarlet hair in black power suit announced, her voice carrying over the rhythmic sound of their shovels driving into the earth in unison.
The only sound Violet could hear was the violent pulse of her hammering heart in her ear drums and her intrusive thoughts….
You’ve finally done it….. dragged this out for all it’s worth until it’s too late….
This was the one event you were forbidden from being fashionably late to you idiot.
Collapsing to her knees with a breathless sniffle, Violet began clawing at the Earth futilely trying to get one last inch out of her efforts. Her perfectly manicured fingertips were snapping under the pressure and the skin of her abraded hands was showing through her torn gloves.
Hot tears stung at her eyes, she didn’t want to cry in front of them, especially not Benjamin as she assessed how deep everyone else’s graves were in comparison to her own.
Most all of them were knee to hip deep in the chilled Earth, wiping their hands on their slacks and nodding in approval at the damage done. But Violet’s was at best maybe a foot.
For a moment she rocked back and forth on her knees, pressing her beautiful ivory forehead to the cold ground and sobbed in the same fashion she had on the first night five years ago…
At the age of 19, the inception of her modeling career, when she was on the cusp of getting her big break, a suspicious bloat started to ruin her impeccable, skeletal form. Violet being the perfectionist she was, starved herself rail thin. So when her distended abdomen began to balloon over the edge of her bikini bottom, she realized there was something larger than a knot of dread welling inside of her. Something with far greater consequences to her modeling career than a trivial eating disorder or a minor stomach ulcer.
It was a nightmare that nice, ambitious girls jolt awake from all the time. A small-town boy who loves you, who wants to give you the world, but little did he ever know he could never love you more than you loved your impossibly large, glamorous dreams that were draped in nothing less than Valentino.
She would never love him more than the thrill of walking her first show, or the breathtaking enchantment of being photographed nearly naked, blinded by the flash of lights and the sparkle of critical eyes and being deemed “absolutely flawless.” Women around the world, molded and sculpted and waxed and plucked and starved to be deemed flawlessly beautiful, when Violet just naturally was.
So she did what any ambitious, desperate girl would do. She broke his heart. She physically dislodged it from his body, cutting it out by each artery, each tendon. With a coat hanger. A rusty, metal coat hanger, ironed out to nothing more than a make-shift scalpel that dissected up Violet’s insides like gummy confetti, until it rained out between her legs.
Rich girls went to abortion doctors. And she wanted to be rich…. But she wasn’t…. Not yet.
He comes to you then. In your weakest moment. When you’re at life’s most polarizing cross roads. He approaches you like a lover. Takes your hand in his, with a comforting squeeze. You feel him inside of you, snaking his way down your throat, filling your lungs, and prickling threateningly around your heart.
He holds you there, with a vice grip cemented like stone around your soul. That’s when you really feel his arrival. Like something slimy tangling in your legs at the lake, or something icy tracing the bottom of your feet under the bed sheets in the middle of the night. You feel his arrival like a cold draft that unravels down your spine or like a dreadful pit that settles in the bottom of your stomach. His voice is like a sweet nothing whispered in your ear, but his demands are nothing short of threats.
And finally you see him. He appears in the inky darkness that’s flooded your eyes. An onset blindness that promises wealth, luxury, comfort, or greatness. He’s living there, right there, in the promise of “absolutely flawless beauty.”
And when she really saw him she was sold.
Sold at the price of burying her uterus and unborn child in a grave on Halloween night in a long forgotten cemetery, far outside the city, alongside strangers burying other bodies of other secrets… of other sins.
Little did they know they would spend the rest of their lives doing it over and over, an inconsequential price to pay for his mercy.
For a while she was at peace with her decision. She had concluded for the longest time that he was God…. Until she realized the only thing he couldn’t provide her….. was love.
It was obvious in the heart shattered way her old lover had looked at her, when she told that affectionate, eager small-town boy the deed was done, the child was gone forever. His love was replaced with something far darker… a darkness blacker than night.
It was also apparent in the fact that, the wealthy man sitting at home tonight who had wanted to spend quality time with her, a man who dreamed of making her his wife, would never actually love her.
How could a man like that love of woman who’s womb was empty? A woman who’s heart was poison? A woman who disappeared for one night every year to kill? A woman who’s age would always be a mystery because her stomach would always be irrevocably flat, hard and empty. A cold lifeless environment where only cancer could grow.
And that’s what it really meant to be absolutely flawless.
It meant that the love and adoration of every relationship were doomed to end before they even started. Because no one could love a monster.
Violet held her breath and watched Petunia struggling, struggling under the violent screams that rattled her ribcage, the sound stifled by the gag shoved down her throat. And she wondered what Petunia’s dreams were or if she perhaps had a daughter.
“She’s a tacky whore so probably not.” Benjamin muttered unimpressed as if reading her mind.
The sound flipped Violet’s stomach. Every year she relived the nightmare over and over again. A loan that was never paid. Her beauty a gift that did not have an expiration date. And that was the worst part, there was not a wrinkle, or pound of fat or any sign of aging that might indicate that there would ever be an expiration date to this insufferable madness.
She was afraid of where he would take her…. Because every year when her deed was done, she somehow fell deeper and deeper into his debt, deeper and deeper into a grave looming below her, a bed carved deep into the coals of hell.
Could what lies below truly be worse from this? She couldn’t possibly bring herself to find out.
The compulsive need to feel something, inspired a grisly idea that sparked a semblance of life inside her. Benjamin.
They were all here paying the price for their unforgivable sins…. Benjamin joined her in her annual planting escapades, burying the truth for another year. The truth that he quite literally fucked his wife’s brains out, bashing her bloody skull against their head board while strangling her.
Who could love a monster? Maybe she could try.
“Maybe I should fuck him,” Violet moaned quietly to herself laughing at the idea. Craving something exhilarating, something distracting. She was craving something more than just sex, she was lusting after understanding.
“ONE MINUTE!” The red headed woman bellared, waking Violet from her thoughts.
Everyone scurried out of their graves and madly began tossing loose piles of topsoil haphazardly onto the wriggling bodies that struggled and coughed below.
Scrambling to her feet, Violet grabbed Petunia by her ankles and pulled her into the shallow indent in the Earth. Petunia flopped madly like a fish out of water, before Violet repositioned her head below the tombstone and slapped her hard across the face.
“Stop it,” she hissed, a rosy blush of anger searing her face. Violet could feel the promise of regretful tears blurring her vision as she tried to abate Petunia’s resistance.
“10 seconds,” the woman bellowed. Five of the six grave diggers retreated from their work, taking several steps back and holding their breath as they waited for his arrival.
Violet clumsily tried to push up from her knees, but she was paralyzed in place. Her face hovered just inches above Petunia’s, the salt of Violet’s tears and sweat blinding her victim.
Violet couldn’t breathe, when she looked down she realized Petunia had wiggled one of here pudgy hands loose from the restraints and was desperately clutching at the pearls around her neck.
“No,” Violet wheezed, reaching a hand up to untangle Petunia’s hand from her necklace, deafened by the final countdown of Benjamin’s stop watch ringing hoarsely in her ears.
Rage was ablaze in Petunia’s eyes, a much duller, darker shade than Violet’s. There was one final ounce of adrenaline exuded to try to salvage her own mortality.
When they locked eyes, Violet lost her breath. She was looking into an alternate universe. This girl was fighting for her life and Violet was fighting for her death.
He was coming… he was coming….
He was here.
“3, 2, 1…..” The red headed woman’s voice was reduced to a whisper, flickering out with the finality of a flame that’s been extinguished.
The pearls around Violet’s neck peppered Petunia’s face, the cord holding them together snapping under the tension. Violet let out an ear-splitting scream, her nails clawing into the dirt as she was swiftly dragged away from the gravestone.
He was here for her.
Before Violet could comprehend what was happening, a warm, comforting hand cupped over her mouth, muffling her wails.
The strong arms were propping her up, shielding her in their warm embrace and coaxing her to silence. Despite the unfamiliarity of his gentle touch, Violet could feel it was Benjamin.
Around the six grave diggers, a preternatural gust of cold air rustled the corn tassels in time with the crinkle of the rippling autumn leaves.
Nature was announcing his arrival.
Through the onset fog, towered a dark figure, a man of uncanny proportions who was as staggering in height as the centuries old oak trees rooted to the cemetery. His skin waxed and waned with an alabaster glint. His bones jutted out of him at impossible angles and where his heart should’ve been was an emptiness that was cloaked in a transparent layer of frost as hazy as the fog that lapped at their ankles.
The darkness was a living breathing juxtaposition. Death masqueraded around as a broken man.
There was something undeniably beautiful in the way the darkness glided across the unhallowed ground, his feet dangled above the browning grass, forever suspended in mid-air.
Violet felt herself drooling enviously over him and the hypnotic way he lured in their gazes. You couldn’t look away from such an impossibility.
Unlike “absolutely flawless” beauty there wasn’t a soul who could resist getting lost in the ever-changing labyrinth of darkness.
The six cowered in silence, holding their breath, too afraid to breathe as they watched him study their offerings with his featureless face and empty eyes.
The darkness came and he took and he feasted. First with the red-headed woman’s offering. He stole her thieving hands in exchange for erasing her embezzlement charges from over a decade ago.
Then he plucked out the frazzled eyes of the older man’s offering, in exchange for pardoning his perpetual adultery. Inside his skull, the frazzled irises furiously zig-zagged back and forth electrified by adrenaline and fear, unfamiliar with their new home.
Next he swooped down to cut out the tongue of the slanderous woman’s victim. With quick, agile fingers his thieving hands sewed the tongue into the back of his mouth.
Then with careful precision he used the nails of his thieving hands to carve and shave the skin off a hysterical, but undeniably handsome young man, a fretful little sacrifice, in exchange for permissing the killer’s own selfishness and vanity.
Flexing and stretching in his new youthful skin he capered between the headstones on his stilt-like legs, his feet never touching the ground.
Stalking his prey, he carefully crouched down next to Benjamin’s sacrifice with a malevolent smirk. The young man who choked on the dust in Benjamin’s shallow grave, had large lungs, and his screams shook the empty cemetery and rattled the corn stalks in a dark serenade.
He reached his long, spindly fingers into the man’s chest, fascinated by the pitter-patter of the human heart as it pulsated in his grip. Without hesitance he wrenched it up from the man’s chest cavity, filling his own gaping hole with the beating vessel, while blood squished between his fingertips.
Finally, he stooped down to Petunia who was madly rolling under the thin sheet of dirt that blanketed her limbs. His gnarled lips curled up as he sniffed, unimpressed by the scent. He paused.
He never paused. Violet’s heart stopped. She felt Benjamin press against her hip bones harder, hugging her closer to him. As if his meager protection stood any chance.
They’d spent years making offerings, with human-like decoys that resembled themselves… this was the only way they could stave him off for another year…but Violet feared that her missteps of tonight, her lateness, her insubstantial grave, her inexcusable sloppiness had finally tipped him off to the truth….
He had slits for nostrils that flared with a hiss of agitation. His dithering fingers rippled with indecision like the fluttering tentacles of jellyfish as he studied Petunia.
Violet could feel her heart beat climbing up the back of her throat.
He would take her. It was no longer a threat, but a promise.
She was and had always been his to take.
Tonight she had wanted to be taken. To be rocked sweetly in the arms of a lover, of a drug, of some kind of distraction that could alleviate the anguish of her ritualistic murder….. but instead, she could feel the dark tendrils of his aura creeping closer, unraveling likes snakes as they wound up her legs and shackled her to this cemetery forever…
She would pay for her sins.
But with one last squeal, Petunia’s screams turned to sputtering, as blood and bile spewed out her throat.
He had ripped out her womb in his bare hands and slurped the life from it.
On rickety joints, he turned theatrically, regarding all of them with a demented smile, the blood from Petunia’s womb dribbling down his toothless gums and trickling down his lips. With a large sweeping gesture he disappeared in a cloud of darkness that drifted on a cold breeze and overcast the brightness of the full moon.
The six grave diggers exhaled in relief. They strode forward gingerly, unable to tear their eyes from the carnage that was left in his wake.
Normally they silently gathered their shovels and picks and departed wordlessly, but tonight the red-headed woman broke their absolved silence.
“Where do you think he goes?” She pondered.
“To make more deals with soulless fools like us….” Benjamin muttered with hot breath that warmed Violet’s cold ears, reminding her that she was still tucked safely in the guard of his strong embrace. Violet was stunned. She shuddered at the thought of the darkness, her breathing still coming in fearful, ragged gasps.
“He let me go,” she chanted under her breath in disbelief. “He let me go.”
“Until next year then,” the red-headed woman let out a resigned sigh, turning her back on her handless doppelganger who was slouched in her grave with her mangled stumps crossed religiously over her chest.
The other grave diggers nodded in unison, quietly retreating across the cornfield, the only thing chasing them was their long-limbed shadows, scurrying through the night, desperate for cover… desperate to disappear.
For a moment Benjamin held her, pressing a palm to her chest, as if pushing her thundering heart back into place. Violet began to melt in his arms and he held her there. Bending his neck, and parting her lips, he gently kissed her delicate mouth, something he had fantasized about for years.
“You saved me,” Violet whispered coming up for breath.
Benjamin smiled mischievous. His lips taunting her with the most provocative smile as he backpedaled away from her towards her headstones.
He kneeled down to harvest the daisies that had populated around the grave in colorful shoots.
Then gathering the flowers together, he presented them to Violet in a small bouquet.
“Daisies…. Just like your perfume,” Benjamin’s eyes sparkled. “I notice them here every year.”
Violet’s mouth groped for words and guilt flushed her eyes with hot tears.
“Darling… it’s okay,” Benjamin reassured with his velvety accent. He cupped one hand under her perfect chin and the other kneaded the back of her neck longingly. “We made it. We survived another year…. It’s okay.”
“Can I tell you the truth….” She whispered gently pressing her forehead into his brawny shoulder. His hands continued to massage around the base of her neck, rifling through her perfect black hair, obsessed with the spindly knot at the top of her spine.
“I don’t know if I wanted to survive this year…..”
Instead of countering her with the expected banter “you don’t mean that,” Benjamin held her closer in mutual understanding.
Violet began mindlessly plucking the petals off of the daisies that were wilting in Benjamin’s hand.
“That was her name….”
“Who’s name?” Benjamin murmured calmly, trying to soothe her.
“My baby’s,” Violet’s lip trembled with the force of her grief. “Daisy.”
“That’s beautiful,” Benjamin nodded in agreement, leaning in for another long, sweet kiss, he felt Violet tug at the daisies in his grip. Tearfully, she folded the flowers and hid them away in the safety of his breast pocket, closer to the heart he didn’t have, the heart that wasn’t his.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Violet began to shake her head furiously gesturing to the headstones lined up at her feet.
“We have to,” Benjamin dissented, wrapping an arm around her waist and grabbing at the nape of her neck to pull her closer.
“No….” Violet licked her lips through tears. “No…. I want to do something else instead.”
“What’s that?” Benjamin cocked an eyebrow curiously.
Violet’s mouth forcefully cupped around his and she desperately clawed at his clothes, grinding her body into his.
“Don’t have to ask me twice,” Benjamin responded playfully, promptly unzipping her dress, his hungry hands caressing the tendons of her slender neck, down to her bony collarbone, and her small breasts.
“Take me….” She whispered hopelessly.
From a distance you could see the ivory skin of two mortals tangling together in a carnal dance, death’s dark shadows cavorted around them miming the world’s most timeless sin.
———————–
“Good Morning Mr. Walker,” sing-songed a sunny receptionist, with silver flecked hair and the imprint of a smile fanning out in wrinkles around her eyes and lips.
“Morning Cynthia,” Benjamin nodded flashing his mischievous smirk, which his receptionist adored.
Leafing through his mail, while also balancing his coffee and briefcase, Benjamin shouldered through the glass door of his corner office.
Normally, he’d neatly shuffle his papers around into an organized mess on his mahogany desk before turning to admire the grand city-scape below while he savored his dark roast.
But today, his light and airy mood was thwarted by a mysterious delivery.
“Cynthia what’s this?” Benjamin spat in alarm, staggering in the doorway.
“Oh….” Cynthia said diligently trailing him. She peered over his shoulder.
“Those were delivered this morning…..”
With slow deliberate steps Benjamin approached his desk as if he were advancing upon a feral dog. Before him a magnificent vase of violets gleamed in the crisp morning light.
Cautiously he reached up to stroke a glossy lavender petal.
“No…..” he whispered, his body jolted back to the memory of Violet’s silky skin against him. He could feel his ravenous body digging and clenching into her tiny frame. He remembered feeling her, her lips, her cheeks, her neck….. and he smelled the faintest trace of dirt.
“Oh… before I forget… here’s the morning tribune…” Cynthia propped the morning paper in front of him with a cursory glance.
The front page had the picture of a beautiful model. “Violet Peralta Dead.”
Benjamin’s mouth grew grainy and dry, he felt the color draining from his face in a dizzying splash of darkness.
“A model was found dead this morning….” Cynthia spoke to him in her usual boisterous tone, blissfully unaware.
“Says her naked body was found dead in a shallow grave outside the city…”
“No,” Benjamin choked under his breath, the newspaper beginning to tremble in his hands.
“Kids these days and their Halloween games….” Cynthia rambled on, her voice becoming low and distorted.
“They say it looks as though she’s been strangled to death…. They’re almost certain they can identify the hand prints around her neck….” Benjamin’s eyes bulged in horror.
“But it was the strangest thing…. They believe she couldn’t have been dead for more than a few hours, but daisies seemed to have grown straight up through the center of the corpse…..”
Cynthia’s voice dropped another octave, becoming an inhuman growl. “Like flowers blossoming from her womb.”
Coffee sloshed against the floor with a hot splatter and the newspaper in Benjamin’s hand lazily see-sawed through the air before it landed on the floor, absorbing the dark liquid.
“You can’t cheat death Benjamin. Just like Violet shouldn’t have tried to cheat me,” Cynthia’s sinister hiss prickled the back of Benjamin’s neck, like an electric shock unraveling down his spine.
Reluctantly Benjamin turned towards the doorway to meet Cynthia who’s eyes were replaced with an all-consuming darkness.
“You didn’t seriously think I’d let you get away with the same sin twice did you?”
“But,” Benjamin’s lip pouted in protest and confusion as darkness descended on him, slowly creeping up his limbs, twisting tightly around his wrists like shackles, rooting him in place.
“You know the rules…… She wasn’t yours to take,” the low voice cackled, as a tendril of darkness wedged its way down Benjamin’s throat gagging him, and snaking towards his beating heart.
In a mad scramble, Benjamin tried to counter his restraints and reached up to withdraw the pile of daisies that Violet had folded into his breast pocket. They immediately disintegrated in his hand.
“Every deal has an expiration date Benjamin.”
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