And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe
Page 17
But I can join you.
The flames rise from your body, and though it aches to touch you, I wrap both hands around your waist.
You gape at me, the tips of your hair curling and shriveling away. “Don’t do this,” you whisper.
“It’s okay.” I entwine your fingers with mine, and the palms of my hands turn to black, but I won’t let you go.
I’ll sway at your side and burn with you. This will be our first dance together. Our first and our last, a lifetime suspended in a moment. A marriage not built to survive a day.
The reek of seared flesh—yours and mine, though mostly yours—lilts around us, and you wither in my arms, growing smaller and smaller, the ash of you falling through the air like dried rice tossed at a happy couple.
My lips part, but no scream comes out, only an echo of grief. I want to take it all back—the wedding, the house, our bitter-cold first kiss. I want to tell you how sorry I am. But more than anything, I want to stay here with you, in this unchanging summer, in this unchanging place. I want to hold you tighter than life itself, but I can’t hold you at all. You’ve already turned to dust in my arms.
Though my skin smokes, I never dissolve into nothing. I’m not like you. Your body smolders from the inside out. This fire is meant for you alone.
When the last flames wink out, I lay the soft shape of you on the blackened pyre, as if this is our wedding bed. In a way, it is and always will be.
“I love you,” I say, and I mean it with every iota of my soul, but it no longer matters.
I’ve been wrong.
You can’t tame fire. You can try to contain it, or you can smother it altogether, but either way, you deny it, you deny the essence of what makes it fire, what makes it wild, what makes us love the things we can’t control.
I wait with you a long time, without sobbing, without speaking your name, without moving at all.
Bit by bit, you emerge. I am not coaxing you from the ash. This is your doing. And this time, you’re different. The wedding gown has melted away, and your naked body is a blank canvas ripe for a fresh start.
I won’t wait for you to awaken. I won’t beg your forgiveness or ask for us to start again. For the first time, I’ll make the right choice.
Your diamond lies next to you in the grass. I slip off my own gold band, and it falls alongside your ring. Then, with steady fingers, I drop a handful of dirt over our promises, and the earth devours them.
I leave everything behind—my ring, my bag, my bride—and head down the sinuous path that led us here. The bus might come early today, or the men at the general store will have fixed their trucks. Someone or something will take me away from here. I’ll be stranded no longer. And when you’re ready, you won’t be stranded either. You will go wherever you desire. Far from me.
Along the trail, I pass the outlines of yesterday’s footprints, a reminder that we were here, we were together. It was real, you and me, even if it couldn’t last.
I pass through the trees and crest into a clearing.
My heart a pillar of salt, I look back once.
Overnight, the tips of the leaves have turned golden, and an eager chill whips through the air. Autumn will come now. Though I wanted to stop it, tomorrow has come.
Below, your body is fully formed. Your chest rises and falls like the tides, and you breathe again. You breathe easy. You breathe without me.
I breathe without you, too. I wish I couldn’t, but this is the way it was meant to be. I whisper once more that I love you and then I whisper goodbye. Smiling, I turn away and move into the first glint of sunrise.
Behind me, summer ends, and you open your eyes.
Gwendolyn Kiste is a speculative fiction author based in Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in Nightmare, Shimmer, Interzone, Three-Lobed Burning Eye, and LampLight, as well as Flame Tree Publishing's Chilling Horror Short Stories, among others.
A native of Ohio, she currently dwells on an abandoned horse farm outside of Pittsburgh with her husband, two cats, and not nearly enough ghosts.
You can find her online at gwendolynkiste.com.