him in the shower. One would think, Abbey, that you had developed a taste for murder, an addiction to blood. A need to watch people who loved and trusted you die.”
The elegant features of Jack suddenly gave way to the wrinkled, cracked and worn features of a bald, elderly man. “And Mason Cartwright, Abbey? Some would wonder why a woman, seventy years old, would search out another husband, especially one as debilitated and sick as Mason. What was there to gain for another round of nuptials? The conclusion that most people would come to is that she simply didn’t want to die alone. Or that marriage made her happy.”
“It was an accident,” Abbey returned quietly, turning her eyes to the ground, as if the sight of Mason, dead now only two years, caused either pain or guilt to blossom in her. “I bumped into him and he fell down the stairs.”
Mason, still wearing Abbey’s father’s dirt-stained body, walked over to his daughter and lifted her chin with a single finger.
“You pushed him, Abbey. And there was a mad glee in your eyes as you did so. You watched him tumble down, your heart swelling with the sound of each bone breaking. And then you walked down and squatted over him and watched him as he died slowly and painfully from massive internal bleeding. He loved you and you laughed as his last breath fled his body.”
“It was an accident,” Abbey said again, slapping her father’s hand away and looking back at the clock, which still read four twenty-five and thirty three seconds.
Her father grabbed the lower part of her face and twisted it back so she was looking at him again. “You married him because he loved you, and you loved to kill people who loved you. You loved to watch people who worshipped you bleed and suffer. You were a black widow, with no compassion, no empathy, and very little human quality inside of you.”
“Would it help if I said I’m sorry?” Abbey asked.
“You tried that already. And He found your apology wanting.”
“You know,” Abbey said defiantly, “I am as He made. He gave me these urges, he gave me these desires, and I can not be held responsible for my actions.”
Mason Cartwright’s broken features fell away, replaced once more by the rough, grimy features of her father. “A fallacious argument, Abbey, and one you already made. Urges are one thing- all people have them- but you were not delusional. You always knew the difference between right and wrong but considered those moral dilemmas below your notice. You could have stopped with a little restraint but chose not to. Displaying sociopathic tendencies is not the same as being criminally insane, and I don’t believe a jury of your peers, given the evidence, would have believed your claims of being the latter.”
Abbey looked around the room, at everything except her father. “I am what I am,” she finally said.
“You are what you chose to be,” her father corrected. “And now it is time to go.” He held out a hand to his daughter. Abbey lifted her hand tentatively, prepared to place it in her father’s, then hesitated.
“Is there music down there, dad?” she asked. “Is there dancing?”
Her father offered a small smile. “Maybe a little polka,” he said with a chuckle.
“Can I ask for one thing?”
“And what is that, Abbey?”
“One last dance.”
Her father’s features hardened. “And what makes you think you deserve even that, sweetie,” he asked, though not unkindly.
“I… I don’t, I guess. But it doesn’t hurt to ask.”
The smile returned. “The first honest thing you’ve admitted to in a long time, Abbey. And for that, you can have your dance. What would you like? And with whom?”
Abbey thought back to her life, her mind tripping over the years as it scurried back to the fifties, when she had been a state dance champion in ballroom dancing. Faces of the men she had danced with, of the men she had slept with, paraded through her mind’s eye, and when she finally spoke, it was with a slight tremble in her voice. “I’d like to do a waltz,” she said. “To Al Joplin’s ‘The Anniversary Song’. With you, dad.”
“Excellent choice,” her father said, and the grubby outfit was suddenly gone, replaced by an exquisite black tuxedo complete with bow-tie and cummerbund. He took her in his arms as music filled the dull and timeless space and they began to move around the room in a slow waltz. Abbey was worried that those black filaments anchoring her form to her body may prove an impediment to their dance, but both of them passed through them as if they weren’t there.
The music swelled as they moved around the frozen, drab room, and Abbey reveled in the feeling of grace and freedom she experienced in this spectral form. She hadn’t been able to dance like this for over fifty years and she found it exhilarating. She closed her eyes and allowed the music to carry her over the floor, and her father matched her movements perfectly, as if he were born to the role.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when the music slowed and finally ended. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours, but when she finally opened hr eyes and looked back at the clock, it still read four twenty-five and thirty three seconds.
Abbey sighed. She tried to disengage from her father but found herself unable to escape the man’s grasp. She turned from the clock to her father, but instead of her father’s coarse face, she found herself looking into the black depths of a hood. She glanced to her left and to her right and found skeletal hands emerging from the cuffs of a black robe on her body. She knew she should have been frightened but she wasn’t. She looked back up, back into the shadows of the hood, and for a moment thought she spied a naked skull staring back at her.
“I’m not sorry for any of it,” Abbey admitted.
“The second truthful thing you’ve said today,” the voice from within the hood responded. It wasn’t her father’s voice anymore, but the voice of the dead, a hollow, sorrowful crooning.
“I lived my life as I chose, my only life, and I have no regrets.”
The figure in the black robe nodded. “I know. And now it is time. Are you ready?”
“Yes.” A pause, then: “Will it hurt?”
“Oh yes, Abbey. Oh yes. More than you can imagine.”
“I understand.”
“No. You don’t. But you will.” The robed figure disengaged his left hand from her right and a scythe, horrible and cruel in its form, appeared in his grasp, the black blade shimmering in the air despite the lack of any true light. He lifted the instrument as Abbey watched, then delivered a single swift blow to the binding threads that trailed behind her. The fibers didn’t snap or tear violently in response to the blow, but parted eagerly under the delicate kiss of the blade
Abbey screamed as she was severed from her body, the sound that erupted from her spectral throat almost inhuman in its quality. The pain which accompanied the scream was equally as keen, washing through her body and settling into every aspect of her soul, an inferno which raged continuously within her. She dropped to her knees, planted her hands on the floor, and clenched her teeth against the agony which wracked her body, waiting, waiting, waiting for it to subside.
But it didn’t.
She lifted her head to the shrouded figure. “I regret nothing,” she hissed.
“And that is why you are going where you are going, Abbey.” The robed form reached down and drew Abbey Whistler’s trembling form into his arms, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. He turned and walked back towards the door he had entered through, leaving the room that defied time, defied life, carrying the black widow towards the eternity she had justly earned.
I hope you enjoyed Last Dance of a Black Widow. If so, please consider reading one of my other works wherever you purchased this one, including:
Pandora’s Children: The Complete Nightmares Book 1
Pandora’s Children: The Complete Nightmares Book 2
(new versions of both available end of October)
Dogs of War: A Ghost Story
King of the Merge (available soon)
Blink (a free short sto
ry)
And, as always, follow me at the following places:
www.pandoraschildren.com
www.darkestdayspublishing.com
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Twitter: @bconvisdmd
Last Dance of a Black Widow Page 2