Elenore

by L. Jordan James

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  I do not sleep well anymore. I have too many dreams of falling into a black pit where gnashing teeth rend the flesh from my bone. I have had too many dreams of a single teardrop falling on Lenore’s cheek while her hand reaches out to me. I do not think that sleep will ever come easily to me again. But a part of me understands. My body tells me that sleep is secondary to revenge because I know that he is out there, waiting, gauging my perseverance, my patience. He watches my every move. But I watch him also. Every newspaper account of sudden illness attacking a village, every outbreak of sickness of an unknown origin is a clue to his whereabouts. I think I know him now. I think I know how he moves from place to place and soon he will rue the day that he ever took Lenore from me.

  In my investigations I do not just read newspaper accounts. I visit the small hamlets and villages and I sit quietly at the local pub, listening to rumours, theories and conjecture about their kinsman’s illnesses. I listen for all of the signs of infestation. I listen to the inhabitants’ accounts and the symptoms of their loved ones’ sickness: pale countenance, weakness, an aversion to sunlight and then sudden death all over the course of three nights.

  While I listen, learn and form theories, my mind works as if in a fever and I have fantasies of having him here before me, kneeling at my feet, at my mercy. And in that fantasy I have shaped my heart into that of ball and powder and I gladly fired the shot that ended both of our existences.

  But there are other times—quieter times, drunker times—when I sit and ruminate on my failure in protecting Lenore. In those hours, time seems to slow and the sand only moves one grain at a time through the hourglass aperture. I shudder when I think of what hell she must have been subjected to in trying to protect me. And, after each time I shudder, my heart is steeled and my spine is strengthened with the knowledge that this road, this path of anger, of blood and revenge I have chosen, is righteous.