Post by Chris Hedges on Apr 29, 2011 19:35:26 GMT -6
This is a short story from William's collection, CLAW MARKS & OTHER DISTURBING DIVERSIONS. If you like what you see here, be sure to check out the entire collection here-- www.amazon.com/Marks-Other-Disturbing-Diversions-ebook/dp/B00433TGNW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1304120312&sr=1-1-spell
Sixty-two year old Bill Thompson was mowing his back lawn in the late afternoon’s 95 degree heat when he suffered a massive coronary and passed away almost instantly. Suzette, his wife for over twenty-three years, was busy in the kitchen at the time, preparing a salad and light dinner for the two of them in deference to the early summer’s unusually hot weather. She heard the mower’s engine die, and merely thought that it had run out of gas or that her husband had stopped it for some reason. But after ten minutes of silence she became a little concerned.
She opened the kitchen’s back door, which led out to a small concrete deck and their rectangular, quarter-acre yard. The uncomfortable heat wrapped itself around her like a warm, wet blanket. She spotted Bill crumpled on the ground next to the lawn mower, lying on his back in the middle of the yard, not moving. She rushed over to her fallen husband, tears falling and crying for help, her worst fears realized.
Dropping to her knees on the partially-clipped Bermuda, Suzette grasped her husband’s blue-tinged face, shaking him gently, pleading with him as she lowered her ear to his lips. When she didn’t hear or feel him breathing, she quickly felt at his neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one. Hysterical now, screaming at the top of her lungs, she raced back into the house and used their landline to call 911. She then ran back outside to perform a clumsy form of CPR on her husband and remain by his side until help showed up. It seemed to her that it took a lifetime for the paramedics to arrive.
# # # #
The funeral was held three days later. It was a simple affair, since Bill had opted for cremation over a more expensive, traditional burial. Quite a number of Suzette’s and her late-husband’s friends and relatives were present, if only to view the urn in which Bill’s ashes had been placed. After the ceremony, Suzette, accompanied by Laura, their twenty-one year old daughter and only child, returned to the house where she had spent the last two decades of her life with her loving husband. Only, from now on, she would somehow have to manage on her own.
“How’re you holding up, Mom?” Laura said.
“As well as I can under the circumstances, I guess.” Suzette carefully placed the glass vase holding Bill’s remains onto the fireplace mantel. She stared at it for a moment, as if in disbelief. Her eyes watered yet again.
“You all right, Mom?” Laura said, moving toward her mother and hugging her.
“Not really.” She sniffled.
Suzette was fifty-two years old and had just lost the love of her life. She had been married once before, briefly, a mistake she’d made right out of high school. The divorce that followed had been painless, and she and her ex had gone their separate ways. It took another ten years before she finally met the right man for her. And it was a man this time, almost ten years her senior---not the naïve, young boy fresh out of high school who had promised her the world and delivered on nothing.
She met Bill on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend. While there were no sparks on their first date, there was nevertheless a subtle attraction toward each other that simmered and improved slowly over time, like a fine wine. Suzette discovered to her surprise that they shared the same sense of humor, and that they felt completely natural in each other’s company. So, it was only normal when they took their relationship to the next level and tested their sexual compatibility. When they both realized they were more than equal to that “task,” they understood that what they had could only be described as special, that they were “soul mates.” In short order they were engaged, married, and baby Laura was soon pushing out her stomach like an inflated balloon.
But now Bill was gone. And she was all alone again.
“Mom?”
“I’ll be fine, honey,” Suzette replied with resignation.
An hour later, Laura left her mother to battle her personal demons by herself.
# # # #
It took a full two weeks before Bill returned to Suzette.
She was thrashing around in bed in the middle of the night, wrestling with her nightmares and the bout of loneliness that had recently descended upon her like a dark cloud. Suddenly, she felt a presence next to her.
“Hey, honey,” Bill said with a tender smile. “I’ve missed you.”
“What the---?” she began, pulling herself up to a sitting position in bed, not believing her eyes. “Who are---?” she said, touching her late-husband’s faintly-lined face, his salt-and-pepper moustache, and his beautiful silver-grey hair.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “I must be dreaming.”
“No, it’s really me, babe,” he said, arms enfolding her.
And in spite of her doubts, she couldn’t deny his physical warmth beside her, nor could she disbelieve his gentle, affectionate touch that she had come to love more than life itself. She melted into his arms as though they were again one body, and it wasn’t until well into the morning that they finally stopped talking, made sweet love and fell into a deep, satisfying, dreamless sleep.
When she woke the next day she found herself alone. Sometime during the early morning hours her Bill had left her. If he had been here at all, she thought briefly. But she knew deep down that he had definitely been with her in their memory-laden, king-size bed. She could still smell his unique scent on her body, a manly aroma that she had never tired of inhaling. And the pleasant ache between her legs only confirmed the incredible fact that her recently-deceased husband had visited her last night from the afterlife. She shook her head, bewildered nevertheless, but allowed a shy smile to tug at her features.
# # # #
For the next few weeks Bill appeared to her every night in her dreams and in her arms. They talked and laughed till the wee hours, then made love before falling asleep, arms and legs tightly entwined around each other like vines. Each morning he was gone. Laura stopped by every couple days to check on her mother, and couldn’t help but notice the complete reversal in her spirits and demeanor. When questioned about it, Suzette merely indicated that she had been dreaming pleasant dreams about her father almost every night, and that she had finally come to terms with his untimely death.
# # # #
One Saturday, about five or six weeks after Bill’s passing, Suzette noticed something odd as she was changing their sheets. Scattered in the middle of his side of the bed were what appeared to be grains and nuggets of sand. Puzzled, she bent over for a closer inspection. But even as she stretched out her hand to touch the mysterious particles, they vanished quickly into thin air.
“Hmph,” she snorted, brow furrowed in concentration, before a light bulb flicked on in her head.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
She rushed down the hallway and over to the mantel, atop which Bill’s ashes rested. Grasping the glass urn, she unscrewed the lid and peered inside.
“Oh no!” she said, realizing that the level of ash had apparently dropped by half. The urn was considerably lighter than when she had first brought it home. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, a few tears crawling down her cheeks, and exhaled a deeply-held breath. The particles on their bed sheets weren’t sand after all, she now understood, they were bits and pieces of Bill’s remains, his ashes. And it meant that they didn’t have that much time left together---when the ashes were gone, he would also be gone from her life. This time for good.
Frightened, she mentioned her suspicions to him in bed that evening.
“I don’t know how it works at all, honey,” Bill said, stroking her face in the semi-dark. “I just know that I can return to you at night, and if my dwindling ashes mean our time together is limited, then so be it. I can’t stay away from you, you know that.”
“I know,” Suzette replied, her eyes moist. “And I can’t stay away from you, either. You’re like a drug to me.”
The pair of lovers cuddled and caressed each other for a long while before descending as always into a deep, enjoyable sleep.
# # # #
Another few weeks passed and Suzette abruptly realized, while checking Bill’s ashes one afternoon, that the level in his urn had deteriorated to almost nothing. She was panic-stricken! How could we have used it up so quickly? she thought, shaking with sorrow. Their time was just about up and she wasn’t anywhere near ready.
During what would become their last night together, Suzette confided her fears to her late-husband.
“I’m scared, Bill,” she sobbed, as they snuggled against each other in bed. “This may be the last time we’ll be able to be with each other like this. Your ashes are almost completely gone.”
“Oh, honey,” he sighed, deeply saddened by this unexpected revelation. “I can’t believe they’ve gone this fast!” He was quiet for a long moment. “You know I’ll always love you, right? That I’ll always be with you, and we’ll always be together in each other’s heart.”
“I know,” she said, sniffling back tears. “And I’ll always love you, too. With all my heart.” She hugged him fiercely, as though she were terrified to let him go. “And don’t you forget, you’ll always be ‘my Bill.’”
“I won’t, baby,” he said. “I promise, I won’t.”
# # # #
Early the next afternoon, Laura found herself knocking on the front door of her parents’ house. She had tried to reach her mother by phone all morning but had gotten no response. She had been a little concerned. But hours later, upon learning that her mother wouldn’t even answer the door, she became quite worried.
She fished the house key out of her purse and unlocked the door herself, pushing inside and crying out, “Mom?! You home?” Her voice merely echoed, unanswered, in the still, three-bedroom ranch.
“Mom! Where are you?!”
Now she was frantic, myriad morbid thoughts racing through her mind like an ADD sufferer. She hurriedly made her way down the hallway to the master bedroom, calling out in a more subdued manner for her mother all the way. But all she got for her efforts was dead silence.
When Laura reached her parents’ closed bedroom door, she suddenly stopped, afraid of what she might find within. But concern overcame her fear, and she slowly shouldered through, bracing herself for the worst yet hoping for the best.
Alas, it was not to be, she realized, as she entered the bedroom and sensed, without knowing how, that her mother was dead. Her slight frame was buried beneath the covers, her body tilted away from her on her left side, facing the far window.
Oh, Mom, she thought, as tears filled her eyes. Not you too…
She crept around the queen-size bed, sniffling and whispering “Mom” a few times, still not convinced that her mother was actually gone. When she completed a half-circuit of the room and was finally able to observe her mother’s lifeless, prone form close-up, she was momentarily shocked by the incongruous sight that greeted her. Not only was there a peaceful, eyes-closed smile etched across her mother’s placid face, but her body looked…distorted in some way underneath the covers. Unlike her dad, who’d fought his weight constantly, her mother had always been a small woman; but the misshapen lump below her mother’s head now appeared to be the size of a small barrel.
Steeling herself against what she was about to do, she slowly and gently pulled the covers down and off her mother’s nightgown-clad body.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered, baffled by what she had unveiled.
Scattered on her father’s side of the bed was a handful of what appeared to be small particles of dirt or gravel, or even granules of sand, she thought, which even as she watched, mouth wide open in shock, gradually began to disappear. But this bizarre mystery paled in comparison to what accounted for her mother’s unusually bulky girth. Because before the onset of rigor mortis, her mother’s arms and legs had been configured into the shape of someone forcefully holding and clasping a loved one for dear life. A loved one who had quietly, lovingly, but ultimately reluctantly, disengaged himself from those comforting limbs and vanished forever from her mortal existence as a new dawn broke.
FOREVER LOVERS
Sixty-two year old Bill Thompson was mowing his back lawn in the late afternoon’s 95 degree heat when he suffered a massive coronary and passed away almost instantly. Suzette, his wife for over twenty-three years, was busy in the kitchen at the time, preparing a salad and light dinner for the two of them in deference to the early summer’s unusually hot weather. She heard the mower’s engine die, and merely thought that it had run out of gas or that her husband had stopped it for some reason. But after ten minutes of silence she became a little concerned.
She opened the kitchen’s back door, which led out to a small concrete deck and their rectangular, quarter-acre yard. The uncomfortable heat wrapped itself around her like a warm, wet blanket. She spotted Bill crumpled on the ground next to the lawn mower, lying on his back in the middle of the yard, not moving. She rushed over to her fallen husband, tears falling and crying for help, her worst fears realized.
Dropping to her knees on the partially-clipped Bermuda, Suzette grasped her husband’s blue-tinged face, shaking him gently, pleading with him as she lowered her ear to his lips. When she didn’t hear or feel him breathing, she quickly felt at his neck for a pulse but couldn’t find one. Hysterical now, screaming at the top of her lungs, she raced back into the house and used their landline to call 911. She then ran back outside to perform a clumsy form of CPR on her husband and remain by his side until help showed up. It seemed to her that it took a lifetime for the paramedics to arrive.
# # # #
The funeral was held three days later. It was a simple affair, since Bill had opted for cremation over a more expensive, traditional burial. Quite a number of Suzette’s and her late-husband’s friends and relatives were present, if only to view the urn in which Bill’s ashes had been placed. After the ceremony, Suzette, accompanied by Laura, their twenty-one year old daughter and only child, returned to the house where she had spent the last two decades of her life with her loving husband. Only, from now on, she would somehow have to manage on her own.
“How’re you holding up, Mom?” Laura said.
“As well as I can under the circumstances, I guess.” Suzette carefully placed the glass vase holding Bill’s remains onto the fireplace mantel. She stared at it for a moment, as if in disbelief. Her eyes watered yet again.
“You all right, Mom?” Laura said, moving toward her mother and hugging her.
“Not really.” She sniffled.
Suzette was fifty-two years old and had just lost the love of her life. She had been married once before, briefly, a mistake she’d made right out of high school. The divorce that followed had been painless, and she and her ex had gone their separate ways. It took another ten years before she finally met the right man for her. And it was a man this time, almost ten years her senior---not the naïve, young boy fresh out of high school who had promised her the world and delivered on nothing.
She met Bill on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend. While there were no sparks on their first date, there was nevertheless a subtle attraction toward each other that simmered and improved slowly over time, like a fine wine. Suzette discovered to her surprise that they shared the same sense of humor, and that they felt completely natural in each other’s company. So, it was only normal when they took their relationship to the next level and tested their sexual compatibility. When they both realized they were more than equal to that “task,” they understood that what they had could only be described as special, that they were “soul mates.” In short order they were engaged, married, and baby Laura was soon pushing out her stomach like an inflated balloon.
But now Bill was gone. And she was all alone again.
“Mom?”
“I’ll be fine, honey,” Suzette replied with resignation.
An hour later, Laura left her mother to battle her personal demons by herself.
# # # #
It took a full two weeks before Bill returned to Suzette.
She was thrashing around in bed in the middle of the night, wrestling with her nightmares and the bout of loneliness that had recently descended upon her like a dark cloud. Suddenly, she felt a presence next to her.
“Hey, honey,” Bill said with a tender smile. “I’ve missed you.”
“What the---?” she began, pulling herself up to a sitting position in bed, not believing her eyes. “Who are---?” she said, touching her late-husband’s faintly-lined face, his salt-and-pepper moustache, and his beautiful silver-grey hair.
“Oh, my God!” she cried, “I must be dreaming.”
“No, it’s really me, babe,” he said, arms enfolding her.
And in spite of her doubts, she couldn’t deny his physical warmth beside her, nor could she disbelieve his gentle, affectionate touch that she had come to love more than life itself. She melted into his arms as though they were again one body, and it wasn’t until well into the morning that they finally stopped talking, made sweet love and fell into a deep, satisfying, dreamless sleep.
When she woke the next day she found herself alone. Sometime during the early morning hours her Bill had left her. If he had been here at all, she thought briefly. But she knew deep down that he had definitely been with her in their memory-laden, king-size bed. She could still smell his unique scent on her body, a manly aroma that she had never tired of inhaling. And the pleasant ache between her legs only confirmed the incredible fact that her recently-deceased husband had visited her last night from the afterlife. She shook her head, bewildered nevertheless, but allowed a shy smile to tug at her features.
# # # #
For the next few weeks Bill appeared to her every night in her dreams and in her arms. They talked and laughed till the wee hours, then made love before falling asleep, arms and legs tightly entwined around each other like vines. Each morning he was gone. Laura stopped by every couple days to check on her mother, and couldn’t help but notice the complete reversal in her spirits and demeanor. When questioned about it, Suzette merely indicated that she had been dreaming pleasant dreams about her father almost every night, and that she had finally come to terms with his untimely death.
# # # #
One Saturday, about five or six weeks after Bill’s passing, Suzette noticed something odd as she was changing their sheets. Scattered in the middle of his side of the bed were what appeared to be grains and nuggets of sand. Puzzled, she bent over for a closer inspection. But even as she stretched out her hand to touch the mysterious particles, they vanished quickly into thin air.
“Hmph,” she snorted, brow furrowed in concentration, before a light bulb flicked on in her head.
“Oh, my God,” she whispered.
She rushed down the hallway and over to the mantel, atop which Bill’s ashes rested. Grasping the glass urn, she unscrewed the lid and peered inside.
“Oh no!” she said, realizing that the level of ash had apparently dropped by half. The urn was considerably lighter than when she had first brought it home. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly, a few tears crawling down her cheeks, and exhaled a deeply-held breath. The particles on their bed sheets weren’t sand after all, she now understood, they were bits and pieces of Bill’s remains, his ashes. And it meant that they didn’t have that much time left together---when the ashes were gone, he would also be gone from her life. This time for good.
Frightened, she mentioned her suspicions to him in bed that evening.
“I don’t know how it works at all, honey,” Bill said, stroking her face in the semi-dark. “I just know that I can return to you at night, and if my dwindling ashes mean our time together is limited, then so be it. I can’t stay away from you, you know that.”
“I know,” Suzette replied, her eyes moist. “And I can’t stay away from you, either. You’re like a drug to me.”
The pair of lovers cuddled and caressed each other for a long while before descending as always into a deep, enjoyable sleep.
# # # #
Another few weeks passed and Suzette abruptly realized, while checking Bill’s ashes one afternoon, that the level in his urn had deteriorated to almost nothing. She was panic-stricken! How could we have used it up so quickly? she thought, shaking with sorrow. Their time was just about up and she wasn’t anywhere near ready.
During what would become their last night together, Suzette confided her fears to her late-husband.
“I’m scared, Bill,” she sobbed, as they snuggled against each other in bed. “This may be the last time we’ll be able to be with each other like this. Your ashes are almost completely gone.”
“Oh, honey,” he sighed, deeply saddened by this unexpected revelation. “I can’t believe they’ve gone this fast!” He was quiet for a long moment. “You know I’ll always love you, right? That I’ll always be with you, and we’ll always be together in each other’s heart.”
“I know,” she said, sniffling back tears. “And I’ll always love you, too. With all my heart.” She hugged him fiercely, as though she were terrified to let him go. “And don’t you forget, you’ll always be ‘my Bill.’”
“I won’t, baby,” he said. “I promise, I won’t.”
# # # #
Early the next afternoon, Laura found herself knocking on the front door of her parents’ house. She had tried to reach her mother by phone all morning but had gotten no response. She had been a little concerned. But hours later, upon learning that her mother wouldn’t even answer the door, she became quite worried.
She fished the house key out of her purse and unlocked the door herself, pushing inside and crying out, “Mom?! You home?” Her voice merely echoed, unanswered, in the still, three-bedroom ranch.
“Mom! Where are you?!”
Now she was frantic, myriad morbid thoughts racing through her mind like an ADD sufferer. She hurriedly made her way down the hallway to the master bedroom, calling out in a more subdued manner for her mother all the way. But all she got for her efforts was dead silence.
When Laura reached her parents’ closed bedroom door, she suddenly stopped, afraid of what she might find within. But concern overcame her fear, and she slowly shouldered through, bracing herself for the worst yet hoping for the best.
Alas, it was not to be, she realized, as she entered the bedroom and sensed, without knowing how, that her mother was dead. Her slight frame was buried beneath the covers, her body tilted away from her on her left side, facing the far window.
Oh, Mom, she thought, as tears filled her eyes. Not you too…
She crept around the queen-size bed, sniffling and whispering “Mom” a few times, still not convinced that her mother was actually gone. When she completed a half-circuit of the room and was finally able to observe her mother’s lifeless, prone form close-up, she was momentarily shocked by the incongruous sight that greeted her. Not only was there a peaceful, eyes-closed smile etched across her mother’s placid face, but her body looked…distorted in some way underneath the covers. Unlike her dad, who’d fought his weight constantly, her mother had always been a small woman; but the misshapen lump below her mother’s head now appeared to be the size of a small barrel.
Steeling herself against what she was about to do, she slowly and gently pulled the covers down and off her mother’s nightgown-clad body.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered, baffled by what she had unveiled.
Scattered on her father’s side of the bed was a handful of what appeared to be small particles of dirt or gravel, or even granules of sand, she thought, which even as she watched, mouth wide open in shock, gradually began to disappear. But this bizarre mystery paled in comparison to what accounted for her mother’s unusually bulky girth. Because before the onset of rigor mortis, her mother’s arms and legs had been configured into the shape of someone forcefully holding and clasping a loved one for dear life. A loved one who had quietly, lovingly, but ultimately reluctantly, disengaged himself from those comforting limbs and vanished forever from her mortal existence as a new dawn broke.
THE END
