Stop The Wedding

Every time Edith got on stage, a man died.

Cheers erupted around the jazz club as her kitten heels made their way up the steps and across the wooden stage. At once the bright spotlight flashed on, blinding her.

Though they did not die a bloody gruesome death; some were pained while others were merely inconvenienced.

“Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen.”

The guests’ cheers roared louder.

Edith, with her deep voice and short blonde hair, was beloved by many, for she had brought the old shabby club on a forgotten side street back to life. Now crowds lined up around the block to hear her sing.

The band began playing, washing out the love confessions and marriage proposals. It was those words, which erupted from men of various ages, that brightened her smile as she sang from the depth of her soul.

Her life depended on her voice, on how well she captured every soul’s attention each night, and the louder Edith sang the better the chance Dahlia had at pouring the bachelor his chosen cup of poison.

Dahlia kept her kohl rimmed eyes low as she set the cup in front of a man in a neat blue suit. Surrounded by much younger women, without a ring in sight.

She knew the men she poisoned were never innocent of sin, but her mind always looked for the signs, for the reasons, and never had she found a single detail of innocence to stopped her.

Her smile was as sweet as the mixture made partly of hemlock and white hellebore, she watched him gulp down as she served the others.

The mixture was a homemade remedy she had long perfected. It would take at least a full day till the poison took full effect, sending him shivering and trembling at the mercy of others as his organs failed. At that point they had usually spent hours digesting other nutrients elsewhere for anyone to ever question the club.

Edith’s voice rang through the small space, the crowd blissfully unaware as they sang along. Even the man, Karl, got out of his seat and bellowed along to the song.

Edith thought then of his betrothed. Her last night at her father’s home, last night in the safety of the walls that watched her grow from birth till the moment her father had sold her for a small fortune.

It didn’t matter that she hadn’t wanted to get married just yet at the bright age of six-and-ten, didn’t matter that Karl had been thirty years her senior. Her father would be able to spend a summer on the coast of Spain and that’s all that had mattered in the moment of the agreement.

The bell on the entrance rang as the door opened, a whisper midst the chaos of the third song, yet as Dahlia made her rounds, she knew to avoid the bar unless she had wanted to interact with him.

At the same seat he chose every time he made his visit, he sat with his hat on the brim of his brows, drink already being poured for him.

Edith smiled a knowing smile to Dahlia who had rolled her eyes, walking as far from the bar as she physically could without losing a dime.

During her break, Edith had made her way through the usually respectful crowd, making her way to Karl. She liked to look them in the eyes on their final nights, liked her face to be engraved in their memories like that of a memory, that of a dream.

She always performed in white.

White lace, silk, sequence, even a white veil at times. She looked like a bride of their dreams.

In the mornings she was the one that attended the social club meetings of those noble women, attended tea with the gossipers of the ton. She was a widower and so it was respectable for her to attend such high-class events without being on the arm of a man.

It helped her immensely in gaining information and connections of unwanted, arranged marriages of young ladies with their entire lives ahead of them, those who wanted nothing more than to stop the wedding.

It was Dahlia, tall, brunette, witty Dahlia that had created the poison from her knowledge on remedies. She was a nurse for as long as Edith had known her.

Edith would select the suitor, and Dahlia would eliminate them.

“Voice ever delightful, Circe,” he said as he always had.

She was at the bar now, awaiting her bottled water. Simply because they were the poisoners in the club didn’t mean they were the only ones.

“Alec,” she greeted him only by name, keeping her attention ahead.

When Edith first saw her dead husband years after his funeral, she initially thought he was the embodiment of her guilt, though she had felt none.

Later on, after Dahlia asked if she too had seen their first victim alive and well, did they realize there was more to their deceased husband than they had ever known.

They had the satisfaction of killing him and getting rid of the invisible chain of their unwanted marriages, and now Alec had the satisfaction of watching time slowly kill them.

Edith, the second wife, often wondered if she had known of his immortality would she have gone with the plan. Dahlia’s mind had never wavered.

“I see you’re still ever so successful at your job,” he commented slyly, smirk embedded on his lips.

To Edith, Alec had become much more bearable after his death.

Now that she was twenty-and-three years of age, with him looking as every other youthful man of twenty-and-seven, they looked the suitable part of wife and husband.

She shivered the thought away; never would she entrap herself in such misery again.

“Why do you keep coming back here?” she asked, finally looking at him, only to find his gaze following Dahlia around. “Have you decided at last to tell on us at last?”

It had been six years since their first kill. Six years of saving other women. Six years of these random visits.

“I don’t dabble in mortal matters anymore, Circe,” he said, returning her gaze. “It did not end too well for me the last time.”

Whatever else she had to say was forgotten as Dahlia tried to rush past them to fill her tray with the drinks.

“Darling.”

Alec’s voice deepened her scowl as she placed the drinks onto the tray.

He leaned forward on the bar, looking past Edith. “Now, now Hecate, you ought to smile, or else that frown will ruin your beautifully aged face.”

Alec and Edith had barely been married a year when they plotted to kill him, Dahlia however, had been chained to him for a handful of years before.

As always, Dahlia ignored his presence, when she took her tray and walked off, Edith would note a hint of sadness flicker in his gaze. She hadn’t known what their marriage had been like, arranged as hers for certain, but it was clear he had once shown her an ounce of his kindness he spoke with now, not any he had shown Edith before his death.

He had married Edith to annoy Dahlia; she had been a mere toy often locked away and forgotten unless she was needed.

Stuffling an unamused sigh at the memories, Edith walked off, certain with his attention on her partner in crime and best of friends, that he wouldn’t notice her.

But just as she turned on her heels, taking a step away, she heard his murmur.

“Goodbye Edith.”

When she returned to the stage, scanning her crowd, she saw that Karl was still fully aware of her, his gaze traveling every inch of her body, and before she sang the first note, she heard the bell of the door, saw it swing shut behind Alec.

“Before I start this next song,” she spoke into the microphone, her words loud and slightly distorted, the sass unmissable. “I would like to dedicate this next song to my late husband,” her eyes found Dahlia’s, sharing a smile only they understood, after all they had made their own path in life with their own hands.

“May he rest in peace.”