Burn a Million

I’d burn a million dollars if I couldn’t buy you a plane ticket. What would be the purpose of the rest? Couldn’t buy me a thing. All I do is think of your bedroom. That’s what time does—finds humor in a place. Then I remember. So much time, but I’m trying. I’ve read every poem. That is what I’m up against, and death is inevitable, but I want to hold you and hear you laugh again. I can’t touch you, but I certainly can listen. I’m learning to hunt for you.

He signs his name, knowing it is physically impossible for her to read this letter, but he leaves it beside the flowers their friends and family brought. As the years pass, he notices that no one visits on the anniversary of her death anymore. Snow that fell days ago still covers her name. She watches him, and every morning as he wakes, she yearns to pull him back to a bed, any bed, but is chained to his broken heart and lack of living. They are not free.

She is visited by her parents. One of whom she met up here, outside the pearly white gates. They don’t say much, but the chain around her ankle feels tighter. They give her an arrow and a bow. They tell her that as long as she does not miss, all will be well. She says she has never used a bow before, and they reply, “I know.” They and the chain disappear.

An ominous voice permeates every microsecond of space. It has no owner, and if she believes that, believe the rest of what it has to say. She listens, and then it, too, is gone.

She falls to Earth. She lands on her feet. She stays in the woods and practices releasing the arrow, but it only falls, waking a sleeping Mischiever named Christopher. He is red and has very bright yellow eyes at night. Part goat and man, she still would rather look than listen. His voice is reminiscent of the burning car she died in. High and low-pitched, crackles. A woman and a man, talking in unison. Every night, he tells her she is “Sort of stupid and sort of cute.”

She pulls back the bow, and the arrow drops.

“No clouds,” says Christopher. His smile might be the scariest thing about him, and how close he gets to her. “He lies in your bed. Never sleeps. Never eats.”

The Mischiever does not walk; he jumps and dances. Reminiscences of being born on the day his mother died. His father danced too, with a drunk midwife. He could go back to those good ol' days, he says, but he has to stay here. She asks why, and he says he, too, is shackled.

“To what?”

He grins and strokes the short, black horse hair on his chin.

“Loneliness.”

“You don’t seem lonely,” she says with an air of authority.

“And you do not listen. Looks can be deceiving, dear."

He reaches behind him and shows her what she was once chained to, “And will be again, forever. But perhaps we can help each other.”

He places her husband's broken heart on a rock where the moon is strong. “Shoot it,” he says.

“What will happen?”

“It’s big game. I cannot say. I cannot ruin the fun!”

She gives the Mischiever a sour look and draws the bow.

“Wait! This is all wrong. It won’t be good.”

“What?”

“This is not him. This is only a wound. You must strike your ex-husband!”

“He still is my husband.”

“Not if you strike him in the presence of another, Cupid.”

“Cupid?”

“Cute and stupid, for I heard the ominous voice as well. He gave you until the anniversary of your death?”

“Yes.”

“Then you know where he is. Strike him, and set us all free.”

“But if I miss?”

“You will with your eyes open. Close them, cupid, and think of your first fond memory with him.” He touches his face, distraught by his own willingness to help them, with long, hoof nails at the end of his thin, red fingers. “But I must warn you. That moment will go with the arrow, and like all, it will belong to time. Hear my warnings, dear. One memory, or the arrow will give him aversion instead of love.”

She lifts her bow, but it pleads with her to only release the arrow once. She has been lucky that it just falls when she tries.

“Go, cupid. Go now!”

She does. She runs from the woods to the cemetery. A cinematic snow falls like shreds of paper.

He stands at her grave and apologizes for being so late this year. In his hands is another letter, which he places in a little red tin. He touches her grave and says, “I’m still learning to hunt for you.”

“What?”

He sees a woman drop flowers on another grave. He apologizes.

“I talk here, sometimes.”

“Mhm.”

“Sorry.”

She doesn’t pay him much attention, and he feels awful beside his wife.

She sees him and raises her bow. She shakes. She is very nervous, but the butterflies in her stomach remind her of a weekend they spent in bed. She closes her eyes, and a tear rolls down each side of her face. She pulls back and releases, opens her eyes, terrified that her husband is not pierced. She tries to reach him but gets nowhere until a small fire starts, and the red tin of letters burns, The Sleeping Mischiever, Christopher in disguise. It screams, “Cupid!” and vanishes. Her heart still sinks, but her husband does not seem to notice the letters are gone; as a matter of fact, she isn’t even sure if there were any letters or a red tin. She looks for the arrow and finds she did not hit her intended target, but she hit the right one. The woman who walks in the snow, and as if they had known each other for years, holds her husband's hand beside her grave and kiss forever.