A Dead Man’s Bargain

The room was silent as I walked in. I slowly reached up to the kitchen counter and placed my small briefcase upon it. I reached to flick up the lights and flit my eyes around the room I had once felt so dear. Little signs of Lydia filled the small cracks and crevices in the house we had once shared. I had worked to remove the objects that provided too extreme a reminder of her presence, putting them in large boxes in my mothers house. Dresses, coats, jewelry, and shoes, filled with the traces of her scent and reminder of her smile were all erased from our home. But it was the little things, the warm lights she had chosen for our bedside tables, the old green rug she’d gotten from her grandfather after he had passed, the color coordinated furniture in all of our rooms, that left me gripped with grief at the loss of her presence. Virtually no room in our house had been left untouched by her influence.

I felt the ever-present pain in my skull worsen as I walked through the hallway into the bathroom, slowly reaching to the sink to wash my hands of the grime built up in the day. I gazed at myself in the mirror, my hair and beard had grown out, getting scraggly at the ends and creating a beastly look to my previously unassuming appearance. My eyes once a vibrant blue had dulled to dark, almost-black red, with dark black smudges beneath them contrasting the new pinkish pallor infecting my skin. Lumps and dark spots covered my face and body turning me into more monster than man.

It was then, when I was standing staring at the mirror I saw a slight movement in the hallway behind me. It couldn't be– could it? It must be a trick of the shadows, as I swore I could see the silhouette of Lydia standing quietly as she always did at the end of the hall.

“Hello?” I cried into the dark, willing my eyes to adjust faster, to prove to me that what I had seen was simply a trick of the night, a result of the little sleep I had been getting since Lydia’s death. But there she was, sure as day, stood before me. And once I had confirmed that it was truly her before me I allowed all reason to run from my mind as I scrambled towards her, my hands reaching out to grab her, any part of her, aching to cup her cheek, run my fingers through her long tresses of hair unbound by the braids and twists and styles she so often had it held up in, to look into her eyes and tell her how much I loved her. How even the meager mortal boundary of death could never take from me the devotion I felt for her.

And yet when I reached her all I saw in her eyes was pain, a pain so indescribable I felt myself momentarily speechless, unable to do anything but look into her eyes, searching for the cause of such despair. And suddenly, as we stood there, my hand frozen in an outreaching position, inches from her face, she opened her mouth and began to speak.

“Why did you do it?” she asked me, her eyebrows furrowed, “why did you kill me?” I still could not speak nor move, so I simply waited for her to continue. “You did this to me. You saw my pain and you did nothing.” Her voice was rising now, a deeper anger gripping her, “Why? Why did you not see? Why did you ignore me? Were you so repulsed by me you didn’t care whether I died or not?” Suddenly, with the suggestion that I might not have cared for her, I was snapped out of my paralysis.

“Of course I loved you, I love you, still!” I cried out, putting both of my hands on either side of her face. “You were the very air I breathed Lydia, there is no life without you, look at me!” I released my hold on her and madly gestured at myself. “Look at me Lydia I am a beast without you, I am no longer a man, the man you loved, I am but a husk, no less a ghost than you.” And with those words the pain in my head worsened as little buds started to grow from my temples, curving into long pointed horns the shape of a goat’s. “You did this to me! You left me. You left me to live alone in this world. You killed me.” My skin was red now and a forked tail wrapped around my leg, I pointed my finger at Lydia, letting her see the monster she had turned me into. “It is you who should be ashamed.”

Large wet tears start to fall down her face and her body starts to morph, her long hair pulled up as if by an invisible force back into that braid she so loved, a familiar old black dress wrapped itself around her form, a trickle of blood started to flow down the side of her throat, and she started to raise into the air. Suddenly we were no longer in the hallway but in our room, the shades drawn and a neatly written note sat on the floor beside her hanging feet. “Lydia, oh Lydia!” I cried, grabbing the stool tossed on the ground and desperately trying to untie the rope around her neck. “Oh I am sorry, I was so despicable, please, I am sorry, please, come down now, visit me again I will be good, please don’t leave me again. I beg of you!” I cried and wept into her arms, holding her limp body against me, a dead weight that moments ago was filled with such life.

I cried and wept until it was just me alone, sitting on the same old green carpet, in the same empty hallway where she had once been.