Page 40 of Bloody Bargain
“Iesu Mawr,”Owena whispered, fingers creeping along the inseam of her pants. What was his name, Daniel? Darnell? His voice was as rich as chocolate and just as sinful. She took a deep breath every time he spoke, as if she could inhale his voice and keep it in her ears forever.
“As you will it,” he said in a tortured hum and Owena practically came apart, rubbing two fingers shamelessly against the seam pressing into her panties.
Then somethingbroke.A pipe? A dam? The world? A deluge of salt water with swirls of pink and red rushed under the door, dowsing Owena’s jeans. She gasped as the bloody water soaked through her shoes, bits of curly bright orange hair washing up against the baseboards. She picked up a clump, heart in her throat.
It… It was Cheryl’s hair color.
Owena swallowed air in tiny gulps, fingers shaking uncontrollably. She attempted to pull her phone from her apron pocket, but it clattered out of her fingers with a soft thump on the bath mat. Red-hot terror scorched her cheeks and temples as she picked it up and clutched it to her chest with wide rabbit eyes.
Terror overwhelmed her as the silence settled. Terror and a strange excitement that closed her throat and tightened her chest. It was the sort of rubbernecking fascination that came with the thrill of standing near a disaster. Owena would tell stories about the murder in her bed and breakfast for years to come. Once the village settled down, she could find a tasteful way to use it. Frame the news articles in the foyer, hold seances…
Aahhh,there it was. Greed. Envy. Lust. So many of our favorite things, all in a single hope for the future. Owena bit her lip, imagining what she might find on the other side of the door. Would sweet Cheryl’s body be desecrated? The sounds had been horrendous. Surely the mess would be too. Would guests decades from now whisper about how her blood had soaked into the floorboards and ruined the carpets?
Our dress brushed Owena’s shoulder as we breathed in the scent of her spirit like a fine wine. She squeaked, falling against the sink drawers.
“Such a sour vintage, love. A little more lust, we think. Go on, imagine D’abel’s fat cock in place of that door knob again. You’ll taste much sweeter.”
Owena tried to scream but her throat was too tight to get a sound out. Her heart galloped in her chest. She clutched the countertop with white-knuckled fingers as she drank us in.
We rarely knew what we looked like from moment to moment, but there was no doubt that Owena saw a vision of herself. Successful, well-dressed, without a bandana and rag in tow. She was still an innkeeper, but dark chic in a grey linen dress and a white Chelsea collar. Very twenties Chanel. Morose and devastatingly interesting with lips that glistened like cranberries.
Her spirit sweetened just a hair as she glanced from her lips on our face that were plump with money to the doorknob by her cheek. We smiled a cupid’s bow smile.Muchbetter.
The innkeeper opened her mouth just as we opened ours. A little parlor trick. A little fun. It always made a mortal’s blood drain. She snapped her mouth shut and pressed her back harder into the cabinets.
“I know, I know.Manyquestions stewing beneath that crown of yours,” we cooed, toying with one of the doe’s stray curls.
“How?” the innkeeper breathed. A tear blazed a trail along the shell of her nostril to the top of her thinning, chapped lips and we brushed it away. She pressed her shaking fingers to our cheek with reverence.
“Dear Owena. Secrets are not secrets for long when the uninvited hear them. What if one of my dearaufwere to catch hold of you? The b’adruokh’s freedom will have been wasted.” We tsked. “We are not as cruel as our children.” We tilted our head, squinting through the door. “Or lazy. Can you believe he called us a spectator? Laughable.”
“Th-the elf?”
We pressed our thumb against her mouth and heat consumed her toes, her ankles, her legs, like the rising mercury in a thermometer. Her stare glazed over as she admired the softness of her own mouth and the prick of her own almond-shaped manicure. The length of her own slender neck, the voluptuous breasts she’d give herself if the profits on Cheryl’s death were as good as she hoped.
“Is it so bad to give yourself over to the things you want?” we murmured, mouth close enough to hers that she could smell her own raspberry lip gloss. We breathed her in, admiring how her skin broke down around her eyes into the ravines of age. The death of hair follicles in her eyebrows and forehead.
We stroked the fine lines in the divot of the bridge of her nose, flicking our nail off the tip gently. “There’s no shame in the gift we offer you, dear Owena. You can love yourself again through us.”
We brushed our lips against her nose and Owena’s abdomen tightened with syrupy anticipation. She squirmed on the tiles, every nerve at attention, and breathed herself in. Our clothes smelled of peonies and our flesh glittered like crystals of sunlight. We were aglow with warmth and the innkeeper’s lost youth, so inviting…
How could have she squandered her twenties and thirties with things like children and elderly parents? It wasn’t fair that she looked in the mirror now and saw her mother and aunts. If she’d had money and freedom, she would be full up with memories of men and club lights, expensive suites and envious whistles.
“Yes,” Owena breathed, lost to the ecstasy of our illusions. Her eyes filled with fog as her corneas decayed and we smiled lovingly, brushing her hair as it fell from her crown and joined Cheryl’s curls in the bloody water beneath her knees.
“Drift into eternity, dear Owena,” we purred, committing her face to our billions. She no longer held affection for the body that served her so faithfully, but we would honor it. Remember it. Welcome it into the bliss of our bright darkness.
Our lips pressed to hers in a sweet, ripe kiss. Owena burned, consumed by the majesty of her own beauty. She was everything, the universe in a mortal sheath made to blink out like a falling star and all the more precious for it. The cosmic light our children craved so desperately roared in her.
Owena slid her fingers into the tendrils of our hair, pulling us deeper into her soul as she tangled her tongue with ours. Her flesh tore, the heat of her spirit pouring from her like lava, dousing the water closet, the yellow suite, the village, the land with a light that could not be extinguished.
Owena lost track of where her toes ended and the tiles began. She didn’t notice how the water gathered in droplets in the air and squeezed through the cracks of the door, or how the old windows rattled with the b’adruokh’s passions. She could no longer tell if she had hair of her own, or eyes or lungs or clothes. The ends of her fingers felt smooth like clay, without nails or knuckle skin. Her teeth loosened and rattled in emaciated gums. Her bones ground down their joints and turned to dust.
She was so much more than she’d ever known.
Sinking into our bright darkness. Sinking into dust and soil.
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