myu's story stuff

[myu]

So over livestream the other day, I mentioned that I have some novels in the works, and that maybe I'd post some of my writings here. This, however, is not from one of my longer pieces. It's just a short story.

As a warning: I like writing about darker subject matter, just so people know. This particular story contains necrophilia, though nothing too detailed. Enjoy and let me know what you think.

Waxen Love

Saul was a simple man. He held an average job and his thoughts weren’t more complex than deciding which pair of socks to wear and what to eat for breakfast. Everything he did was predictable; he had a habitual schedule that he never faltered from. He was a man who played it safe and never aspired to be anything greater than he was.

His most cherished habit and pastime – something he would never not do – was sitting on a burgundy aged recliner in front of the single window in his apartment. He’d sit for hours from the time he got off work to the time he retired for the evening. Saul could be described as a people watcher, but there was really only one person he waited for when he looked out on the streets below each day.

Her name was Sara Lee. She was twenty-four years old and had recently graduated from a university she’d attended overseas. She had shoulder-length brown hair, fair skin and inquisitive green eyes. Sara Lee got off the city bus at around three p.m. every other day and walked one block to the flower shop to buy a single flower. Saul didn’t know what kind of flower it was though; he didn’t know much about flowers.

The two of them had never spoken, but Saul fancied they did quite often. He spoke to friends who had friends who spoke to her. Through them he learned that Sara Lee had two older siblings, that she had a monarch butterfly tattoo on her lower back and that, underneath her gentlewoman appearance, she was partial to horror flicks. That was what sparked his fledgling horror collection. But it sat on the shelf collecting dust because he wasn’t one who could stomach that sort of thing. All the blood and dead bodies gave him nightmares.

It was through those friends of friends who knew Sara Lee that he learned the flowers were lilies. Who they were for remained ever a mystery, but finding out was on his list of things to do. Just like talking to her face-to-face.

He liked to imagine she was doing some sort of altruistic duty to a sickly friend and that her increasingly pale complexion was due to her many hours spent indoors keeping that friend company. He loved that she had such compassion. Every day that her shoulders were more stooped forward, he noted how dedicated Sara Lee was to her sick, bedridden friend. How noble a woman she was, he thought. He loved that about her. That, and just about everything else.

One Thursday afternoon he took his same seat at his single window, predictable as ever. The weather was rather gloomy; thick grey clouds plastered the sky and no breeze touched the streets. Hardly anyone was about, but no matter, Sara Lee always came in any kind of weather. The city bus rolled up at three, just as expected. Two people got off, both men.

Saul’s heart skipped a beat, but he quickly caught himself. She would come, she always did. He knew his Sara Lee and could predict any move she’d make. He’d wait, even if it meant turning to stone where he sat.

Five o’clock…. Seven…

With every passing hour the tick-tock of his wristwatch grew louder, until it felt like a gunshot into his brain each second. At ten o’clock he launched it across the room. The wristwatch exploded on impact, tiny pieces of metal scattered across the floor. It didn’t matter; Saul had never liked the watch anyway.

The street lights flickered on as he continued to sit there, waiting for his Sara Lee. In the quiet of his apartment, his mind started to wander. Why hadn’t she come? Where was she right now? Was it that sickly friend who kept her away from him? Was she just out with friends? Saul’s knee started to bounce up and down as his thoughts trailed on to something less pleasant. Was she with another man? Was his ever-loyal and beloved Sara Lee cheating on him? No, he reassured himself, she would never do that. He knew her, didn’t he? Yes, and better than anyone else, he liked to think.

All the same, even if he did know all about her, his nerves grew and grew until he thought his heart would shut down from them. He couldn’t control it anymore. Bouncing nerves turned into a throbbing anger. What else would keep her away?

There, all alone in the dark, Saul started coming up with ideas of how Sara Lee was going behind his back like a harlot. He tried to picture the man who had stolen her so that he would know whose ass to kick the next day. He also guessed that man was the person who she was giving the flowers to. The devotion that his Sara Lee exhibited for that person was disgusting now. He couldn’t believe she was doing that to him, that the devotion he deserved in return for his was being thrown at some jackass who probably didn’t even appreciate it. She belonged to him – him and no one else.

For the first time in years, Saul got up from his recliner without having seen his Sara Lee.

The next morning Saul woke up with the resolve to find what the hell was going on. He skipped work and didn’t answer the phone when his boss called. He dug through his closet to find the phonebook he never used to look up Sara Lee’s number. If she wouldn’t come to him, then he would go to her and it wouldn’t be pretty. Every part of his mind was alight with the thoughts of telling her off. He’d show her that she couldn’t just take everything he’d done for her for granted without so much as a ‘thank you, but there’s someone else who does more for me than you, Saul.’ Who the hell did more for her than him? No one, that’s who. When he found her number in the phone book and started to dial it, he paused. For a split second he wondered if he wasn’t jumping to conclusions. He spoke to friends who had friends who spoke to her; they would have known if she was seeing someone. They would have told them.

Unless they were all conspiring against him. Those bastards. A person couldn’t trust anyone anymore.

With his new realization he dialed the number, pushing the buttons so hard that they almost got stuck. Saul had to check himself when the person on the other end answered so that he didn’t yell at them.

“I need to speak with Sara Lee,” he said in a shaky voice.

There was silence at first and then a weak, “Sara Lee?”

“Yes, that’s what I said.”

“Don’t you know?”

Saul was growing more agitated. What was this, some person covering for her? She must have known he was going to call. “Yes, of course I know. Put her on the damn phone!”

“If you know, then…” The person’s voice faded away and Saul thought he heard muffled crying on the other side. When it came back, the voice was all sobs and words in between, “You can’t… you can’t speak with her…”

“Why the hell not?!”

The crying was louder now and he had to hold the phone away from his ear so as not to deaf.

“What’s wrong with you? She died yesterday and you call asking for her. What kind of person does that?”

“She’s….” That was all he could manage to say before he hung up the phone so quickly it fell to the floor. He stood there, frozen and regretting every thought he’d had the night before. Saul should have known his Sara Lee would never cheat on him like that. He should have known no other person could ever come between them, no one except death – something that was entirely beyond her control. He fell back against the wall and slid to the floor.

Her pale skin and hunching body weren’t the results of sacrificing for a dear friend; they were the results of an illness. He couldn’t leave things as they were. He had to fix the corrupted image he’d made of her with his own paranoia. Saul would see Sara Lee again very soon.

He had planned to wait at least a day since the phone call, but that was too long for him. He couldn’t live with himself that long without seeing her face again. He rode the bus for the first time in his life, and sat in the very back so that no one would look at him and notice that he was just a shell of a man without the love of his life. There wasn’t anyone on the bus to look at him though, just him and the driver, but Saul imagined it was full of people. They all kept looking back at him and he just looked back with dark hollow eyes.

The bus came to a squeaky stop at the corner of the last block on the edge of town. He got off and walked halfway to the other side before stopping in front of the cemetery gates. They were at least two times his height and made of grey wrought iron and set the somber tone of the area. Saul walked in, taking a flashlight out of a small bag he’d brought with him. There were no lights in the cemetery because the dead didn’t need to see where they were going. He had only taken about a hundred paces in when he shined his light on the numerous headstones.

If it were anyone else looking for Sara Lee’s grave, they would have been there for the whole night trying to find it, but Saul knew exactly where to go. Sara Lee’s family was old and they had their own family plot. He’d walked by it several times and knew that one day they would be buried there together.

He moved his light along a row of headstones until he came to one that looked new. It was a mourning angel kneeling over newly dug earth with its wings drooping on both sides. He smiled, thinking it was only fitting that the angels should over losing one of their own. He placed his bag and flashlight on the ground next to an array of flowers left by mourners. Saul got down on his hands and knees and started to dig up her grave. He hadn’t brought a shovel; he hadn’t planned that far ahead, but the earth was soft enough that it wasn’t so hard for him to do.

At first he was calm and methodical about the digging, making sure that none of the dirt fell back into the grave. But as he got closer and closer to her coffin – to seeing his Sara Lee again – he became increasingly frantic and threw dirt in every direction. Some of it fell back in and some of it went so far that it landed on other graves. He reached his hand into the dirt and it crashed into something hard. His heart racing, Saul jumped into the hole and started to claw at the side of the coffin. He rocked it back and forth until it rolled onto its side where he could open the lid more easily.

He tried to gather himself between ragged breaths, but gave up after two minutes. He placed his hands gently on the lid and pulled. It opened easily, and he tried to keep too much dirt from falling onto Sara Lee.

Saul held his breath.

His Sara Lee was still beautiful. Her skin was still pale and she was obviously not moving, but Saul could have sworn he’d seen her breathing. She’s just sleeping, he thought, sleeping and everyone buried her alive. She was white and glowing like the moon. He thought himself her savior, and the one true person who loved her more than anything. Saul wiped his hands off on his clothes before he touched her. When he placed his hand her face, he could have sworn he saw her smile and then he knew that this was meant to be. He’d always known they were made for each other.

In the earliest hours of the morning, just before the sun started to rise, Saul carried his love on foot back to his apartment. No one was awake yet to see the spectacle of a man running along the sidewalk with a fresh corpse cradled lovingly in his arms. He ran up the stairs to the fourth floor because the elevator took too long to come down and pushed through the door to his apartment. Saul placed Sara Lee at the small table in his kitchen and went back to lock the front door.

He’d never locked it before, but then he’d never had anything in his apartment worth protecting before either. He knew that if he didn’t lock it, someone would try to come in and take Sara Lee away from him. Saul couldn’t let them do that. She was his and no one else understood that. He looked at her sitting at the table, her head leaning forward and her hands resting in her lap. Saul didn’t have to ask her what was wrong, being her other half he knew exactly what to do.

Sara Lee had been underground for so long she must have been starving. He set about the kitchen, preparing a meal for the two of them to share. He gave her a plate and sat across from her with his own. They started talking, and Saul apologized profusely for his ill thoughts toward her. She told him not worry and that she forgave him because she loved him. Saul beamed. She loved him. His Sara Lee loved him. Despite everything that had happened between them, she was still devoted to him and unselfish. He loved that about her even more now than ever.

He got up from the table and told her he’d be right back. Saul strode to his room and dug through his sock drawer for something important. He’d been holding onto it for some time, and was overjoyed that the moment had finally come. Sara Lee turned her head to him when he came back and smiled when he knelt down on one knee in front her. He held up a small velvet box and said four words. It wasn’t enough that they both knew she was his. He wanted to make it official, and of course her answer was yes.

That was all it took to make his life complete. Saul lifted Sara Lee up from the table and spun around with her in his arms. He loved her even more now that he had her in his possession, and he would never let her leave. That didn’t matter though, as Saul knew in his heart that his Sara Lee would never try to leave him. She hadn’t done it before – it had been her family and the rest of the town that had taken her away. He wasn’t going to let that happen again.

Sara Lee looked at him with closed eyes and Saul did the same, slowly lowering his head to meet hers until their lips touched. He couldn’t have imagined the moment would be more amazing. Her lips were cold against his, but he knew it was just the feeling of a first kiss. Saul remembered the stories his friends told about their first times kissing. They had no idea what they were talking about; the kisses in their stories weren’t ones of true love. Saul couldn’t begin to describe his kiss with Sara Lee in words. When he moved his face away from hers, he couldn’t even remember what words were or if they had ever existed in the first place. There was just a feeling and, in that moment, there was no world outside of his apartment.

By this time, the sun was just above the taller buildings of the town and, when its light started to break in through his lonely apartment window, he crossed the room to it with Sara Lee still cradled in his arms. He glowered down on the streets of the people who tried to keep Sara Lee from him. Did they think they could overpower true love? He hated them all – even the people he’d never met or seen before in his life. Saul took hold of the blind’s drawstring, but before he could close it he saw someone on the street. It was the owner of the flower shop, looking up at him and his beautiful bride with wide eyes and a gaping mouth.

Saul smirked at the man below. What, was he jealous? Of course he was. Everyone one of those people down there should be. They didn’t think he would end up with her, but then those poor bastards didn’t know anything to begin with. He’d been touched by an angel and now the angel was bound to him in holy matrimony. Saul pulled the blinds down while the man of the flower shop was still locked on the portrait of them in the window.

That was the last that anyone saw of Saul or his Sara Lee.

Days later there was an article in the newspaper about a body having been robbed from a grave in the dead of night. The family was grieving the loss of their daughter, and now the theft of her body. Rumors took root in the town quickly and grew for months. No one knew anything and the authorities were left without a lead. Sara Lee had been adored by everyone so they couldn’t figure out who would do something so horrible. Saul was a simple man and had no criminal records tied to his name.

It wasn’t until he was filed as a missing person that the flower shop owner came forward with what he’d seen in Saul’s window on the morning of the body’s disappearance. Complaints from other building residents about a foul and curious stench coming from the apartment spurred suspicion forward. The authorities broke into Saul’s apartment with a warrant. It was black inside and none of the lights worked when they tried to turn them on. One person was brave enough to wander in silently to the window, covering his mouth and nose along the way. When he drew the curtains and the blinds, dust flew up into the air. The inside of the room hadn’t seen light for some time. The chairs at the table were drawn away as if someone had just left after a meal and plates lay with half-eaten moldy food on them.

The authorities worked their way further into the apartment. They knocked on the bathroom door, but there was no answer. They opened it to see the tub filled to the brim with old murky water and then closed it again. The stench was coming from the depths of the apartment, behind the bedroom door.

The door was locked, so they had to break it open. It took three people to do it and when the door flew open an even stronger smell came out. Some of them had to run from the room before they passed out – others weren’t so lucky. No one had anticipated seeing what was there.

Saul was laying in his bed, pale, emaciated and very much a corpse. His arm was wrapped around a woman dressed in all white with a ring on her finger. They all recognized her as Sara Lee; she was perfectly preserved and looked the same as she did on the day she died. Saul had covered her in a layer of wax to keep her from decaying as quickly as a normal corpse would have. He had then taken her to bed, and died with a smile on his face.

[Cavemonkynick]

Wow, that was a bit morbid, but it was very well written. I liked it:)