Just a quick flash story for the season
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Another October 31 had rolled around on the calendar. I, Carol Robeson, made my final preparations for the annual Robeson All Hallows Eve Scare a Thon. It was the highlight party of the year in our neighborhood. The house was bathed in an eerie orange light that flickered. I had my long hallway blacked out and at the entrance a black light that illuminated a glow in the dark skeleton and further down a motion activated strobe light that flashed rapidly as my ghoulish guests passed through. The pièce de ré·sis·tance was a billowy ghost that was tripped by a pressure sensor pad on the floor and the ghosts “flew right at the person that stood on the pad and as quickly retreated once the pressure on the pad was released.
As they exited the hallways another skeleton was posed and pointed at the door to the backyard where the party was being held. Over the years I and my husband Jim had created a virtual cornucopia of gadgets, lights, and special effects to transform our mild-mannered suburban home and yard into a truly haunting and terrifying experience for friends and neighbors. I loved Halloween and my motto is “the gorier the better”. I had just walked into the garage and put the last of the food I prepared into the spare refrigerator. Jim normally manned the grill but this year I decided to have the bulk of the food catered. The reason was simple, Jim wouldn’t be here this year and I didn’t want to even attempt that huge of an undertaking.
As I closed the door to the refrigerator in the garage, I heard the front door open and close. When I returned to the kitchen, a startled voice travelled down the haunted hallway. A man emerged from the other side and had carried in a large and thick Styrofoam cooler which he sat on the counter. Just then the caterer called and told me that my food and the warming trays had arrived and I needed to tell her where to stage everything. I had even ordered a humongous ice sculpture shaped like a gargoyle. So, I retreated to the backyard having left the man standing in my kitchen without so much as a welcome greeting and instructed the catering staff as to where to set things up. After I gave them their instructions, I returned to the house where my husband’s best friend stood.
I asked him, “Any problem getting the dry ice?” Charlie Harper replied, “No problem at all. We’ll have steaming bowls of witch’s brew aplenty!” he chuckled.
I did a creepy witch’s laugh and said, “Thank you my pretty! We’re running late, got your makeup kit?” Charlie said, “Yes, mistress of the dark. I’ll meet you upstairs as soon I retrieve it from the car.”
Charlie had done theatrical makeup in college for stage productions and for film students for their student project film productions. He had soon transformed me from a typical suburban housewife into a tremendously hideous and frightening witch. As I donned my costume, I looked in the mirror and realized in combination with Charlie’s makeup magic, how it gave the full effect of the wicked witch. As I dressed as Charlie worked on his own makeup. When he finished his makeup and dressed, he looked every bit the part of a 19th century east European count. He smiled and then suddenly his fangs descended as he said, “I want to drink your blood!” He had bought a set of movie prop fangs that dropped and retracked via a small lever he worked with his tongue that was hidden behind the prosthesis.
He made a bee line for my neck and I told him, “Easy there Drac, I don’t want to mess up my makeup. Besides, it’s nearly the witching hour and the ghosts, ghouls and goblins are soon nigh! Its time for the haunting to begin!” as I laughed my eerie witch’s cackle. So, we made our way to the backyard via the garage where we retrieved the punch bowls and food. Charlie and I then went to the kitchen where I got out pints of sherbet and he brought out the dry ice as we added the finishing touches to my “pots” of witch’s brew.
I had placed a sign at the front door that said, “Enter at your peril”. My guests had all attended former parties and knew to just walk in. Charlie admired the latest addition to the décor in the backyard. It was a freshly dug grave and I had placed a wooden tombstone I had specially carved behind it. The inscription said, “There once was a man who got in my way and now through eternity in this grave doth he lay.” Charlie said, “Nice touch!” I heard a scream emit from the haunted hallway and guessed someone encountered my flying specters. Several couples had arrived and it wasn’t long before the party was in full swing. We ate, drank, and danced to the likes of the Monster Mash and One Eyed Flying Little Purple People Eaters.
After we all had consumed a fair amount of fortified witch’s brew the lights “mysteriously” went out and “lightning” flashed across the inky blackness before a muted orange, white light spookily appeared over the grave in the backyard. As everyone’s attention shifted to the newest attraction, I planned to give my annual thanks to all who attended but before I uttered a single word, I felt something as it grabbed me by the ankle. Charlie and the others looked and watched in horror as a hand emerged from the freshly dug grave, the hand now wrapped around my ankle.
Then as another bolt of lightning struck a body in its entirety burst out of the grave. The undead spoke, released my ankle and pointed his fingers at me and Charlie and said, “They tried to kill me and buried me alive!” The body then collapsed. At first everyone was frightened by what they believed to be an All Hallows Eve Scare A Thon classic prank. Some began to laugh when one our friend’s, John, who’s a doctor and dressed as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde went as he said, “To finally ‘pronounce the body truly good and dead’.” Charlie and I had freaked out at the sight just as John rolled the body over.
He examined the body and noticed that there was real blood soaked into the “victim’s clothes. He used his sleeve to wipe the dirt from his face and proclaimed, “My God, it’s Jim and he’s been stabbed!” He phoned 911 and soon the sound of sirens invaded the neighborhood and the backyard was infiltrated by police and paramedics. The paramedics attempted to stabilize him and then transported Jim to the hospital while hordes of police questioned everyone.
John and the other witnesses told them the same story about how the body emerged from the ground and proclaimed that Charlie and I had tried to kill him and buried him alive before he collapsed. They had all believed it to be another prank to scare everyone and it had until John decided to play along and examined the body. John told them he’d discovered it was my husband and that he had truly been stabbed and was bleeding profusely so he dialed 911.
The witnesses all said that they were appalled and mortified when John informed them that their neighbor had been stabbed, buried, and left for dead. Charlie and I were escorted into the living room and were informed of our Miranda rights and arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. We both remained silent as we were led out. Charlie and I were placed in separate cars and whisked away to the nearest police precinct.
Epilogue
I later learned that Jim had immediate surgery for the 12 stab wounds I had inflicted. He had the audacity to live for just 13 hours. Though it didn’t matter in the long run. I also discovered that Charlie took a deal they offered me, a reduced sentence for indicating my partner’s complicity in the murder of my husband. He confessed and gave them the whole sordid story. He mostly told them the truth about how we had a torrid love affair and wanted to be together. He detailed how I had wanted to get everything I could from Jim and had plotted to stab and bury him in the backyard on Halloween and hide the fact as part of the party décor. His absence and later disappearance would be explained by the claim that he’d left me and run off with another woman. I’d divorce him for abandonment and get everything. Once the divorce went through Charlie and I’d be married.
He told them he encouraged me to get a divorce but that he did help hide the body when he learned of the murder and believed they’d get away with it. He told them he had done so because he loved me and had wanted me for years. My one fatal flaw was to pick such a pantywaist as Charlie. He testified at my trial. He left out the part where he had constantly been in my ear about how he had wanted Jim out of our lives permanently. How did I know he meant divorce?
Charlie pled guilty and received a life sentence with possibility of parole after 13 years. Given my husband’s dying declaration, Charlie’s collaborating testimony that included how we immediately went upstairs and fucked on my marital bed right after we buried Jim in the backyard. Coupled with my emotionless demeanor in court, the jury had deliberated only 13 minutes before they found me guilty. The judge deemed my decision to murder my husband as cold, calculated, and as sadistic as it was horrific and then he sentenced me to death by lethal injection.
I tried to appeal but was denied and after several attempts at having my sentence commuted to life had failed, the date for my execution finally had arrived. The case and my subsequent trial had received widespread publicity locally and even garnered national attention. I was dubbed the “wicked witch killer”. The story was I was dressed as the witch when I stabbed Jim. They were wrong, I stabbed him before I fucked Charlie in our bed yet again and only after I finished preparing for the party had I donned my costume.
The prison chaplain came in and asked if I had any remorse for my actions. If so, my soul could be saved. I looked him in the eye and said, “Remorse? No. Regrets, yes. I wish I stabbed him 13 times, I’m sure that the thirteenth one he’d have been good and dead and would’ve saved me from all this nonsense. Also, my failure to select a real man for a paramour instead of that lily livered asshole who gave me up in a heartbeat.” The chaplain looked at me shocked, and said, “I’d ask God to have mercy on your soul but I doubt it would do any good.” He left as the jailer led me down the dark grey hallway of concrete that had walls a foot thick.
It was ironic that a thunderstorm raged outside and the lights flickered as we walked my final journey. I was led into room 666 and I was strapped to the gurney inside the room with leather restraints. A nurse placed the IV needle in my arm and secured it. A series of aligned tubes that had plungers on top held the chemical cocktail that assured my demise and plastic tubing ran down and joined a central tube connected to the IV needle, that line had a valve contained within.
In a room where a Plexiglas window was shrouded by curtains is where the button that activated the plungers was located. Several rows of seats sat inside where those seated in witness that I had indeed made my way to hades. The drapes slowly opened as it was nearly midnight. I saw the angered faces of my mother and father-in-law, Jim’s brother Tom and his sister Angela as they came like the grim reaper to make sure I was surely and truly dead. I heard the slow tick of the clock as it neared midnight, the witching hour.
At 11:59pm the warden made his statement, “Carol Lee Harris Robeson, as adjudicated by a court of law, having been found guilty of the crime of Murder in the first degree and by the order of the Governor, you are to be executed via lethal injection.” I saw his family smile as the clock struck 12 while the warden pressed the button and that activated the plungers behind me. I felt the fear rise as he finished speaking and it was quickly replaced by panic as the neuroparlyzer took hold. My mind screamed and struggled against the restraints while my body remained still and eerily calm. I soon felt extremely sleepy and I fought the darkness for as long as I could before I faded into nothingness.
As my soul left my body Jim suddenly appeared out of thin air. Although not corporal, we had a spectral form that looked much like our living bodies and not at all what I expected from a ghost. Jim looked at me in silence and he appeared to have a large stick match in his hand, like the kind used to light fireplaces and such. Suddenly I felt myself doused in a substance that smelled like gasoline. Jim smiled and said, “Before you can be committed to heaven two things must occur. You need to be cleansed and you need to be forgiven by the one whom you wronged in life. First the cleansing.” Jim struck the match in thin air as its flame released an acrid smell of brimstone. He knew in life that I had a deathly fear of fire and burning to death, a fear that had multiplied as he tossed the match in my direction and watched intently as I burst into flames.
I felt the immediate heat as it radiated and engulfed my apparitional form and with it the searing pain as it burned what I imagined to be flesh, a flesh that was now non-existent, and pain so severe that nothing like it existed on earth. I screamed in agony tortured by the flames that seemed to be continually fueled as to burn eternally, fueled by the inherent evil contained within my soul, the evil that led me to heartlessly murder my husband so I could be with my lover. I asked, “If you are truly of heaven how can you be vengeful? Did the Bible, not say, ‘Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord?”
Jim again looked me in the eyes, he now appeared serene and possessed an inner peace that wasn’t there when I first saw him before me. He spoke, and said, “I had, yet, ascended into heaven at least until this very moment. It is as it says in the Bible and vengeance is the purview of God himself. Occasionally, when the need for justice is strong, he allows victims to be his instrument of vengeance as a thus allowed them to achieve justice for themselves. As to forgiveness, that is in my purview and we will revisit it in say a millennium or so? Just to assure the evil has burned from your heartless soul. Goodbye Carol. See you in a thousand years, or so!” I watched as he magically and mysteriously disappeared much as he appeared.
My blood curdling screams reverberated and echoed as I was ensconced in that acrid odor and the only discernable light here in room 666 was the glow from my own flames. I had never felt so alone when it suddenly hit me, I had descended into hell. A hell of my own design where Jim held the only key to my salvation. I wondered what hurt the most, the flamed that burned and constantly tortured me or the knowledge that I was haunted by Jim’s peace at my expense. I wondered if the evil would ever be purged. I was suddenly plagued by the sound of my witch’s cackle as it reverberated incessantly in my consciousness. The laugh I had at Jim’s expense that fateful night I murdered him. Ironically, I realized that he had, had the last laugh after all. I was left burning, surrounded by that fetid smoke, and all alone except I faintly heard beneath me as a doctor pronounced, “Time of death 12:04 am, October 31.”