House of Skin

Dear Eddy,

I think these letters are at an end. This is the final installment. I’ll say what’s left to say and we’ll leave it at that.

After we killed that cop, half of the state was organized against us. I assumed they were, anyway. The only problem with our law enforcement agencies is their lack of organization, their lack of cooperation with one another. Had things been different with them, they would have have pieced together our trail and followed.

Thank God for their ineptitude.

We had places to go.

Do you remember where we went next?

We drove the car down to the end of that dirt road and left on foot. Hand in hand, we set out through the woods together. Through fields and thickets. It was nearly dawn and the rain had subsided.

“Where to?” you asked.

I led on and we bounded up a hill. The grass was yellow and wilted. I turned and kissed you. I saw love in your eyes. You saw it in mine. There was a stone wall and we climbed over it. The air was cool, still. Overhead, the dark sky was heavy with bloated clouds pregnant with rain. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

It was perfect.

A cemetery.

I don’t remember the name of it. I’d been there many times before and still the name eludes me. My family was buried there. In the damp, black earth they were waiting for me. I thought I could almost hear them weeping. I brought you to the back of the cemetery. Where the graves are old, the weeds long, the trees crooked and thick-limbed. You picked up a bouquet of wilted flowers along the way and gave them to me. I loved you so much then it hurt.

I led you to the vault.

It was overgrown with skeletal creepers. We had to hack our way through. The door was open, it was always open. I used to go there to be alone, to think, when I was a girl before the trouble started. It was as I remembered it. Frozen in time.

Our honeymoon cottage.

It was cold inside. A rush of dry, October wind greeted us. Your hand was in mine. My heart belonged to you. There were dead autumn leaves carpeting the floor and they crunched underfoot.

“Here?” you said.

“Yes.”

I started to laugh and I couldn’t seem to stop.

You were trembling.

When you closed the door behind us, it made a scratching sound. Sweet, dread music on this day of days. Tarnished bronze plaques were set into the cracked, mildewed walls. This was our place. There was a rotting bier and you broke it into kindling, lighting a fire with it. Flames licked orange and yellow. Huge, grotesque shadows played over the walls. We made love then amongst the dead and dreaming. There were ancient, mummified flowers and you threw their petals into the air. They drifted lazily down over my shuddering nakedness.

I was yours. You were mine.

You forgave me for what came next. I know you did.

In the dank, dusty confines of our tomb, I put the razor in your throat. You died quickly. There was little pain. Our moment was captured forever in that still, October place of time and memories. I laid with you all day while a frozen wind blew leaves and dead roses over us. While spiders spun webs and the dead became dust. Sometime later, a moon rose in the raging sky. It was huge and full and orange. Almost as huge as your dead, staring eyes.

When night came I was still there. I never left. In that vault of funereal charm and cold mourning my heart burns forever. A bleeding corpse-fat candle.

I still hear the wind, the thunder, the graveyard rats clawing in the walls. We’ll always be together in our womb of dread and beauty.

Good-bye, Eddy. Good-bye dark heart.

My screams go on forever.

Yours,

Cherry