Blood and Bone: A Smattering of Unease (14 page)

“How
dare
you threaten me!”

“How dare I?
How dare I
? Obviously you need reminding that I’m the woman that you
killed
, your
wife
, no less, the same wife that you promised to love, cherish, and protect until death do us part. I think you’ve been a little remiss with your vows. If you had done what you had promised, you wouldn’t be in this situation. Speaking of which, how would you like a quick trip to prison tonight? Maybe you should think about
that
.” She smacked him on the arm with the poker, hard enough to sting, but not hard enough to bruise him.

Simon remained silent. He was sick of thinking about this “situation”. He was sick of Juniper reminding him of this “situation” each day, every chance she had.

He quietly completed every task Juniper demanded of him, while he fumed inside. He carefully prepared complicated recipes and threw them away, while his diet consisted of hot dogs, canned pasta, and cereal. Every day he vacuumed all of the carpets, swept and polished the hardwood, scrubbed both bathrooms and the kitchen, and dusted the furniture. Then there were additional chores: cutting firewood, cleaning the attic, washing the clothes, whatever Juniper could think of.

The chores weren’t easy for Simon; he’d been sitting behind a desk for the past two years. The most strenuous lifting he had done was to lift pens for signing contracts, credit card receipts, or checks.

He grew angrier with each passing day, but Juniper kept him in check with the damned fireplace poker. Just enough to remind him of the agreement he had signed, and of the photograph depicting evidence of his guilt.

He reflected upon his abrupt lack of control. He had always controlled every part of his life: work, home, Juniper, his acquaintances. His control had been wrested from him, and he didn’t like it one bit. He wracked his brain, following his thoughts in circles, trying to find a way out of this “situation”, but he couldn’t see any way out, other than to turn himself in and confess. And he wasn’t going to do that.

Hell, he couldn’t even just leave Juniper. He couldn’t abandon the house. This was
his
house, damn it! He’d had it designed and built for him long before Juni had come in to his life. Everything in it was
his
. He wasn’t about to relinquish any of his possessions, all of the fortune he had worked so hard to amass. Juni wasn’t entitled to a dime. But if he skipped out on her, he would lose it all.

It’s just not fair!
The thought was petulant, like an argumentative child.

The other voice, more faint, spoke up:
But this is the choice you made.

He couldn’t deny it.

He did the best he could, despite the circumstances. He hoped that if he performed the tasks well, Juniper’s rage would mellow, and maybe she would relent and he might be let out of the contract.

At least she stayed out of his way, most of the time. She emerged from her bedroom just long enough to give orders, to check that he had done the tasks she’d assigned to him, and to check the food he prepared. Otherwise, she stayed shut in . . . except when he heard her creaking around the dark house in the small hours of the morning. Simon stayed in his room during her nocturnal wanderings. Juniper was damned
creepy
. She scared him.

Simon wanted to kill his wife – again.
You can’t kill what’s already dead
, he thought. Plus, he had signed the contract. If nothing else, Simon was a man of his word. There were some many things he wanted to do to her from which he would derive satisfaction: break all of her fingers. Break her ribs and smash in her skull with a hammer. Beat her down and kick her until her ribs were broken.

But he couldn’t touch a hair on Juniper’s head. Not that there would be anything left to touch on her decomposing scalp, in a few weeks.

One of the things he was finding as he cleaned the house each day was Juniper’s hair. At first he found strands here and there. More recently, he had been finding small, honey colored clumps, sometimes with skin attached. They smelled like rot. Whenever Simon came across one of these treats, he wrinkled his nose and got the gloves. He wouldn’t touch the stuff with his bare hands.

He was also finding what seemed to be flakes of skin. These were becoming larger and more prevalent as the days passed. The large ones were more like gooey chunks. They stank so bad he wanted to vomit into the trash as he tossed them away.

Juni’s rotting, road-kill smell was permeating Simon’s entire house. The ripe, foul odor grew stronger with each passing day.

On the brief occasions when she showed her face, Simon noticed that she looked worse and worse. The skin of her face appeared as though it was melting. He could see parts of her graying flesh hanging off here and there in clumps and small shreds, and her teeth and parts of her jawbone jutted out, unprotected. Half of her scalp was completely gone, revealing the dirty looking parts of her skull beneath. She hadn’t changed her clothing in days; filthy with her decomposition, the shirt and jeans hung off of her skeletal frame.

It made his skin crawl with disgust.

It cheered Simon to think that maybe Juni would simply decay and fall apart, and he would be free again. He could just wait her out. But how long would that take? She was repulsive. He wasn’t sure just how much more of this he could stand.

And he couldn’t help but feel apprehensive about what was to come the day of their anniversary.

* * *

He was on edge that whole day; Friday, July 28
th
. He waited and waited, but he barely saw Juniper that day. He began to believe that, in her crumbling state, she had forgotten about the date.

He began to breathe a little easier as it became later and later. Finally, he went to bed.

His worst fears were realized when, shortly before midnight, he woke to the sound of the bed springs creaking as his dead wife slid beneath the blankets beside him. The stench was ungodly.

She moved close to him and draped a bony arm across his chest. “Don’t you remember our special day? It’s our anniversary! Today was the day that you put the ring on my finger and we both said, ‘I do’. We said our vows. But you’ve been neglecting me, hubby. That’s against the rules. Tsk, tsk, tsk. What do you say, baby? Let’s celebrate our anniversary with some old-fashioned lovin’.” Her voice gurgled and her fetid breath drifted up to his face.

Simon gagged and retched. Moaning, he pushed her arm away and threw the blankets aside. He stumbled out of the room.

Behind him, Juniper laughed, a low, gurgling, husky noise. “Aww, come on now, hubby! Now you’re hurting my feelings!” She called after him.

Never! Never, never, never, never, never!

He locked himself in his office.

There was still one thing he had control of.

* * *

Juniper slunk down the stairs to check on him about a half hour later. She rapped on the door of his office. “Simon,” she called in her gurgling voice.

Silence.

She called out and knocked again. When there was still no response, she pulled on a pair of latex disposable gloves she had grabbed from the kitchen.

Fishing a key from her pocket, Juniper unlocked the office door. When she found her husband dangling by his neck from the central beam in the exposed ceiling, she ran upstairs to shower and clean herself up.

Afterward, she donned a fresh pair of latex gloves before rummaging through her dead husband’s pockets, dropping the key into one of them when she was finished. 

Juniper then searched the room, careful to leave everything exactly as she had found it, with the exception of the contract Simon had signed with Smite, along with the telltale photograph. These she confiscated before she exited the room, closing the door securely behind her. She made sure it was locked, then busied herself with a meticulous cleaning of the house, searching for any clue her husband might have left regarding the incidents that had occurred during the past few days. As she cleaned, she gathered up the three decomposing rats that she had planted through the house. She tossed them out into the woods.

Satisfied with her cleanup, Simon Kurst’s lovely young wife climbed between the freshly changed sheets of the marital bed and slept soundly.

* * *

Twelve months later in Ocean City, Maryland, a slender, attractive woman in her late twenties sat on her rear deck, facing the beach and the ocean beyond. Her honey colored hair shone brightly in the early morning sun.

The woman wore a comfortable fleece-lined sweat suit against the chilly, damp breeze that blew in off of the rolling surf. She warmed her hands around her morning cup of coffee as she perused the pages of the daily newspaper.

A figure appeared at the north end of the beach. As it approached she could see that it was that of a tall man, whose white polo shirt and khaki shorts stood out against his deep tan. His silvery-gray hair was combed impeccably back from his forehead, and he carried a brown briefcase.

The woman jumped up and waved excitedly. “Uncle Drew! You’re so early!”

“I hope you don’t mind,” Andrew James said, climbing the steps to Juniper’s deck. He hugged her briefly and bent to give her a peck on the cheek.

“Of course I don’t mind, Uncle Drew! I don’t care what time of day it is. I love to see you! Why don’t you have a seat?”

He folded himself into one of her deck chairs while Juniper poured him a cup from the ceramic pot on the table. “Thank you, my dear,” Drew said, adding sugar and cream from the containers Juniper had set out.

“It’s so nice to see you again!” Juniper dropped comfortably into her chair.

“And you, as well.” Drew sipped his coffee. “You look lovely this morning. Single life must be treating you well. And safely ensconced in the beach house. You did well.”

“I never would have any of this without your help. You saved my life!”

“Ah, Cinderella turned Princess. It worked out so well for you. And I’m so glad that we were able to be of assistance.”

“The Second Skin was unbelievable! I was so worried that it wouldn’t work, but Simon didn’t have a clue! It even made my skin feel cold and stiff. What was in that?”

“We’re always trying new products in this modern age of theater,” her guest said proudly. “I couldn’t tell you exactly what it’s made of. I believe it is oil-based. You saw how it worked. It’s a petroleum-jelly like substance that hardens into a thin, skin-like covering. It’s really just a new, lightweight form of stage makeup. The insulating and ‘sound-proofing” properties just happened to additional characteristics that the developer discovered, quite by accident.”

Juniper shook her head. “I still can’t believe the whole thing worked. Simon never believed in the supernatural. You must have been quite convincing.”

“I’ve been in drama for a very long time, my dear, and I am privy to tricks and effects that not every actor knows about. I pulled out all of the stops for you. Your father would have murdered that man in cold blood, had he known what ill fortune had befallen you.” He shook his head, then flashed a bright white smile. “
You
must have been
much
more convincing. After all, you had to play your part for several days. It must have been so difficult to take the makeup off and re-apply it, every day. It’s a wonder you weren’t discovered.”

“Oh, no, I never took it off. I just put more on. The more I left it, the worse I looked.” She wrinkled her face and shuddered. “The dead rats were the worst, though.”

Drew looked at her inquisitively. “Dead rats?”

Juniper smiled and waved it away. “Never mind, it isn’t important. I’m just glad to be sitting here with you.” 

“And I, with you. Still, I would have loved to have been there for your performance. The Actors Guild would have been so proud!”

“The Actors Guild! Hold on a second, Uncle Drew. Before I forget, I have something for you.” Juniper stood and went through the sliding glass door into the house. She returned with two pieces of paper. “Five thousand to the Baker City Actors Guild, and seventeen thousand to James, Jenson, and Collins. That should settle us up. Thank you so much for representing me and helping with my late husband’s estate.”

Drew took the checks and deposited them into a pocket of his briefcase. “Few could be more deserving of the help than you.”

“Well, if you and the Actors Guild hadn’t sent me that postcard, I doubt I would be here, today. And you – well, of course Simon tried to disinherit me. Thanks to you, he wasn’t allowed to leave me destitute.”

“You are very kind, my dear.” Smite took a last sip of his coffee and stood. “I have a nine-thirty appointment, so I must be off. I will be flying home tomorrow afternoon.” He hesitated. “But before I leave, I must ask you . . . would you consider re-joining the troupe and pursuing your acting career again?”

Juniper smiled, standing to take her uncle’s proffered hand. “I would consider it.”

“Why don’t I collect you for dinner this evening, then? A couple of the troupe members are actually here in town with me. I’m sure that they would love to reunite with you. We can have a good conversation.”