The Deliverer

Baldwin’s illness came on strong, immediately following the honeymoon. Seven days later he was dead.

It started with a dry scaly patch on his right forearm that spread until it covered his entire body like a dried out mummy. We thought nothing of the insect bites that we had both received while honeymooning. We tried lotion on the dry patch and seeing a doctor, he had a future appointment with a skin specialist, but he was dead before that appointment could be had.

On the seventh day the warm sun steaming through the window woke me, contrasting to my husband’s cold stiff body laying next to mine.

The autopsy proved inconclusive, just that he had no hydration in his body at all, nothing left except a dry husk. The coroner wanted more tests, but she gave up after Baldwin’s parents and myself badgered her into releasing his body for funeral and burial, closed casket of course.

Burial day was sunny, yet chilly and crisp. Steam puffed out of the mourner’s mouths as they mourned, surrounding Baldwin’s grave. Today was totally unlike the day of the funeral, a frigid and a torrential downpour of rain. I approached the grave, my boots leaving mud tracks the only sign that I had been here to mourn him. I halted. His grave had been dug up, haphazardly, the casket opened. I was terrified. I backed away, feeling empty while the hard cold rain pelted my face and hair. I was stopped by a unyielding object, a man under an umbrella. His face looked like the skin was being pulled taught against his bones, his nose sunken in and nonexistent. I knew it was Baldwin, back from the grave. A chilled shudder ripped through my body, but I looked on. On his left hand I saw what I thought at first was a butterfly, then as I looked more closely I saw it was a blue moth. The creature that at one time had been Baldwin brought the moth up to his mouth and with a hoarse whisper that wafted my way, I heard him say, “Deliver her to me.” It stopped raining. I ran.

I could sense, no, I could actually hear the moth’s wings flap closer behind me. The flapping stopped as the deadly moth landed on the back of my coat, unbeknownst to me. Once inside my house, I felt comforted, yet my heart beats continued to speed. As I hung up my coat I saw the moth. It flapped and fluttered towards my face. I swatted it, but it’s mouth suctioned onto the back of my hand, it stung. Blood dribbled down my arm.

The moth fluttered near the window. I opened it and shooed it out. It glided outside and onto the opened palm of the undead skin-husked over version of my husband.

He smiled devilishly at the moth, then extended the same grin to me. “My darling Samantha, in seven days I will send the moth back to you, and he will deliver you back to me again, where our love will burn eternal.”

Sleep covered me that night like a death shroud, undisturbed. When I awoke, there was a dry scaly patch on my hand where the moth had bitten my hand, no doubt that it would grow larger, consuming me and my body.