Sunday, November 21, 2004

The insanity I can write...
Okies, this is rather odd but here's a story I wrote for my Creative Writing...

Stained

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift current twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his neck.

His heart pounded in his ears as he regretfully thought of the man whose life he had taken. Tears began to well in his emerald green eyes, recalling the blood of his victim staining his sinful hands.

“What have I done?” he demanded of himself, becoming vexed that his mind never answered.

“…Eli Stanton: charged with murder in the first degree of Michael Schroeder,” the executioner read from the paper in his hand, standing a few paces to the apparent criminal’s right. “The punishment is death by hanging.”

“I could just stand by and let that man continually rape my wife. That bastard had to pay for all the pain he’s caused her and murdering my children,” he recollected. “I’m not a murderer… No… I can see the blood…oh, that putrid scent… make it stop…” The tears flooded down his pale cheeks.

Behind the executioner, he could she his wife crying for him through his blurred vision. The very sight of her made him burn with the fire of hate. He could remember the screams of his wife he heard when he came home that night. He could see his daughters lying motionless and prostrate on the paisley rug in his living as he passed, their throats slit by the jugular. A loving father should not see such horrors to be bestowed upon his children. So young his poor children were, a young woman at the age of fifteen and his darling six year-old.
His wife was only thirty-seven, a delicate thing with the kindest heart. Eli did not deny that any man would lust after her beauty: silky cornflower hair, watery blue eyes and a magnificent figure to satisfy any desire. But Schroeder marred that exquisite beauty his beloved Regina once had by raping her without thought.

“I thought you were my friend, Michael,” Eli screamed to no one, watching his wife continue to produce tears, glistening in the setting sun. The sunset reminding him of something. “The sun looks like blood…”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” he replied and returned to recalling the horrible night.
Remembering, his eyes widen, the visions were so clear and crisp. Entering his own bedroom, he had seen his once pure wife, lying naked and broken beneath Schroeder’s massive form.

“Come to watch?” Eli remember that deep voice say as a smirk spread across the man’s lips.

“Bastard! Get off of Regina!” he had screamed, his anger boiling his blood.

“I’m just having some fun,” Michael stated, rolling lazy to the side. Now removed, Eli saw the remarkable purplish bruises that Michael must have inflicted to “persuade” Regina into the downy bed. Eli remembered drawing his Smith and Wesson from the bedside drawer within the blink of an eye. He remembered cocking the pistol and his finger itching to the pull the trigger. The smirk on Michael face was burned in his mind as the nude mass of muscle rushed at him.

BANG!

Michael’s body hit the floor with a silent thud.

“Eli, what have you done?”

“I’m so sorry, Regina,” Eli whispered and he saw her look up. He gasped. The sunlight caught the silver of a knife blade clutched in her hand.

“Eli, I won’t let you die alone,” she mouthed. The moment she closed her mouth, his execution was prepare to unceremoniously push his condemned form over the bridge, hoping the noose would break his neck, killing him instantly.

As the sun sank behind the hills, that very moment, Regina’s knife flash out and nearly severed the head of the execution from his body.

“Fools,” Eli heard her sigh maniacally. Smiling at the summer breeze as it blew her long blonde hair about like water flowing in a stream, Regina wiped the blood from the knife blade on her lovely blue frock. Eli caught a glimpse of her eyes; the reflected the colour of the blood. The sight frightened him, leading the humble man to question his wife’s humanity and innocence.

“Regina, my dear, what is wrong with you?” Eli asked, his voice trembling with fear. He had his dear Regina have such gruesome presence.

“Do not fret, my dear Eli, we shall meet our children in Hades,” she replied in a docile tone, an almost psychotic expression on her shadowed countenance. Once more, quick as lightening, the knife blade was release and pierced a broken heart. Cutting the noose, Regina held her husband as she pulled him away from the edge of that lonely bridge. She smiled again as she saw the peaceful façade on her husband’s smooth features.

“I love you, my beloved Eli,” Regina whispered and plunged her knife into her own heart. As the blood bubbling and poured from around the knife, she threw her head back, the corpse of her husband clutched in her arms. She saw the first stars of the night, but in her mind they were stained in blood.

Copyrighted Maura Keck 2004

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