Purgatory
Will heard the knock at the front door and turned over to see that it hadn’t woke Sarah and she was still breathing softly in her sleep. He quietly got up and picking the flashlight of the bed stand beside him headed down the stairs to the front door feeling the chill in the unheated house, it was only October and already the need for central heating was becoming apparent, well that would just be one more hardship they would have to endure he thought trying not to feel overwhelmed by the situation they were in.
The security chain was already on the door and he opened it without hesitation so another knock might not fall and wake Sarah up.
Standing outside in the cold night air was his neighbor Jeff Morgan, his face lit up ghoulishly by a small lantern he was holding up to his chest with his left hand.
“Was is it Jeff, it’s two-thirty, is everything alright?” Will whispered removing the security chain from the door and opening it up for the man.
As soon as the door opened Jeff swung his right hand up and plugged the large kitchen knife he had been hiding against his leg into Will’s chest and pulling Will back from the door he fell on top him of the stricken man as he collapsed onto the hall mat that had welcomed his murderer into his home on so many occasions.
“It’s the end of the world didn’t you know and I mean to get me some of that wife of yours before we all starve to death. Well that and I’ll be taking your generator with me, you or that haughty bitch upstairs won’t be needed it,” Jeff said to the dying man with his mouth close to Will’s ear.
Jeff slowly pulled the knife from Will’s chest and climbed up the stairs to the bedroom with Will eyes following him every stealthy step of the way.
Will couldn’t so much as whisper a warning to his sleeping wife and all he could do was look at the empty stairs almost invisible in the darkness and feel his life blood slowly spill from the wound in his chest. He heard the bedroom door quietly open and then close and felt an anguish he never thought possible as the frigid air flowed in from the opened door and the night sounds prevented him from hearing anything more from upstairs.
#
Sarah woke to the feeling of cold steel against her neck and the warm wet slobber of someone licking her face, coming slowly out of a deep sleep she thought to herself that we don’t own a dog and Will would never lick her cheek like she was a lollipop.
She then smelt the sour body odor and her gag reflex brought her into full consciousness as a mans weight fell on her pinning her to the bed.
“Scream all you want bitch, there’s no one around here that’s gonna help you,” Jeff said to Sarah slapping her across the face.
His weight falling on her had knocked the air out of her lungs and she was in no condition to speak let alone scream. Her survival instincts kicked in and she reached under the pillow behind her head for the small knife sheathed in its leather scabbard. Feeling her breasts been roughly fondled through her night shirt and meaningless grunts from her intended rapist Sarah raised her left hand to draw Jeff’s attention in that direction while with her right hand she plunged the knife in the side of his neck with all the strength she could muster.
Jeff fell onto his back on the bed making gurgling sounds as his feet scrabbled on the bedclothes as if he could somehow escape the sudden bloom of pain in his neck, quickly the strength left his body as the blood flowed out through the knife wound and the hand that was clamped there around the base of the blade still sticking out of his neck, trying to stem the blood loss.
A lantern that Sarah had never seen before was sitting on her bedside table and she could see the macabre spectacle of Jeff Morgan’s looming death, she wrinkled her nose at the smell as the man lost control of his bladder and bowels.
He looked near death so she picked up her now useless bedside lamp and swung it around by its cord and brought it crashing into Jeff face breaking his nose and shattering the light into a hundred pieces that cut a myriad of bloody wounds on the mans face. She looked at his ruined face and saw his eyes roll back into his head. That was good enough for her, she quickly clambered across the bed and pulled the knife from her neighbors neck with a sickening slosh.
“Will!” Sarah shouted grabbing her sweatpants, quickly putting them on and heading for the bedroom door.
“WILLIAM!”
#
The sound of something breaking woke Will and he found that he had passed out and had let his hand fall from his wound causing untold blood loss.
“Will!” he heard Sarah shout and a brief flower of hope blossomed inside him that maybe she was ok, thought how he did not know.
“WILLIAM!” he heard her scream from the landing at the top of the stairs and finally he saw her bathed in the glow of the a lantern she was holding in one hand that caused a crimson glint to flash of the bloody knife she held in her other.
“Oh Jesus, Will, no!” she said rushing down the stairs to his side and gently picking his head up and laying it in her lap and pressing her hand onto the wound that was now only trickling blood while tenderly brushing away his thick brown hair that was plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“Tell me you killed that bastard,” Will said surprised to find his voice had return, weak and coarse, but his voice none the less.
“I killed him, now hush, save your energy, I going to get help,” she said.
Will looked up into her green eyes and thought how beautiful her strawberry blonde hair looked in the soft light tussled with sleep. He tried to move his hand to run it through those locks but found that it would not move. Neither did Sarah despite her intentions.
“I love you Sarah, I loved you before I met you and I’ll love you long after I’m gone from this world,” he said softly.
The tears spilled from her eyes and splashed down onto his cheeks, they felt cool and clean and her hand felt soft as she brushed them from his face. He caught her smell among the many others that battled for acknowledgement, that curious combination of jasmine and lavender that had accompanied them when they made love; fucked; laid in each other arms in sleep; holding hands while talking a late evening walk. A thousand other times in other situations, that smell meant Sarah to him. He had never told her that.
“Tell my daughter I love her and I‘ll always be with you both, looking over you,” Will said closing his eyes for the last time.
Sarah placed her fingers against his neck checking for a pulse and finding nothing dropped her head onto her husband's chest and cried for all that was and all that might have been. She stayed that way for the next twenty minutes holding the man she loved with all her being until she heard a thump from the upstairs bedroom.
Sarah gently crossed Will’s arms across his chest and closed the open front door. She moved into the sitting room with its bay windows looking out onto the large green area shared by all the houses in the estate, a place where the local kids banded together to play every game imaginable and where only a month ago they had enjoyed a barbeque with all their neighbors basking in the unseasonal heat of a welcomed Indian summer. The grass was empty now and the pitch black of the night just reminded her of the dire trouble she was in.
Five days ago Will and Sarah had woken up to a commotion outside in the street and had looked over at their alarm clock to find its screen was blank. Will had checked his cell phone but that too was dark and his digital watch was in the same condition. Sarah’s spring wound gold watch had the time at 7:30, the sun was already starting to rear its head for the day and was sneaking in where the curtains met in the middle.
They had gone outside to find the world they had known had come to an end, something had happened to cause all the electronic devices in the town to stop functioning, that first day had been one of pure terror as everyone realized their cars wouldn’t start, their cell phones wouldn’t turn on and there was no electricity coming to their houses. People had been up for hours and had found that this was not just a problem in their estate but in the entire town and someone remembered from the previous nights late news that countries in the western hemisphere were experiencing power blackouts due to unusual solar conditions.
The next five days had been one of increasing uncertainty as shops were looted in the dark of night and the police were no where to be seen, and there was no way to call for them.
The first news of atrocities had reached them yesterday and they weren’t sure whether these were just the fear addled ramblings of some confused minds or actualities that would soon be visiting their quite town.
Last night Will had given her the small knife that belonged to his father and asked her to keep it with her at all times, as first she had baulked at the idea of carrying a lethal weapon around with her everywhere she went but she'd seen that it gave Will some peace of mind so for his sake she had kept it close at hand and even went to sleep with it under the pillow at his insistence tonight. Before they went to bed last night Will had made her go some through kata they had learned in the martial arts classes they had taken over the last two years.
That though brought a wry smile to Sarah’s face as she brushed the tears from he cheeks and unceremoniously flung the coffee table off the sitting room rug. She dragged the rug out beside her dead husband's body and remembered how they had come to be in the martial arts class in the first place as she delicately moved him onto the golden-red colored rug they had picked out together last Christmas.
They had agreed to join up for some night classes to keep themselves entertained during the winter months but could not come to any consensus as to what class they should take, Will wanted martial arts 101 and Sarah had wanted creative writing. They had compromised and decided to go to both and had enjoyed themselves, when last winter came around they decided to join up again for some more classes and the same debate had ensued. Finally they had decided to go to the open night for the classes and to separate and pick a class that both of them would have to attend. This time Sarah picked the advanced Martial arts class as she had found she enjoyed the almost balletic movements involved in learning the various routines or kata as their instructor called the training routines. She had been waiting by the refreshments stand when he had come up to her with his choice, advanced creative writing, she remembered how hard she had laughed at that and the look of bemusement on his face before she told him about her pick. That was how they were together, they just complemented and completed each other.
Sarah had dragged the rug with Will’s body on it out into the back garden and she had begun digging his grave there, this was their place, they had chosen this house and fallen more deeply in love here over the last four years than either of them would have thought possible and she could not think of any place better that he would like to be buried and now as the niceties of society were slipping away she guessed no one but her would care where she buried her husband, the only man she had ever loved.
#
She toiled long and hard into the night with at first only the starshine to light her task, and then nearer the end the dawning day began helping out.
Just as the sun broke the horizon over the nearby ocean Sarah pulled her husbands body down into the hole in the earth, and before wrapping him up in the rug she tenderly kissed his now cold lips and cut a lock of her hair off and tied it around his wedding finger, just so he would have something of her while he slumbered here and then she cut a lock of his hair and placed it into the pocket of her night shirt, an old shirt belonging to Will that she liked sleeping in, just so she could carry a piece of him with her on he hard road ahead of her.
Climbing out she began the process of replacing the sods of earth back from where they came, turning a hole in the earth into a grave. The tears fell from her onto the dark moist soil and she shoveled it onto the rapidly disappearing shroud. Her blurred vision mixed with that of the early morning sunlight to create a blinding white radiance that spoke of god and obscured the object of her task until finally the strength left her body and she fell to her knees beside her husbands grave and wailed her anguish at the sky, at god, at anyone that would listen.
The sounds of neighbor’s concerns roused her from an almost catatonic state as she picked herself up off of the ground and wiped the tears from her eyes that had left trails down her soil covered cheeks as if her sorrow would be forever tattooed on her face for all to see.
She ignored the queries from the people leaning out of their windows and picked up the shovel and walked into the garden shed to pick up some supplies for her final trial.
#
Sarah opened her bedroom door and found Jeff where she had left him, he had come to and knocked over Will’s night table in an effort to get out of the bed, but he did not have the energy and had fallen back against the headboard and now looked at her with baleful eyes curiously untouched in his ragged face.
The hours it had taken Sarah to bury Will had not been kind to the murder and he looked like a resurrected corpse, the blood on his face had congealed into a horrendous sight and the room stank of feces and urine.
He tried to talk but all that came out was a guttural grunt that caused bubbles of blood to form in the area that had once been his nose.
Sarah felt her fury ignite burning away her sorrow and replacing it with a rage that seemed to fill the room with electricity. She dropped the gas can and hemp garden sack on the floor of the room she once loved spending time in, and swung the shovel with all the force her soaring rage gave her at Jeff’s neck, the sharp edge of the tool biting deep into tissue and bone and burying itself in the bed’s headboard.
The decapitated head fell from the bed and out of her sight.
#
The crowd had gathered outside Sarah and Will’s house but no one had entered to see if she or Will needed their help and it was a sign of the times Sarah thought to herself as she strode from the house out into her driveway in the bright morning sunshine and stood before the assembled neighbors, smoke bellowed from her bedroom where she had dowsed the corpse in gasoline and set it alight.
She was a sight to behold, her clothes were filthy from digging the grave and were covered in Will’s blood and her dirt streaked face gave her an almost demonic look. Choking black smoke curled from the house behind her and cast a rolling shadow over her.
“This is the end of times and only the righteous will survive to be taken to heaven and the rest of you will burn in the lake of fire,” Sarah screamed as she tipped open the cloth bag and Jeff Morgan’s severed head feel onto the ground at her feet.
Some in the group screamed and ran to their homes, other just stared in shock, Tracy Morgan howled in horror at the sight of her husbands decapitated head and then ran at Sarah, who punched the woman in the face knocking her unconscious.
Sarah looked down at the unconscious woman and the head of her husband and felt her tentative grip on reality slipping even further from her. There was a light touch on her arm and flinched at it Sarah turned to see her sister moving in to pull her into a hug.
Sarah’s sister Michelle lived more than one hundred miles away and with no transport and method of communication she thought she had lost her. But Michelle and her husband Mark had been on their way to give her sister a surprise visit as once Michelle had heard she was going to be an aunt she had to see her younger sister and give her a hug. When the solar event had happened there were only twenty miles outside of town and it had taken nearly five days to get to Sarah through the sparse country side, but they were here now and they would take Sarah back home with them, there was nothing for her in this town anymore.
#
The sixteen year old girl stood by her father’s grave and watched as the workmen methodically placed brick after brick in the building that would soon be her new home. She had her father’s brown hair and her mother’s fiery spirit and she would be damned it she was gonna let any reformed government tell her Mother where her husband should be buried. Her name was Hope.
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