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Deathbed	By : MadameManga Category: WWF/WWE > General Views: 2322 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. I do not know the celebrities of WWE/WWF. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
This story is very loosely inspired by the plot of the opera “The Flying Dutchman”. I’ve cast a number of familiar people in the roles; they are not intended to be seen as their real selves, but as actors playing parts. All recognizable characters are the property of WWE, and no infringement is intended. This story is intended for entertainment purposes only.
Written in 2001.
Deathbed

by Madame Manga
The smoke stung my eyes and rasped in my throat, and the heat from the burning house rippled across my cheeks and forehead until my skin felt half-cooked. My body remained in the shadow of the Range Rover, somewhat cooler than my face, but I didn’t want to duck down or turn away from the conflagration.
Four people—all undead, yes, but human still—were withering away in that inferno. Their souls had no remaining place of residence on the earth. No power would fight for their freedom, and though none of them had treated me kindly, I watched the fire with horrified pity for its victims. Was this divine justice or harsh retribution? Was this what God intended for them or the triumph of the Devil?
Perhaps there was nothing I could do for them, but I still couldn’t look away. Combined with the horrible smell that Deadman recognized and the dread of what its presence meant, I had a premonition of Hell.
I saw the whole property bathed in orange firelight, the smoke twisting and billowing up in a giant plume. Fragments of wood and miscellaneous contents of the house lay all over, most still smouldering. I saw part of the sofa with the flat springs emerging like bones from the burning upholstery, some scattered pots from the kitchen, the upper half of the grandfather clock.
One indistinct lump of blazing debris lay on the ruins of the veranda, catching my attention for some reason, and when I realized it was a body, missing head, arms, and upper torso, all the terrors of damnation weighed suddenly upon me.
Everything in life would come to ashes, and though I still had a heart beating in my breast, though I had been given a new life, that too would end one day. What would become of my mortal soul? My consciousness of a terrible presence intensified, a personification of darkness and despair and eternal agony emerging from the earth and coalescing around the house like a miasma of all the foulness and decay of countless millennia. The smell became overwhelming, making it difficult to breathe at all.
The side of the garage next to the house was entirely engulfed in flames and the roof was catching; the barn’s dry shingles burned like paper. In an hour or less, there wouldn’t be a stick standing on the property.
“He’s here,” said Deadman quietly. “In person.” I could barely stand now, my hands clutching the heating hood of the car, and he hunkered down to the ground with me, surrounding me with his arms and speaking in a soothing voice. “Darlin’, it’s all right. He ain’t here for you. He can’t take you.”
“Not yet,” I whispered. “Not yet...” I felt sick to my stomach, my flesh creeping, but at the same time my deepest nature called out to the rank, evil aura of the overwhelming presence. Blackness in my soul: every sin I had ever committed, every crime standing out in red letters against the utter darkness. I had killed, I had betrayed, I had debauched myself.
I gritted my teeth, feeling a horrible arousal, my pelvic muscles clenching and releasing as if I were being penetrated with an invisible appendage. My head fell back against Deadman’s shoulder as I arched my body, writhing in abandon.
For a moment I responded to the call. I submitted myself to the Devil and his influence began to enter my mind. “Ohhh!” I moaned, my body jerking at the burning caress of corruption.
The darkest, most powerful lover of all, who would take me entirely for his own, never letting me go as long as the universe lasted. He hovered around me and inside me, insinuating himself within my entrails. He knew me, because I had been his creature in so many thoughts and actions, and some day perhaps not long hence he would call my name. He had chosen me a long time ago. Who or what would defend me against the power of Hell? Not myself. I knew I would give the embrace only token resistance; a little judicious force would propel me into his arms.
“Irene?” the rider said in alarm. “Fight it, woman! He ain’t what he claims to be. He’s a damn liar! The Author of Lies!”
He held me, kissing my hair and rocking me back and forth as I moaned. Grasping at the protective arms around me, I tried to pull myself from the depths. Only he would defend me; only he could.
My lover had been redeemed from Hell. He had escaped the fire and the darkness, and he had the courage both of new hope and of old experience. I had flirted with the darkness all my life never really knowing what I trifled with. He knew this presence as a longtime acquaintance—I had just met face to face for the first time with the essence of evil.
“Hold onto me, darlin’. Let me help you fight it…” I laid my face against Deadman’s breast, finding the opening of his shirt and rubbing my nose against his bare skin. The feel of the crisp hair that covered his chest and the warm, musky scent of him began to bring me back to myself, and I slid my hands under his coat and around his sturdy waist to hold him even closer.
I loved him. I’d met him only the evening before, but he was the man I would love for the rest of my life. The thought of living with him, sleeping every night in the same bed, filled me with terrible joy that was almost dread. He had taken me in a way no man ever had.
My groin clenched again at the recollection of his penis inside me, his hands on my breasts, his lips on mine, and I tried to fill myself with the memory of his love. Would I be able to stand such bliss so often repeated? Was I worthy of it? Could it ever be again the way it had been these two nights past?
A strange doubt began to creep into my mind: would he even be faithful to me? A man of such appetites, still undead and near-invulnerable, dyed so deeply in blood and horror—what would he be when loosed upon the world? In redeeming him from slavery, had I done the right thing, or unleashed a monster?
“No,” said the rider suddenly. “Shut up.” He wasn’t speaking to me. Again he addressed the air, his face hardening. “I won’t hear any of this, so you can just do what you came to do and get out! I won’t listen to you!”
I realized that the presence was communicating with him as well and I shuddered, but he held me with iron hands. “Shut up! She’ll never betray me! She’ll be true to me, because I’ll snap the spine of any man that gets within ten yards of her!” He showed his teeth in a grim smile. “Get behind me, Satan! I’ll never do your bidding again!”
“Get behind me, Satan,” I echoed, and the awful doubts began to ease. Opening my eyes, I saw my father sprawled on the ground, moaning. He still dry-heaved and choked at the smell, though it began to lessen, retreating back into the earth.
Almost I heard, at the fringes of my perception, a thin chorus of screams: an empty plea to the ether. He had what he had come for, and he had left behind ruin and terror. None of us had rejected him entirely unheard.
The priest lay flat, his shaking hands holding up his crucifix as he prayed. Papa rolled over and struck his fists against the earth, crying out in an inarticulate voice. I thought I heard my name repeated in between curses of a kind I had never heard him utter.
What had the devil said to him? Could he shake it off, or would it insinuate itself into his mind until he couldn’t tell hellish thoughts from his own?
He had lived such a pure life, on the surface; he neither drank nor smoked, and for all his money, he had not taken a mistress in all the time since my mother had died. He never used a four-letter word or a blasphemy, conscientiously keeping his every utterance clean. The epithets he’d used on Deadman were among the strongest I had ever heard him speak, but the language that spewed from him now was as foul as a sewer. “Papa!” I cried. “Papa, are you all right? I’m here!”
“Honey?” he muttered, his eyes scanning frantically from side to side. “Honey, where are you?”
“Right here, Papa!” I broke out of Deadman’s arms and stumbled to him. “Papa?”
“You’re gone, honey! He’s taken you away! No…” he sobbed, grasping at me. “That’s my daughter! My only child, and you can’t have her, goddammit! Ah’ll fuckin’ kill you, you son of a bitch! You’ve abused her and tormented her—you don’t love her! How could someone like you steal a good woman from her family? Give me back my daughter!”
“I’m here, Papa. Please…I’m here. I’m all right; no one’s taken me away.” Deadman loomed up behind me, stooping to put a hand on my shoulder, and my father screamed.
“Nooo! Not you! Not you!”
“Who, Papa? Who are you afraid of?”
“Death,” he said, staring at me with wild eyes. “Ah’m afraid of Death. You’ll be the death of me, and there’s Death himself standin’ behind you!”
“Oh, Papa…” I was the one to cradle him now, holding his head against my breast and rocking back and forth.
“He all right?” asked Deadman. “Sounds like the bastard hit him pretty hard.”
“I guess he did…” Papa gradually began to calm down, and eventually sat up and looked for his hat. He smoothed his hair back and jammed it on, his expression still a little wild.
“Señor…” moaned the priest. “Por favor, help me…”
“Oh!” I said, suddenly conscious that we had neglected the poor man. “Papa, do you have a first-aid kit?”
“Y-yes…look in the car, honey. Under the back seat.” He seemed to revive at the idea of helping someone else, so we got up and went to the priest.
Though conscious, he was in great pain from the gunshot wound in his calf and his burns, and Papa and I worked over him with gauze and adhesive tape from the first-aid kit until the bleeding stopped and he was properly bandaged.
There wasn’t much we could do for the burns other than wet them down with anti-bacterial spray. The only painkiller available was a bottle of extra-strength acetaminophen tablets, and Papa consulted the label and gave the priest four pills with a drink of bottled water. I felt my shoulder wound again and took some painkiller myself.
Deadman stood back and watched the buildings burn. Still the fire lit the whole area, and soon the barn roof fell in with a huge plume of sparks. Although the house fire was burning low, the whole garage was on fire by now; the heat felt like mid-day.
Papa lifted the priest as he moaned in pain and helped him to the car. “Easy, now.”
“I’d give ya some whiskey, Padre,” said the rider, “but it was all in the upper left-hand kitchen cupboard by the dining-room door. I’m fresh out.” He gave a half-laugh. “Don’t believe it myself, but I’m actually gonna miss that dump. Knew it like my dad’s house.”
Papa glared at him for a moment, then helped the priest lie on the Range Rover’s back seat and got into the driver’s seat.
With so many of Aitch’s bullet holes in it, I wondered if the car was still driveable. The big .308s might have cut hoses and punctured tanks, though most of them had gone through the passenger compartment. All the glass was gone and the doors and seats sported numerous holes. Even the Jesus fish on the rear bumper had a bullet score across it.
Papa fumbled the key into the ignition and tried to turn the engine over. It choked and stuttered and subsided. “Fiddlesticks,” he said, and slumped over the steering wheel. “We’ve got to get the Padre to a hospital, and…”
“What is it, Papa?”
“Ah didn’t want to say this in front of…well, the people at the garage told me there were state troopers around earlier. Asking about you.”
He glanced at the rider, who smirked. “You know, about the, um, missing persons report. We need to…um…get you to a safe place.”
“I know what she’s done, Pop,” said Deadman. “She told me, so don’t get all mysterious on us.”
“She told you?” Papa glanced at the priest, whose eyes were closed.
“Yep. I got the scoop. Six-barrel divorce.” He winked and headed for the house, which was mostly embers at this point.
“Honey,” Papa hissed, “what did you do that for? If he knows you’re wanted for murder, he could—”
“What? He’s not going to turn me in!”
He slid out of the car and shook his finger at me. “Why on earth are you so sure about that? Now he’s got something he can hold over your head!”
“He loves me, Papa, and I love him. He wouldn’t ever threaten me with that. He knows what Roy was like, anyway!” I turned away from him and followed Deadman towards the ruins of the house, curious to know what he was doing.
He was kicking aside fallen timbers that still glowed red around the edges, apparently looking for something. A gleam caught my eye. “Hey, there’s one of the handlebars,” he said.
“Your bike?” It had been parked right by the side of the house and shingles and kitchen hardware littered the ground, along with large fragments of the outward-blown walls.
“Yep, my bike.” He shot his coat sleeves over his hands and grabbed the handlebar. “Shit, it’s hot. Watch it—it’s liable to spill coals everywhere when I yank it out.”
Deadman seemed to ignore the burns on his right hand, though I knew they must be paining him. With a heave he loosened the debris packed around the bike, and with a few more yanks he pulled the white Harley out from under a big piece of blackened exterior siding. The bike seemed intact, though covered with soot and fire-stained.
“Ahh, my saddlebag’s burned to hell. Lost all my stuff, ‘cept what’s on my back.” He brushed away the charred remains of the leather bags and kicked a half-fused bit of chain with the toe of his boot.
“How did the bike survive?” I asked in surprise. Even the leather saddle and the tires were unharmed.
The rider looked at me as he dragged the bike away from the smouldering pile. “This ain’t your standard-issue Harley roadster, darlin’. It’s had to stand up to a lot in its time.”
“Oh.” Behind us Papa was looking under the Range Rover’s punctured hood and fiddling with the adhesive tape from the first-aid kit; perhaps he had found a ruptured hose. “I suppose an indestructible vehicle has its points!”
“I had it the whole time I was the Hellrider. Now that I’m just an unemployed bum, I guess I still got the wheels.”
“You don’t want to keep it, do you?”
“Don’t know why not. It’s a fine bike.” Deadman set the Harley up in the yard. “Just got to wait for it to cool a little. Won’t take long—I’ve had it red hot sometimes.”
“If you say so,” I murmured, somewhat taken aback. I heard the car hood bang down and glanced over my shoulder. Papa leaned on the car with his back to me, hunching over something he held close to his body.
Click, click, click, went a succession of small sounds; I saw a glint of stainless steel, and I realized he was checking the load in his Colt .45, removing and re-seating the cartridges in the clip.
I thought he must be worrying about running into state troopers; although Papa was a deeply moral man, I didn’t put it past him to defend me from arrest with everything he had.
Deadman came up behind me and put his arms around my shoulders. “All right. We got some unfinished business with the Padre here, an’ then we can figure out what the hell to do next.”
“Unfinished business?”
“Gettin’ married, darlin’. I ain’t lettin’ you slip through my fingers.” He kissed the top of my head.
“Oh…” I actually blushed. “That.”
“You ain’t changed your mind?” He turned me to face him, a serious expression on his face. Papa tried the ignition again and started the engine. “You ain’t gonna try runnin’ out on me again? I see Pop’s got the car fixed.”
“No! Of course not!” I raised my arms to him and he swept me up into his embrace and lifted me slightly, my toes dangling in the air. “I want to marry you. Isn’t that part of the condition?”
“Yeah, it’s part of the condition, but that ain’t why I want you to be all mine.” He kissed me on the mouth, his soft lips and prickly mustache sending cascades of warmth through me. My desire for him began to stir, my body jolting with memories of acute pleasure. “I love you, and I need you bad. You know that, darlin’.”
The engine turned off again. “I want to take you down, baby. I’m gonna lick yer sweet pussy ‘til you can’t stand it no more. I’m gonna fuck you ‘til I can’t move…”
“Yes,” I whispered, kissing him back and running my hands through his loose hair. I couldn’t wait to have his body close to mine again. He was everything to me; I knew I would glory in his bed my whole life long. “Oh, I love you…”
“Take your dirty hands off my daughter, you scum!” My father came running up, shouting in fury. “How dare you touch her?” He seized me by the upper arms and tried to wrench me from the rider’s grasp, hurting my shoulder wound.
“Ouch! Papa!” I protested, startled at his vehemence. Hadn’t he realized yet how I felt about this man? “Let go of me!”
“It’s obvious you can’t protect yourself from him, honey, so Ah am going to have to do it for you!” Papa pulled me away from Deadman, who let go to avoid bruising me. I stumbled backwards and shoved away from Papa.
“Stop it! There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“You’re delusional! Stoned on something! You’re talking nonsense and you have been ever since Ah got here! Ah’ve tried to play along in hopes this would start making sense, but it hasn’t, and we’ve nearly been killed getting caught up in this scumbag’s local feuds! Come with me now, honey. The car’s started up, and Ah am going to drop the priest off at a doctor and take you home.”
“I don’t mind going home for a little while, Papa, but first I am going to marry him. It’s very important that I do so!”
Papa nearly popped a vein. “To his schemes, Ah suppose it’s important! You told him who Ah am, he knows you stand to inherit a great deal of money, and he wants to make sure he gets a cut! Even if it’s annulled in a week, he can blackmail you about Roy! Claim to the prosecutor that you killed your husband so you could marry a filthy biker!”
“That is ENOUGH, Papa!” I shouted. “This is the man I love, and I won’t hear—”
“Where the hell did he get an idea like that?” said Deadman with frowning incredulity. “You listen to me, Pop. I don’t care what the hell you say—I’m gonna marry her if I got to fight the Devil off all over again! I love her, and she’s saved me from Hell. This is MY woman!”
“This is my man, Papa. The one I’ve wanted all my life. I’ve promised to marry him, and there’s nothing that’s going to stop me!”
Papa reached into his back pocket and snapped out his wallet. “Fine. If Ah’m forced to, I’ll buy him off!” He shot me a look that conveyed his intention to deal properly with my lover as soon as he was able. “How much does this low-life want for drug money? Or should I call it ransom?”
“Stop it, Papa!”
“Here.” Papa brandished a wad of bills with a rubber band around the middle. “Ah have five thousand dollars here in hundred-dollar greenbacks. Ah thought Ah might run into some difficulty retrieving my daughter, though Ah had no idea how much trouble there was going to be, or Ah would have brought more! Take it, you piece of filth!”
He threw the money at Deadman; it hit him in the chest and fell to the ground. “Pick it up!” Gasping with anger and shame, I put a hand over my mouth.
The rider gave my father a slow, feline blink, his green eyes glowing, and slightly shook his head.
“Don’t you look at me like that, you white trash!” Papa was in an apoplectic rage, shaking his fist and trembling all over. “You have no right to look at me like that!”
Deadman sneered at him and walked up to the car where the wounded priest lay, opening the door and leaning inside. “Hey there, Padre,” he said in a casual tone.
“Si?” was the weak reply.
“You feelin’ up to performin’ a little weddin’ ceremony?” He rubbed his beard with finger and thumb, giving me a quirky smile.
“Que? There is no license…” the priest protested. “It is not legal!”
“That’s for sure!” yelled Papa. “This is ridiculous!”
“I ain’t concerned about a damn blood test! This ain’t for the benefit of the state government—it’s between us and the Almighty.” The rider reached out for me as I approached and held me to his side.
“But…you are El Muerto. How can you marry a woman?” I knew the meaning of the Spanish name, and I recalled something I had said to my husband the last time I had seen him. ‘No one can be married to a dead man’. I supposed I was about to prove myself wrong.
“Ah’ve got something to say on that subject as well!” said Papa in fury. “How CAN you marry her? You aren’t her kind! You aren’t even a fraction of what a son-in-law of mine should be!”
“I can marry her the same way as anybody else, Padre,” said Deadman in a curt tone, slitting his eyes at Papa. “Just say a few words, and that’ll do the trick. Man and wife.”
“No! My daughter will never say vows with a piece of slime like you! It’s been a while since you could get out of a rape charge by marrying the girl, even in this state!”
Deadman snarled, his expression baneful, and began to turn in my father’s direction. “Pop, you are taxin’ my patience something awful—”
“Since you are so insistent,” said the priest suddenly, “I must say yes.” He glanced at my father and seemed to convey something with his expression, for Papa gritted his teeth and began to subside. “Is there a ring for the ceremony?”
“I don’t have one,” I said, looking at the indentation on my finger from my discarded wedding ring. “’Taker?”
“Nope,” he replied, scratching his beard. “That important?”
“Yes, for a Catholic ceremony, but…” I turned to Papa. “I’m sorry about this, Papa. I know you’re not happy about it, but this could be the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life. May I have Mama’s ring?”
His hand went to the chain around his neck. “What?”
“Let me wear Mama’s wedding ring. You offered it to me once before, when I married Roy, and I wouldn’t take it—I guess you know why. Will you let me have it now?” His red face went pale. “Please, Papa.”
“Honey, Ah love you. You are my only daughter, but you can’t ask this of me. To desecrate—”
“I love you too, Papa. I wouldn’t do anything to desecrate Mama’s memory. I love this man and I’ve pledged to be faithful to him. Will you believe that my intentions, at least, are good?” Papa looked at the ground; I thought he was about to cry. “Please let me have the ring.”
“Señor,” said the priest, “will you do as your daughter asks?” Again I saw him convey something with his eyes—perhaps it was an assurance that no harm would come of it. Wordlessly, my father unclasped the chain that hung around his neck and removed the ring from its place with the crucifix, kissed it and held it out to me on his palm.
“Thank you, Papa.” I kissed his cheek, which quivered under my lips. The ring was plain narrow gold, slightly worn from clinking against the crucifix for thirty years. I’d held it only a few times in my life, for Papa didn’t ever take off his chain, day or night. “I’ll take good care of it.”
He didn’t answer me, and to my surprise, let his chain and cross drop to the ground. “What are you doing, Papa? Why did you—”
“Por favor,” said the priest. “Will the persons to be married approach?” Deadman took my hand and led me up to the open car door. I handed him the ring and he weighed it in his palm for a moment, then closed his hand around it and put it in the pocket of his coat. Papa moaned and covered his face.
The priest struggled to sit up and I gave him an elbow to grab. “I don’t remember all the wedding service in English, I apologize. I must make it from my head. Very short, because my head is not thinking good right now.”
“That’s all right, Father,” I said. “I’m sorry; if it wasn’t so important, we wouldn’t bother you.”
He closed his eyes for a moment, his face grey. A wisp of smoke from the barn drifted over our heads. “We are here to witness this marriage. This man, this woman.” His eyes opened. “What is your name, El Muerto?”
“My name?” said Deadman. He glanced at me with a smile. “I ain’t gone by my christened name in a long time.”
“This is a proper time to use your christened name,” said the priest with a touch of asperity.
“My name is Luke,” he replied more seriously, then smiled at me again. I squeezed his hand.
“We are here to witness the joining in Christ of Luke and Irene. Are either of you already married in the Church?”
“I was married,” I said. “My husband died a couple of days ago.”
The priest looked a little startled. “There is no obstacle in the Church’s eyes?”
“No, Father.” Aside from unatoned mortal sin, that was. “May I make confession?”
“Confession? Are you in a state of sin?”
“I don’t know, Father. I had better tell you, and you can decide.”
“Very well. Will the others go for a moment?” Papa sighed and walked a little distance away, turning his back.
“I heard it all anyway, Padre,” said Deadman.
Ignoring him, the priest steepled his hands and recited a formula. “I am ready to hear your confession, mi niña.”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned…it is thirteen years since my last confession. I have killed two men…and one child.”
“Que?”
“Three men raped me thirteen years ago, and I killed them, but I confessed to a priest and did penance at the time. I’ve committed many sexual sins since then…too many to count. I married a man I didn’t love, and he gave me a deformed child. When she was three years old, and the doctors had given up on relieving her pain, I held her in my lap and smothered her. That was a year ago.”
The priest crossed himself. “Madre de Dios.”
“I loved her, Father. I begged God to take her, and when he didn’t, I gave her to Death. I know it was wrong.” Deadman put a hand on my shoulder, but for once I held back the tears. “It was murder, and a mortal sin. I’ve always known that.”
“That is a question, mi niña.”
“What?”
“Who were the two men you have killed?”
“My husband and his best friend, two days ago. That man was my lover, and I confessed to him that I had killed my daughter, and both of them came to kill me. I shot them dead, and I fled here. My car went into the ditch, the Bearer of Indictments claimed that I was killed, and I believe I was returned to complete a task. I was trying to reach my father’s house, but this is where I ended up. You saw what happened—I am the Hellrider’s redeemer.”
“I saw. It is very strange. This killing of your husband and his friend was defense of self, then?”
“I suppose so…but the only reason they wanted to kill me was because of my daughter’s death.”
“The only reason you took her life was to take her out of pain?”
“Yes, Father.”
He let out a heavy sigh. “I can’t assign penance for such a crime. It is not a matter of saying many rosaries.”
“I know.”
“But I can offer a thought, perhaps. God enobles suffering, the Church teaches us. It is not for us to end it ourselves by taking life. If there is suffering, God has it in His heart for a reason. My English will not say it all correctly, but if you were taught well, you know it.”
“I attended Catholic school, Father. I know it.”
“Good. But I will say, though it was sin for you to end your daughter’s life, she is now with God. You prayed for her pain to end, and it has ended. God does not work directly, as you know. He has His instruments. His messengers. It is not for us to judge God’s method, but perhaps you were made the instrument of mercy for your child—that is how it is in English? It does not excuse the sin.”
“I…”
“It’s only a thought, no more. My head is not good, with the pain. You have a strange fate, it seems, and some of what is willful sin for others may be something else for you. You are an instrument, you have free will too, and you have had strange tasks to fulfill. To redeem El Muerto from his damnation…I thought it was impossible.” He shook his head. “Do you determine to abstain from sin, mi niña?”
“Yes, Father.”
“The sexual sin? If you marry, you must be faithful to your husband.” He wagged a finger at me in the immemorial way of priests.
“I will be faithful.” I smiled.
“I cannot absolve you. Say a rosary often. Ten times daily.”
“Yes, Father.”
“We got the bases covered? So let’s get married,” said Deadman with a touch of impatience.
The priest mumbled a rapid boilerplate lecture on the purposes of marriage and inevitably brought up the Church’s position on the natural procreation of children. Deadman cleared his throat with a hint of embarrassment; I looked at him in sudden realization and he shrugged philosophically.
We would never have children, of course. He wasn’t able to impregnate a woman, any more than Aitch had been able to do so for his wife, and my womb would never quicken again.
A sinking sadness went through me. This choice was inevitable, it seemed, something that had always been meant to happen, but even though I longed to be his forever, it was a choice of death over life. This marriage wasn’t like any that God had ever blessed, and I wondered what the ultimate result of it would be.
The priest concluded the homily, which even he seemed to think inappropriate, and took a long breath. “Luke, do you consent to be Irene’s husband?” Papa approached again and stood listening, his fists clenching.
“Uh-huh,” Deadman replied.
“Irene, do you consent to be Luke’s wife? There is no forcing?”
“I do, of my own free will.”
“Will you, Luke, take Irene to be your wife?”
“I will,” said Deadman.
“Repeat after me. I, Luke, take you, Irene, for my lawful wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”
Deadman repeated every line until the last, when his tongue stumbled. “Until death—um, death has parted us.”
“Will you, Irene, take Luke as your husband?”
“No, she does not!” interrupted my father, apparently goaded beyond endurance. “Stop this travesty! Stop it now!” He seized me by the arm and tried to pull me away. Deadman turned and backhanded him.
Papa staggered and sat down hard, though I could tell he had been hit with no more than a fraction of the full strength of that arm. The rider leaned over, put his hand on Papa’s head, and rolled his eyes back. They flashed white and Papa collapsed in a heap to the ground.
“Papa!” I exclaimed, kneeling to check on him. He was limp and couldn’t speak, but his eyes moved back and forth, his expression agonized. “Oh, no!”
“Ah, he ain’t hurt much,” Deadman muttered.
“Did you have to hit him?” A dark blotch was forming between Papa’s right cheekbone and brow; he was going to have a magnificent black eye. “If you can still use that ability, couldn’t you have just…?”
“Sorry, Irene—I got a little mad.”
“A little mad?”
“I pulled my punch, OK? Nothin’ but a bruise; no broken bones. He ain’t on his best behavior for a weddin’, you got to admit.”
I moved Papa into a more comfortable position. The rider took my arm again and we turned back to the priest.
“Go on, Padre.” The priest’s eyes were wide and fearful, his face blanching even paler, and he held up a defensive hand. “I ain’t gonna do nothin’ to ya,” said Deadman in exasperation. “Just finish up the marriage!”
The priest breathed raggedly and muttered in Spanish for a moment. “Where did I leave the ceremony?”
“You asked her if she’d take me. Come on!” His eyes flared acid green and my heart rate jumped.
“Ah…uh…Madre de Dios…will you, Irene, take Luke as your husband?”
“I—I will,” I said.
“Repeat after me.”
“I, Irene, t-take you, L-Luke, for my lawful husband, to h-have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until d-death do us part.” I repeated the vows trembling with emotion, some of which was fear.
“Ego conjungo vos in matrimonium in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti. Amen,” recited the priest, making the sign of the cross, then translated for Deadman’s benefit. “I unite you in wedlock in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”
We were married, at least in some sense; I considered the marriage binding, and perhaps Heaven was listening, for all the flaws of procedure. “The ring,” he said, and Deadman handed it to him. He muttered over it in Latin for a few moments. Blessing it, of course—I gasped when he held the ring out again, wondering what would happen when he put it back into my new husband’s hand.
Nothing at all happened. Deadman took my left hand, small and tan in his great pale calloused palm, and slipped my mother’s ring on my third finger. The priest had left out an essential part of the blessing, then, which might have been what he had tried to convey to my raging father. If he’d meant to invalidate the marriage, I knew he hadn’t succeeded. Again, the air had changed.
“You may kiss the bride,” said the priest, and collapsed back into a reclining position on the car seat. My husband pulled me into his arms and pressed his lips to mine.

Continued...
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Deathbed