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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
- 5
- 6
- 7
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

He had gone on his awful errand, and I was alone in the house of the dead. I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep, although it must have been the wee hours of the morning by then. I sat in the porch swing and rocked slowly back and forth, looking out into the yard, the floodlights too bright to let me see the night sky.
Stephanie finished washing up in the kitchen and flounced off to the garage, opening a door to let light stream out behind her into the driveway. I heard a loud crackle of television and the shrill beginnings of an argument, then the door shut and closed off the sound. In the quiet I heard clanging and curses at the back of the house. Getting up, I walked along the veranda and looked around the corner to see who was there and what they were doing.
Illuminated only by one kerosene lamp stood Aitch and his father-in-law Vince, the owner of the property. They were addressing a rusty white propane tank supported by a small shed built against the foundation. Aitch had a large pipe wrench locked on a valve and struggled to turn it while Vince held up the lamp and offered vulgar advice.
Aitch’s generous muscles bulged and his features creased, but the valve wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t see a trace of the injuries Deadman had inflicted on him. Aitch let out a grunt, heaving with a great effort, and a vein popped out on his sweating forehead. WHANGG! The wrench slipped, hitting the tank with a loud clang and leaving a dent.
“Shit!” Aitch spat, wringing a stung hand.
“Will ya be a little more fucking careful?” yelled Vince. “Gonna cost two hundred bucks if we got to buy a new one, and I’m not the one who’s gonna ask ‘Taker for the dough!”
Aitch picked up the wrench and brandished it. “Fine. You do it, asshole.”
“Now just hold on a second there! This kind of thing is your damn job!”
“Hell, and here I thought I earned my keep porking my wife,” retorted Aitch with a sardonic grin. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I ain’t your hired hand any more.”
“Don’t you speak of my daughter that way! I’m still the owner of this fucking property, and it’s not like yer gonna inherit any time soon, you lazy piece of shit!”
“Shut the fuck up!” The two traded curses back and forth for a few moments and Aitch shoved Vince, forcing him to sit down hard. This provoked another storm of profanity and threats, and finally Aitch flung down the wrench and stalked off to the garage, followed by his father-in-law with his fist shaking in the air. A door slammed again and everything fell quiet.
I didn’t want to return to the house, so I descended the steps to the yard. A dog raised its head from the dust and examined me. I skirted the drive and headed to the back of the property away from the house. Passing the garage, I saw a window hung with a bedsheet, a lamp shining through it next to the bluish glow of a television. The voices inside were muffled.
The barn loomed up in the darkness before me. I liked barns, especially weathered barns with half-ruined roofs like this one, so I approached it and circled around to the half-open main doors. It didn’t smell like a working barn; they had no animals other than the dogs, apparently.
Inside hung Stygian darkness, punctuated by lighter stripes where boards were missing from the walls. Next to the doors, I felt the wall, found a battery lantern hanging on a hook and turned it on. Rats skittered away from the bright white light.
The beam lit up a series of wooden stalls hung with moldering harness and rope. Nailed to one wall were rough storage cupboards and a workbench. A tractor so old it had not a fleck of paint left crouched in the main open area like a rusty tomb guardian, and all around it rats had dug nests in the piles of disintegrated straw and stacked hay bales.
There still lingered a faint scent of manure and musky animal bodies, and a soft, mournful feeling of nostalgia moved through me. Papa had a barn like this one, though in somewhat better repair, and he still kept cows and chickens, so the place smelled strong like a real barnyard.
I hadn’t been to my childhood home in ten years. I’d always liked to sit in the barn and watch him milk the heifers, and when I was old enough, he’d let me bring the hatchet while he caught the cockerels for Sunday dinner. He’d praised my dispatch in chopping off their heads. “Not like a girl,” he’d say approvingly. “No silliness.”
I turned the lantern and saw a set of whittled hooks on one wall, just like the ones Papa had made for his rifles and shotguns. One old Winchester lever-action lay across them, but they were otherwise empty. Deadman had ruined a shotgun in the fight when Vince had threatened him with it.
Had he forgotten the man wasn’t killable? Was there a weapon in the world that would do the trick? Deadman existed in torment; he’d said so. If he couldn’t find a woman to release him, how would that existence ever end? I walked up to the Winchester and ran a finger along the stock, careful not to put fingerprints on the barrel that might rust it. It was shiny and the stock had been recently oiled.
“I take care of it,” said someone behind me in a quiet, amused tone. For a moment I thought it was the rider and turned with a jump in my heartbeat.
But although the voice was low and masculine, it wasn’t Deadman’s. Aitch stood in the open door with a smile on his heavy-browed, handsome face, arms folded and his blond hair loose around his shoulders. “There’s still some good huntin’ around here.”
“Oh.” I dropped my gaze for a moment; his smile was just a trace too warm, but looked up again immediately, not wanting to seem timid or anxious. He might have been dead, but he didn’t look like a man who let any sort of advantage or opportunity pass him by. Notwithstanding his large nose he was attractive when he smiled, with a well-developed body and a deep chest, an incisive discernment flickering in his hazel eyes. But his lips were thin and brutal. I knew I’d have to be very careful around him.
“You like guns, ma’am?” he asked innocently.
“Um…my Papa taught me to shoot.” It was a question why Aitch was now so much friendlier than his wife, but I had some idea what the answer was.
“No kiddin’? My wife won’t even touch a gun. I have to keep ‘em out in the barn here.”
“I’m not afraid of guns.”
“No, I don’t guess you are,” he replied. “You’re probably not afraid of much, not if you can ride with ‘Taker and stay so calm and collected.”
Oh, I had a very good idea what the answer was; he was cocking a hip at me, perhaps unconsciously, and trying to disguise the fact that he was estimating my cup size. As I always did in situations like this, I calculated the possible advantages of letting him encourage himself. I caught myself brushing back a lock of my unconfined hair and decided not to cut him off at the knees yet; being on good terms with one of the denizens of the place might be useful.
“Matter of fact, I heard a couple of shots a while ago,” said Aitch.
“Did you?”
“Uh-huh. In the house.” He held up two fingers. “Don’t tell me—I’m not so bad at guessin’. Sounded like a small caliber revolver. Twenty-five or thirty-two?”
I looked hard at him; he did know what he was talking about. “Thirty-two.”
“Good for you, ma’am,” he said with a smile. “Though I guess it didn’t do what you might of thought it would.” His manner grew serious. “Why’d ya shoot at him?”
I was silent, veiling my eyes. “Oh, Jesus. That must have pissed him off. Did he hurt you?” Aitch was doing an excellent job with the deep voice of concern.
“He hit me.” I touched the sore side of my face. “But he was more interested in finishing what he’d started.”
“He tried to, uh…sleep with you, ma’am?”
“That’s right. It must be the whole reason he brought me here. I said no and I asked him to stop, but he didn’t.” This seemed like the right approach; if Aitch thought I was aligned with Deadman, he would probably clam up and leave. I could tell he had something to impart to me—asking the caliber of my gun hadn’t been random conversation. “I shot him. When the wounds vanished and I realized what he was, I was petrified. He dragged me upstairs and…”
“That son of a bitch!” he said with conviction. “He’s finally gone off the deep end! Are you OK?”
“Yes, thank you. I’m perfectly all right. He didn’t beat me up while he was doing it.”
Aitch’s expression of outrage didn’t quite cover up his delight that I had a significant complaint against Deadman. “Good Christ, ma’am! If I’d known what was goin’ on—”
“It wasn’t your fault,” I said, my voice breaking a little. “I don’t think anything would have stopped him.”
He made an angry gesture, as if he put himself in a category of upstanding and decent men obligated to shoulder the burden of women’s defense against the unworthy members of his sex. I found it difficult not to roll my eyes. “Maybe not. I’ve never yet taken him down. But that don’t mean I don’t want to try.”
“Yes, you tried right when I got here.”
“Yes, ma’am. Sorry we lumped you in with him. Wouldn’t have no self-respect if we didn’t put up some kind of a fight once in a while. We all heal up fast anyway…well—”
“Ah…your wife told me your family are all in the same state he is. Undead. That you’d been living here like this for years, and that he takes advantage of you.”
He smiled tightly and rubbed his short beard growth with a thumb. “You could put it like that.”
“So you really want to get rid of him. Probably more than anything else.”
“Well, that’s easier said than done.” Still not giving much away—he was admirably cautious, but I knew he was anxious to get something off his chest, if he thought I was a safe recipient of his confidence.
“Yes, I gathered that. Since he’s a walking dead man and invulnerable and a servant of Hell and all that. I’m sure you know more about it than I do, of course.”
“I’m damn impressed,” said Aitch with a genuine smile. “You’re a tough lady. He forced you to go to bed with him, and you shrug it off. And even though everyone ‘round here knows what we are and shoulda got used to us a long time ago, they run inside and pull down the blinds when we come into town. You ain’t scared of me at all. I like that.”
I allowed myself a small smile of self-congratulation. “Can you tell me something about him? About ‘Taker?”
“Sure,” Aitch said. He began to approach me, putting his hands in his pockets. “What do you want to know?”
“I hear that there’s a condition for his release from Hell. That he has to find a woman who’s always loved him and always will remain faithful, and if he doesn’t do it in another day or two, he’s going to be bound to Hell forever.”
“Yeah, that’s true. He’s got to marry her, point of fact, and she’s got to be true to him ‘til she dies. Makes me laugh, ma’am, ‘cause I’m damned if I know how he’s going to accomplish that in the time he’s got left.”
Aitch checked his watch. “Yeah, thirty-six hours. Day and a half, and it’ll be fifty years since he smashed himself all to hell out on the highway. I know, ‘cause I saw him do it, and I saw him get up again and I lost my lunch—he was in that many pieces.”
“You saw it? Fifty years ago?” Of course—the family had to be as old as Deadman. “I understand. Tell me what happened. How he became what he is.”
“If you want to hear about something that happened so long ago. This is way before your parents were even born, ma’am, I reckon.” This was flattery; I was sure he could tell how old I was. His own apparent age was about the same as mine, but of course I had to add half a century to it to have any idea of his birthdate.
“I do want to hear it. What was he like before that?”
Aitch chuckled, tilting his head back. “Crazy mother. He never could pass up a race.”
“A racer?”
“Uh-huh. Had himself a real fine bike that he’d warmed up something amazing, and I swear he came up behind me once doing a hundred and seventy. I was going fifty in a Buick and thought I was a hotshot until he passed me like I was standing still.”
Aitch drew a line through the air over his shoulder, back to front. “Like a streak of fire with that red hair of his in the sunshine, and he was laughing like he’d nothing more to ask of life than to let him go so fast.”
I had a little quiver; it was both excitement and a weird regret. I knew that reckless laugh.
Aitch caught his lip in his teeth for a moment and considered. “We had a sight more population out here back then, not so long after the war, and lots of guys had learned to ride a bike in the Army. We used to have drag races out by the Last Chance. He beat the pants off all comers, every single damn time. We’d have racers coming from far as Dallas or even Los Angeles just to give it a try. He swore he’d beat the devil himself if the devil knew how to pull a Harley ‘round a blind curve. And one night the Devil took him up on it.” Aitch smiled at me.
“Somebody came to challenge him to a drag run. Tall guy, even a little taller than ‘Taker, and shoulders as big. He had a helmet with a face mask on, though, which you didn’t see much in those days, and he was all in red and black, covered head to foot. Never took the helmet off, so we never saw his face. He spoke a little odd, like his throat was bad, and a couple folks said he smelled of burning, but that was afterwards, so I don’t know about that.
“He came into the Last Chance and he said he’d got a bike that would put any other bike to shame, and ‘Taker jumped up on a bar stool and hollered that he’d lay a hundred dollars he hadn’t no such thing, and we all went outside and lined up by the road to take a look. And the stranger got on his bike, which was black as anything, and he said that he wouldn’t accept no bets for money. All he would take was a soul. We laughed, ‘cause it sounded like a joke, and he said it again. He’d race for a soul and nothing else. ‘Taker said he didn’t need his none anyhow, and he’d bet whatever he had to bet, but he’d beat that black bike on any day of the week and Sunday included. We laughed our heads off.”
“You laughed at the Devil?”
“I don’t know that it was the Devil in person. I get the impression that he’s the kind to prefer a messenger to do his work. Just for instance, ‘Taker himself, as he is now.”
“What was ‘Taker’s name?”
“Well, I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know. I knew him, but he wasn’t a particular friend of mine, and he went by a handle even then. We all called him Deadman—yeah, before it happened. Think it was a name he got in the Army. Just one of those weird damn things.”
“Go on,” I said.
“So…we watched the two of ‘em ride back a quarter mile west, with the finish line being right in front of the bar, and a couple guys went with ‘em to fire the starter pistol and certify it all fair and above board, and they got ready and lined those bikes up nose and nose, and the gun went off and they started. We saw the headlights coming at us like two bats out’ve hell. I don’t know how fast they were going, but they went past the bar and they didn’t stop for another half mile at least, though it’s uphill past that point. It was too equal to call.
“They went back and they did it again, and it was the same thing. No one’d come that close to beating ‘Taker, ever, and he was hopping mad. Swore he’d beat that bike if it was the last thing he did, and he’d keep riding ‘til doomsday if that was what it took. It was like the weather changed when he said that. Something in the air wasn’t the same. We’d all been laughing and joshing him for doing no better than a tie twice in a row, but we kind of sobered up at that point. He was looking grim. Zipped up his jacket tight and combed his hair back, and he got on his bike again and they lined up for one more go. And they were going faster than ever, greased lightning on a roadrunner’s back, coming up on that finish line neck and neck, and there was a red flash like fire, and ‘Taker’s front tire blew.”
I gasped and Aitch nodded solemnly. “Saw that bike take a hell of a tumble with him still in the saddle, end over end and the sparks flying off the pavement like a welding torch. The stranger crossed the finish line a moment later, but we didn’t pay him any mind. We all piled into our cars and went to look. I could see him in my headlights when I got up to the spot. Still all tangled with the bike and blood spreading out around him on the pavement. I’d seen a man hit with a grenade or blown up with a shell more’n a few times over in Italy, and I knew he was dead.”
“What did you do?”
“Some of us stood around lookin’ uncomfortable, and some went and puked as quiet as they could, and someone else went back to the bar and called the coroner to come scrape the poor guy’s liver off the highway, and then the stranger rode up and got off his bike. I figured at least he’d take his helmet off then, like a mark of respect or something, but he didn’t. He just stood there lookin’ at the dead body. Mentioned that he’d won, and we felt that wasn’t quite appropriate under the circumstances.
“So we told him to get on his fancy black bike and show us the back of it right smart, or we’d reduce it to scrap and him along with it. We’d seen that flash and we had a notion he had somethin’ to do with the tire going—it wasn’t a clean win even if ‘Taker hadn’t been killed. He paid us no mind. He looked at the body and he called him by name, and we all damn near fainted when the body sat up sudden.
“Had an eye hanging down from the socket and the brains showing on that side, and he’d lost an arm and a half, among other things, and his legs were smashed to jelly. But he sat straight up and seemed to be listenin’ close. The stranger told him he’d forfeited his soul to Satan with his own mouth, and he was Satan’s creature now and the Devil’d do with him as he liked. And he told him to get up. He kind of crawled around and collected his missing bits, and most of us blew chunks at that point if we hadn’t done it already. There were two fellows went stark staring mad from what they saw that night. If I didn’t believe in the Devil’s doings and black magic before then, I surely learned better. And before I knew it, he was standin’ up again and looking more or less normal, except for his eyes.”
“What was wrong with his eyes?”
“They were green before, ma’am, but they weren’t anything like that shade of green. Gave me the cold shivers and they still do.”
“I…know what you mean. What did he do once he had been put back together?”
“Well, then the stranger led him to the black bike, only it had gone white for some reason, and told him to get on it and ride. He’d got his wish to ride ‘til doomsday, and he had a job to do somewhere. He looked like he understood the deal better than any of us did, and he took off on that bike and left his own bike in its wreck on the road. He’d loved that bike like a woman. When the cops got there, the stranger was gone and no one knew how or where. They told us we were drunken fools and they left it at that. But everyone ‘round here knows who he is and what he does, and he’s done it ever since and never aged a day. That’s the Undertaker.”
“My God…”
“But I guess you asked me another question than that,” remarked Aitch, a twinkle in his eye. “You want to know how he’s supposed to get out of the mess he’s in, not just how he got in it.”
“Yes. Why did Satan impose a condition like that? Just to torment him?”
“Satan? What makes you think that part was the Devil’s?”
“Um…I guess I assumed so. Or he said something to that effect. It’s not?”
“It ain’t. He’d been the way he is for ten years before he ever knew there was a way out. I heard him in in the yard one night speaking to someone I couldn’t see, and I could swear he was crying. Got down on his knees and everything. I thought he’d gone nuts, but it turned out he was speaking to a messenger from the other side. Come to tell him he could be redeemed some day, and this was how. They’d bargained the Devil down and got him a chance, she said. He curses that angel now and calls her a lying bitch when he’s good and drunk, because it was a false hope, naturally. There is no one like that. No woman’s ever going to fall in love with the messenger of Death.”
I found his certainty rather ludicrous. Was he a woman? “Then you don’t know who this woman could be? I thought it must be someone he knew.”
He shrugged. “’Taker don’t have much to do with women, at least living ones. I never heard of him being acquainted with any real close. Though I also never heard of him, ah, treatin’ a woman dishonorable, like he’s done to you. Frankly, aside from beatin’ the tar out’ve anybody gets in his way on the job, he keeps pretty much on the straight an’ narrow.”
“I saw him beat someone—well, someone other than you.” Aitch grimaced slightly. “But it wasn’t on the job. Now that I think about it, he might have done it because the man was insulting me.”
Aitch’s eyebrows went up. “No shit—pardon my language, ma’am. He did that?”
“Yes. It was at the Last Chance, as a matter of fact. A man he called Rattlesnake started yelling at him and calling me names, because he thought I was one of the dead people ‘Taker carries to Hell, I guess. But then after they’d fought, Rattlesnake tried to tell ‘Taker to leave me behind, because I wasn’t rightfully his. There wasn’t anything Rattlesnake could do about it, though, because he’d been too badly beaten.”
I didn’t like the look on Aitch’s face one bit; it was far too calculating and pleased. “Stepped out of line, did he? It’s his night for that.”
“But wouldn’t you like him to marry this woman, whomever she might turn out to be? Won’t he leave you alone if he succeeds?”
Aitch put a hand on the wall at the level of his head and a mere yard away from me, leaning against the hand and hooking the other thumb in one belt loop. The pose displayed his thickly muscled torso very well. “I’m not sure. None of us ever thought much about that comin’ to pass. He’d be free from the Devil, but what goes down after that I ain’t got a clue.”
He laughed shortly. “Maybe he goes and crashes his bike again to get it over with, which isn’t real likely. More like, he moves in on a permanent basis. Or he locks us all inside and sets the place on fire; I wouldn’t put it past him. So it might not be much of an improvement from our point of view.”
“Your wife thought I might be the one. She asked me if I was in love with him.”
“Did she?” He looked slightly startled, but I had the impression that he was acting. Almost certainly his wife had reported her conversation with me. “But he’s treated you bad.”
“Yes, he has, and I’m not faithful in any case. I shot my husband and my lover dead this morning.”
“No shit,” said Aitch, his face lighting up. “You are a tough lady.” I saw that I had removed a doubt; he clenched his fists and shadow-boxed in a moment of irrepressible joy. “Hey, I’ve got something to show you. Where’s your gun?”
“Right here in my purse.” I drew the revolver out.
He held out his hand and I let him take it. Popping the cylinder, he ejected the cartridges and examined the two empty casings. “Mind if I take the brass? I’m something of a hand-loader.”
“Be my guest.” Aitch crossed to the workbench and put down the gun and the cartridges. “What kinds of cartridges do you build?”
“Mostly .308s for my Winchester. Long-range for hunting. But I’ve got some handgun rounds in this cabinet.” He opened one and pointed to a box on a shelf, stepping back as if he expected me to take it out. “It’s that box, there—the one with the tape around it.”
“That’s a little high for me to reach.”
Aitch looked around for a stool, but there wasn’t one. “Uh…OK, how about I lift you up and you grab the box?” He held out his arms.
“Huh? Why?” Was he trying to get his hands on me?
“Hey!” he admonished me, palms out in a gesture of injured innocence. “I ain’t that kind of guy, OK? It’s just that—well, I guess I should probably show you. So you’ll see what this is about.”
Aitch turned to the shelf and picked up the box. I heard a strange sound from him and his teeth gritted, then he dropped the box into my hand. “There it is, so hold on to it.” Turning over his hand, he showed me his palm and fingers. The lines of the box stood out red and seared, the skin blistering as I watched. “That’s why.”
“Oh, my God!” I nearly dropped the box myself, but it was neither hot nor caustic—it was only a small cardboard box, filled with something heavy that clinked. “What happened?”
Aitch grimaced and closed his hand around his injury. “It’s the cartridges, ma’am. They burn me right through the box and through any weapon they’re loaded into. In other words, I can’t fire them and have a prayer of hittin’ anything. Even a glove’s no help.”
“Then why make them? How did you make them? What on earth are they?”
“They’re silver, but that ain’t why they burn. I cast the bullets out’ve some old jewelry of my wife’s and made the cartridges, and then I took ‘em to a priest and asked him to bless ‘em. He didn’t really want to, you understand, but I kind of persuaded him. It wasn’t easy getting ‘em home, I’ll tell ya; I was laid up for weeks.”
“A priest blessed them, and they hurt you?”
“Yep. They’ll kill undead, see? That’s why I made ‘em.”
“They’ll kill…’Taker.” My heart gave a great thump.
“Yes, they’ll kill the Undertaker.” His mouth curled in an intimate, triumphant smile. “Naturally they’re a little lightweight compared to lead, and the hollow points won’t mushroom much. They’ll have the same effect on him that ordinary bullets have on an ordinary man, though. Aside from the burnin’ thing, that is. That ought to make up for any ballistic shortcomings the silver’s got.”
He shivered slightly, backing away from me. “Blessed objects are like poison to us. I don’t even like having ‘em in the same room with me, which is why they’re out here.”
And his wife said that their family didn’t believe in ‘that kind of shit’? I opened the box and looked at the cartridges. Three dozen assorted: six each of six different calibers. I saw sets of .308 rifle ammunition, .22 long, .45 ACP, .38, nine-millimeter Parabellum, and .32. “It looks like you didn’t know what sort of gun would be firing these.”
“No, I didn’t, so I put ‘em together in some common calibers. There’s a full load of .32s there. If you got those in your revolver, you’ll have no worries. I know you’ve got the grit to use that gun.” He looked me in the eye with transparent sincerity. “I’ll feel better knowin’ you have these. You can take care of yourself now.”
“I guess I can.” I picked up my gun and put the six cartridges in one by one, then smacked the cylinder home and spun it. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure, ma’am. So if he tries anything again…”
“You think I ought to use the gun again.”
“You might even do him a favor, ma’am. It’s not like he confides in me, but I know he’s given up hope. All he truly wants any more…is to rest. Destroy his body, and his soul goes free.” He made it sound like an act of compassion; I wondered if his wife had told him about all my crimes.
“Free? To where?” I closed the gun in my purse again.
“I don’t know. I can’t know if he’s condemned, but I can tell you that there won’t be anybody to take him to Hell, because he’s the Hellrider. The job’s going to be vacant again, at least for a while. So maybe he’ll just fade away into oblivion. That’s what he wants anyway.”
“If you say so.” I left the purse sitting on the workbench and looked around the barn. “You don’t have any animals.”
“No.” Aitch made a wry face. “They don’t like being around us. Every one of them went crazy and died in a few days after we came home undead, and any others we bring here do the same. I wouldn’t mind having a few chickens for the eggs and meat, but no dice.”
I heard barking in the front yard a good distance away. “Your dogs don’t seem to mind you.”
“The dogs…?” He let out a breathy laugh. “They look like dogs, yeah.”
“…Oh.”
“They’re not ours. They just watch the souls he brings here, to keep ‘em from escaping. No smarter than dogs, but they know their job. Like we do, though we complain about it plenty. I know why my family’s here—it’s to serve ‘Taker.”
He looked at me. “It’s the Devil that did this to us, just like it was done to him. My wife and my in-laws don’t think so, but I know there’s nothing else that would make us this way.” He glanced at the burn on his hand. “‘Taker needs a home base, so he was provided one. We’re the crew and he’s the captain of the ship, and no one can sign off and go ashore.”
“How can you stand this?” I asked with a wrench in my stomach. “Existing like this. Knowing you’re dead. Having to cater to him. Nothing changes or grows…what do you have to look forward to?”
Aitch shrugged philosophically. “Nothing, I suppose. The damn house is starting to fall apart, so that keeps me busy. I don’t want us to end up sleeping in tents, but some day the termites are going to get the better of me.” He mimed spraying bugs.
I laughed a little. “It’s been fifty years?”
“Almost. I ran the car into the ditch six weeks after ‘Taker started doing his job.” He smiled back. “I’d been married only a month. I hafta admit my wife is starting to let it get on her nerves.”
“She doesn’t seem happy.”
“She ain’t. I do my best, but it’s not enough. Reckon I’m a little old-fashioned—” he grinned— “but a woman needs some kids to keep her occupied.” I closed my eyes with sudden heartsickness, and Aitch stooped down to look in my face. “What’s wrong, ma’am?”
“Nothing.” I felt the tears begin to flow and put a hand up to shield myself. She had told him about all my crimes… “Y-you son of a—”
“God damn—I’m sorry.” He reached out and enfolded me, drawing me against his chest. I stiffened. “C’mon, I didn’t mean it like that.” I looked up into his face and saw suddenly unsheathed desire there.
“I’ll make it better, sweetheart,” Aitch murmured, bending to kiss my cheek. His tongue flickered out to smooth the tears away. “Come with me.”
“N-no…”
“Come on.” His mouth moved over mine. “It’ll be good.”
“For you, maybe. Getting tired of doing it to the same woman after only fifty years? How sad.” I shoved him hard and broke out of his arms. He made a remonstrative expression and reached for me. “Don’t touch me! You seem to have forgotten something!” I lunged for my purse on the workbench and Aitch seized my wrists.
“Now be reasonable, ma’am—”
Someone slammed a fist into one of the barn doors, sending it flying open, and both of us jumped. “Get away from my woman, you son of a bitch.”
I turned and saw Deadman’s huge silhouette in the doorway, coat sweeping around his legs with the violence of his movement. “Step back from her. Right now.”
Continued...
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Deathbed