Forever In My Arms
A Halloween Short Story
I had left my glass on the floor beside my chair, and I was just refilling it with the whisky, preparing to put in another hour on my translation, when something upon the side table caught my eye: a single loose and half-crumpled sheet of paper. It was not one of the pages I had been working on, which were all still attached to the legal pad. More disturbingly, the sheet was smeared with what looked like fresh blood, as though it had until just recently been in the hand of a badly injured person. I picked it up by a corner and discovered that it was a printed page from my translation of the Inferno, the story of Dante’s pitiful encounter with the adulterous couple, Paolo and Francesca….
As I approach the one-year anniversary of the launch of The Comic Muse, I begin a practice of offering some of my short fiction behind a modest paywall. Most of my writing here at The Comic Muse, however, will continue to be “on the house”—though freewill offerings, as some of you have already made, are most welcome.
Tonight’s short story, “Forever In My Arms,” is befitting Halloween. I hope you will find its price, less than many coffee shop concoctions, less forbidding than its subject matter.
Forever In My Arms
It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when I heard Jane moving about downstairs. I hadn’t even heard her come in, as I was in another world among the late repentant at the base of Mount Purgatory. I was translating Dante’s story of the death of Buonconte de Montefeltro, the soldier who, bleeding upon the battlefield, saves himself at the last gasp by uttering the single word “Maria” before giving up the ghost.
“Up here!” I shouted, my mind still idling upon the line I had been struggling with. When I didn’t hear a reply, I set down my pencil. It was unusual for her to come over at this hour. How was she able to risk it? Had Stephen himself not come home? I set my books and legal pad upon the side table, threw back the blanket I had tucked around my legs, and hurried downstairs.
“Jane?”
Strangely, she hadn’t turned on a light. I flicked on the ceiling light over the entrance way and found, even more strangely, that the front door was locked. I called her name again as I flicked on lights in the kitchen, the parlor, and the powder room, but there was no answer. Part of me was hoping this was an erotic game of hide-and-seek, but other, panicked scenes blew more strongly through my mind: Stephen had found the second phone Jane had bought on the sly, read all our texts. Our secret was out. Her career was now in jeopardy as well as mine, and she had come here so that we could make our stand together.