Young Writers Society

I wrote this up yesterday after getting inspired by Poe, let me know what you think!

Dearly Beloved

I am sitting, right now, in my high-backed chair set at an angle to our quaint little fireplace. Its red-and-gold covering has been worn from the years of use. It used to belong to my father and mother, and was passed down to me after their deaths.

The only illumination by which I am writing comes from the lively flames that spring up eagerly, never once stilling, always moving, much as the sea’s waves never cease their constant lapping upon the shore.

The night has been a cold one; eddies of fog swirl and pass by the grated window on the other side of the room. Not long ago, I was out there, returning from my monotonous, pallid job of store clerk. I was the last man to lock up the place, and hurried through the cobbled London streets to the little abode that I call home.

My journey was only briefly interrupted by another human: a fellow worker returning to his own dwelling, his nose red and protruding from behind the scarf wrapped around his face. His eyes flickered at me momentarily, scrutinized me minutely, and then he nodded politely and passed. The only sentiment I felt for him was pity, for he did not have the joyful expectancy as I did, knowing that she was waiting at home for me.

My darling is, by far, the loveliest woman one has ever set eyes on.

Her exterior is smooth, white—almost pale, yet lovely to behold nonetheless—and lustrous. Her dark eyes are large, hypnotizing depths into which I often find myself being drawn, as if by some otherworldly force. Her figure is tall and thin; as of late, I have begun to notice that her arms border on emaciation, but I do not mention it to her.

Though she does not often speak, she keeps her mouth occupied in much more pleasant ways—namely, smiling at me, her pearls of teeth glistening in the light, with a warmth and tenderness that makes my heart quicken.

She is sitting across from me in the partner to my current seat, smiling at me now as I pen this. I let my eyes stare at the flames in the grate momentarily and think back to only a few hours ago, when I first returned to our house.

Upon my entrance from the windswept street that our small house sits on, I found her waiting expectantly for me. I closed our door on creaking hinges and stepped to her. Our fingers intertwined and I brought her hands to my face, letting them cup my cheeks.

Your face is cold.

She did not say it aloud, with words, but I knew that is what she conveyed to me with her eyes.

No matter, I said in a similar manner. I will warm them by the fire.

’Tis a wondrous thing indeed to have this unspoken communication, something that can only come from the years and intimacy of a relationship like ours.

We ate supper in relative silence; it was a comfortable quietude into which we were both plunged. I paid no mind to the cool, watery broth in my mouth that sufficed for our meal; poverty might have stricken us, but what mattered that? I have her, and that is all I need for true happiness.

I lean back now in my chair, the pen hovering over the smooth, white page of my journal, and say aloud, “Remember our first meeting?”

She only smiles at me again, her white pearls glistening in the firelight.

Her fingers are long and slender, smooth and white; she used to play piano when she was younger. I take her hand now in my own; it is cool to the touch. I lovingly stroke it, and she smiles her beatific smile at me, her dark eyes mesmerizing.

I remember when I first saw her youthful face, smiling at me much the same as she does now. We had met, and spoken, and I had become ensnared by her alluring eyes and the beauty that shone from within. She was the love of my life, I knew.

Two years after our first meeting, at the ages of nineteen and two-and-twenty, we were happily married.

The sight of her face at the window was what kept my spirits alive as I returned from the dreary grayness of the mills. Hers was the cheerfulness that had kept me also joyous in our hardest times of struggle.

And when she succumbed to the raging sickness that overswept our town, she was the one who encouraged me not to despair. I stayed by her side constantly, a guardian day and night, warding off the plague that so desperately tried to take her from me.

Those weeks of toil, pain, suffering, and depression finally came to an end. During that time I had become almost a hermit; never eating or sleeping, never leaving her side. She was the only reason for me to live.

One morning, as I rose from a deep slumber into which I had fallen beside her bed, I found her eyes fixed upon me, a smile lurking at the corner of her mouth. I felt quite mad with relief; she was all right; she would stay with me yet.

I cared not that I was lacking in a job now, nor that our rent was due or the fact that we were soon evicted. She was able still to smile at me, and that was all that mattered. It was an easy matter finding a suitable shelter that we could call home, situated on the corner of Emptiness, away from the folly of other men.

Proudly, I had carried my sweet one, delicate from the illness that had so ruthlessly wracked her small frame, into our new abode. Setting her down onto the single bed, I had met her gaze and promised her, “No matter what, we will always have each other.”

She had smiled in reply. I know.

As I sit with her now, remembering that time nigh ten years ago, when I thought I was going to lose her, I feel a creeping warmth enter my bones. I love sitting with her here in the darkening gloom, basking in the glow of the eagerly licking flames.

We are both at peace.

†††††

Tragedy! I can barely write this now; the ink has already smeared across my former neatly written pages, but I care not. The words I wrote in peaceful tranquility not three hours hence seem like but a memory.

I am sitting in some sort of health institution; a medical man has just been here to give me an examination. Fortunately, he has not removed my journal or pen from me, and I am able to write this now. I feel very sick at heart, but I must impart my observance of the night’s evil deeds.

Our home was invaded upon, by none other than the man I had passed in the streets this evening, during my return to my house. I did not recognize him then, but he had evidently remembered my face; he used to be one of my closest compatriots, whom I have not seen for years.

Tonight he barged into our home, followed by none other than the constable and two of his men.

“This man is mad,” he had said, pointing at me. “Here he has been living all his days, in this hovel, believing it to be a palace, with that!”

And he pointed at my beloved with a wretched finger!

“He needs medical attention; it’s a miracle he hasn’t frozen to death out here in this barren wasteland during the blizzard.”

The constable stepped forward then with a stern expression upon his blank face. “Come with me,” he had said.

I had risen angrily, and it took the constable and his two men to drag me away from my dear’s side. “I will not leave my wife!” I cried, turning to her.

She could only stare at me, her eyes wide.

“You’ve gone raving mad,” my former friend—now, greatest enemy—had stated. I could barely stand to look at his face, so deep was my rage.

“Why do you dare interrupt a man and his wife in their home?”

“That—thing—is not your wife anymore!” the man had yelled.

I had frozen; my faculties seemed numbed, as if in disbelief of what they had just heard.

The traitor could not stop the flow of words pouring from his mouth. “Your wife died a decade ago! The doctor attested to it; your family saw it with their own eyes; even I saw her lifeless body. She is dead and gone, but you would not believe us. You continued to think in your delusional mind that she is alive. Look at her!”

I had turned my tormented gaze upon the face of the woman I had been living with for so long.

She was still smiling at me, her eyes as hypnotizing as ever.

“Do you not see?” the man had cried. “That thing in the chair is a skeleton! You’ve been living in a hovel for the past ten years with a rotting corpse!”

I could not believe him; I would not. I had turned upon him and given him a blow with my fist that sent him to the ground with a blackened eye. The constable and his men had dragged me out of my home, away from her.

I had caught one last glimpse of her face, still smiling encouragingly at me. I had seen something glisten down her cheekbone; the faintest trace of a tear.

Do not fret, she had called to me, we shall see each other again soon. It will not be long before we are once again united.

I feel weariness overtaking me now. I want to leave, to escape into the darkness where she is waiting for me. I do not know what to make of this entire night, other than the fact that I have no reason to live if she is not here with me.

I go now in the knowledge that I will see my dearly beloved again.