Aunt Marlene BY D. H. Torkavian

I remember the rain slammed itself against my windows the night Aunt Marlene came to visit with us. I was six, and I didn’t sleep anymore. My grandmother was in the bedroom across from mine. It was two in the morning and she was dying. I could hear her lung-shattering coughing over the rain. The harsh sound pulled me deeper into a dark reality. I slipped out of my little pink princess bed I once begged my grandmother for, but in that moment I felt too big for the thing. I went down stairs.

The light was on in the kitchen. The yellowness of it made the yellow wallpaper and tile look even more dingy. My mother – hair in a wispy bun – sat at the old wooden table sipping out of a coffee mug. Her eyes were red and raw, like hamburger meat.

“Hey, Baby boy,” She said as she wiped underneath her eyes. “Did the storm wake you up?”

I shook my head. My mother’s already sad face became sadder than I ever remembered seeing it for the briefest of moments. Then she plastered a fake smile so pretty I almost forgot it wasn’t real. It made sense to me. My mother was a sculptor, and she was very good at making beauty out of muck.

“Hot cocoa?” She offered.

I shook my head again. My eye lingered on the back door behind my mother. The rain was beating behind the calm lace drapes that covered the little window in it.

“I know.” My mother reached over and pulled a chair out for me to sit. “We can wait together.”

I pulled myself up on the cold wooden seat, and swung my little legs as a distraction. My mother held the mug closer to her face so I wouldn’t see her sad mouth, but I it didn’t help any. I listened to the steady ticking of the clock next to the cream colored phone on the wall across from us. My legs swung in time. Every so often my mother’s warm moist hand ran through my tangled bed head hair. Time ticked on.

The knock made my mother and I jump, even though we felt it coming. Like a buzz in the air before lightning strikes. My mother rushed to the door and flung it open. Our visitor moved with such grace that it seemed like she was floating. She wore a long dress in oxblood, a red sash was tied around her tiny waste, and her dark hair was piled underneath a matching bonnet. Her dark gloved hand brushed my mother’s tears aside.

“Abigail,” Her voice sounded rich and distant like a bell. “I came as soon as I was able.”

My mother crumpled into her arms, and the woman made shushing sounds as if my mother were a baby. She hugged my mother, and I noticed the dark stain clinging to the woman’s mouth. It was the same as the ones on her sash.

“It's been so hard.” My mother cried.

“Of course, my love.” The woman said sweet as honey on warm buttered toast.

Something about the woman made the skin around my neck crawl. I sat very still in my chair as my mother sobbed into the strange woman. I wanted to hide from her, but her black eyes slid in my direction and her dark lips stretched into a hungry smile. I felt like she was a wolf going to eat me alive. She whispered something into my mother’s ear, and my mother let go of the woman too make tea. The woman moved over to me. Her full skirt was so long I couldn’t see her feet, so for all I knew she was floating.

“Hello, William,” She said to me. “I am your Aunt Marlene.”

As if in a bad horror movie lightning light up the dismal sky, and the thunder was so loud it hurt my ears. The name was so strange to me. She held out a hand and I took it. The glove felt silky. She bent over and lifted me out of the chair. Aunt Marlene played with the lace at the edge of my nightgown with her gloved fingers.

“Has William seen her?”

“No!” My mother snapped. Her cheeks burned red. “It’s already hard enough for him. I don’t want him to have to see her like that.”

“I understand,” said Aunt Marlene kindly, but her eyes were narrow and cold.

“Would you like me to put him to bed? Then we can catch up.”

I hoped she said no, she would do it. I wanted my mother to hold me and to take me away from this strange relative.

“Alright,” my mother replied. “But he has to go straight to bed. “It’s a school night.”

My mother had sent me to my tomb and I could do nothing to save myself.

“Very well, Abigail.” Aunt Marlene said, but I could hear deceit in her words.

Aunt Marlene carried me up the stairs back to the dark and the coughing. I was terrified. She moved – as I thought she might – not to my room, but my grandmother’s. The door opened with a squeak.

There in her big bed, with the stained comforter was my grandmother. She looked emaciated, like her illness, and the tubes she was hooked up to were eating her from within. Her gray eyes brightened a little at the sight of Aunt Marlene and me. My grandmother moved the clear plastic oxygen mask.

“You came… at last…Aunt Marlene…” She wheezed out.

Aunt Marlene carried me over to the bed, and together we sat. The bed smelled of a sweet sour smell that I was too young to understand was the smell of death.

“Are you here to make Gran’ma better?” I asked in my child-sized vocabulary.

Aunt Marlene looked at me, and smiled her hungry smile. “No sweetheart. I'm going to make sure she stays dead.”

She turned to my Grandmother, and squeezed her hand. “Oh, Alice. It feels like only yesterday you were a tiny thing. Running around your mother’s garden after butterflies.”

“It’s been… a lifetime… for me…” My grandmother tried a little laugh, but instead, more coughing. “It’s my… time.”

Aunt Marlene turned to me. “Give your grandmother one last kiss, then go to bed, all right, my love?”

I obeyed, kissing my grandmother’s tissue-paper thin cheek, then crept off of Aunt Marlene’s lap.

“Grandma… loves you…” Her withered yellow hand smoothed my hair. “See… you… soon…”

I hugged her, and felt heavy as soon as I let her go. I knew something was going to happen. Aunt Marlene stopped me as I moved past her, and wrapped her arms around me.

“Go to sleep.” She whispered in my ear.

I walked out of the room, and pretended to carefully shut the door behind me. I left a crack to peep through. Aunt Marlene sat with my grandmother for a while. Then she took off her gloves, undid her sash, and took off her bonnet. Lots of long dark hair tumbled down around her.

My grandmother’s breathing became labored, and after a while it was a like one long wheeze, until finally she shuttered a little and exhaled one long breath.

My grandmother was dead.

A part of me wanted to cry, but there was a bigger part that new she wasn’t going to hurt anymore, so I almost felt happy.

Aunt Marlene held the sash and waited. I put my tiny hand over my mouth in case a sound came out of it. I didn’t know what she was waiting for, but it didn’t feel good. Time ticked on, and on, and on.

Then my grandmother’s body sat up. The thing stiffly rising was something unnatural. Its head turned to Aunt Marlene with eyes that reflected red in the dark. For a moment they just looked at each other still as stone, but then my grandmother lunged.

Aunt Marlene moved faster than I’ve ever seen anyone move, too fast. The sash was wrapped around grandmother’s neck, and Aunt Marlene was tugging at both ends. I jammed my mouth shut so I wouldn’t scream. Tears flooded my vision. I had to blink to see what happened next. Aunt Marlene tugged and tugged. My grandmother thrashed with clawed hands that ripped into Aunt Marlene’s pretty dress. Aunt Marlene gave a final tug, and I heard a sickening wet pop that ended the conflict.

The head fell, but Aunt Marlene, too quick, twirled the head in the sash before it hit the bed. The headless body of my grandmother slumped over the bed. Aunt Marlene’s eyes flicked in my direction. They flashed red.

I opened my mouth to scream, but she scooped me up before I could breath. Her arms were so tight it was almost comforting. It silenced me.

Aunt Marlene carried me to my room, put me in my little pink princess bed, and sank down with me. I felt her cold hands on my skin. She smelled of something coppery. The smell, the weight of her next to me almost felt like home. Aunt Marlene kissed the side of my neck, and there was pain there. Her wet tongue slide up to my earlobe.

“Sleep, little one,” Her voice echoed, and I could smell the copper on her breath now.

Her dark eyes look half opened and heavy. They made me want to sleep. I felt my grandmother’s head – wrapped in her red sash – against my side.

Aunt Marlene held me tighter to her for a little while. Everything was sliding away. I put arms around her neck hugging the monster close.

“Aunt Marlene, please.”

“Begging never stopped me before, little thing. It won't give you what you want.”

Wet tears ran out of my eyes as if they were on fire. Aunt Marlene released me. I opened my mouth but had nothing to say. Her eyes made it easy not to think.

My eyes began to close. She was drifting away from me. Or was it the world? Was I dying?

“No,” she said, “Just falling asleep.”

She was at my door now. How had she crossed the room so silently? “I'll see you again one day. When it's your mother's time, and then again when I come for you.”

“I'll be waiting.”