HALLOWEEN FICTION

THE LETTER

©2009 Robert Burnham, Le Roy NY

Did you not think I would find the body and the other skeletons you’ve been burying in the crawlspaces of your mind, not to mention the crawlspace below your kitchen?  Did you not think that I haven’t figured out your ploys a long time ago and have been watching idly ever since?  Or like so many others, do you believe you are actually getting away with being the despicable person you are?  Well, I guess, since you will die within three days of reading this, I should set the record straight and clue you in now that your demise is at hand.  And such a horrible, pain-embellished demise it is set to be.

Even now the ghouls whose bodies you have stashed below your house are beginning to quiver in the anticipation that you will soon be joining them.  The very sand and lime that you have dumped over their rotten corpses have become to ripple with worms and cockroaches crawling up from the bones below, coming up as harbingers of your doom.  I saw you bury them, you know.

I saw you all them years ago when you pushed that little girl into the brook and ran off cackling in glee.  All she wanted was to be friends but she was ugly and you couldn’t let others know that you liked an ugly girl.  What you didn’t know was that her freckled-covered face would have become synonymous with American beauty.  That is if the left side of her face had not been caved in and permanently disfigured by the jagged rock protruding into the brook.  I remember how you acted in shock and bewilderment when she was found and rushed to the hospital.  She is still alive you know, still being cared for by some nuns down in Lewiston.  She doesn’t even remember your name because you are such an insignificant, putrid being.  She was filled with enough sweetness that nightmares of vengeance have never taken root within her.  Such vengeance is still coming, coming for you soon, but not because she has willed it.

How about that time you stole your friend’s essay?  It was that very essay that landed you a scholarship to the University while your friend entered into the world of manual construction.  He has a house now, over on Granite Street.  It’s a small house with modest furnishings that took a lifetime to accumulate but it is filled with a loving wife, children nurtured lovingly into adulthood and the sounds of grandchildren playing in the hall.  He wakes every morning, your old friend, knowing that he is smarter than you although you have spent your entire life convincing the world you are the more intelligent one.  His hands are gnarled and scarred while your own remain smooth and delicate to the touch.  But next week, his hands will be hugging his grandchildren while yours will be burning in agony.  My only personal regret is that he will not know your suffering.  He will never know how much you despised him for his simple life while you hoarded every luxury your ill-gotten fame and fortune would allow.

Do you remember the day of your father’s funeral?  Your siblings were all there with their grieving families, as was over half of the entire town.  You arrived in that chauffeured-driven Mercedes in your Amosu suit and your Bruno Marley shoes.  Did you come to pay your respects or to just put on a show?  I don’t remember seeing any tears in your eyes but I do remember the bright gleaming of your Ashford Corum watch as you held it under every nose that cared to turn your way.  I know that watch must have set you back $10,000.  Your sister paid for your daddy’s funeral, didn’t she?  And on a teacher’s salary.  May God bless her; Lord knows He has no blessings for you.  Of course, you never had any need for God, did you?  You will have a need for God over the coming three days but let me, with great joy, remind you it is now too late.

Although you couldn’t see me or feel me, I was riding with you last week.  You took that shortcut down River Road past the cemetery which plays host to your ex-wife’s final resting place.  The marriage only lasted five years or so but that was a good four years or so longer than your fidelity lasted, wasn’t it?  You were never content to simply cheat on her, no, you had to remind her all the time how inferior she was to you and to all the other women you brought to your marriage bed.  Your constant abuse and mental anguish turned her once sweet soul into a blackened hole of self-doubt and self-loathing.  Even after she miraculously found the strength to walk away from you, you still haunted her everyday.  I remember when Ted telephoned you and informed you that she had died, your only response was to ask him why he was troubling you so.  Her death was ruled natural but you knew the truth.  You know that you had killed her many years before she gave up that last breath.  And so, there we were last week, riding by that grotesquely unkempt cemetery and as I diligently searched through the hideousness of your mind, I could not find a single thought given to her.  I like to believe that she is now in Heaven and all of the pains and humilities you piled upon her are now forgotten, for they say there are no tears in heaven.  You, of course, will never find that out.

This will be the last time I speak with you.  I thank you sir, for sacrificing so much of your precious time to read this missive in its entirety.  You now have three days left and the clock is ticking.  Pity, you’re not even going to be around for this year’s Halloween party.

Waiting,

- L