Giselle and a Nightly Man-Eating Sorority

Giselle

In a cold jolt of shock, I awakened from my grave. The night when I first rose from my tomb from the unnatural slumber of death, I materialized in a spectral form that looked like the human body I must have had when I was alive. I clearly wasn't alive now. I frantically scanned my surroundings only to recognize the graveyard where some of my mother's family had been buried for centuries.

Amidst the alpine clearing of my great-grandmother's ancestral burial ground, I was transparent as a pillar of glass in the gossamer bone-white gown I was swathed in.

The chilling emptiness of the air stirred the dust into whirling dervishes that were strangely visible to my naked eye. I rose amidst the earth in a cloud of insubstantial mist, diaphanous as a wisp of smoke. I am Giselle. That is, I was Giselle. I only vaguely remembered that I was once alive.

What's happening? I wondered. I grasped at my arm with my other hand and found, to my shock, that the other limb faded from sight at the slightest attempt of a touch. Blind Bill, an infamous recluse with a gaunt frame and pale ivory skin, leaned against a tree as gnarled and weathered as the old man himself. He inhabited a rickety shanty across the river. The faint light from the slivered moon glinted across his walleyes, lending him the frenzy of a rabid beast.

Bill warbled "John the Revelator" while absentmindedly strumming along with his twangy banjo, which created a haunting ambiance. Almost on cue with the eerie music, ghostly forms of women rose from their graves while leaving the ground completely unearthed as their gauzy skirts trailed against it.

Despite the variances in their skin tones, all the women possessed an identically eerie pallor as if they had bathed in chalk dust. The women kneeled and bowed their heads subserviently. I was prompted to do the same. I hastily complied just as a figure approached the clearing.

The figure was a bronze-skinned woman with thick lilac waves of hair rippling down her back like ink in water. Her peridot eyes glinted coldly like flints of frost. She was clad in a suit as steely silver as a salmon's skin. Her bearing was erect and haughty. The woman saw the gowned women and she nodded towards them, reluctantly acknowledging their presence. She swept her hair across her left shoulder deftly with her hand, which had fingernails like talons of a bird of prey. Her eyes fell on me.

"Arise, my subjects," she proclaimed. My eyes dropped to the ground as I failed to meet her searching gaze. "And who is this newcomer?" she asked. I stood with my eyes still downcast. "I am Giselle, majesty," I muttered. "Majesty" was the only thing I could think of to call her. I mentally cursed myself for my assumptive blunder. The woman smiled, baring file-sharp teeth that still appeared somewhat like a human's.

"I am Queen Myrtha of the Wilis, sovereign of the forsaken souls of these scorned women. You are welcome here among us. My subjects were all misused women once, probably much like yourself, I imagine?" said Myrtha. "What are you?" I asked her. "I am not entirely a spirit, but I am not entirely human either. Some would call me a wraith, flitting between worlds and dimensions and feeding on luckless men as it suits my fleeting fancies. I am most anxious to hear your story, Giselle dear," said Myrtha. Her words oozed out of her berry-stain lips like nectared poison. "What brought you to us?" Myrtha asked intently.

The white-gowned woman watched me hungrily, as if hoping for a tale worse than theirs. "I-I'm not quite sure I understand," I replied. "How did you die?" asked Myrtha. Unattainable snippets of my life before death flashed before my eyes, quicker than I could recall exactly what they pictured. I was dead. I was dead! I was dead? It all made more sense now, the fact that I might be a ghost! As if sensing my thoughts, Myrtha laid a supportive hand on my shoulder. "Was it a man? Tell me all about him," she said eagerly.

My sudden realization flooded my senses, and I began to feel myself fading. Just as I began to fall, Myrtha leaned over, caught me, and cradled me to her lifeless chest. "Shhhh," she crooned, like a lullaby. Myrtha touched her icy finger to my lips and began to unearth my grave.

Seizing my barely decomposed heart from my corpse, she then sank her carnivorous teeth into my heart like on would an overripe fruit. Rivulets of blood dripped down her chin like the juice of a pomegranate. Frozen in horror, I looked on. "All is well. You're safe now. You're one of us now, Giselle. One of the Wilis. Consider your death an offering to feed your queen," said Myrtha, as if the last thing she said was something I was expected to be happy about.

I was rightfully overcome by the macabre nature of it all. I had died and woke up in a gothic nightmare. I watched Myrtha's bleeding face and felt a stab of pity for this...creature. Surely it wouldn't kill me to allow her a taste of my corpse. It wasn't like I needed my body anymore. Myrtha was welcome to it as far as I was concerned. Still, I couldn't help fighting the urge to gag at the putrid rot that dangled limply from my corpse's bones. Myrtha seemed to sense my misgivings because she stopped feeding.

In a fluid movement, Myrtha cradled my spectral form's jaw, which was strangely solid to the touch of her claw-like hand. Myrtha seemed to assert herself with a primal carnality. She held for a spell and studied me carefully, daring me to display the slightest sign of defiance to her, my new sovereign. Her innate inhumanity was simultaneously repulsive and alluring. Caught in this stance, her dusty-flower breath washed over me in a wormy fog.

Before I could blink, Myrtha dissipated into the night air. The gowned women avoided my gaze and hurriedly sunk back into their graves as the first rosy mist of dawn began to appear. I descended with my new sisters. I was dead until the next sunset would inevitably arrive.

Thus, was my first night as a full blown Wili. Gods have mercy on my soul.