Giselle and a Nightly Man-Eating Sorority

Myrtha

On a later day when Giselle still lay beneath the earth, a hapless man came to visit her grave. He wasn't mourning her, but tearing apart the flowers left by Alec. Right when he was about to piss on Giselle's grave, I stood before him and demanded his name. He was a measly-faced fellow. He called himself "Hal." And so, we struck up a conversation. I had seen his grasping type in the brothels of my young womanhood. I could see that he was sorry, but not for killing Giselle. He was sorry that he got caught.

"How are you not rotting away in a lightless cell for what you've done to one of my subjects?" I asked Hal, seizing him by his putrid shirt. "They released me for lack of evidence. My uncle basically owns the sheriff 's office," the peevish conglomerate of imitation humanity blundered out.

I released him and let him clamber to the ground. "Ah. I see," I said, when in truth I didn't see at all. "You couldn't control her, so in your eyes, she deserved to die." I grabbed his arm and sensed a shocking truth emanating from him. "You came here to—profane Giselle's body? She's at rest, and I will not let this stand. Necrophilia was an abomination even back in my corrupt time," I told him. "You are a vile bug, a mass of refuse, and I will see to it that you are squashed to a pulp, or I am not Queen of the failed women, the Wilis!"

Hal stammered some excuse that I didn't have time for. I pointed to the ground emphatically with a finger and worked what I could of my morbid charm. "You. Will. DANCE!" I proclaimed, so deafeningly that I was sure to rattle the bones of the very dead themselves.

Against his will, Hal heeded my command and began to dance. Terribly, I had to admit. He begged me many times to rest, just as Giselle had pleaded for mercy at the hands of his makeshift blade. Hell hath no scorn than a queen at the murderer of one of her subjects! Hal would dance himself to death before I began to be appeased. Kind-hearted Giselle would have granted him mercy, that was true. If I told her what he was going to do, she would surely forgive me.

After Hal sunk to the earth in one last gasp, I dragged his carcass and chucked it into the nearby churning waters with the rest of the sewage. I cleaned my hands in the fountain and couldn't help but crave Giselle's soothing voice and her fingers braiding my hair. Like every other night, I waited patiently for Giselle to appear.