Sweet

Which strays first, the body or the heart?

So much time had passed since another man's hand had caressed her skin that Melody could not recall. But in this place, with the feeling that had begun to swell in her heart again, she knew one thing for certain. . . her betrayal must end.

Peter reached across the table and clutched her fingers in his hand. The warmth of his touch spread into her slowly, seeping into long forgotten places of body and soul. She remembered this feeling. This was what she wanted. This was what she thought she had lost for good. She could not have this feeling with anyone else. She had it right before her all along, right where she had left it.

She had missed him so much.

Had he become distant or had she simply stopped reaching out? The love they shared had begun to weaken, eclipsed by the nuisance of everyday. Must get up. Must work. Must eat. Must sleep. Somewhere in the maze of necessity, love got lost. While the love diminished Melody's need, her desire for it, did not. She had begun to look away from the everyday and Peter was her everyday.

Did he notice her absence? For a time, she would chill around him. She thought she didn't love him anymore. She craved the touch of another, a man not so distant, a man not everyday. The other man wanted her. She felt excitement around him, while around Peter, she felt only the suffocating crush of death.

She realized now that crushing feeling was shame.

She had thought her marriage was killing her. Day by day more of her heart withered away. Peter didn't love her and she would starve until there was nothing left of her.

How wrong she was. Peter never stopped loving her. His ways of showing her had only become more subtle. Her suffering had been self-inflicted. The love was there, she just wouldn't take it. She had been killing herself.

No more. Never again. He loved her and she loved him. She knew it now. She would never leave him again.

Peter stood from the table and with a loving smile he took her hands and pulled her to him. He wrapped his arms around her. She could not mistake the look in his eyes. He did not doubt her love for him.

A door closed in her mind, shutting off a part of herself forever. She wouldn't tell him what she had done. She could not bear to hurt him and destroy that devotion in his eyes. She would never tell him and that part of her would wither and die in the darkness of her mind.

His hand came up to cup her face, holding her cheek and the gentle line of her jaw in its firm embrace. His other hand moved behind her, hidden from her view. She did not doubt that she would feel its tender touch soon.

She would be his forever.

"Ah," she uttered a soft note of surprise. She felt a momentary shock of pain, a sting at the back of her neck. It was the last thing she knew.

She would be his forever.

Peter frowned slightly as she slipped slowly from his embrace and crumpled to the floor. She wasn't supposed to feel it. She wasn't supposed to know his intention or see how close her end was. He stared at his right hand. He still clutched the pick-like weapon that he had thrust into her brain stem. He had hesitated as he had begun to drive the point through her skull. He had faltered in the design of his perfect betrayal.

That pause would haunt him for the rest of his days.

Peter cleared the table of the candles and the remains of their meal. He laid Melody's body across its center. Her feet dangled limply off the edge and her eyes stared sightlessly upward. He looked down upon her, considering his approach with a critical eye. He could not afford another mistake.

All around the floor beneath the table he had lain white canvas to catch any blood that would stray from his plan. The contrast of the dark red on the stark white would have pleased him more than any stain on his clean tiled floor.

In his right hand now, he held a small sharp blade.

He did not look at her face as he unbuttoned her blouse to expose her naked chest to the light. Her face no longer concerned him. Once it had been the totality of his life...but, no longer. No hatred. No love. Those feelings weakened him. Only the design mattered. He had a plan and any weakness would deviate him from its true course. She swore her heart to him for his keeping and then gave herself to another man. She belonged to him and he would insure that she would keep her promise.

The tip of his knife slipped into the white skin of her chest. Her blood escape the confines of her body in a hurried rush to reach the air, only to linger around the long, angry incisions Peter had made. It seemed to want to get away but outside the body, it lost all purpose.

As he gently pulled the skin and flesh away from the bone, the blood began to splatter down onto the canvas below. Peter laid his knife down and regarded the scarlet patterns. His mind grasped the image tightly before time and the air itself could sully the brightness of her life spent. The blood made no recognizable design in its accidental placement but he found its sight beautiful to behold.

To retrieve the prize he truly desired he had to cut through her bones with a saw. He had not expected this part of the task to be easy but as easily as ribs could break they proved to be difficult to penetrate. A fine white powder issued from the contact of the saw blade against bone. It rose in the air as a soft snowlike mist and then sunk into the blood that soaked it up, disappearing forever into another hue.

Finally he held it in his hands. Her heart. The rest of her did not matter. He would deal with it later, clean her body up with the rest of the dinner mess.

With a kitchen knife he minced her heart into tiny pieces and mixed them with the flesh of a pumpkin to form a paste. This he pressed into small pastry shells and baked the tarts until they turned a golden brown.

Waiting for them was almost unbearable but he would not rush this. Hesitation cost him perfection once before. He would not let impatience rob him of it now. This was something he needed to savor.

He made wise use of his time by burying the remains of his wife where her flesh would become food for his garden. He gathered the white canvases from the floor and folded them neatly for storage.

His stage was set and now he sat down to enjoy his dessert. He plunged his fork into his pumpkin tart and lifted the first bite to his mouth. Her heart would now by his, a part of him forever. He smiled at its delicate flavor.

It tasted sweet.

"Peter, Peter, Pumpkineater, had a wife but couldn't keep her. He put her in a pumpkin shell and there he kept her very well."