STAGE THE SECOND: BLEEDING
"Old Man Stauf built a house, and filled it with his toys.
Six guests were invited one night, their screams the only noise.
Blood inside the library, blood right up the hall,
Dripping down the attic stairs: Hey, guests - try not to fall!
Nobody came out that night. Not one was ever seen,
But Old Man Stauf is waiting there, crazy, sick, and MEAN…" -The 7th Guest
"For the wages of sin is death…" -Romans 6:23
It has begun again, for the last time.
Poor Abigail doesn't know. Neither does John, or any of the good souls in my former congregation. Even Dr. Pontiff says that at this stage, there's nothing more that he can do for me.
A tiny ghost sleeps inside my womb, neither male nor female, and shall haunt me until my coming end.
How is it that some people are born, and some are not? Was my body so unwilling to give one infant life? Could that soul feel my anguish at becoming a mother without a corresponding father? It's true: I've been a whore, and succumbed to pleasures a respectable wife should deny. "Take up your cross and follow Me", the Saviour said, yet I could not. I couldn't pay for my foul deed by bearing a living child. Instead, my wicked body spewed it forth like the remains of a half-spoiled dinner. Perhaps my baby knew I was utterly unfit to be a mother.
"Seth," I whisper. "Anne." Which one were you?
I bite down on my lower lip so hard that it begins to ooze. I've never spoken those two names aloud.
Blackness. I fainted and woke up that morning, so dizzy that the whole room whirled. Wetness, tears…
Agony.
I'd prayed for death then, so why now? Have I not paid my debt in full?
No. That's not the reward of sin. Stipendium peccati MORS est, if I recall Father's Latin lessons correctly.
"Narcissa, dear?" Abigail gently turns toward me in one of the church's pews. "Is something the matter?"
"Nothing of consequence," I tell her. "Perhaps I've eaten something at dinner that doesn't suit me."
"Very well." She smiles and illuminates the whole room. Even at twenty-five, she's as radiant as eighteen. I wish I could tell her. I wish I could sob out the contents of my heart and let tears gush onto her dress, but that's no burden for Mrs. Randall to carry. She has hers, but mine is mine alone. Abigail was joined to John in the lawful way, with courtship first, wedding invitations, a formal ceremony, then the bridal bed.
At eighteen years old, I'd had Father to tend before he passed away of stomach sickness. Of course, his was far different from mine! It was a lingering, malevolent affair, stealing his strength by gradual degrees. First his legs failed, then his arms, and finally his mind. On his deathbed he was nearly delirious with pain. I'd had no time to think of courtship or marriage for so long that I nearly became disinterested in them.
Love? It couldn't keep him alive. Father had enjoyed his days with such vigor as I grew up, but I didn't know what had robbed him of it until the autopsy. Countless growths, as grotesque as balls of excrement but without the stench, had been poisoning him from the inside out. My fate is fitting. As he bled internally, so I now bleed, even though my growth is gone. Dr. Pontiff deems it slow hemorrhaging; I deem it justice.
Justice for being the only one of six guests to leave a New Year's gala with more than a hangover…
