One More Day

"Seth,” a silken voice cooed softly in a caressing whisper, penetrating the crushing black abyss of silence Seth was suspended in, ”Awaken.”

Seth jolted upright from his bed, gasping for air with lungs filled with earth. He could not breathe. He could not see. He could only feel...Pain and thirst. Unbearable, searing pain that ripped through his midriff, that coursed through his limbs with stabbing pin pricks in crushing waves that burned worse than a thousand suns.

He clawed at his face in madness to rid himself of the filth covering his mouth, the sour taste returning of dirt and the realization he had wriggling maggots eating away at what remained of his tongue. The little terrors were ripping their way through his throat as they bore tunnels through his body in an endless quest for food.

His bony hands tore away at his soft, oozing left cheek. It was then he truly felt the maggots writhing inside of his flesh as they chewed deeper into his tongue to get away from his prying fingers. He wanted to gag. He wanted to rid himself of the putridness, but he could not. He could not because he was the source of their feast. He was dead. He belonged to them.

He was dead...and now he was partly dead...but...How? How could that be? Why would anyone want to put this curse of pain on a poor soul?

As Seth fought against his convulsing, rotting body in agony, memories from his life seeped back into his bones in pulsating flashes. He remembered how he died. He remembered his chest bursting apart, the sickening ripping of his flesh, the fiery throbbing of his mortal wounds. The vitality leaving him...

Seth asked himself, “But by who? Who killed me? Who stole my life? Who stole my future?”

His mind searched for the memory. The betrayal bombarded him. Shot down like a lowly, mangy dog.

***

He was blasted with a shotgun in rapid succession to his chest and throat at close range in the general store by Nicholai, who up until then had been his best friend since childhood. Nicholai became wrought with jealousy upon hearing the news of Evelyn accepting Seth’s proposal. Had Seth only known Nicholai’s intentions, he might have had a chance. But, alas, he was clueless until it was too late. It all happened on a humid August afternoon. No one tried to catch Nicholai as he made his escape.

Memories poured in as flashes of his sweet Evelyn, Seth’s soon-to-be wife, who was there helping her Pa run the store that day, running to Seth’s side as he tried to stagger after Nicholai, but fell instead after only two steps in a pool of his own warm, thick blood.

He remembered how Evelyn wailed as the light quickly dimmed in his eyes. How his spirit ebbed away second by second before the doctor could be fetched from the Cullough’s homeplace. Even if the doctor had been there, Seth knew he was a goner. His lungs were pocked with pellets and his throat was ripped wide open. He was drowning in his own blood. He had few precious moments left.

Seth remembered the vision of Evelyn as her long, curled caramel hair cascaded down in a curtain around his face as she cradled him against her in a vain hope she could keep him from dying. The tips of her tresses became stained with his sticky blood.

Seth remembered how, in those last few precious moments he wanted to speak to Evelyn as he lay dying, but the sharp, salty taste of his blood filled his mouth instead. He gagged and gurgled. The blood came up in clots surrounded by red froth as his lungs desperately tried to pull air into his oxygen-starved body.

He wanted to tell Evelyn of the peace of his spirit that was taking him away, despite how he felt physically and how he appeared to her now as he suffered. He wanted to tell her how much he loved her. He wanted to tell her everything would be all right. He would see her again. He just knew it. As his heart beat its last, the peace faded as his gaze fixed at a cloaked figure at the edge of the room. Terror filled his heart as his spirit tried to flee. His vision blurred.

"No, you shall be mine,” it called out to Seth in a death rattle.

Heaven closed to him as he was sucked towards the being who watched him across the room. His physical body died on the hard wide-planked pine wooden floor in the middle of the general store in the lap of his one true love.

His soul was sucked into an oppressive, deafening silence. After that, he never knew the fate of his murderer nor his own role in what would shape the destiny of the sleepy township of Sweetwater.

***

"Be still. The pain will lax. Your body is healing. The more you struggle, the more pain you shall endure. Do you not wish to see Evelyn again? I will put you back in your cage if you do not behave,” the silken voice whispered in Seth’s mind.

He could not tell if the voice was that of a woman or a man. It was genderless. It referred to the dark solitude he endured since his death, in a place where his senses, save for the sense of touch as a part of his cruel torture, and his thoughts abandoned him. He would do anything to not be sent back to the horror of being trapped in his decaying mind. The being’s words were enough to snap him back to the present.

Seth still could not breathe, but he realized for now he didn’t have a true need to breathe. He was merely going through the motions out of survival instinct as those last minutes of his life flashed. He still could not see, though. But he knew the voice was right.

As he relaxed and laid back down in his bed, his unbearable pain of the rot and maggots, while haunted by his last moments alive, subsided into an icy numbness as wet cloths were laid over the whole of his body, sending electric tingles to the wounds that, to his surprise, were soothing. He could feel his wounds healing as the maggots were purged from the pellet holes that gaped from the spread of the rot. His body was turning the tide on the pestilence as it absorbed them all. The cloth itself absorbed into his skin wherever it touched.

As a warm wet cloth was laid over his face, the voice, the same one which trapped him in limbo, poured into Seth’s mind like sweet honey, ”May the rest of your senses be returned to as was in your life before.”

He felt the hammer in his chest that was his healed heart resuming its abandoned duty with renewed vigor.

Against his will, Seth’s eyes burst open to the sight of a tiny room made of plain pine paneling lit by the soft yellow glow of a lantern.

At last, he was permitted to gulp in air to his aching lungs. They were useless as wet rags at first, but after a few breaths, he was breathing normally. He stared at his shaking right hand as he watched muscle and tendons painlessly weave around the bones of his fingers as they knitted back into their proper form. His skin enveloped the new growth, pushing back the putrid mold and rot, turning from a graying green to a healthy, blood-rich tone which he had in his former life.

As Seth dared to prop himself up with his hands, he stared down at his body. All of his wounds were now healed. His ribs and lungs were laced together in their proper place. He could feel his heart beating in his throat, which was now healed. Not a trace of dried blood nor even a bruise marred him, save for one scar lacing his forearm he received from an injury in childhood.

He edged to the side of his bed in an upward sitting position. Only then did he realized he was naked. He covered himself in sudden embarrassment for shame of being nude in the presence of whoever was performing this act on his second chance at life.

“It was necessary for the ritual, you see. Your clothing would have grafted to your flesh. We can’t have that. Fret not, for I have a change of clothes for you.”

The cloaked figure appeared by his side holding a neatly folded stack of suitable wear before Seth could blink. The thing had no face and no form under its robes. Only darkness lurked there.

Seth stood on unsteady legs, snatching the bundle out of its grasp.

“W-why?”

Seth managed to rasp hoarsely while quickly dressing, not caring if the creature watched him or not.

“Why not? I need someone to help me punish this town for the evils it brought down on the innocents. And there is the fact Evelyn loves you. She sought me for help. I have held up my end of the bargain. Now, you are to fulfill the rest of her debt. That is, unless you want her to take your place in death.”

The creature’s voice edged from flat to sinister.

“Evelyn would have never agreed to this!”

Seth spat out angrily as he fastened his trousers.

“Really?“, the creature growled. “Look into the bedside basin and tell me what you see.”

Seth thought it was a strange request, but did as he was bid. In the white porcelain bowl, Seth saw black goops of congealed blood floating in a pool of crimson surrounding a large swab of torn linen. He had been healed. He knew that. There was the evidence in the bowl. What does that have to do with anything, he wondered to himself.

"Everything. Everything has a price," the creature whispered into his mind.

Evelyn appeared in the doorway, dressed in mourning attire, hair bound into a tight, coiled plait. She carried a fresh basin of water. She was pale and trembling at the sight of Seth, but a small smile crept upon her face.

“Seth!”

Evelyn set the basin down on the table and ran to his open arms.

“Oh, my love! It worked! You have returned to me!”

She buried her face against his chest.

Seth could only stand silent in disbelief that she would go along with this plot. He felt a mix of gratitude and abhorrence.