"It is said Mother Leed's had twelve children right as rain. But her thirteenth, she claimed, would be like the Devil."

He rescued her from the train tracks. She married him under the crook'd fingers of a lightning struck pine tree.

Together, they buried the preacher deep in the hollows, tangled in the roots of a long-dead stump. Together, they carved a heart in the bark and hardwood and marked it: "Forever, 1939."

Entwined, they found the county highway.

Heat shimmered, thin as specters in the sun. Warm blacktop led them to the city.

• • •

Clean boots and a black dress.

He always wore a tie and smoked a cigarette, brown. She brushed the polished wood with a chiffon hip; fingers trailing shoulders as her poison-red lips parted for her illicit, honey lies.

Dice rolled. Chattering promises against the cup. Dollars, beaten and frayed from rougher days, slid out of pockets and into theirs. Cards were their best trick. No one saw his hands move. No one noticed his halo of smoke tremble from a pair of wings that couldn't be seen.

They only noticed her: A lush silhouette sparkling under the lights, wrapped in a grinning gray fox. High heels left imprints in the wine carpet when she swayed. Black nails dug into just the right arm at just the right moment.

Distraction.

This was their game.

• • •

Moonlight on water was their vice. A full moon. Burnt orange by the waxing month and fat as a pig's heart. And under it, he watched her dance. The sand folded wherever her bare feet fell as she twirled in cotton and fragile lace. Not a year earlier, those same ankles had been crossed at leisure on the steel rail. Waiting.

Waiting for him.

Black hair uncurled, she dipped her scarlet scarf into the river, pinching it tight against the current. He slipped up behind her—a smell of forest fires, a hush of stagnant summer air—his long fingers traced her hips.

She sighed against him when he finally touched her, eyes closed.

They found another tree. One in a thousand pine trees. And after a while, when the moon crested and began to fade for dawn's approach, they paused on their backs on the browned needles and carved "Forever, 1940" into the brittle trunk.

It bled for them, the tree.

She cried for him beneath it.

• • •

A man came to their table.

He never played a card.

Night after night he sat, staring, whisky and ice sweating in a crystal-cut glass. His fingers ticked against his knee. He was all long bones and pressed corners. A fedora sagged in the heat, shadowing his crook'd nose and scarred upper lip.

They only appeared in summer, the pair. In a city full of tourists, ice cream, and boardwalk casinos. Seaside fun for families. A haunt for hungry men and deep pockets. He watched them as if they would vanish—salt mist in the sunshine, burning to nothing in a blink.

Distraction was a word he didn't know.

Not until too late.

What he did know couldn't be seen by any normal eyes, only those with Sight.

And when she came near him, sauntering in a ragged dress—dead skin flaking on his suit jacket—he never flinched. Not once.

She thought him charmed.

Red blood caked her lips and she wobbled on a broken heel. Thick laces kept her neck together.

She looked like she'd been in an accident. She looked like she'd been hit by a train.

Pieces scattered and repaired; a torn rag doll with cross-stitched button eyes and a nest of matted black hair. Some grinning grey skull.

But despite her putrid state, he was worse : The dealer. The husband. He stunned the imagination beneath his glamour. A shimmering Borealis shaped like a gregarious man.

He charmed the ladies and the men.

They couldn't see the amber eyes and wings on fire. But the man in the pressed suit did.

Night after night he sat, hand resting on his knee, whiskey thinning. Watching. Waiting.

Waiting for his moment.

• • •

In August, the man sent them a message. The grease monkey in grubby coveralls barely stuck around to be sure it was received in hand. The air by the pier smelled rank: dead fish and stale water. But the paper was white. The black ink smudged in the fold and bled blue at the edges:

One hundred grand...or else.

She watched her husband crush the note in his fist, ash slipping on the midday breeze.

He looked at her, his moon, and smiled.

She tipped her head toward the sun and smiled back.

• • •

It was done in a minute.

They met in the pine trees, privy to whirring heat bugs and snakes. The man only saw the wife, though. She walked toward him; barefoot in the dirt, bruises on her legs. Her body held whole by impossible means. From her rot-black fingers dangled a battered suitcase.

She stopped beside a decaying rose bush. He could see faded bills, peeping out of the suitcase seam, the clasp straining, distracting.

He didn't see the shovel when it hit him.

Once.

Twice.

Three times over. Each swing slinging blood across a nearby stump some fifty years old.

Together, they sunk him in the marsh. He bled out, turning the mud to sunset clay. Together, they washed in the river.

Steam rose where her husband walked. He turned her in the gentle current, holding her hand for a dance. He tipped her back and under, her loose hair rippling below the surface like lake weed. The mud washed away and he held her up again. Her clothes clung, wet, and she wrapped an arm around his shoulders, mindful of the wings that scored the water.

She kissed him because she loved him. He kissed her like she was his last breath.

• • •

They walked the county highway, straight down the middle, untidy as hell. Clothing rumpled and damp from the river, hair hanging in segregated waves, they looked like errant children to the woman on the passing bus.

Exquisite.

           Strange.

                 Memorable.

                               Wrong.

She clutched her Rosary in knotted fingers. Amethyst beads and a Jesus Crucifix; the silver plating was worn to brass under her weathered thumbs. The midday heat played cruel tricks on her eyes, insubstantial sights that faded like breaths—a glittering creature and a walking corpse-girl.

A blond young man and his raven lady.

She told the police in Atlantic City. No one paid her mind, not until days later when a body was found. A man with a crook'd nose spread on the same blacktop, dragged from the mud by a hungry animal. His skull cracked, eyes white, he stared up at the sky. Sightless. Vultures wheeled above the bristling pitch pines, waiting to see him move or stay dead.

He stayed dead.

• • •

The dogs found them in the middle of the night, on the bank beside the river.

The full moon betrayed them, slicing their figures from the dark like paper cutouts. He tried to hide her in the trees, but his scent on the breeze was too strong.

He couldn't fly. His fragile wings couldn't bear her weight too—

They ran.

Policemen and rangers combed after them. The dogs with sharp teeth and taunt leather leashes lunged forward, aggravated. Flashlights caught glimpses through the tall trees: a flutter of lace, a snatch of bare feet.

Footprints that smoldered.

Snapped twigs on fire.

The dogs followed them, keeping them in sight. Someone shouted—

A gunshot cracked loud as thick ice.

Once.

Twice.

Four times. A bright smudge in the dark, orange and white.

The husband felt his wife stumble and fall. She folded in the dirt, her limpness frightened him into stopping.

He tugged on her hand, but she was dead. A hole in her head and her heart. Accident. Providence. His magic undone. Even the train—a grating metal bull, twisting itself into submission down the track—had left these parts alone.

In his sorrow, he screamed for her at the base of a crooked tree. A terrible sound that whipped the dogs and beat the men back in terror.

He wasn't gregarious underneath the suit and loose tie, the cuffed trousers and mud-stained boots. He was a devil. The human peeled away, and he left hoof prints where he walked and claw marks on the rocks.

He sat for hours and cradled his wife until night broke, revealing her oozing blood and grey skin to the sun.

• • •

In the forest he stood, clothes shredded, flies nipping at his face and eyes. A cryptid. An amalgamation in pain.

Alone, he buried her deep in the hollows, tangled in the roots of a long-dead stump. Alone, he carved a heart in the bark and hardwood and marked it:

"Nothing lasts forever, 1941."

♛ A/N: Thank you for the read :) If you liked it, please don't forget to ★ vote ★