“So as I said, whatever you might be told, avarice is a virtue.”
Shemeska smiled, and having made her point, she took a long, slow drag from her cigarette. She seemed pleased with herself, and honestly it fit, given that for the last thirty minutes she’d waxed poetic on the philosophy of greed, punctuated by more than a few tangents on her hair, her nails, and the peculiar shade of purple lipstick she wore that day.
Sitting opposite from her at the table with a tired, pained look upon his face sat a rather common looking man named Marcellus. In contrast to her polished, preened, and overwhelmingly high-class appearance, he dressed in simple, functional clothes, and the dust of his travels still dirtied his boots. Above it all, he seemed impatient and haggard, as if he hadn’t slept in days.
“Why?” He asked pleadingly. “Why are you doing this?”
She took a sip of white wine and regarded him with disdain. Another pregnant moment of silence on her part and she relaxed as an unbidden servant approached from one side and deftly wiped a single fallen drop of alcohol from her cleavage, acting with the reverence of an acolyte at a temple towards its most holy of reliquaries. For her part, she acted as if the man simply wasn’t there. He didn’t matter.
“Our farms were heavily in debt, and as I understand it, you purchased that debt three months ago.”
“That would be correct.” She stated.
“And since you have, you’ve called in on every late payment, even though the prior owner had allowed us time to collect what was owed. Hired thugs beat my uncle nearly to death when he protested them taking his horses and ransacking his house. My brother’s cattle died of disease within a week of being told he was past due on his own debt. The wells taste of salt and our crops are dying. You’re destroying our ability to pay you, and then making us suffer as a result of that. Why are you doing this to us?”
She answered with a resigned sigh, exhaling smoke in tiny little streamers between her teeth and little rivulets from her nostrils like a hungry dragon preparing for a meal. “You see, it’s unfortunate you had to break the mood and stop our delightful little banter. You could have at least prolonged the pause before the inevitable and allowed me to finish my soliloquy.”
Shemeska paused, and while it might have simply been his eyes suddenly adjusting to the contrast between the room’s illumination and the few candles burning at the table, but suddenly the chamber seemed altogether darker. With the shadows looming, for the first time since he’d been sitting there, Marcellus noticed that the woman’s eyes glowed a faint, luminous violet, and as she leaned closer, he became aware of the faint scent of brimstone, hitherto masked by a wash of perfume.
”Why am I doing this?” She asked. “Because I'm evil.”
A smug smile crossed her features as she watched the lines of confusion twist and form across the man's face.
“That's the key to understanding me you see. I'm evil. But when I say that word, understand that I don’t mean just the petty little malevolence of self-interest that you find in a greedy landowner or an unscrupulous businesswoman. Not the rationalized malignancy of a man delusional enough to think his own goals exist to further some postulative greater good; no, not at all. I am Evil. My fingers laid in a baptismal font set the water to boil. My shadow falling across a newborn sparks a fatal infection that claims a village. I haven't caused all your woes simply because I can, nor because it all makes sense in some Byzantine scheme of structured torment. No, I've done it all because I enjoy it Marcellus. You and your kindreds’ agony bring a smile to my lips and a bounce to my step. The worry that keeps you up at night and makes your wife cry herself to sleep at your side curls my toes like a lover’s tongue between my thighs… and the best I assure you is still to come.”
Marcellus had no response, and a numb shock slowly spread through his body as she leaned forward. Her dress sparkling and tight against her flesh, she pressed her breasts against the table in a display of sexuality at utter clashing odds to the malicious, predatory hunger in her eyes.
”I want you to beg little man. I want you to beg for me to make it end.” She explained, leaving her tongue perched on her lips like a serpent tasting the air. “And then I want to see your face when I tell you no and offer you your only release from it all.”
“What the f*ck?!” He exclaimed, honestly frightened of her.
And you’ll accept my terms, because while you took it upon yourself to come here to my parlor and dance your plaintive little dance upon these metaphorical little webs of mine, I've been playing reaper elsewhere.”
Something was wrong. Something was horribly wrong.
Shemeska motioned with the end of her cigarette, causing a bit of smoldering ash to fall to the table, neatly forming the outline of a tiny, mocking smile. Theatrics aside, the motion summoned one of her elegantly dressed attendants as some other subtle cue had earlier done. A slender man dressed in black and purple, he carried a small box, about the size of a ripe melon, neatly dressed and sealed with metallic string the color of his mistress’s hair.
"My gift to you Marcellus." She said, still leaning forwards. And still, despite the display, he didn't once glance at the cleavage, but only at the box.
His heart beat heavily in his chest as he looked at the gift box, “What is this?”
"Open it up Marcellus.” Shemeska prompted. “You're sure to recognize it."
"What is it?" He asked again, this time with a slight tremble in his voice.
"It's her head.” Shemeska replied with poisoned amusement. “Neatly severed and wrapped in fine tissue paper. It’s her head; your wife's that is."
Marcellus dropped the box like a hot iron, leaving it on the table as he got up from his chair, almost falling to the floor. His eyes bulged and his facial muscles twitched as Shemeska’s voice droned on with callous normality.
"I hear that with the proper divinations, the eyes of the dead hold the reflections of the last thing they saw before they gave up the ghost. Care to know just what she saw before they killed her? What manner of violatio..."
His weeping cut her off, and she paused to listen to the sound as he sat on his knees on the floor, leaving the box untouched upon the table. She allowed him several minutes of agony before she motioned and had him brought back to his seat. He slumped in his chair and only looked away from the box when she produced a slender, stoppered vial and delicately placed it on the table directly in front of him.
"That's my offer Marcellus.” She explained, tapping one painted and polished nail upon its wax seal. “That's your way out. You still have children you know.”
Broken, having lost half of his most treasured things in life, he had no other recourse. His death would spare his children, and with luck, his relatives would take them under their wing and flee their land, leaving their current hell behind. “Please, leave them alone. I accept your offer.”
Shortly thereafter the air was marked by a peculiar, acrid scent as the bottle’s seal was broken and Marcellus swallowed its contents in a single, tortured gulp. And as the poison coursed through his body with each beat of his dying heart, breaking down the connections between his nerves and sending his body into a frothing, flopping seizure, Shemeska stood over him, laughing with disdain. And in the moment just before his brain lost its capacity to comprehend, she opened the box and displayed for him its contents as he died.
Minutes later his body lay on the floor, twitching with residual muscular contractions for several more minutes as Shemeska returned to finishing her meal, interrupted as she had been by the man’s pleading intrusion. Eventually the corpse lay still and her servants stepped forward to carry it away, but one motioned to the box.
“What do you wish done with the box mistress? Shall we dispose of the head with the trash, or do you wish to have the fat rendered down for a candle along with whatever from the body we can?”
"The head?” She asked. “There is no head. The box was empty. There was never anything inside at all.”
She laughed, and even her servants felt a twinge of horror at her obvious pleasure, even as jaded as they were.
“At least there wasn’t a head in there before.” Shemeska quipped. “So find me his address, fetch me a blade and perhaps a nice decorative ribbon. But first take this wine away and fetch a sweet red, it suites the situation so much better.”
