Third Place Story, 2000.

Death & the Maiden

Trent M. Walters

Shubert was about to protest but stopped herself with a wily thought. She smiled. What could weakened and dying men do about promises? “Okay, Father. Okay. I will sacrifice myself. For you. But first you must keep this medicine under your lip.”

Her stepfather grunted, but acquiesced when she lifted his lower lip to insert another pinch of dried leaves. Shubert could almost see the transformation before her eyes: the skin gained a pink hue, the hands warmed under hers, the wrinkles rolled away. . . .

His gasping mouth closed and appeared to swallow. He coughed. He choked. He sat up, rigid and erect. Fits wracked his body. His pink face darkened to mauve. His lungs worked to launch a reluctant projectile.

Then, as suddenly as it started, he stopped. He relaxed back into his feather pillow, as dead. It wasn’t until she heard her mother’s stifled sobs that she concluded that her stepfather had truly passed on.

Strangely, she felt nothing. It was too unreal. Her thoughts dwelt on just one item: the dried leaves. She sniffed her fingers – the smell that onions leave a day after cutting them.

Through the open window, Shubert heard a murmur. She stuck her head out. More peasants had gathered out front, chewing the fat. The torches they passed from weary to fresher hands illuminated their faces eerily, drawing and redrawing the shadows on their craggy faces.

She pulled back in and wondered why, if her stepfather were so resigned to death, would he cough so? Was living merely a reflex? And how could so small a thing as a pinch of leaves swallowed cause so large an event? She wished she had so much control over life.

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