“Rose & Thorn” Short Story Award
Til Death Do Us Part
by Donald L. Vasicek
Vermillion Capulet’s hit with a hammer eyes jerked. The pain, evident in the crimson edges and disbelief, catapulted as she bungled the ring in her hand. The metallic noise struck the dead cement floor. It cracked the noiselessness like a car horn blown in her ear. She gripped her head tightly. Her picket fence teeth stood like a barrier behind her cherry red lips. If you looked closely, you could see an edge of blood in the left corner of her mouth.
Recent, ruby and scintillating against the churlish light, it shoved itself at her animated skin as though it had a deadline to meet.
Vermillion urged her tongue. From somewhere not out of the mystical abyss inside her mouth, she flickered over the blood. Near at hand, a coffee-maker perked.
The Dutch chocolate coffee odor bit at her gaze like an intrusion into the Vatican. The coffee spewed over the lidless glass pot. She watched it splatter on the floor. Enough so that she guarded it’s spitting dark splurges on a human hand.
She inspected her hand. A pane of mirror coffee pot lid plopped blood. A droplet at a time.
Vermillion’s stare chased them. One. Two. Three and so on. They began to suffocate the ring which had come to rest on the outstretched palm of the hand proximal to a matching one on the ring finger which would experience rigor mortis promptly. Suddenly, a telephone rang.
One of those presumptuous sounds, like an ultimatum.
“The Capulet’s, this is Vermillion,” Vermillion stammered.
“A thousand and one are waiting, Vermillion.”
Vermillion pressed at her side. Blood, almost black, saw the world around her side. Not caught up by the snow-white dress, the splotch continued to spread like black death seeping on every side of a meat dealer’s knife.
“Seems Harvester had his lascivious eye on another, Boris,” Vermillion uttered.
“Obsequies to remarriage?”
“You might say I lost my ring somewhere in the vital fluid of life.” Vermillion slumped to the floor.
The phone followed her. It clumped on the hand of blood. The ring there, jumped like a bean, and landed on Vermillion’s heart, just above her laid open rib cage.
END
