The Curse of Immortality: A Bryanae Short Read online

  “If you don’t mind …” she added.

  D’Arbignal closed his eyes for a moment and when he opened them, he nodded.

  “Sure,” he said. “I’d be glad for your company. Of course I’ll take you with me.”

  He reached for the door handle and then stopped. The dark bruises around his eyes made his face look skull-like, his eyes appearing to be mere sockets in the flickering light from the fire at the other end of the room.

  “I’ll take you with me until the black woman,” he said. “We part company that very moment. I won’t have you follow me to my death.”

  13

  Silence fell among the men as D’Arbignal staggered from the room, dragging the poker behind him as if it weighed hundreds of pounds.

  There was an even dozen now, including Piter and Werewolf. Belle’s blood froze as Piter’s gaze met hers. She read the accusation and hatred in those eyes and she shivered.

  “So where were we?” D’Arbignal said, his voice a croak. “Oh, right. I was explaining to you that thirty gold might seem like a lot of money but that it really wasn’t. However, I don’t think you were paying very close attention.”

  The wanted poster rolled up into a tube as Werewolf removed his billy club, which had been pressing the poster open. Piter had D’Arbignal’s orange sword in his hand. His mouth curved, showing that cold broken-comb smile of his.

  Someone threw a tankard at D’Arbignal, which he batted away effortlessly with the poker. Another man tried the same tactic with similar results.

  “You’ve been far too generous,” D’Arbignal said, advancing. “The next round is on me.”

  One of the mob smashed a chair against the wall in three hard strikes. He and two others picked up makeshift clubs from the debris.

  Piter took two running steps at D’Arbignal and raised the orange sword above his head. He swung down at the wounded man with a fierceness that surprised even Belle, who knew him better than anybody.

  D’Arbignal didn’t block the blow. He merely sidestepped and placed his foot against Piter’s kneecap. Piter’s upper body kept moving forward but his legs stopped following it. Piter cried out as he flew through the air, his arms stretched before him, the orange sword clattering to the ground.

  Werewolf swung the billy club at D’Arbignal’s skull, but D’Arbignal parried it with the poker and in the same fluid motion, brought the poker down on Werewolf’s arm. The tavern owner shrieked and dropped his weapon, too.

  The chair-club brigade advanced while Piter climbed to his feet. He searched the floor around him in vain for the sword: in vain because even now, D’Arbignal was picking it up. The weapon seemed like a natural extension of his body. He looked at the thin orange blade, his eyes haunted.

  “There was a time when I would toy with all of you,” he said to all of them or to none of them, his eyes still on his sword blade. Now he looked up at the encroaching men. “But that was when I had more time.”

  One of the men took a hesitant step forward brandishing his makeshift club, and that was all it took. D’Arbignal attacked with dizzying speed, his blade slipping through the attacker’s ribcage and into his lung. Without hesitation, D’Arbignal turned and sliced the back of Piter’s leg just as he managed to regain his feet. Piter began to topple but D’Arbignal managed to drive his sword through Piter’s throat before he hit the ground.

  Werewolf took a step back, holding his hands up in surrender. D’Arbignal faked a lunge at him, spun a three-quarters turn and cut down the remaining member of the chair-club brigade.

  He continued to whirl and lunge, at times with an eerie rhythm, at others in a strange staccato. Within seconds, all save Werewolf were dead. He hesitated only a second and then ran the unarmed tavern owner through, as well. The melon with handles made of hair dropped to the ground in a spreading pool of blood.

  D’Arbignal looked grimly at the carnage but said nothing. He went to the bar, from which surface he snatched his odd travel sack. He plucked up the wanted poster, too, and tossed it into the bag.

  He eyed a lone bottle of wine at the end of the bar and he grabbed it with one hand and pulled the cork free with his teeth. He took a long swig of it, the red liquid splashing down his face onto his already ruined clothes.

  A figure slipped free from the shadows by the bar and lunged at D’Arbignal as he drank. Fancy, her skin pale but her face and body dark with drying blood.

  “Look out!” Belle cried.

  D’Arbignal started to turn but it was too late. He howled in agony as Fancy stuck her blade into D’Arbignal’s side.

  In a single fluid motion, D’Arbignal slid to the side and drove a deadly counter-thrust through Fancy’s chest, his lunge almost beautiful in its deadliness.

  Fancy dropped to her knees and fell back to the floor where she did not move.

  D’Arbignal clutched his side where she had stabbed him with a butcher’s knife. He stared down at her lifeless figure and groaned, the sound filling Belle with despair.

  He didn’t move, just stared down at her body.

  Belle grabbed the bottle of wine he still held in his hand and splashed some of it on the wound in his side. He snarled but said nothing, still looking at Fancy’s body.

  “No,” he said, at last, turning to Belle. “No, you can’t come with me. I’m not fit to be around. This carnage has to stop.”

  “But—”

  “Stop!” he shouted. He reached into his bag and tossed a handful of gold coins onto the floor at her feet. “Just stop.”

  He threw another handful of gold and then a third.

  “I told them that thirty gold wasn’t a lot of money,” he said, tossing one handful of coins after another. “And the girl told me I’d never live to spend all my gold. I guess we were both right.”

  He made to leave but Belle grabbed his arm. His eyes looked hollow as though he had looked into the heart of evil.

  “That girl,” Belle said. “The one who told you your future. You said she did it because you refused a favor. What favor?”

  He flinched as though she had slapped him. A self-loathing smile appeared on his face, his teeth bloody and ghastly.

  “She asked me to deflower her,” he said. He barked a laugh that was not kind. “Here I am this great so-called ‘lover’ and the one time someone actually needed me, I refuse her.”

  “But why would she need that? You said she was just a child.”

  His smile twitched. “She needed it not to turn into something else, something far, far worse.” D’Arbignal grimaced. “But, see, I had my lofty morals. I’d never make love to a child. So instead, she did change and she cursed me as she did.”

  “You did the right thing,” she said hollowly.

  “I wish I knew if you were right,” he said.

  He clutched his side as he staggered from the tavern, on his way to meet with his black woman. Belle was alone now with the slaughtered remnants of her life. She eyed the glittering coins spread across the floor among all the dead bodies and she hugged herself for comfort.

  She had always lived in poverty. She had thought she had struck it rich when William had married her, with his semi-steady income of two bronze plunks a month, but she had found that the income didn’t make up for all the suffering he had caused her. Then there was her and Fancy, willing to sell their bodies and their dignity for a single plunk each. Belle had seen so many whores die: from diseases, from johns with knives, some even by their own hands. She had kindled Piter’s ego for money, pretended to enjoy it as his thick hands pawed at her in bed. Piter and Werewolf and their friends had died for money, even though they all had seemed to live comfortably enough.

  And then Fancy. Poor, young, stupid Fancy. She thought she was an assassin pretending to be a whore? No, she was just a different kind of whore. They all were whores, every last one of them. It seemed that Belle had been the only one who knew she was one.

  D’Arbignal seemed to have been the only one among them with more than enough money to s
atisfy him, and what joy did it bring him? He was still a man condemned to die. Belle may very well be only a whore, but she’d outlive him despite all his wealth.

  Belle looked at the shiny coins and shook her head, sickened by greed and desperation and need. She headed for the tavern door, determined to find a way to live without D’Arbignal’s money. She stopped, of course, and she bowed her head. Her shoulders sagged.

  Then loathing herself for it, she returned to the room and, on her hands and knees, began picking up the golden coins. They all were whores, true, but she figured that that being the case, it was preferable to be a wealthy one.

  There looked to be well over a hundred gold sovereigns spread across the wooden floorboards. With that kind of money she could do anything she wanted. Perhaps she could find a husband and have another baby while there was still time. She’d live her life knowing which things she had done for love and which she had done for money. And if news of D’Arbignal’s death ever reached her, she’d lift a glass to his memory.

  Belle hiked up her mustard yellow whore’s dress and, using the skirt as a makeshift bag, began to pick up the golden coins. The coins gleamed and in them she could see the reflection of a woman exhausted from living but too stubborn to give up quite yet.

  About The Author

  photo: Wai Ng

  JEFFREY GETZIN graduated from Clark University, where he won the Loring Holmes and Ruth Dodd Drama Contest for an original one-act play. He earned a master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh. Jeffrey is a former software developer at Google in New York City, and lives in New Jersey with his long-time girlfriend Kate and a seemingly infinite number of cats.

  Jeffrey is a lifelong practitioner of various martial arts, and currently holds a purple belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu under Renzo Gracie black belt Jamie Cruz and has trained in Muay Thai under legendary fighter Kaensak Sor Ploenjit. He has competed in table tennis at the national level. Jeffrey is an avid film and home theater buff. Also, his mother says he is very handsome.

  For more information, visit www.jeffreygetzin.com.

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