Jive Danced Away

C. Baker

            Though his pace was not hurried, the trees clawed at him, arthritic fingers grasping at his clothes and face. Beams of silver spanned the heavens of the inky river of the night sky, dotted with pebbles of platinum light, beating against the canopy of the ancient trees.

Out of his twenty-two years on this Earth, it was the coldest winter in recent memory. There had been no snow, just a dread cold settling over the land; perhaps to stay. The water of farm troughs had frozen over during the night broken again each morning. Winter caps were donned in the early morning, fire wood stacked near the door to avoid a lengthy trip in the cold.

This very cold bit at him now, cut his cheeks, frosted his eyes, made visible his breath. It was foolish, he realized now, for me to make pilgrimage out of the farm today. But he had sworn four years previously to visit her grave every year on her birthday, the third of January.

Sometime later (it was hard to tell time in this particular forest), he came to the clearing. Moonlight shone brightly on the thick grass, thick enough to use as a bed. They had come here often before the accident, stargazing and telling stories. The clearing was not particularly large or small, and he got the feeling that it changed size at a whim. There was constant blurred motion at the edges of his peripheral vision; the tree line seeming to retreat or advance at any given moment.

            The grave stood in the middle.

            It was not rich or decorated frivolously: farming was not a job for the frivolous. It was made of plain stone, tinged with age after the course of hot summers and cold winters. The light of the moon made the stone shine like opal containing a star. It seemed to burn from within.

            He walked towards it, the grass offering slight resistance to his steps. He reached out his hand to touch the stone, tracing his finger over the engraving:

                        The sun of my life;

The moon that guides the hero by night;

Take your respite;

That you are freed from your blight;

My dearest Jive.

It came back to him as it did every year: the hot summer weighing down the world under an oppressive blanket, a miasma of heat shimmering over the dirt road as his pickup bounced over the ruts and tracks laid down by years of commute; her face, dotted with perspiration, seemed to glow with a cool radiance. They were talking, but he didn’t remember about what; maybe about which movie to watch at the cinema.

That’s when the car hit them.

He hadn’t been looking at the road; her beautiful oval face distracted him, cool blue eyes promising the relaxation of a day by the lake, lips more plump and red than an Apple of Eden.

Steel bent and screamed.

The windshield spiderwebbed.

            Glass flew across the cabin, rending flesh.

            Her scream cut through the air, goosebumps in the heat of June.

            The paramedics told him later, after he woke in a hospital bed surrounded by concerned family, that she had died nearly instantly after the impact. The passenger side door had crumpled, and the engine block of the other car had carried enough momentum to liquify her ribs, and fracture his right arm. The other driver had threatened to press charges, but dropped them after learning that his betrothed had been killed.

                        He didn’t talk to anyone for a while.

            The ceremony was plain; money was tight. It went without saying that it would be closed-casket. The coffin was plain oak, the tombstone of a generic type. His was the only family that attended; her family never present in her life, given up for adoption at birth. It was a brief funeral, given in the glade, clouds masking the unrelenting sun.

            His eyes were moist as the casket was lowered into the ground. The sky above opened, rain falling like a thousand tears, mixing with his own, a wet kiss on the cheek. He became solely devoted to his work on the farm; college was never expected of him, and his parents needed his help more often in their slowly advancing age. But, on the third of January, he made pilgrimage to his shrine, her resting place.

            He hadn’t realized he was crying.

His fists were clenched tight on the head of the tombstone, knuckles white with exertion. The tears froze as they traced their solemn way down his exposed face. God, how he missed her. He prayed every night for her, hoped that she knew that he missed her.

“What’s with the tears, my boy?”

The voice froze him to his core. His eyes flew wide, to see a cowled figure advancing towards him from the edges of the forest, directly behind the tombstone.

“You miss her, don’t you?”

It was raspy, the man’s voice; like dead leaves underfoot in fall.

“W-who are you? Why are you here?” He cursed himself for his voice cracking. The old man continued to advance, relying on a gnarled walking stick.

“Don’t you know yet, Jason? You’ve been quietly calling out into the night for me, hoping for me to make my appearance, begging for an audience with me. In the darkest of the night, you toss and turn, call out ancient names best left unspoken, and beg for her to live again. To live, with you.”

The old man pulled his cowl back, revealing a drawn out nose, and exaggerated mouth. His eyes were alive; dark and twinkling with sinister energy. Clouds began to obscure the moon’s silver light.

Jason took a step back, wary. The glade dimmed as clouds formed overhead.

The old man stepped closer, past the tombstone now.

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” He huffed at this, crystalline breath dissipating in the air. He searched for some recognition, or understanding in Jason’s eyes. He found none.

“I’m the Devil. I’m disappointed. All the begging from you and I would’ve thought that you’d be expecting me.”

Jason shook his head, muttering under his breath.

“Now listen here: I can give you what’s-her-name-” the Devil turned and looked at the grave “-Jive, if you give me something else in return. Nothing important-” he glanced at his fingernails “-just your soul.”

Jason stopped.

“You… You could give me her back? You can do that for me?” He spoke softly, afraid that even voicing the idea could make it real, afraid of having hope.

“Uh-huh. Just need a verbal agreement that you’ll give me your soul and you can see her again.” The old man looked up from his nails, and held Jason’s eyes.

Jason shivered and looked away.

“If you can give me her back, then that means that…”

“That she didn’t go to Heaven? Oh no, she did, but the ol’ geezer in the sky doesn’t like to admit to me having the power to do just about anything that I please. You see, we made a bet a long time ago over an apple… Long story short, I bet that humanity was intrinsically evil. He bet the opposite. I won, and every now and then I get to snatch one of his precious from his ‘Glorious Kingdom.’”

                        The clouds swirled overhead, like an inky broth, obscuring the moon.

            “I agree. Bring her back to me.”

                        The old man smiled.

            All of reality screamed. The clouds vaporized as the heavens opened above him in all its glory, the light of the divine shining down, stronger than the sun and as pure as creation. His eyes burned with its magnificence.

            The ground in front of him exploded, dirt flying like a filthy rain; the Devil laughed maniacally, clothes burning away, taking the form of a satyr wreathed in flame. The casket set to rest four years ago slowly rose out of the soil and into the air, the oak burning away until he saw his Jive. Her skin was rotten and decayed, but bathed in the brilliance of the heavens it seemed beautiful. The satyr motioned with his walking-stick-turned-staff, and the flesh was new. A second more and she was wearing her white wedding gown.

            The satyr gestured for him to look skywards, as he made a pulling motion. Simultaneously, Jason felt his soul wretched out of him and saw the soul of his beloved descend into the corpse. Every nerve ending burned, every cell screamed, every fabric of his being wept as his soul was pulled out of him. He collapsed to his knees before his reanimated love.

            “Jason.”

                        Her voice was angelic, her face radiating beauty.

                        He looked at her, his scorched vision blurred with tears of joy.

            “Jive.”

                        She gasped.

            “What have you done!?” Panic tinged her voice.

            The devil cackled manically behind them.

            Her cream-colored skin began to slough off, turning a waxy yellow. She reached out with her hands, wiping away dirt and tears as she decayed before him.

            “I love you Jason. Don’t you ever forget that.”

            She screamed as her soul was ripped from her body: the same ice-cold scream from a hot day in June.

                        The silence was deafening but for the wheezing of an old man.

            “I never said how long you could see her, my boy.”

                        He could hear the smirk in the his voice.

            Jason closed his wet eyes, centuries old now. His body ached, his head throbbed, his eyes stung. He lay down on the now-dead grass where they had shared their first kiss, their dreams and hopes, and where he had proposed the idea of marriage. He just wanted to sleep.

            As his senses were fading to pitch darkness, Jason felt himself being picked up, and heard the heavy breathing of an old man exerting himself, as he was carried off to something far worse than oblivion.