Jezebel

            Jezebel loved him, the boy that she called a knight; he was her life. Now, since he passed, she was not the same. Her eating habits started to slow and eventually cease altogether. She stopped writing all of her poetry and stories and stopped singing. There was no possible way for her to cope as she now fell into deep isolation.

            In her apartment, she held herself up. She let no one in, she let not herself out. There was no escape for her, both in her grief and in the walls of the structure in which she lived. Thoughts of alcohol, drugs, and sharp needles crept into her head, begging to be acted upon. Often times, her neighbors would hear her cries in the dead of the night when the demands of her body got to be too much. Her neighbors didn’t know how long she would last; she only had so much food left in the refrigerator from the time of her man’s death, so they expected the police to show up sometime during the month.

            Curled up on the bed that she possessed, Jezebel wept. She held in her hands a knife, one that she used to compulsively slice part of her mattress open as if the places of the cuts were her wrists. There was no chance that she could bring herself to commit suicide, so she decided that when her man died, she would starve herself to death. She thought, “What way would be better? I can’t drink myself to death, I can’t cut myself, I can’t shoot myself…I’ll die with a stomach full of nothing, since that nothing represents everything that I’ve become.”

            To the sentiment that she made for herself, she held strongly to it. For her, there was no anything to life anymore; she was at the end. Her life was going to be over, and her body would be discovered at some point. She wondered if anybody besides her lover had ever cared for her. The mother that she never grew fond of despised her, loathing Jezebel with a putrid, fiery hate. Her parents wanted a son, and when they did not get that request, they hated the child they bore. Jezebel remembered this, and cried more.

            Then, in the silence around her crying, she heard a note being slipped under the door. Three knocks on the hinged, oak panel followed after the sound of the parchment scraping against the firm texture of the hardwood floorboards. She rushed to the door and opened it, hoping to find the person who had given her the note…she did just that.

            To her left, she saw a man in a trench coat walking down the hall. She ran after him and grabbed him by the shoulders and turned him around. His face was hidden behind goggles and a bandana. He looked down upon her as her hands gripped the lapels of his coat. Her hands shook, and her eyes quivered with hope. The man wanted to cry with the woman, but he knew that he could not, for then, his anonymity would be compromised.

            “Just read the note.” The man said.

            “Please say more than that.” Jezebel said.

            “I know this is hard for you…” The man was feigning and accent, but he’d never practiced much with acting. He would start to slip out of character, but then he would catch himself. His situation was such a delicate balancing act…it was as if he were on a tightrope strung between two planes flying high up in the troposphere; his balance beam was a pole with the weight of the world laid on one end and had a small, five pound weight on the other end to act as a balance.

            “I know it’s you under that mask…” Jezebel said in the most frantic manner. “Reese…it’s you under there, I know it. You’re wearing your favorite bandana, the same one that you hung up in our bedroom. You would brag about how you got it, saying that your great grandfather battled a pirate for it. You were so great at bullshitting, but now you’re just acting poorly. I know it’s you under that mask. Why do you have to go like this?”

            “I don’t know who you’re talking about, now let me go…” The man replied.

            “No! I’m not letting you the f**k go until you’re mine again!”

            “Jezebel!” The man said. She froze; she knew he was angry, so she let go of his coat and let him steal himself away into the rest of the world. And she would collapse back into her foxhole of existence again, now with a new note to read.

            She picked up the letter that the man left near the door, and found her letter opener. With the piece of metal, she tore through the highly-compressed layer of plant life and pulled out the note that the envelope withheld. She unfolded the piece of paper, and returned to her bed to read. The note read:

           

            “Jezebel,

 

            I know that by the time you read this, the police report will say that I’m dead. But the thing is, both you and I know that the truth is the opposite. I did not die in that fire, and I was the one who saved you. You wouldn’t have remembered me after the fire, and you didn’t, so I ran. I ran away as far as I could, until I heard that you were holding yourself up inside of your apartment. That’s when I decided to write this…a sort of final goodbye.

            You probably don’t remember setting your grandmother’s house on fire…and for that matter, shooting your grandmother’s cat. You did both in the same weekend, along with getting incredibly drunken…I actually found it quite amazing that after the first night of drinking, your kidneys and liver were still working. Anyway…the fire, let me get back to it.

            You were aggravated intensely by your grandmother, to the point where you decided to set your grandfather’s ashes ablaze. Although, in your drunken stupor, you had forgotten that ashes can’t really be rekindled, so you ended up burning the floor of the room you were in and that managed to ignite the whole house. I happened to be walking to the house when I saw the first flames. So, I rushed into the house to try to save you, and I managed to do just that. But, your grandmother, I couldn’t find. I knew that you wouldn’t have cared anyway, but I felt obliged to help anybody that I could. Either way, that doesn’t matter now…

            After I got you out of the house, I set you down on the front lawn of the house. In a panic, you said to me that when the police come, they might think that I set the house on fire…so you told me to run. And so I did. Although I left my car parked in your driveway, I managed to get away. I stayed at my friend’s house and stayed there for the night. I expected you to call me or send someone to tell me that you’d come to me, but nothing happened. I waited a week for you to come. And after that week, I penned this…

            As I let this ink pick the paper, I can’t help this one feeling that has been creeping in the back of my mind for a while. I’ve been meaning to tell you, but I’ve been afraid to do so. For a last goodbye, this is probably not what you wanted to hear, but…

           

            Jezebel, I don’t love you anymore.”

 

            Her eyes poured out with sorrow. She now took the blade and sawed across her wrists…she now had her motive to be done with.

 

            A police officer called to the apartment had found Jezebel. She was soaked in blood, and she was almost unrecognizable. The area had been sealed off by the officer, and a coroner had been sent out to collect her body.

            But folded up neatly on the table was a small note that none of the crime scene investigators had taken notice of until they were about to leave. The note was nearly unreadable with the blotches of blood scattered across the paper, but it still was legible and read:

           

            “By now, someone has found me dead. I don’t care who it was, or when it happened, or when I was dead. The blood on this paper should do me some justice, somehow. Maybe it will set my soul free in some sense…or maybe it will make me stay around forever. I’m not sure…and there was little I was ever sure about in life. But, this decision was one certainty. There would’ve been no amount of counseling that I could’ve gone through to try to change me; I did what I did.

 

            But one thing that I remember my lover saying, long ago, when he loved me very much was this: I will hold you in the night, because the sky is always darkest before the dawn.

 

            One thing I can tell you, is that he was wrong.”

Reviews

[.shalynn.009.]

Interesting. I liked that you kept the POV third person omniscient, as it allowed you to get outside of Jezebel's head and into the man's, Reese. it also allowed you to kill her off in the end, although the detachment of the narrator to Jezebel didn't let me feel her pain much, so when she died, I didn't feel much sadness. However, your constant description of her troubles and her life may have deadened my feelings some, and desensitized me to all of the internal pain going on, which probably works with the theme of the piece.

I'm not one for stories about people dying because someone doesn't love them back (not much of a romanticist, sorry) so I may be a bit biased, but I found a few plot holes and problems in this. I think someone else mentioned below that it doesn't make much sense that Reese would believe the police might htink he set the house on fire. Jezebel was drunk, so her actions and reactions make sense, but he was clear-headed. I also wondered why tho police didn't realize that the fire was man-made and lead that back to the drunk girl on the front lawn.

Reese mentioned that he knew she wouldn't remember him when she woke up, but she did remember him, just not what became of him. Thats just a small technicality. I was also a little thrown by the way the letters were written. They seemed more like old-timey, rather than modern age. Your stle of writing often slipped into this as well, and for me, it made it less believable. But again, I'm not a romanticist, so that may just be my bias.

I did like that you didn't end it happily, even though it's not the way I wanted it to end (that's life, a difference of opinion, makes it all the more interesting). You clearly have a romantic style, but also a dark style, and I like the way that the two styles have bled into each other here. Although the idea (kill yourself because a man doesn't love you) isn't entirley original, the actual story was tragic and mostly well written, even if a few things could be cleaned up.

Over all, this was an interesting piece, with a bit of suspense and intrigue that kept me reading until the end, though it isn't my genre. So, for keeping me interested throughout, I give you credit. Good job, and thanks for the RR.

[Coyote Poetry]

A dark and powerful story. Love can twist-up a life and leave you with no place to go. The story was powerful. I like the ending. Thank you for the excellent story.
Coyote

[Ian Faraway]

The last two paragraphs of Jezebel's letter were almost poetic. Very dark and not very pleasant to read in the best sense possible. Doesn't make sense but writers who write horror novels want to hear that. Anyways, it was nicely penned.

[Joiedevivre]

wow. Really loved this, the end sent shivers down my spine. A story I will remember for a long time. So sad.

[Kayla K]

This was extremely powerful, no matter how sad it was. It left me awestruck. This is probably one of the best short stories I've ever read. Maybe some would say it's gruesome, but "It's not always rainbows and butterflies."~ Maroon 5. Sometimes, to make a point, it has to be sad, because sadness is the strongest thing in the world, even if it makes us weak. I loved this story.

[halflives]

Wow.
Just... wow.
That was powerful, amazing, incredible. I'm amazed.
Scratch that, I'm not amazed. Because this is you we're talking about. You're possibly the best short story writer I've
EVER
read.

[A]

Pardon me, I don't know much about writing short stories, so I can't really give any criticism, however as a reader let me tell you what i think
I truly enjoyed reading this story, I lived the moment... it appealed to my five senses, great story friend, keep up the good work!

[Jessi Berlasty]

"Jezebel remembered this,(no comma there) and cried more." "One thing I can tell you, (no comma) is that he was wrong."

Sad story. :-( Why would they think it was him though? He didn't reason that out very well.

[MR_BERG]

Well written, good story.
I do notice a recurring theme or themes; love and death, death and love. I get that it's important to you. I also worry that you're writing the same story, or poem in slightly different ways. Do you have anything else to say?

[Short.Nerd]

Wow that was great! Keep up the good work:)