Corsets & Corpses

What is a girl to do when her husband won't stay dead? Kill him again, of course!

I surely had not expected to find, upon awakening from a most delightful and somewhat scandalous slumber featuring the rather handsome heavyweight champion from the neighbouring town, the rotting corpse of my husband staggering over to my bed, dripping sludge and bodily fluids all over my crimson-and-gold Aubusson rug. My eyes, previously half-closed and heavy with stolen sleep, flashed open as the stench of putrefaction reached my nostrils and bile rose in my throat. I propelled myself upwards and reflexively grabbed the closest thing to me: a pillow.

No, that wouldn't do.

My husband lurched another step closer, an ungodly groan emitting from his hanging jaw. Upon his swollen tongue, a bustle of maggots writhed about as though the dawn light burned them, and a couple fell onto my rug. My poor rug! It would never be the same.

I threw the pillow as hard as I could in the general direction of his face, but it sailed straight past his lolling head and knocked a Grecian vase to the floor with an ear-shattering crash. I consented myself to a small shriek of fear and glanced around for my next impromptu weapon. The glint of a candlestick holder caught my eye—oh, but could I bring myself to tarnish its beauty with blood and brain matter?

Dearest Reginald never had been quite good with timing; he cut short my ponderings with a gurgling bellow, much like the drunken din he used to perform on his way back from the public house. His club-like foot thumped forward a step, the other one close behind. The gap shrinking drastically between us, I cringed at the poor ornament and its impending doom. Alas, it had been a wedding gift from an acquaintance we scarcely adored. And in truth, the filigree engraving that littered the surface was rather last season.

We danced through the space together then; he, blundering towards me like an elephant on opium and me, graceful as that first night we'd met at the Sumners' ball, and as he stepped into the space I had just occupied with my ever-so-deadly pillow, I launched myself onto the bed and across to the opposite side, clasping the cool candlestick holder in my hand. It skidded down, slick with my sweat, and I had to jostle it about before I acquired a firm enough grip with which to beat someone.

Rallying my skirts and my wits, I called out to the oaf of a man and he swivelled on his heel to face me. As he did, a sickening multitude of layers of green skin sloughed off his foot and mulched into the carpet with the ease of paper in water. A retch forced itself from my bowels and I had no choice but to accommodate it: horrendously unsocial heaving sound and all. My mother would surely swat me for doing so, but then again, given the circumstances, perhaps she would understand. I was, after all, about to murder my husband for the second time in a month.

I knew I should never have married a shipping merchant. Even if he did have the aquiline nose and the ebony whiskers and the money and the horses and the Cornish manor by the sea. I should have stayed in London, waited another season, and surely some subdued solicitor would have come along and swept me off my feet.

Mutant ocean fish that turn men into zombies would never have reached London.

It started on one of Reginald's boats. A fisherman caught a strange-looking sea creature, and it took a chunk from his arm. His fever progressed to full blown delirium, and when he had bitten half the men on board, they realised he no longer had a pulse and was decaying from the inside out. By the time the boat reached port, only a young boy hiding in a barrel of salted pork had survived, and he ran straight to Reginald's office to tell him the dreadful news. Unfortunately, the boy was unaware he, too, had been bitten, and upon seeing the beefiness of Reginald's jowls decided he was simply too delectable not to eat, and thus my husband was bitten. By this time, the gossipers in town had informed me of the crew's plight, and when my dear husband returned home for the evening I was waiting in the dark with a pistol.

I thought that would be the end of it.

But apparently not.

Once again, Reginald exhibited his dreadful timing and lunged at me; great green tree trunks for arms swiping at the air as I sashayed into the corner of the boudoir.

The corner. You fool, thought I. He was twice as tall and thrice as wide, and I had ostensibly trapped myself in the worst possible place to be with absolutely no escape.

And, heavens! A most wounding realisation struck me as I glanced around Reginald's immense bulk for any chance to flee. Why had not the servants awoken? But of course, I knew the answer. Reginald must have killed them already, and I was soon to be next, followed by the whole village.

I decided it prudent to end these horrid proceedings post-haste.

He pitched forward, and this time I was ready for him.

I had but a second to raise the candlestick holder above my head, clasped between two uncalloused, white-knuckled hands, and as soon as he was close enough for me to count the beetles crawling in his lank hair I brought my weapon down upon his brow with all my might.

The skin of his face parted like gentlefolk from lepers. Black fluid gushed out of the wound, spraying us both. It was warm and dense, and smelled of death. I expected to gasp, to shriek, to wail, but I knew better than to open my mouth to such poison. Stifling another unseemly retch, I scraped my face across the epaulette of my nightdress in a futile effort to clean myself.

And it was then that I saw my chance.

His eyes had been soiled by his own vile juices. He could not see me, could not anticipate the candlestick holder driving towards his head once more.

His face crumpled as I threw all my strength into my attack. Once, twice, thrice I struck him, until he fell to his knees. He did not groan, for he no longer possessed a mouth to do so, and the floor shook as he collapsed into a motionless pile of rotting flesh and blackened innards.

Drawing quick, shallow, bile-tasting breaths into my lungs, I dropped the candlestick holder and stood quivering over my dear husband's body. I wiped my mouth, wiped death from my lips.

"Excuse my language, my beloved," I whispered, "but kindly go to Hell this time."