Repose

by Richard H. Williams

It was 2 am and the dense purple of the night seemed to shroud the pale moon. The sharp chattering sounds of the dogs on the neighboring mountain echoed ominously across the hills and valleys. An occasional car glided quietly through the little village.

Bill tossed restlessly in the arms of his young bride. He had lain awake for over an hour and had become fairly obsessed with his inability to sleep. His thoughts were of events unusual and frightening, of deaths unnatural and terrifying. He recalled the death of a close friend who had joined him for 18 holes of golf on a Sunday morning and had become deceased 15 hours later. The friend had also been 31 years of age and newly wed and death had been attributed to natural causes.

Bill gazed with admiration at his wife's easy repose. The round curves of her gentle face carried a half-smile. He rolled noiselessly from the circle of her arms and moved into the next room. With a sure and easy gesture he packed his pipe. As he sucked contentedly on the acrid brier he thought, "What a superstitious fool I am."

Bill ambled recklessly back to the bedroom and crawled into bed, lying facing his wife. As he slid pleasantly into the nebulous world of slumber, he felt a short, sharp stab of pain. His wife's straight, white, long canines made two clean punctures in his jugular vein and, as he felt himself recede into an eternal blackness, he visualized the tender half-smile in repose.

Copyright Richard H. Williams 2005