Abort Plan

"No! You can't do this! Stop making me!" Giselle saw his darkened frown and features and knew he was blatantly telling her she was the one who started it.

"If you do this you'll kill us both, me and your child. Don't you care about that life? At least let me keep that life, you've taken mine already."

He made a move as if to throw her off his galloping horse but resisted his fist a hair's breadth before it made contact with her wretched figure. She shuddered and hated her position. When you didn't know a thing about horse-riding or getting down a horse (much less a stallion galloping at top speed through the marsh areas of the woods), you had no better option than to clasp the driver's coat to prevent yourself from getting flung off by the velocity.

Much less the chance of escaping from him. He was taking her to the butcher. They called him the Abortioner in the village, a savage wild huntsman taken to relieving soiled "virgins" of their burden and rumor had it that he ate the bloody fetus raw.

Giselle cried into his coat and sobbed inaudibly but the tremors from her worry vibrated in his heart. He had driven himself into slavery. Slavery to the objects of lust and women. Now the master called for a small token. A germ of a life really. His father would never know, his prestige would not be affected and there was the small dark glimmer that he would be rid of the clinging plain brown haired girl in the bargain.

Unwittingly or wittingly, he had brought his pistol. It was not in his habit to load it before he needed it but now it was loaded and ready to fire in the inner pocket of his coat. Protection? There was no saying that the Abortioner would want a steak of a more gluttonous helping.

But you love her.

Love? Did he? Could it be that he had saw a glimmer of it in his soul? No other relationship had lasted this long between him and the other whoring "virgins". What made this girl so different then?

He could not turn back now and look like a coward. He had already showed her his weak side for those moments of walking until he pushed her into the stables and made her clamber up his horse.

No more time to harbor any doubts. The Abortioner had seen them coming up his dirt track to his barn housing his darkly moaning cows.

He had butchered her the same way he butchered his cows.

There was blood in the hay, the cow's feed, the water, the barn floor. Blood on his knife, on her thighs, on his fingers, on her face. There were tears only from her eyes and perhaps, a minute ago, streaking down the bloody fetus together with the fresh blood gushing from her womb.

Giselle felt drained and fainted a moment after the scene described.

"Get her out son. I have to clean and muck out this barn before the missus comes back from marketing. On with you two."

Paying a murderer's fee of silence and a taking an unwanted life, Henry stooped down to collect the butchered body with just a breath of life.

Once outside her cradled her near his chest and galloped to the hollow in the woods he noticed earlier. There he laid her gently down near a mossy log. She was still breathing, but the breath was jagged and uneven. He touched her face with his bloodied hands and left her tear soaked cheek bloody with the hands of a murderer.

The pain was unbearable, like she was swimming in a sea of blood which clogged up all her senses. All she could feel was the searing pain of the biting lion and the innocent lamp kicking her. They were on land but she was in a whirlpool of salty blood which stung at her wounds. The blood was deathly cold and struck her like knives thrusting all around into her at her hair's slightest movement.

Then she was embraced warmly and deeply by a Prince. She saw a horse in golden reins and saddle waiting to carry her off to the ball. He kissed her lips in true love's kiss. Perhaps there were such things as 'happily ever after…….

She was gone.

Henry held her cadaver in his hands and he saw the townsmen seeing her corpse in the woods with all the staining blood. He saw them noticing his bloodied hands which he would attribute to hunting wild rabbits to the woman on the forest floor. At night they would creep into his room and find his loaded gun. Further puzzled and skeptical they would alert the officials as the corpse decomposed but the trail leading to him grew hotter and more evident. Soon they would be hot on his heels and nabbed and hanged for his crime under the Puritan law.

Crazed and insane, he could not feel himself clutching her and kissing her like the black man Othello to his dead wife Desdemona. Only he was far from dead.

He dug a grave through the soil and earth and frantic insects of repulsion climbed up his arms and shirtsleeves. He threw her body in and went in himself to kiss her goodbye. Then he was maddened by his frenzy and tossed the dirt over her in no ceremony or order. Just to cover her and that was all he needed to do to escape the crime from which he was guilty of.

He ran away from his neighing horse and the images of her. There was no one else he could confide in. They would tell on him without mercy. Not his scandal-filled friends who would laugh it off. Not his family. Surely not to God. The stern figure would rebuke him as he never had in the Sunday masses.

He took out a pen in a last whim of leaving behind a letter to remind her of. His lyrical sense and phrasing were gone with his anger and hate and burden. A mad man's grief and sorrow overtook his pen in the letter he wrote.

Then he shot himself in the fields as he gazed into the horizon and the village he would have gone home to had he given up on his wild-goose chase for women months ago. He felt blood dribble down his chin and closed his eyes silently but mournfully.

Later that night, the spirits awoke. Giselle danced into the field relieved of the pain which had dissipated. She saw the corpse in a faraway field with her ghost eyes. She walked out into the moonlight and saw the crumpled paper and the handsome corpse. She had a vague idea that she knew him.

Staring at the fields looking at the far stretched hazy horizon he laughs mirthlessly. His hard cold phalanges grip the reins of his horse. Back to the lands where she appears out of nooks ceaselessly. Her bright green eyes and plain brown hair, too repeatedly boring when wheat was sown. Wild oats scattered in a frenzy chase soon proved to be wicked, thorn adorned weeds. Fertility, blessing or curse, to one so young to have taken the fruit's seed. Her family died in the pendemic, never to known about her miserable plight. She pleaded, begged her one-sided love, after one night's warmth turned deathly cold like Othello's last kiss. Flee from the night's misconception of bliss. Blood flows freely like a dirty spring after he takes her to a butcher's place for the abduction. Soon night changes tune and no longer plays seduction. In the nocturnal sounds she clings tight to his stallion, forgeting the pain in his suddenly warm embrace. Only one of them feels his kiss and knows that he clings on for hours to her broken, bloodied corpse. Only one can stay to dig a grave with bare hands. Only one rides away from the town 20 miles from their birth. Only one willing choses death as his partner. Refusing to give over to false love's pure surrender. In the fields he ran away from her, where he finally realised her worth. A shot of the pistol rings clear, again. In the towns of unrequited love.

Then Giselle wept at the knowledge as she saw the ghost tears rolled down without the relief crying brought people.