Page 6 of Marrying My Moth Lady

Tears carry my mascara down my face. The black streaks on my cheeks represent prison bars. Most days, I’m at peace with my isolated life. I don’t think about my confinement as I dress up in the clothes and makeup I have delivered to Matthew’s apartment, eat the food I grow, or he brings from stores, and surf the net. If I couldn’t read the websites or troubleshoot our unreliable internet connection, then I wouldn’t live at all. But Matthew’s visits trigger me lately. Ever since hestarted dating Carrie Ann seriously, I’ve felt the walls closing in on me. I’m sure she’s the bee’s knees, but I doubt she knows I exist.

I’m jealous of his relationship. I want a companion of my own.

“I’m going home. Don’t follow me,” I yell between sobs. I hate how I sound like a petulant child instead of an independent woman. At least our captive is light enough for me to carry. I throw him over my shoulder in a fireman’s hold and take flight. I cuddle his legs tightly to my chest, so the branches don’t smack him. At this time of day, I can’t fly too high. With bird watchers, amateur drone drivers, and nosy biddies with camera phones everywhere, I stick to the canopy for cover.

This man needs a good woman to fill his belly with biscuits and gravy, fried okra, hushpuppies, and vinegar-stewed greens. My gravy may be vegan and mushroom-based, but I bet I can fatten him up. Poor soul probably freezes solid in the winter and blows around in the spring thunderstorms. He may be our temporary hostage, but it doesn’t mean I won’t treat him right. Matthew can crow until the cows come home, but I’ll make this man my friend.

My first friend!

If the stranger’s a bug collector, he will understand why Matthew and I had to kidnap him. The miners can’t be allowed to rip apart the forest. I don’t care what’s under the soil. It’s not worth destroying the plants, animals, and insects that live above the ground. The bulldozers come in, build a mine, and move to the next area six months later. They leave empty dirt patches behind without trying to repopulate the area. They move too fast for Mother Nature to replenish them. My question is whetherthis man is part of the Carter Mining Company behind the chaos, like Matthew suspects, or if he’s someone caught in the crossfire.

Someone like me. Oh, wouldn’t that be the cherry on the sundae if he were a forest conservationist?

“You are innocent until you say otherwise,” I say to my new friend’s limp form. I flick the last of the tears from my cheeks onto the forest floor. “I won’t assume you’re a monster like Matthew does. I understand how much that hurts.”

I calmed myself from a three-alarm fire to a low simmer by the time we landed on my treehouse’s porch. I love how my potted herbs bloom at this time of the year—even the stinky garlic chives wear a crown of delicate white blossoms. Bees hop amongst the flowers, collecting their nectar. Usually, I’d drape my tired wings over the back of my Adirondack chair and watch them, but I don’t dare linger with the bulldozers within earshot. What if someone found my slender hostage?

“Hi, honey, I’m home,” I call to the empty three rooms that make up my world.

Somehow, my little joke falls flat when I have a man slung over my shoulder. It’s not as if I have a monster husband waiting by the small woodstove to roast my human. I’m vegan…and single…and the farthest thing from a hunter.

I drop my guest onto the bed Matthew purchased for when he stays overnight. He keeps Momma and Daddy’s bed in his apartment, and I prefer my rooftop nest. The navy-blue covers offset the stranger’s pale complexion and sandy brown hair. I’ve never seen someone with blond eyelashes. His glasses are beyond repair, so I set them on the bedside table beside my stack of gardening books. He doesn’t stir when they clink loudly. I push his chin to close his thin lips. His angular features are quite handsome. Few smile lines obscure his smooth planes. Ishe serious all the time or like me, without someone to share laughter?

Do I dare to remove his hiking boots and tuck him in? No, I can’t pretend he’s a guest. He’s nothing more than a bargaining chip to securing my home—a means to the deed to my land….which Daddy should have acquired anyway. Crashing onto my orange-flowered couch, I unbuckle my heels and kick them across the room. Excitement mixes with dread as I contemplate meeting the stranger. What’s his name? Probably something sexy like Grant…

No use spinning my mental wheels when I’m racing the clock. I need to shake a leg and secure him before he comes to. Is it bad that I’m getting a perverse satisfaction from unknotting Matthew’s rope ladder to make the bonds? I can fly up here, but my wingless, wholly human brother is—for once—at a disadvantage. He can holler until he loses his voice. I won’t let him up until he apologizes. So there!

Before I busy myself in the kitchen half of my great room, I must clean the mud off my body. Can’t have ‘swamp monster’ be his first impression of me! My bathroom is just that—a bath in a tiny room. A hand pump from the late 1800s fills a clawfoot tub at the command of my arm muscles. Cold creek water flows up the pipes nestled in the tree’s trunk to my bath.

I throw my soiled dress into the small bucket I use as a “sink” and set it aside to scrub later. If I must take the stranger to the latrine by the creek, I’ll wash my dress there. No time for dress scrubbing or heating water to make my washing pleasurable. By the time I work the hairspray from my hair, he will be awake…or my hairdryer will do the job. I can’t greet him without a fresh blowout!

What if I was destined to meet him? If he’s half as charming as he is handsome, he could bethe one. The best way to a man’s heart is through his stomach…if I haven’t soiled those prospects by kidnapping him after my brother bludgeoned him in the head. Maybe a better strategy would be to appear casual and not try too hard. If he’s a jerk or bitter over the wholekidnapping thing, then I can feign indifference. Cold cabbage salads with iced sweet tea for supper will be perfect for this humid summer night.

What will the stranger think of my home? What was once my parent’s bedroom is now my office. I don’t work but there is a desk…so I’ll call their room an office when I take him on the tour. Who am I kidding? Touring three rooms? While tied up? I must figure out some way to move him if I plan on feeding him. He will use the latrine eventually. What will I—

“Let me go! Where are my glasses? Untie me this instant!” My bound guest screams.

I waste precious seconds fluffing my hair in my antique mirror before answering his calls. Useless primping if he’s blind without his glasses. He must need them like a rabbit needs his ears. Poor man! I’ll explain everything. I just know he will understand and be kind.

“Let me go, you sadistic bitch!” He yells as I enter the guest room. His eyes blaze with anger. He pulls his lips impossibly thin, so they seem to disappear. Blue veins throb violently on his forehead. “If I have to fight my way out of these ropes, I’ll alert every cop in a hundred-mile radius on your ass! We will see who likes to be locked up when you’re rotting in prison, asshole!”

“Now I won’t sit for name-calling in my home,” I say with atsk. I grind my fists into my hips to maintain my composure. “Imay have to wash your mouth out with soap until you learn the proper way to speak to a lady.”

Chapter 4

Horus

This is how those murder shows start. Someone goes into the forest and disappears. If the police wait the twenty-four hours required before a missing person’s report is filed, I’ll be hacked into little pieces. I watched hundreds of those shows and they have one big plot hole. How does a victim escape to tell their tale? As a grown man, I never thought I would be abducted and murdered. If this happened a year from now, I’d be the owner of this land and could get a restraining order for trespassing…or call the cops on them for kidnapping…wait, I can do that now.

How are you going to file a police report from her bed, idiot?

Talk about a curveball. But puzzles are a scientist’s playground, so I’ll outsmart her. If her brother with his fake limp but very real baseball bat is absent, I can overpower her once I’m freed. My guts churn with anxiety. An evil smile curves my lips. If she doesn’t free me to use the bathroom, she will suffer more than me when my bowels let loose. A putrid gas cloud envelops me. She picked the wrong victim.

“Better slow those wheels in your head, darling,” she says with her adorable twang. Damn if my blood doesn’t stir at heraccent. Memories of her shifting skirt and thick thighs blanket my plotting in a milky fog. “Steam’s rising from your ears…and other parts. Even if you wrestle your way out of the ropes and overpower me, you are over twenty feet off the ground in my treehouse. You won’t survive the fall in one piece.”

“Thanks for the info,” I say with a louder intestinal rumble. “I’m not contemplating an escape without my glasses. I’m blind as a bat—”

“Bats aren’t actually blind. Besides echolocation, they have adequate night vision. They are color blind though,” she interrupts.

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