Page 39 of Curse of Immortality
“I want you to murder me,” Maeve informed him with a straight face.
“You?” he asked with a frown. “Why would ya want that?”
“That’s my business,” she replied dryly.
“Alright, but couldn’t ya just do it yourself?” The large man looked down at Maeve, struggling to read her cold attitude.
“No, because I need you to dispose of my body.”
Scratching his neck, he looked up and down the street before muttering, “What’d ya mean?”
“Cut my head off and bury it as far away from my body as you can.”
The man's eyebrows rose, and his mouth fell open as he stared at her in utter shock. He liked to think of himself as a good man of God who served the law, by executing those that deserved to go to hell. If Maeve had come to him five years prior, he would have sent her away without a second thought, but times were tough, and his wife was now pregnant for the eleventh time. With a last look over his shoulder, the executioner accepted the job. “If you’re serious, I’ll do it. Can it wait until I had my dinner?”
“No. I want to have it over with now.”
The executioner’s shoulders rose and sank as he sighed. “Fine. Meet me by the old mill outside town. I don’t want anyone seeing us together.”
With Ellen having been the old miller’s daughter, Maeve found it ironic that the executioner who had killed her asked to meet at the mill. But she did as he requested and once they were outside town, he led her deep into the woods.
“This will do,” he concluded after a while and put down the lantern and the sack he carried with him.
For a moment, Maeve and the executioner stood watching each other until he pointed to a fallen log. Pulling out his ax, he instructed her, “It’s easiest if you sit on your knees, place your hands behind your back, and put your head on that log. If you hold still, I promise to make it a clean cut.”
Maeve sank to her knees and positioned her head on the log as he had instructed. Closing her eyes, she thought of how peaceful everything would be in just a moment.
She heard the large man positioning his feet on either side of the log and raising his arms. Once, she had seen this man as a monster when he hanged Ellen, but today she would take his help to end her misery. The quick and sharp cut of the ax startled the birds in the trees, making them take flight.
Some hours later, Maeve opened her eyes and found herself surrounded by darkness. Though the dirt she was buried in felt suffocating, she was far from dead. To Maeve, it felt like centuries before she managed to dig her way out of the ground. Her dirty brown hands clawed their way up for air. Maeve’s hair and skin had turned brown from the dirt she’d been buried in, and the worst part was that the executioner had stolen her dress and shoes, leaving her stark naked. It was late into the night, and she was left confused and furious that her plan hadn’t worked. Her body had healed itself and clearly that dimwit of a man hadn’t followed her instructions of splitting her head from her body. It left her furious and thirsty for revenge.
With dirt covering her body, Maeve marched out from the deep woods. It was a dark and windy night as she passed the church and headed straight for the executioner’s house. Other than the wind that gusted against the closed doors in the village, everything was quiet, as every human lay in their beds deep in sleep. That was a good thing because if a humanhadbeen awake to see Maeve marching through the village completely naked with something close to steam coming out of her ears and flames burning from her eyes, they surely would have screamed in fright. Maeve could easily be mistaken for a demon who had ascended straight from hell. Her hair was tangled with mud making it stick to her skin and fall down in dull and brown locks. Her body was stained from the dirt she had been buried in, but the scariest part was the look in her eyes. If anyone had seen the all-consuming rage in Maeve’s eyes, they would have pushed themselves against the wall and prayed for divine protection.
Unlike the first time Maeve came to the executioner’s house she didn’t knock on his door. It was partly because she knew he’d be asleep and didn’t want to wait for him to get up and secondly because she knew he wouldn’t open the door to her. Taking a step back she used her powers to melt the lock in the door and quietly entered the home of the sleeping family. The night sky was black, and no candles were lit, so even if the executioner or his wife had been awake, they wouldn’t have seen Maeve skulking towards their bed because she was darker than the shadows with the dirt that covered her body.
The executioner kept a sharp blade hidden under his bed knowing that because of his job he had certain enemies who wanted to see him dead. Having the knife within his reach gave him the comfort of sleep. Maeve’s eyes had long ago adjusted to the darkness of the night, and with the light of the moon shining towards the bed, it wasn’t difficult to spot what the shining thing was.
The knife made a sliding sound when Maeve pulled it out from under the bed, but the sound wasn’t loud enough to wake the snoring man or his wife who lay beside him.
“Ihatehumans,” Maeve whispered as she pressed the sharp knife against the large man’s throat. She considered slicing his throat before he got a chance to speak, but when he opened his eyes and fear rapidly spread in them, she wanted to enjoy his terror.
“I told you to separate my head and body,” Maeve hissed, her eyes crazy.
“I-I-I did,” he stuttered with sweat forming on his forehead and throat where the blade lightly pressed.
“Liar,” she snarled with a clenched jaw.
“A-Are y-y-ya a ghost?” he asked with his chest rapidly moving up and down.
His wife, who lay beside him, gasped when she opened her eyes to see what looked like a demon to her. A shriek escaped her shivering lips as her gaze fell to the knife that was pressing against her husband’s throat.
With her motherly instincts warning her to protect her large pregnant belly, she leaped out of bed and clamped her body to the wall in fear.
“If I were a ghost, would I be able to press this knife to your clammy throat?” Maeve whispered.
The executioner made a throaty sound as sweat ran down his face making it look like he was crying. “I swear I did as ya said. I buried your body where I killed ya and yer head in the forest past the church.”
His wife, who stood pressed against the wall, tried to stifle her sobs with her hand, but it was no use.
