Phantom Kiss

Every human will one day die. Acknowledging that fact, I have found, makes most people feel rather uncomfortable. It’s a taboo topic that has been wired within us for ages. So much so, that we feel compelled to apologize after bringing up this natural tendency that we will all experience. Truly, I know the secret behind why death is so fearsome. It has to do with the living discovering the unknown world. The unknown scares more than the sting of the reaper’s scythe. 

I used to share these truths about death quite freely when learning about these topics from my divine Adelia.  She taught me about superficial life and death, the dangers of the afterlife, the importance of life, souls, and their significance. She was my teacher and friend, but more than that, I had an impenetrable passion for her. 

Her lady-like stature calmed me. She had tight pinned curls that gracefully laid under her big-brimmed floral hat. The curls gently bounced on the cloth that caressed her puffed shoulders and the collar of her dress showed just enough cleavage to make a young man like me go wild. 

However, I showed her enough respect that she was able to slowly possess me with her charms. I have always longed to wrap my arms around her corseted waist and the train that followed her around. Her dress looked stunning on her. However, I was aware that her Victorian fashion did not match the 20th century. 

I have always known my sweet Adelia was strange.  She was always pale, but not albino. She was a perfect sheer where only the moonlight and a soft ballad could ease her state. Constantly I’d try to clasp her hand in mine, aware of my one hundred percent chance of failure. I’d try to imagine how it’d feel to clasp my fingers around her jeweled hand, but I couldn’t quite grasp her. When she saw my attempt, she’d always smile and hum me an old lullaby and explain to me the meanings behind the song.  She loved poetry.

I still remember the first night I tried to hold her. I was so frustrated that evening by some little nuisance, so much so that it led to tears. My beautiful Adelia, trying to comfort me, started to sing me a poem:

“When night is almost done, 

and sunlight grows so near

That we can touch the spaces,

It’s time to smooth the hair

And get the dimples ready,

And wonder we could care

For that old faded midnight

That frightened but an hour.”

Adelia loved music, but her voice alone was a softer note than any melody in the world could hear. Listening to her soft vocal chords clatter together gave me the time I needed to collect myself. Within a sudden minute, my emotions turned from a lightheaded frustration to calm confidence. I am afraid to admit that I hadn’t felt confident within the moment, but I shamefully used her sympathy as a pathway to get what I wanted. What I wanted at that moment was to be held. I wanted to feel her hands pressing my back and smoothing the hair on the back of my head. With this in mind, I walked up towards her and wrapped my arms around her waist. My hands stayed in place there for only a second before they fell through her image. 

“The poem,” She said, acting as if I did not attempt to embrace her at all, “was written by Emily Dickinson, I always admired her. However, I never treated her the way I ought to.” 

Sitting on the edge of the bed in my room I asked her, “Why?” paused, then added, “Did you know her?”

She scooted beside me on the bed and with a girlish charm responded, “Yes. Emily was a schoolmate of mine back during the days where ladies were finished rather than taught. I was not the friend I should have been. Sometimes it is the influence of others that help you create your art. ‘For that old faded midnight that frightened but an hour.’ If she only knew that I could relate to a poem about the dawn.” 

“Perhaps, she didn’t read between her written lines.” And at that remark, she smiled. She blew in my face, a soft stream of cold breath sticking to it. 

“Do you feel that?” She asked. “Yes,” I said and did the same back to her. “Did you feel that?” She shook her head “no” with an apologetic smile. “We are different.” She said, From that, I always knew she was right. She and I were, in fact, different.

From that moment, I couldn’t resist my longing for her. My desire to make her my own was a flame growing into a wildfire. I do admit that my obsession quickly escalated the more in love I grew. It escalated so much that I came up with the bizarre idea of bringing her back into flesh. She promised me that she would try my attempts but her faith in my success was of a low standard. She had warned me before to never trust the supernatural and that I may never detect their hollow lies, but I was ignorant of her warning. I knew well enough that if she taught me these truths, she couldn’t lie, Adelia was too pure to lie. But this news seemed slightly intriguing to her, almost as if she knew the secret solution to our happily ever after. 

I researched for days on end, reading and studying the philosophy of life and death as well as satires about the consequences of my idea. I knew well enough that I was not able to physically touch her, and this went with everything else as well. However, what if she was able to inhabit flesh? This thought intrigued me and led me to the absurd idea of creating a Frankenstein out of my perfect Adelia.

She was not fond of this idea, however, she agreed to try. I regret saying this but I perhaps should have listened to her wishes and her consent. I did not. I was too fixated on my plan that I had forgotten about my adored Adelia. 

Later that evening, I had planned out each of the steps I needed to accomplish my experiment. However, it seemed that the first step would be the most challenging. I needed to take a corpse from a morgue. I needed a beautiful young woman, freshly dead without any funeral makeup or stitching. This would be a difficult task, but it is the most crucial one to my plan.

I spent two years executing my idea, using all of my free time dedicated to this selfish act. This all led me to become a thief and a liar to my friends and family. But most of all, I was giving myself hope. 

I had the intellect to complete my experiment. There was a sort of pride that swelled up within me more powerfully than my happiness of her flesh. My new Adelia inhabited the body of a young woman, beautiful and newborn to death just as I had planned. She fit into her body perfectly. Together my pure Adelia and I spent days, dancing under the moonlight to her favorite ballad as she always loved to do. We would hold each other in our arms and gently fall into a tender rest of peace. I had all that I ever wanted. 

I became aware of a few things. I understood that if a stranger on the street recognized the corpse my sweet Adelia inhabited, then chaos would unleash. So, we stayed indoors. Shut out from the world together in a perfect hidden life. 

Adelia’s body lasted about a month before it started to decay. I do admit that I hadn’t thought of that possibility until it started to occur. My poor Adelia, looking in the mirror, would try to powder the gray spotted skin and drench herself in a perfume to hide the scent of rotting. I would often hear her voice start to sing macabre and songs of death. My sad Adelia, I found out, was trapped inside this decaying body. She hadn’t told me this was possible to do, but perhaps she didn’t know it herself either. We should have known, however, because I had to sew her soul inside the body.

Over time, my depressed Adelia started becoming more frustrated and fierce. She stopped bothering to hide the decay with makeup or perfume. She started looking ugly, smelt like filth, and started growing dark thoughts. I have started trying to nonchalantly avoid my disturbed Adelia: finding things to do on the opposite side of the house or going out to work more often to get away from her.

  Within the next few weeks, she looked almost zombie-like. I could not bear to even look at my treacherous Adelia. I avoided her completely. Not only has the grey in her body started to spread, but the stench grew increasingly worse and holes started forming in her body. She started losing teeth and the ability to talk. She sounded like a gurgling fish. House flies would buzz around her and try to nip at her skin. My disgusting Adelia grew angry and screamed the sound of horrors. It was atrocious. She was, in fact, a monster. 

One day upon my arrival from work, I found a note clenched in her decayed hands. This encounter was shocking to me, especially since the day was so bright and full of glory. Yet, despite the weather, the room was gory and dark--it reminded me of my past two years of obsession with isolation. A knife lay beside the body in the kitchen, all slashed from her escape. I unfolded a letter I which was clasped in her hands. Written inside was the poem she recited to me the first time I tried to hold her hand. However, written within it, a whole new meaning came.