The Last Horror Novel in the History of the World Read Free Page B

forgiveness.
    But, this is far from true.
    When alone, wandering amongst his own kind, in the town he never invites his family to from fear of humiliation, he encounters myriad women who embody the stock he knew he was supposed to search for. Often, he curses himself for chancing upon his bride, in a world foreign to him, alive with mystery. It is this mystery he accuses, blaming the unfamiliar surroundings as the catalyst for his faulty feelings. The mother of his children is still pleasing to look at, to hold, but now that the magic of her strangeness has tapered, been undone and made homespun, a nausea at the eternity he’s promised her has mounted, made him miserable. 
    It is not so much a plan he hatches as a notion. He leaves himself open to the suggestion that he might still find his way. After all, their wedding did not occur in his church, under his Lord’s eyes, but rather near a river at dusk, the faint wisps of orange sunlight leaking like streaks from the horizon.
    “If I am approached,” he tells himself, “I will not thwart the advances.”
    In this way he deceives himself into believing that any engagement that might grow out of his openness would be fatalistic, sent by God, and who would he be to intervene?
    Maybe he is sharpening a sword, maybe he is cleaning a rifle, maybe he is checking the mailbox—it all depends on when the story occurred. There is nothing definite beyond this: the man finds a more suitable lover.
    On a lark, he meets a woman with money from a respectable family, and, because they are more suited to each other, they fall madly in love, and the man sets his designs on stepping away from his former family and into this new lady’s life.
    He barely explains this to his wife, says merely, “I’ll not be home again,” and the wife is heartbroken.
    Here the legend becomes murkier, splits in two.
    Some say the wife does it immediately, some say years transpire before it’s done.
    This is a possibility: the man’s new woman cannot bear him children. They try, over and over, they try, but the results are always the same—nothing happens.
    The man knows, for his life’s plan to be fulfilled, that he must have children to pass his name to. The new wife knows this as well, lays in blankets weeping and watching the sunset, lighting candles and speaking with Jesus.
    It is a great internal debate that twists in the man’s soul. On the one hand, he already has two children, on the other, they must stay secret or it could be his undoing.
    The new wife’s depression does not abate. She stays hunkered down in misery, breaking from her woes only long enough to endeavor to conceive again. Each time becomes more wretched—mechanical sex where no one opens their eyes, and afterwards she sits in odd positions that she’s discovered in books, because these unique postures are supposed to aid with conception. They do not.
    Long is the season of their sadness, and the man schemes a longshot.
    He goes to the new wife in her nest of sorrow.
    “Do you love me?” he asks.
    “More than anything,” she tells him.
    “Will you always?” he says. “No matter what?”
    She becomes curious. “You know I will,” she says. “I don’t understand?”
    “Promise me,” the man says. “No matter what.”
    “I promise,” she says, “no matter what,” she says, “I always will.”
    Then comes the confession along with the scheme, “I can go for them,” the man says, “I will bring them here,” he says, “they will be our children,” he tells her, “yours and mine.”
    Joy glows in the new wife’s eyes. “What are you waiting for?” she asks, and the man goes.
    Again the legend leaves us to assume. We know nothing of the specifics beyond this—the man travels to his neglected abode. Perhaps, on seeing his return, the old wife goes wild with hope, “Has he returned? Will he stay forever?”
    Imagine then the pendulum of her emotion when he professes his purpose, “I’ve only come for