The Wedding Band of Peggy Clay

by Anahita Ayasoufi

Part 1 appears in this issue.

conclusion

Peggy scanned around and found herself standing in her night robe in the middle of a desert realm with a creek that seemed to have a life of its own, a parcel of questionable food in her pocket, and a ragdoll cat at her toe.

There were only two things she could do: move forward and keep chasing the unattainable ring or trace her steps back along the creek to the house. She glanced back. The creek was now welling out of desert sand, twenty feet behind her. There was no length of the creek to trace back. She cursed.

“Meow,” Winter said, beginning to patter forward. The bobbing boat had started moving again, and Peggy resumed her chase. They raced ahead for hours. She could not tell how many. The moon never changed place in the sky and the ring never came quite within reach. Then her stomach rumbled in a loud growl.

Hunger began like a pang, then another, then a roar. She had had chicken soup with Gerald at 5:00 p.m., but to her starving body, it seemed like days ago. She wondered if this was an illusion of some kind. At some point, the terrain had changed from soft sand to rocky pathways. The creek snaked through the rocks, and the tiny boat was bobbing in place somewhere ahead out of reach.

She sat on a rock and took out Mother Tabitha’s food. She turned it over in her hands and unwrapped it. In there she found nothing but a handful of steak pieces: five, to be exact. The smell made her knees weak. It wasn’t much, but it was a delicacy for sure.

“Meow,” Winter said, licking his whiskers.

Between her rumbling stomach and the glassy eyes of Winter pleading, she made up her mind that the food had to go to Winter. She placed the unwrapped steaks down and watched Winter gobble them up one after another.

Before the last piece disappeared in the feline mouth, she took her gaze away, and that was when the boat moved again, except this time it did not get far. At the edge of the darkness, it got caught between two protruding rocks near the bank.

Peggy leaped and all but fell into the creek. She extended a shaky hand toward the ring, so close her fingertips touched it. She took a step into the water. It was icy cold, painful, but not deep. She bent to close her fingers around the wedding band when the darkness near the two rocks moved. Not darkness. A snake. Black with crimson spots. She froze. How had she missed it? The snake opened its mouth, large and stinking, its fangs sharp, its tongue slithering like another snake. Peggy’s limbs stiffened. Impossible to move.

Winter pounced. One blow, two blows to the head. The snake hissed and retreated into a hole among the rocks, as if someone had pulled its tail.

The ring boat began to float away.

Peggy kneeled by Winter, her heart thumping, adrenalin rushing in her veins. She patted his head with passion.

Winter allowed this for a moment, then leaned his neck away from her hand and meowed at the boat.

“Right. Let’s go.”

They were only a few minutes into the fruitless chase when a strange sound filled the air: whoosh, whoosh, clap, like a bird flapping its wings but much louder. Peggy looked up and spotted the blotch of moving darkness to the right of the moon. Then it got closer, and Peggy’s jaw dropped. It was a crow, if a crow could be the size of a two-story building. Its beak was the size of a billboard. It threw its head to the sides giving rise to twisting gusts that knocked the air out of Peggy’s chest. Peggy screamed, but the sound went lost in the deafening caws.

The crow descended on them fast. Running would do no good. Winter pressed himself to the side of Peggy’s leg, his back arched, his fur standing up. A flash of memory sent Peggy to a time long ago when she had clasped her mother’s leg fearing a stray dog. She looked down at Winter, then up at the crow, then down at the creek, where the ring had finally settled in a doldrum of sorts, well within reach.

Only a split second to decide. No way to get the ring and protect Winter, too. She dropped on her knees and made a bridge over the cat, clutching him to his chest. She shut her eyes tightly and braced for the claws ripping into her flesh, but what happened instead was something else entirely.

Her legs began to straighten. Winter wriggled out of her embrace. She opened her eyes in horror in time to watch Winter leap to the ground and get smaller and smaller as the crow lifted her higher and higher in the sky.

“Winter!” she shouted. Then she gripped her robe to prevent the belt from loosening and sending her headfirst to the rocks. Somehow the crow had sunk its claws into the fabric and not the flesh of her back. She struggled to breathe in the killer wind. If she had not chased that ring, she would be by Gerald’s side and Winter would be with Tabitha. Only if she had not chased that ring.

She dangled from the talons for an immeasurable time, wind making whips out of her gray strands and slapping her face. She waited for the crow to drop her into a giant nest rattling with human bones. Instead, the ground raced toward her face, and before she could react, she thumped down and rolled in sand.

The crow retracted its wings and stood behind her like a guard. Peggy stumbled to her feet. She took inventory. Loads of sand trickled from her disheveled hair. She had left Winter behind, not knowing if he was able to find his way back to Mother Tabitha. She would most probably never see Gerald again. She had lost her wedding band for good. And behind her stood a monstrous crow. In front of her, she checked.

In front of her was a curtain, black velvet. She reached to touch it, and the velvet moved. Not a curtain. A hooded cape. Draped around the shoulders — if there were any shoulders — of the Grim Reaper.

It couldn’t be. She took a step back. Despite her mind screaming against it, suddenly, everything fell in place. The unfathomable realm, the giant crow, the cape, and the scythe. This was the end of her life.

“Surprised, are we?” a resonant voice said. It came, not from the Reaper’s mouth, where it should have come if the Reaper had a mouth, but from all around her. The air itself was resonant with vibrations. She not only heard them but felt them on every inch of her skin.

“Did you think life would never end? Have I ever failed to deliver?” His tone was disgusted. Then the vibes of the air heightened enough to feel like a punch in her chest, before they let go.

For a moment she considered the possibility that this was a stunt trick, a man in a costume with excellent ventriloquism talents. But it was wishful thinking, with the impossible crow behind her. The vibes in the air laughed, as if they could read her thoughts.

“First name Grim, last name Reaper, the real thing at your service,” the Reaper said.

“Any time left?” she murmured, pulling herself together. Somehow, once she accepted it, the problem became a logistical one. “Do I have time to say goodbye to Gerald?”

The Reaper waved the scythe. “You seem to have had enough time to injure my snake and disturb my crow.”

The crow cawed behind her, and a slithering sound reverberated somewhere to her left.

“I am sorry,” she said reflexively. “I was chasing—”

“The ring, I know. If I get my hands on that Mother Tabitha...” The Reaper sounded annoyed.

“The ring kept moving away.”

“You thought it would keep you in Gerald’s mind. You were afraid of being forgotten,” the Reaper said.

“The ring is lost now.” A strange feeling washed over her. “Perhaps it’s for the best. If he does not see the ring, he will forget me. He won’t suffer when I am dead.”

The Reaper shifted closer to her, floating on nothing. He placed something under her chin, a finger, but he had no finger, only a sensation of solid matter conjured out of thin air.

“You think I am here for you?”

“What?” She glanced around. There was no other human there but her. Her chest became heavy with an invisible weight. A knot formed in her stomach. She saw for the first time where they stood. Behind the Reaper’s vast cape, the realm had merged into familiar walls, concrete foundation, wooden planks, cobwebbed stairs leading to the basement’s door into the kitchen, and.... she gasped. From under the basement door were seeping puffs of smoke, like ghostly claws. She smelled the fire.

“No!” She leaped toward the stairs but fell into the non-existing arms of the Reaper.

“Mr. Reaper, please!”

“Oh, just call me Grim.” He lifted her and placed her back on her feet. She rammed into him again.

“Your husband needed to warm up some milk. He forgot to turn off the burner. It was his time, anyway.”

“No! Let me go help him.” She shoved against the air. He wrapped around her like a python.

“Remember the photo album, the one that you lost?” The Reaper whispered.

Peggy froze. It had been such a long time since she had thought about the album, consciously at least. She was twelve. She had pestered her parents to let her take the family photos to middle school to show to her friends, except they were not friends but bullies. The album ended up in the groundskeeper’s wood chopper. She had gathered as much of the dust as she could, wood splinters cutting her hands. She kept the dust in a matchbox. It still sat somewhere deep in the bottom drawer of her private closet.

“When your mother got dementia, you never forgave yourself. You thought the album would have made her remember you in the end.”

Peggy moaned. Was this why she had left Gerald alone and chased the ring?

She went down on one knee. Then she knew what she needed to do. “Mr. Reaper, Grim, you want a life. Take mine!”

The Reaper uncoiled from her. “Will you give your life, really?”

“Yes!” Of course, she would. There would be no meaning in life without Gerald.

The Reaper appeared to think about this. “You know, Peggy, many think they will give their life for their love, but few actually do at a time like this. Survival is a very powerful instinct.”

“Take it,” she said, reaching toward him with both hands.

“What will he do without you?”

“There is an insurance policy. He can hire a nurse.”

“A nurse will not love him.”

“He can get a cat.”

“You will be forgotten.”

Peggy paused. “Isn’t everyone, eventually?”

There was a long resonance in the air around her. It sounded like a deep roar. The Reaper’s posture stiffened.

“It does not work that way. It is not your time.”

Her shoulders drooped even as her thoughts began to race, searching her surroundings and the deepest darkest corners of her mind for a solution. The Reaper moved toward the stairs. That was when it dawned on her what to do. “Grim! Stop!”

He turned the faceless hood toward her.

“Human life is not the only thing you want. There is something else. Isn’t there?”

“What?”

“You do not want to be forgotten, either.”

“Who forgets me?”

“Everyone! We are so desperate to go about our daily lives that we deliberately make ourselves forget you. You said yourself that we are surprised to see you every time, even though you never fail to deliver.”

The Reaper leaned closer to her. She had his attention.

“How much life do I have left?” she asked.

“I cannot tell you that.”

“Fine. Don’t tell me. But take it and split it in half between me and Gerald. I know you have made that deal before.” She did not know this, but she hoped. She had heard of many couples who died within a few days of each other.

“Why would I do that?”

“So that I write the story of this encounter. I will put long hours into it, stay up at nights to get the details right. I will pour my soul into it. It will be visual like a photo album, concrete like a wedding band. I will never, ever forget you.”

She waited. The resonant air became an ocean of white noise. She could not interpret his mood. The crow cawed and the snake hissed.

Then the Reaper lifted the scythe. She braced herself. Everything went dark.

When Peggy regained consciousness, she was sitting on the kitchen floor with her back against the bottom cabinet. A man in paramedic uniform was holding her wrist, taking a pulse. A firefighter was filling out some forms clipped to a board.

“Gerald!” she croaked, her voice weak. Her throat burned from the smoke.

“Your husband is fine, Mrs. Clay. He noticed the fire in time and called us. You must have fallen asleep here and then inhaled smoke, ma’am.”

She closed her eyes in relief. Then she opened them and glanced around. The damage was minor: soot on the backsplash board, crooked vent, nothing the handyman could not fix.

She found Gerald in the living room. A ragdoll cat, white as snow, purred in his lap. He looked up. The first rays of dawn brightened his childlike face.

“This cat woke me up in time. Can you believe it? Came out of nowhere.” He stroked the back of the cat. The cat stretched under his touch. “I think he wants to stay. What should we name him?”

“Winter?” The name blossomed in Peggy’s mind.

“Meow,” Winter said.

Peggy inhaled a deep breath. “We should go shopping: a litter box, cat food, cat treats, lots of cat treats.”

Gerald nodded. “While we’re at it, let’s have your ring tightened too. It looks a bit loose. We don’t want to lose it.” Gerald pointed at her left hand.

Peggy looked down at the ring, the gold band, the pearl, and the five melee diamonds catching the morning light, each telling the story of a different era of their life together. And now, a new story was forming in her mind with urgent speed. She had to buy a legal pad and pens to write it down. There was an urge to bask in the presence of Gerald, to hug Winter, to write the story. And to do it all before they ran out of time.