Last month while Meera (her name still felt alien to his tongue, its strangeness and beauty still struck him when he spoke it aloud.) was elsewhere—a long drive to the nearest metropolis to post several letters and process an overseas money wire, which he begged off although the trip was at his request—Edgar decided to explore his new surroundings on foot, without the distraction of Meera’s presence.  Distraction might not be the appropriate word, her company always seemed to calm his troubled thoughts, he could forget her less than attractive attributes.   When he was alone, their differences, though few, overwhelmed; their similarities frightening.  Donning his hiking boots and Amerigo Vespucchi attitude was a clever bit of misdirection on the part of his conscious mind to force his subconscious to release all the fears he had been storing away, like unclaimed baggage at a deserted railway station.  Edgar had never been much of a tourist, he knew where he was going and why.

Setting off as soon as the rented car jounced out of sight, he trudged the rutted dirt road, catching  glimpses of the occasional wildlife indigenous to wooded areas, but none of the two legged variety, only mail boxes; some tilted askew, the wooden post rotting and soon to fall, the names long faded to a rusty blurt.  No roads branched off the main one, just wheel ruts or barely visible foot paths leading either to the inhabitants, who expected little contact from the outside world and cared not for its intrusion, or, a ruin, an empty shell abandoned because of too little social stimulation.  Meera had said that most of the natives were ‘older folk’, content in their isolation.  Most of their progeny were probably scattered all over the States, sometimes dropping in, as duty dictates, to remember their roots, then flee, back to the safety of metropolitan anonymity.  Or to gather on the odd occasion—marriage, birthdays, funerals.  Funerals.  She added that while the living population was few, the dead rivaled for space.  However far they traveled, or how diluted the blood, something instinctual, primal called them back to seek their final resting place in the North Carolina clay.  Edgar inwardly cringed at the predatory gleam in her eye as she recounted her home town’s history; Blue Mound jealously reclaimed Its own.

In the window frame before him was a nail, bent and rusty, the sharp end dangerously exposed.  Edgar had become obsessed with that nail ever since it had cut his hand, in the fleshy part between thumb and forefinger, when he had tried to pry open the water swollen window.  Sucking on his desecrated flesh, the sweet/salt of blood and rust not unpleasant on his tongue, he wondered what would happen if he introduced his wrist to the nail’s bite; sawing back and forth until white of bone appeared.  He would watch the blood well and spill, his life draining, nourishing this house; he could almost see the starving wood greedily drink the crimson drops as they fell.  Desiccated, he could then join the slow decay.

Would she still love him?