A Deadly Kiss

Ben was driving down a winding dirt road in Eagle Pass, Texas through a mist thicker than the most condensed of pea soups. It was nearing 10:00pm and he had not seen hide or hair of any kind of rest stop and his eyes were leaden with exhaustion. Holding the wheel steady with one hand, he reached for his cell phone to adjust his GPS thinking it wouldn’t make a lick of a difference but if anything it would give his mind something to focus on. No sooner had he grabbed his phone then a young woman had materialized out of thin air in the middle of the road. Quickly as he could, he swerved sharply to the left which sent his phone flying out the open window on the driver’s side. Fortunately, he was able to skid to a stop before his car could hit a tall oak tree; its branches were like that of a gnarled old woman’s fingers—twisted, deformed, and dark corruption.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Ben carefully eased out of his seat to search for the lady he thought for certain he had seen standing in the middle of the road before.

“Hello?” he called, his voice echoing into the darkness.

There was no reply.

“Helloooo?” he called once more.

Again, only silence answered.

He resolved that it was his own sleep-riddled brain that conjured up the young woman. After smacking his cheeks and shaking his head rigorously, Ben returned to his car to resume his trip. Closing the door, he peered once more into the dark void before turning back to the steering wheel. He thought it was probably for the best if he found and stopped at the first hotel or motel he saw if he couldn’t find his wife’s family house within the next hour. Ben glanced down at his left hand. Lightly twisting and turning his golden wedding band, he thought of Sophie. They had been having problems as of late and from what he could tell, things were only getting worse. He wondered if their marriage would last the weekend, much less the year.

Impulsively, he glanced to the right and what he saw caused him to leap out of his skin: the young woman, who had been standing in the middle of the road not too long ago, was now sitting in the passenger seat. Confusion began to set in once the initial shock gradually ebbed away. Wouldn’t he have heard the door open if she had come in?

Again, Ben wrote it off as a sign of how tired he was and turned his attentions to her. He could see she was quite beautiful: slender, deep shining pools for eyes, long slinky, black hair; skin as pale as the moonlight with a subtle hue of golden brown, lips shading pink roses, and breasts as supple as two pomegranates. Like any man, Ben’s eyes lingered at her breasts. He then found his mind drifting away on the tides of erotic imaginings. How long had it been since he and Sophie had been intimate, weeks, months? Way too long form him by the way he was sizing up this mysterious lady. He felt like a lion that had gone on too long without a decent meal.

The sight of her lips moving and the slight tremor of muted words floating through the air quickly snapped him out of his private reverie.

“I-I’m so sorry…what was that?” Ben stammered, shaking his head to clear it.

The young lady tugged at the edges of her satiny white dress before whispering in a voice as smooth as silk, but lonely as the wind—“Take me home with you…”

Ben was positively stunned!

“I beg your pardon?”

Here the woman in the white dress slightly raised her skirts, exposing the creamy skin of her thighs only barely before repeating—“Take me home with you…”

Ben swallowed hard at this. He felt his heart start to hammer with excitement at the thought of her offer. His member twitched with anticipation. His palms began to sweat. A salacious smile soon played at the corners of his mouth. Before he knew it, his slick fingers were Google-ing nearby hotels and motels. There was a Motel 6 about ten minutes away from them.

“Let’s go baby girl” Ben seductively cooed, resting one of his large hands upon her bare, soft thigh.

To his surprise, the lady covered his hand with one of her dainty ones, returning his lecherous gaze with a wicked smirk. Something dangerous flashed across her eyes and Ben felt his stomach twist up into a several knots. Dread began to take root like a noxious weed, taming the wildfire coursing through his blood. However, like any man who was hell-bound on doing what he wanted, he brushed it aside and turned the key in the ignition. They were soon on their way towards what would most assuredly be a seedy motel.

Within five minutes or less, they had arrived. Ben’s motor was revving to drive where he hadn’t been before and this beauty seemed just as eager to accommodate him on his sinful path. In spite of this, when Ben went to open his door he caught a glint of the golden band adorning his left ring finger. The small sign of a promise to remain faithful to his partner brought him kicking and screaming back to reality. He felt as though a bucket of cold water had been hurled in his face and he was just waking up to the truth of what he was about to do.

“What am I doing??? What. The actual. HELL AM I DOING???!” he admonished himself

“I am a married man! What am I doing here with her?! For God’s sake! I don’t even know this woman!” he continued to scream at himself

Sophie may be many things but she did not deserve to have her own husband run around behind her back. Ben realized he was better than this. His wife and lover deserved better than this. He WOULD love her better than this.

Heaving a sigh of resolution and with a humble smile, he turned to the lovely passenger.

“Hey, listen…” he began.

She was gone. The seat was as vacant as a broken heart.

Ben turned this way and that, his brow furrowing in perplexion. Where had she gone this time? He thought that maybe she had experienced a similar change of heart like he did and chuckled good-naturedly.

“Ah, all’s well that ends well.” He supposed as he moved to exit his vehicle.

He decided he would check into a room for the night, order a bite to eat, turn in for the night and find the family house bright and early the next morning.

Unfortunately, Ben never got the chance. Before he could turn the handle on his door, an oppressive force overwhelmed and pinned him to his seat. In a panic he fixed his eyes forward to face the invisible adversary that had overtaken him: it was the woman in her white dress, the very same he had picked up not too long ago. There were, however, a few marked differences—her ebony hair was stringy, laced with seaweed, and dripping; her once flawless skin was grey and marred with decay and clammy to the touch; her luminous eyes were now dull, lifeless orbs. Her aura seemed to hum with pure hatred directed towards him and her once coral lips were black with rot and turned up into a cruel, rotten smile.

“You men are quite predictable,” she croaked in a voice that rattled inside his head; both were the textbook definition of a horrid nightmare.

Her wheezing, acrid breath assaulted his face like a bramble of prickly thorns.

“You are no better than the rest…you are all just like Felipe…” she hissed like the very demon summoned from the most depraved depths of Hell she was. Anger and fury like that of a cobra about to strike.

Having anticipated his question as to who Felipe was, the nightcomer turned his ear towards her, and whispered the story of how she came to her untimely end; each word dripped like toxic, green poison into his chilled, doomed soul.

“It was 1963. My name was Maria Consuela DelFuente. My family and I lived in a small puebla in Mexico. We were poor, but a proud people. I was thought to be the most beautiful woman in all of the country. I loved my life, humble as it was…but then HE came along. We fell in love. We married in secret since his father forbade him to do so in public. We had two twin boys. My sun and moon…they were everything to us. To me. I thought I was so lucky, so happy. But one day…he came riding up with that little high class slut. She was younger. She was beautiful. She was rich.”

Ben sucked a breath through his teeth as the creature dug its fingers into the warm flesh of his throat. Her eyes narrowed as she gritted her teeth, each one now filed to a razor-sharp point.

“He humiliated me! Dragged my good name, which was all that I had, through the mud! So I took the only thing I could take from him—our children. His boys. Then I took my own life. The Rio Grande swept us away. But I came back for the sole purpose to warn others against being unfaithful, as ordained by that hateful God above.” She sighed bitterly.

Then a wicked, quiet laugh escaped her lips.

“But no. No. I will not be reduced to a simple omen. I will not serve to warn. Instead, you and countless others will suffer for my grief and that of so many others you have hurt so needlessly. You will feel my pain.”

With this, she gripped either side of his face and roughly pressed her decomposing lips to his. Ben knew deep in his heart of hearts that he would never see his beloved Sophie again. He would not live to repent his near transgression.

After what felt like an eternity, the thing pulled away, leering knowingly and once again began to hiss:

“A token for a traitor of the heart. One less piece of scum in a world that saw fit to rob me of my own life.”

Then suddenly, she was gone as soon as she had come. Dragging the back of his hand across his lips, Ben attempted to rid himself of the vile pollution that the strange phantom had left behind with her dreaded curse hanging in the air like smog. Heaving a wad of spit out his window, he made to yank his cell off the portable charger to call Sophie as a last chance to right the wrong he would have committed. He came to realize with gut-wrenching alarm that his phone had been lost at the god-forsaken scene he left behind. His hand was grasping empty space.

A sense of impending doom loomed over him. It gripped him tight and would not let go no matter how much he tried to shake it away. An overpowering scent of dirty river water soon filled his nose. The roar of crashing waves rushed throughout his ears. Then, as if this wasn’t terrifying enough, there was a strange tickling sensation that began at the back of his throat. He started to cough. He coughed, and coughed, and coughed, and wouldn’t stop coughing until he pulled out what looked like…seaweed?

Ben’s eyes became unfocused as time marched on. It was as if the Rio Grande itself had begun to fill his eyes with their murky waters, blinding him partially as the woman’s cursed kiss took full effect. To his complete surprise and utter horror, Ben choked up cold bouts of water. Those bouts turned to bursts, to torrents, and then simply flooded out of him. He was drowning from the inside out!

In only a matter of minutes, his rabbit-pattering heart was slowing down. His very life flashed before his glossed over eyes. His violently seizing body eased to a few jerks. Finally, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and with one last gust of water, he was gone from this life onto the next.

Somewhere along the serpentine highway, the vengeful spirit transformed from monster to her original enticing form. All that was dead about her disappeared, her rosy complexion returned, and she was once again the vision of youth, grace, and loveliness. With a sinister giggle, she looked up at the full moon; satisfied in knowing that she had rid this wretched world of another immoral man. Another despicable beast had been erased from existence.

Without warning, she overheard the soft purr of a well-oiled engine and the crunching tread of tires upon dirt and gravel. A new victim approaching perhaps? Tilting her head to the sky, she breathed in the night—heavy and humid—and grinned a toothy grin. What she smelled was sticky, sweet, metallic, and heady. Another heart tainted by infidelity was making its way into her trap. This was yet another soul to claim and drag to Hell. The Woman In White would deal another kiss of death to another equally deserving man. She would savor it slowly. She would take her time drinking in their pain. This was her purpose. This was her ambrosial wine. Pray you never cross her path. If you do, may whatever you believe in have mercy on your soul. She definitely will not.