Saint Oswald by Jay Bonansinga (always you kirsty moseley .txt) 📗

His head is bleeding. He can feel the delicate rivulet of blood on his temple. He reaches for his handkerchief and dabs the wound, and then dabs his moistening eyes. He is watching his wife die. He reaches out and strokes her arm. “Okay. So... there was this guy, died from a coronary before I had a chance to... okay, let’s say seven.” The fact is, Oswald has no idea how many he’s taken out. “Yeah... seven.”

Matilda gazes at him with a strange, wistful expression, her eyes going glassy and unfocused. “Oswald... sweetie pie... you have lived a life of sin.”

“Yep.” He looks down. “Yep.”

She sinks deeper into the cushion of narcotics, her eyes rolling back in her skull. Her head lolls. Oswald looks up, his heart seizing with terror. Is she going out? Is this it? He touches her cheek. It feels as cold as an ice pack. Her head droops forward. Her breathing gets shallow, faint, like a dying sparrow. Her head lolls backward again and she murmurs. “You must atone.”

Oswald looks at her. “Huh?” He studies her bloodless porcelain face. “What was that, honey?”

She fixes her glazed stare on him. “You have to atone, sweetie. For your sins.”

“Atone?”

She lies back again. Her breath comes out of her on a low, plaintive moan. “Listen to me, Ozzie, because it might be the last thing I ever say.”

Oswald stuffs back the urge to sob. He coughs. “I’m listening.”

“I want to see you again someday, my love... somewhere down the line. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He tries to respond but he has a lump the size of a Volkswagen in his throat. All he can do is make a low, moaning sound.

“Someday, I want us to be reunited in heaven,” she reiterates. “I want this more than anything else.”

He manages to croak, “So do I, darlin.’ And we will. I promise you we will.”

“You promise?”

“Yes... yes.”

“There’s only one problem, Ozzie.”

“Yeah?”

“Your soul is lost. It’s lost.”

“It is?”

“It is... it’s lost... along with the souls of all the poor, wretched victims you’ve killed—they’re wandering in limbo.” Her eyes go vacant again for a moment. She gazes up at the ceiling, head swiveling aimlessly, a satellite dish hunting for a signal. Her voice changes as though possessed by some strange inner reserve. “There’s only one way you’ll ever get to paradise and see me again.”

“Name it, Tilda. I’ll do anything.”

“It’s the only way you can save yourself, and the souls you’ve ruined.”

“Anything.”

All at once, she looks at him and her expression hardens and her eyes fix themselves—as lucid and sober now as a biblical prophet—directly at Oswald. “You have to atone for the killings.”

Oswald stares, a momentary pause as he processes. “Yes, absolutely. You bet. I will atone.”

“I mean it, Ozzie. If you ever want to see me again, if you want to restore the balance... you have to atone for your sins.”

Oswald is vexed. What is she talking about? She’s been quoting the Bible lately, sure, looking into the abyss, getting herself prepared. Getting right with the Lord. Who can blame her? But where is this going? He looks at her, wipes the tears from his eyes, and mutters, “Copy that, Tilda. I’m totally going to atone. Don’t you worry about—”

“PLEASE DON’T PATRONIZE ME!—I’M DYING!” Her spindly body convulses and shudders, a stick figure tossed by invisible gusts. Her head lolls again, and she has to work in order to keep her gaze focused on her husband. Her voice crumbles. She mutters as though to herself. “‘The moon... the moon... she is earth’s dead child... doomed to perpetual return.’” She swallows dryly, agonizingly, her chapped lips making smacking noises. “From new moon to new moon, all mankind will come to bow down before me, sayeth the Lord.’ Isaiah... Chapter 66... Verse 23.”

“It’s okay, darlin’... tell me. Give me my marching orders.”

She looks at him with her last scintilla of strength. Then she speaks in a clear voice. “Save as many lives as you’ve taken.”

He gapes. The silence grips the room. “Excuse me?”

“By the next full moon, Ozzie.” She speaks calmly, her voice filled with certainty. “You have to save as many people as you’ve killed.”

* * *

The chills start on the backs of his legs, the gooseflesh spreading up his arms, rashing his scalp. The heat from his injuries—his abrasions and scrapes—starts to fade and turn icy cold. At first, he can’t understand what’s happening. It’s as if the fear has suddenly overridden the grief and the sorrow. But why now? What is it that he is suddenly afraid of? He has known this moment was coming for months. He has lived with his wife’s cancer for almost a year. The disease has become a countdown clock. So why now? Why the tidal wave of terror?

He blinks, the revelation striking him with the force of a battering ram. He realizes right then that he never truly believed she was leaving him. It never even occurred to him that they would never see each other again. Oswald never thought of himself as much of a Christian, even though he was raised by so-called Christian parents, but he now realizes that he apparently absorbed the faith on a cellular level. He believed with every fiber of his being that he would meet his beloved Matilda in the afterlife.

Now she has placed an untenable quest between him and that reunion.

All at once, the realization brings back a vivid memory from the deepest recesses of Oswald’s mind—fully formed—something Matilda once told him. He remembers it was early in their marriage, a Saturday night, late, after they had tied one on down at Simon’s Pub. It was summer, and hot, and they had wandered home on foot, collapsing in their front yard on the cool grass, giggling like little children. Then Matilda had latched her gaze onto the full moon, which loomed above them like a yellow beacon, and she had gotten serious all of a sudden.

That night, she told Oswald the story of her father’s