Mortal End: A Simmering Pit of Jiggery Pokery

Chapter Seven

Decent burials were definitely Verrye Brutall's thing. So much so, that he was determined to do things by the book - the Good Book.

Merit Brutall, wife number one, had been buried on a warm spring day. The garden was beginning to come into bloom and the birds were in full song, chirping a gentle chorus as he lowered her corpse into the cold, dank ground.

Being compulsive about cleanliness, Merit was no longing sporting her blood drenched night-gown, the one she had been wearing when he had slit her throat from ear to ear, in their hand-carved bed in the dead of night. Verrye had burned that. She was now attired in a pale blue silk dress that he had watched her sew, little by little, every evening after she had put their babies to bed.

It had taken her months to save the money to buy the fabric, selling the flowers she grew in their garden at market during the summer months, and the fruit off their trees through the winter. Had she foreseen that she was sewing her shroud, she may have decided to take her time.

And now it was Virtue's turn.

Verrye had put her newly slashed body in the cool-room to delay decomposition. Flies had been plaguing them all summer and the last thing Verrye wanted was for his second wife, the deceased, to start humming and making the place stink.

It was enough that she would soon be viscid and tremellose, causing him to have to immediately plant a bed of fragrant roses upon her tomb, before the dark stench her rotting flesh would create, suffocated him.

As he pushed open the pantry door, Verrye twitched his strong Romanesque nose, checking the chilly air for a rank aroma. There was none. He was also relieved to see that Virtue was fly free.

Lifting her heavy relic was quite a task now that rigor mortis had set in. Rigid with morbidity, her pale arms and legs proved difficult to manoeuvre through doorways. It was like moving a chunky piece of furniture up a narrow and winding stairwell.

After a few stops and starts, Verrye got to the front door and stood for a moment whilst he wiped his lightly lined brow, leaning Virtue uncomfortably against the jamb.

He would really enjoy this funeral, he thought with an inward smile, and most especially the wake. Especially now that he had the place all to himself.

© 2003 Toula Mavridou-Messer All rights reserved. ***Mortal End, Too is the second novel in the Mortal End series. There is an excerpt available on Wattpad to give you a taste of the storyline. I will post chapters regularly, but there are as yet unknown chapters, so this may take a while. You can sign up for my newsletter, follow me on Twitter (Princess Toula), or like my Facebook page. For more information, see my Amazon author page Author.to/ToulaMavridouMesser. Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks for reading! Toula Xx