Chapter Two
Margaret
It was all such a wicked illusion, thought Margaret, as her breath started catching in her throat. Had anyone chanced to see her in her present condition, undoubtedly they would have branded her a whore. She was on her bed, nude, with her butt up in the air and her full udders hanging down like obscene pendulums of flesh.
For that last few minutes, Margaret's eyes had been closed. This way, she was able to see herself not as she was at present, but as she had been in the past. Her body had never been lean and sexy, like the bodies of the celebrities she sometimes saw on TV. However, it had been curvy, warm, and alluring enough to attract her husband. He had been a handsome man with dusty brown hair and a matching mustache, by the name of Robert Caldwell. She'd married Mr. Caldwell while he was still off playing army-man in the early nineties, serving multiple tours in places as exotic as Kuwait and Iraq. That was well before the current mess in the Middle East had started up. Margaret had been twenty-eight then, while her Robert had been twenty-six.
Robert had only been a diesel mechanic and not a soldier. He was always out somewhere in the desert, trying to keep the sand from getting too far into the working parts of a Humvee's innards, or piecing together axles and such when those trucks had gotten stuck in rough terrain. The fact that he was a non-combatant did not stop her Robert from getting blown up by an IED, an Improvised Explosive Device. The device had ripped through the inside of the lightly armored personnel truck her husband had been sitting in. It was concealed within a case of MREs (Meals, Ready To Eat), and added to a stockpile of supplies that Robert's squad was requested to load and transport. The IED had taken out her Robert, and everyone else unlucky enough to be on board the vehicle that day.
The moment the news of her husband's death reached her was the moment Margaret's world had turned upside down. The person she had once been disappeared. Gone was her carefree attitude, her optimistic sense that there was always a silver lining behind every gray cloud and a rainbow after every big storm. Gone were her days of joking around and smiling, of heading out to catch a movie, of taking in a nice dinner at a restaurant, or even of going out for a jog or a bicycle ride. The new Margaret was angry, bitter, and disappointed. For many years now, she had been this way.
Margaret well knew that her Robert was long gone, and that the impostor who slid onto the bed behind her was nothing more than some devious entity pretending to be him. Yet, when she closed her eyes she saw her self as she'd been twenty-two years before, a little on the chubby side, with hair bright and blonde, bouncy and curly. As for the thing behind Margaret, when her eyes were shut, she was entirely convinced that it was her husband come back from the dead. The entity breathed and moved like her Robert. It reached out and held her ass like Robert had, many years before. It teased the open flower of her sex like Robert would, before he penetrated her and made love to her exactly like Robert would.
And that's what Margaret would do; she would make love to that strange weeping-thing-turned-Robert that she'd found in Donald's bedroom. The woman would feel that hard cock of his invading her from behind; feel his hands groping at the swells of her ass. That was at first, before those strong and perfect hands went over and cupped and held her full breasts. In that intense moment of ecstasy, Margaret found herself pushing back to meet Robert's thrusts, becoming even more excited when she heard their flesh smack together. Only sluts made love that way, she reminded herself. For a few fleeting moments, she would allow herself to be one. For her one true love, Robert, she would have done anything.
Margaret heard the weeping thing's moans and felt its shudders around her and within her. These motions were exactly like her Robert would have made them. When her husband could no longer hold himself back, Robert would wrap his arms around her waist and embrace her, until the last of his sexual contractions had passed.
This too, the weeping thing did for her. Behind her, she could hear it breathing hard. She could feel its sweat moistening up the back of her thighs. She felt the last of its tender kisses as they were planted on her back.
Margaret fell forward on her bed, panting from her exertion. While her Robert would have stayed with her and cuddled, the weeping thing was no such beast. Like a thief, it fled back into Donald's room, until such time as she felt the need to go over there and draw it out again.
"Margo..." The weeping thing had said to her, using Robert's fading voice before it quickly disappeared past her open door.
That's what her Robert had called her, back when he was alive. Margo; after that actress in those old Superman movies. Nobody had referred to her that way in ages.
Margaret lay on her bed for several minutes, refusing to open her eyes and ruin the illusion. She was still twenty-eight, still young and happy, still very much in love with her Robert and he with her. Still...
The woman's thoughts stopped, as she felt the weeping thing's expulsions seeping from her body, for it had its own seed just as a man does. The sheets will have to be washed, she thought. She would have to use up even more of the laundry detergent, unless she got her body off the bed in a hurry. This is when Margaret finally opened her eyes and slid off the mattress. As she got to her feet, she made the mistake of looking into the large mirrors that made up her closet doors.
Margaret saw herself as she really was, old and wrinkled and discolored and bloated. She had become a waste of a woman with arthritis, diabetes, and high blood pressure afflicting her. A woman who had to inject her belly with insulin once a day to make sure her blood-sugar didn't get too bad. She would be better off dead, she thought. She'd been telling herself that same thing for over twenty years, ever since she'd lost her Robert.
The old woman's face tightened into a mask of pain. She took a seat on the edge of the bed and began to cry. She no longer cared about the expulsion leaking from her body and oozing down to stain the sheets.
Some time later, Margaret found herself sitting in the small corner reserved for an even smaller dining table with four white and wooden chairs. She was drinking warm Jasmine tea. The woman tried to convince herself that her life had changed ever since she'd discovered the weeping thing in her old renter's bedroom, but really it hadn't. Margaret was still the same old Margaret, who had to go to the doctor at least once a week to get something or other checked. Who had nothing better to look forward to, other than TV sitcoms and talk shows that seemed to be getting stupider with each and every passing season.
Well, her renter was gone now, so that had changed. Oh, the police had come by when she'd called them. They'd taken a look at Donald's things and checked whatever it is that cops checked on occasions such as that. Donald had been missing from work for a couple of days by then. One of the detectives had even confided to Margaret that some of Donald's coworkers had mentioned that he had been seeing someone new. So far, nobody had a clue as to who that person was.
Margaret had given the police her own suspicions. Donald had been eating a hell of a lot more food lately, and he sure wasn't showing where all that food was going on his waist. Donald had a girl on the side, she was convinced of it, and he was taking all that extra food to her!
She caught the detective rolling his eyes at one of the other cops, right after she said that. Because they didn't believe her, Margaret started nagging for them to leave her house. They would not budge an inch for her, not until their so-called investigation was over.
In the end, the cops finally did leave. Somehow, over the next couple of days they managed to get in touch with Donald's next of kin. These relatives had called her. In no casual terms, his family requested that Margaret ship Donald's things to them, at her expense and over a distance of several states. That phone call had very quickly gotten ugly.
"Well, screw you!" Margaret had screamed into her phone. "If you aren't going to pay for the shipping costs, then Donald's shit isn't going anywhere! And you'd better be good and quick to come and grab it, before I go and donate it somewhere! Goodbye!"
Margaret had slammed the phone down on its cradle, still fuming as she stood up and began pacing back and forth in the small living room. Only after her anger had begun to subside did she begin to hear the weeping thing. She'd heard that weeping a few times before, but she'd never been able to locate its source. It seemed to be coming from a certain room sometimes, but she could find nothing in that room once she'd gone over and poked around inside of it. The weeping seemed to be coming from the entire house at times, or from the ceiling above, or from the space below the house, or even from outside the house. In the end, the old woman had just taken it as another sign of her growing old, or getting crazier.
