Airbag Thansgiving: Absolution

The following is a sequel to StangStar06's inspiring BTB story for Thanksgiving 2013 Airbag Thanksgiving. It was for me in equal measures dramatic and horrific. And thanks to the devilish suggestion from a fellow author, DFWBeast, I decided to do a gothic horror twist for the sequel. My inspiration for the twist here includes: Edgar Allan Poe's Eleonora, Ligeia and Morella as well as Henry James' The Romance of Certain Old Clothes. Hope you'll enjoy this twisted tale for the holidays!

Ian

I stood in front of my wife's grave in a numb blank. I wasn't sure what to feel or think. I guess I'd loved Selena on some level yet the discoveries of the last year left me wondering if I ever knew what love is. It wasn't some engineering problem that I could solve. It wasn't a car that I could try to fix or understand. Before marrage, I thought I had feelings for Selena but I had been banging her sister for much of the time that I had been hanging with Selena. Yes, Melissa had manipulated me into sleeping with her and later into marriage. However, before the discovery of her longstanding affair with Johnny, we had been happy and I had loved her even though I'd professed to have feelings for Selena. Of course, my feelings for both didn't stop me from being a leading cause of death for both sisters. And now, in a final irony, the two sisters were buried side by side. I wondered if both were spinning in their graves.

And I wondered if I'd soon find out why Melissa had asked me to appear at her graveside on this Thanksgiving afternoon...

A Year Ago

Three weeks before Halloween

Selena rubbed her big belly absent-mindedly with pleasure as she watched Piper and Steve play in the sunshine in the backyard. The kids had adjusted well to the loss of their mother Melissa and were well on their way to accepting that their aunt was now their father's new wife and their new mommy. Neither had called her mommy as yet but she was hopeful that the awkwardness would subside once they accepted that she was a permanent fixture in their lives and that she was going to give them a new sibling.

What had disconcerted her though was the closeness of the housekeeper, who Ian had retained after Melissa died, to the children and how she often looked at Selena with disapproval. Particularly the fact that Selena had moved into Ian's bedroom on the very day he had been discharged from hospital. It had worsened when Ian and her started having sex, the woman had radiated disapproval whenever she had to change the stained and rumpled bed sheets, which was daily.

Actually, now that she thought about it, Selena realised that the housekeeper's hostility and disapproval of her increased before the sex began. It began the day Selena had burnt the pages she had torn from Melissa's diary. A chill still ran through Selena at the recollection of that day 10 months ago. She'd finally read Melissa's diary in its entirety and realised how close she came to losing to Melissa again. That prompted fury that matched what she felt when Melissa had stolen Ian from her all those years ago. Another thought occurred to her, if Ian found and read the last pages, she would lose him to Melissa again, albeit on an emotional level.

'Damn you Melissa! I won't let you get away with stealing Ian again. Not emotionally or any other way' Selena thought to herself.

Those thoughts drove Selena to an impulsive act that she was unsure if she really regretted even now. She tore those last pages of Melissa's diary and ran out of the house. No one else was in the house, Ian had taken the kids to go last minute Christmas shopping. The housekeeper was nowhere to be seen after she'd finished the dishes from brunch. Selena looked around and saw no one in sight, which was hardly surprising considering how cold it was outside. She picked up some stray dried branches of the trees that were now bare and withered in the backyard and dried them meticulously. Then she searched for some lighter fluid in the garage. Failing to find some, she settled on motor oil, the disused can of motor oil that had been meant for Melissa's ill-fated Jaguar.

It gave her pause. She remembered the initial horror when she realised Ian's role in Melissa's death. It had all been swept aside in her rationalising process,centred on the one premise: the bitch had it coming after all her nasty tricks and behaviour.

The same rationalising process had her reaching for the motor oil as an alternative to the lighter fluid. It would just be an added touch of irony to the vengeance she was about to wreak on her dead sister.

Selena poured the motor oil on the branches, there was little of it left and she hoped it would be sufficient for the task. She searched for a lighter or matches but found none. Silently cursing, she wondered why it was so difficult to destroy Melissa's last attempt to win Ian back.

A stray thought almost like a whisper floated across her mind.

Maybe it's meant to be.

She shook her head, wishing to deny that thought because of its implications: that she and Ian weren't meant to be.

'No, damn it! We were meant to be together. It was Melissa who stole him and hurt him. I'm just going to make things right again!' Her jaw clenched in rage at those thoughts.

Her defiance was reflected in her facial expression and eyes. She patted her pockets and found a pack of matches she could have sworn was not there just minutes earlier. Ignoring the sudden shiver that ran through her as the wind blew, Selena struck the matches and lit the branches. The whoosh of the fire coming to life was almost extinguished by the sudden pick up in the wind that blew across the backyard. Selena suddenly wondered why she didn't do this in the fireplace in the house and then remembered she didn't want to raise suspicion should traces of the paper fragments remain in the fireplace.

She took out those torn last pages and tossed them gleefully into the fire. There was an odd pause and she was afraid the pages wouldn't burn. Yet, they suddenly burnt rapidly and disappeared into the iridescent flame that left only black ashes in its wake. Selena barely heard the loud howl of the wind as it blew in that backyard. It was perhaps disconcerting that others who heard the wind thought it sounded like a drawn-out "Noo..".

Selena never noticed the housekeeper who had been roused from her routine midday nap in the corner of the kitchen by the curious wind. In truth, the housekeeper felt she had been shaken awake by someone but upon opening her eyes found no one in the kitchen. The howling wind then brought her to the window which overlooked the backyard. There she saw the new mistress of the household standing in the backyard next to a fire that was burning.

She tut-tutted when the new mistress installed herself in the master bedroom scarcely days after the old mistress had died. That the new mistress was the sister of the old mistress made the whole affair even more scandalous. She had felt pity for the old mistress who had hired her when she was separated from her husband, the master of the household. She loved the children and could see that the old mistress loved her children and husband though her actions said otherwise. While the old mistress had moved another man, presumably her lover, into the house, she was keenly aware that the old mistress had literally no interaction with the other man who was relegated to the guest bedroom. She could hear the occasional calls made by the old mistress to her husband and how she tried to provoke him into returning to their home.

She remembered how the old mistress cried every time the master refused to return or to respond to her provocation. She also remembered how alcohol became her old mistress's best friend and constant companion in the last weeks of her life. When the master had brought the old mistress home after an accident, she had wanted to tell him what she knew, but she had hesitated. Afraid that she might overstep boundaries and not be able to retain her position, she had kept quiet. In the days after the old mistress had died in that awful accident, she wondered if her silence had contributed to the situation. Regret, however, served no purpose. She could only hope that by keeping an eye on the master while this new mistress took over, she could atone for what she had failed to do. At the same time, she would do all she could to protect the children whom she had come to feel close to in the months that she had worked for the family.

The housekeeper froze, her eyes suddenly fixated by the figure that stood in the light sundress just metres behind the new mistress looking at the new mistress and her bonfire with great intensity. The housekeeper felt she could not move even as the figure looked past the new mistress and directly at her. While the figure's lips didn't move, the housekeeper heard her words almost as clearly as if the figure had spoken next to her ear.

Please save the ashes after my sister finishes what she's doing. Please help me. I cannot leave until I have absolution and Selena has just deprived me of that.

The housekeeper could barely nod her head before the figure indicated her thanks with a grateful expression. After a last baleful glare at the new mistress, the figure vanished, seemingly leaving with the wind, which stopped blowing abruptly. Despite the warmth of the kitchen, the housekeeper shivered as she crossed herself. Watching till the new mistress left the backyard and came back into the house to get her keys before leaving to join the master and the children at the mall, the housekeeper sat in ruminative silence. While a thousand questions and doubts ran through her mind, she was sure of only one thing. The old mistress was still around and things were going to get interesting for the master and the new mistress. While it was certainly spooky to have seen an apparition, she could feel that it had no ill intentions towards anyone, except perhaps the new mistress who had apparently crossed the old mistress in a really bad way. She grinned and thought sometimes life only got interesting after death.

****

Selena brushed aside the disconcerting thought that the housekeeper could have witnessed her act of burning Melissa's diary pages and therefore became more disapproving and hostile. No, she recalled, no one was around the day she did it.

Emboldened by what she had done, seeing it as her clearing the last remaining obstacles in her new relationship with Ian, she had gone to bed that night determined to use the tactics described in Melissa's diary to seduce Ian.

She had needed courage to overcome her nerves despite her boast a month earlier that she would outdo Melissa's seduction of Ian and make Melissa look like an amateur,. She had never been great at this and after denying Todd carnal pleasures despite being married to him for two years, she wasn't entirely sure that she could pull it off. The buzz from the red wine was wearing off so she had downed some whisky and was now regretting it as the headache intensified. She'd had that headache after she had burnt those diary pages but put it down to stress. It had weakened to a light throb but was now threatening to wreck her plans for the evening. She'd gotten Ian to drink a little more than usual, hoping to make him more pliable and open to seduction.

Ian was already in bed when she joined him.She decided to go for the direct approach, stripping out of her blouse and baring those bountiful breasts that Ian so admired. She knew she was gaining ground when Ian's feeble protests faded away and his eyes glazed over with lust as he watched the impressive cleavage in front of him that was within tantalising reach. She allowed herself her first smile of victory when Ian reached out and grasped her tits. She'd pulled his shirt half off him and was working on his pants when the sharp pain hit and she had laid back on the bed, almost blacking out.

Actually it wasn't that she had blacked out, it was more like she had floated out of her body and was watching it make love to Ian. It was as if she were watching a video of herself following and using all the tactics described in Melissa's diary to seduce and please Ian. It was odd because while she was watching her body, she couldn't seem to feel the pleasure of the orgasms and hard pounding that Ian was giving her. In fact, what seemed to rouse her from that state was the shock of seemingly seeing a strange face when Ian had collapsed on her body after his explosive climax and later shifted on his own back when he had recovered sufficiently. It was Melissa's face not her own. The shock of that sight had her jerk out of the apparent zoned out state she felt she had been in after she felt the sharp pain.

Coming abruptly to her senses, she could feel the wetness of their combined cum on her thighs and across her mound. Satisfied that she must have had a bad dream out of guilt, after having destroyed part of Melissa's diary while using the other parts of it to seduce Ian, she curled up next to Ian and was fast asleep within minutes.

She hadn't noticed Ian's strange expression as he looked at her sleeping form.

****

Days before Christmas 2013

Ian

I wasn't sure what to think. Was it the alcohol? Selena had plied me with more alcohol than I'd had since the disastrous Thanksgiving dinner scarcely a month ago. I suspected she was going to seduce me that night and I was right.

She stripped and waved those magnificent breasts at me and I capitulated. Hey, I'm only a man. Since the fight with Melissa and leaving home months ago, I've been without sex. And with the guilt I felt over Melissa's death, I wasn't even tempted with Selena moving into my bed the day I moved back into my house.

No matter how much Selena kept telling me that Melissa deserved what she'd suffered, I knew better. Besides, what would she say if she only knew of the role I'd played in her sister's demise?

However much she hated Melissa, surely as her sister, she can't let that go and live with her sister's murderer? If she could, what kind of person would she be? I'd just escaped from one coldly conniving bitch, could I plunge into a relationship with another?

My mind raced as I recalled what I'd just seen. Yes, the two sisters looked similar but after years of watching my wife, I was quite sure I could tell the difference between the two. I'd seen my late wife Melissa. I'd been slightly surprised when Selena seemed so certain in her seduction of me. She seemed to know so well what turned me on. As my head cleared somewhat, after the shock of seeing my dead wife's face as we climaxed together in fulfilled lust declined, I searched for the logical explanation that my rational engineer brain could accept.

It would be easy enough to explain why I saw Melissa's face, after all, I'd played a big role in her death. But why Selena?

Suddenly an unrelated thought struck me: Selena must have read Melissa's diary. That was the only explanation for her knowing the intimate details of my sex life. Only Melissa knew the details of what turned me on.

It also explained exactly what happened to the diary when I'd left it on my desk in the office that early morning. No one had known that I'd gone into my office late that night after sneaking out of the hospital. Melissa's funeral was to be held four days later. For some reason, her last words before leaving the house that fateful Thanksgiving night rang insistently in my mind.

Read my diary.

It was strange that that should be what kept playing in my mind, after all, I'd caused the airbag failure on her side of the car and caused her death. Most people would have thought that if nothing else that guilt would be driving me crazy. In this case, I thought the nagging thought of Melissa's diary was my mind's way of reminding myself of the guilt I had to bear over Melissa's death.

So I sneaked into the office and sure enough the diary lay in a package on my desk. There was a short note from Melissa pleading for me to read it. I could recognise her handwriting after eight years of marriage. Somehow, the sight of her handwriting and the searing memory of her last act, pushing me aside in a bid to protect me, had helped to partially redeem her in my mind.

Yes, Melissa was a manipulative bitch who seduced me when I'd started developing feelings for her sister Selena and eventually manipulated me into marriage while making use of my money to provide for her boyfriend and supposedly her real love Johnny. Yes, it had devastated me to know that much of what I thought was genuine love between us was part of her devious scheming. Yet, her last act alive had convinced me that there was a level of love deep inside Melissa that I'd not believed was there.

While the early parts of her diary had me gritting my teeth in fury and rage, her minute description of details of our blissful marriage gave me pause. There were careful observations of what pleased me and what didn't. Particularly meticulous notes on what I like in bed. Those were not the notes of one who was indifferent to me. Or one who saw me merely as a financial tool for her and her boyfriend. My unease grew as I read further, had I been so blinded by my rage and pain that I had wilfully ignored the inconsistencies between what my wounded pride or Selena told me and what Melissa's actions said of her feelings towards me?

It was almost 3 am when I got to the part where I'd left her after discovering her longstanding affair with Johnny. I was still recovering from the after effects of the crash and was stretching the limits of my weakened state to have read so far. I was about to put the diary down for the day when a thought occurred to me to scan the rest of the diary so I could refer to the portable electronic version later.

It proved to be a fortuitous decision since after scanning and saving the scans to a cloud server, I'd left the original on my desk. I remembered locking my office door before I left so I was reasonably certain that the diary was secure. Sneaking back into the hospital was a bit of a chore but no one was the wiser. Selena found me in the hospital bed the next morning.

The next few days were filled with activities related to arrangements for Melissa's funeral, running Johnny out of town and taking care of the kids. Having to tell the kids that their mother was gone was most traumatic, I wasn't sure they really knew what was happening. Fortunately, the housekeeper Melissa hired was close to the kids and they seemed fine with her taking them under her wings.

I was a little surprised when Selena moved right into my bedroom when I'd thrown Johnny out and moved back into house. But for all my guilt, I couldn't resist the warm body solution to loneliness. Besides, it had always been a matter of guilt for me that I'd fucked Melissa when I was just about to be more than friends with Selena. It was a sticking point that whatever feelings I'd for Selena hadn't been strong enough to stop me from fooling around with her little sister. Hooking up with Selena was almost reflexive since I knew about the rivalry between the sisters and how Selena had taken Melissa's victory badly. And if I were to be honest, Selena's tits were a natural wonder.

When I finally had the time to return to my office, I had to deal with a ton of mail and only noticed after a day of trying to catch up with business matters that Melissa's diary was missing. I wasn't too perturbed by that since I was sure that it would turn up under some pile of papers. That was a month ago. The diary never turned up.

And then as time passed, I simply forgot about the diary.