by Sarah Boyt
Alyona knows not where she is going nor what she is doing. All she knows is that is must get away. She must get away from it all: the barn with the tacky halloween decorations, her fiance’s so called friends that call her a gold digger and tell her to go back to Russia, and her fiance himself. A devilish anger curdles her blood as she processes the betrayal. The man who promised her the world. How could he invite an ex girlfriend to their joint bachelor/bachelorette party? How could that drunk moron make out with his ex while she went to the bathroom? How could that idiot think she wouldn’t walk in and see them? Hot tears stream down her face and goosebumps cover her extremities as she runs through the events of the past hour. After she walked in on them, Alyona hit her fiance with the knock-off Prada purse her fiance gave her after their fight last week. When he told Alyona he was sorry for flirting with his ex on social media and insisted that he has not been sleeping with her.
“What’s gotten inta you, Aly,” her fiance said in his southern drawl. “Stop hitting me. I told ya I’ll git you a real Prada when I got the money.”
“ You know why I’m mad.You lie. Everything is a lie. This place is a dump, you are no millionaire, and,” Alyona screams.
“Aly calm yourself down. I didn’t tell no lies. I promise I ain’t been sleeping with nobody but you.”
“Take your fake purse and give it to HER,” Alyona screamed. Before running out she launched her purse and her “sexy” heels at his wrinkled face.
The night is lonely. It is dark with no hopeful beam of moonlight to guide her.Squishh. A thousand legs crawl across her bare foot. “Ahhhh!!!” Alyona’s feet, which have carried her courageously through the vast blackness of the Kentucky countryside, break out in a sprint. Down the hill she flies, yet still the spider of a thousand legs clings to her foot. “Ughahh! Ew,ewww!!” Alyona frantically kicks her foot. Her screams pierce the eerie silence. Still, the stubborns spider clings. Out of breath, spine tingling,hands shaking she flicks the insect away. Promptly she runs.
Oozing mud and cool grass become the rough asphalt of a rural highway. Blindly tearing across the highway, Alyona is oblivious to the noise of an approaching vehicle. A split second later the driver turns on the brights. Alyona wails. She wails for Russia. She wails for the lies, the broken promises, the manipulation, the betrayal that brought her here. She wails because she never thought that she would die in the middle of nowhere Kentucky on Halloween night.
Screeeech. The car stops abruptly in front of Alyona and the driver steps out. The driver is a translucent female figure with eastern european features and curves that could only be achieved with cosmetic surgery. The type of women who would get a lot of swipes right on Russiancupid. Death.Spirit. She feels weak. The world begins to spin. A black night becomes even blacker.
When Alyona comes to she is in a pumpkin patch. The car is parked by the side of the road. The beautiful ghost is sitting next to Alyona eating a worm. Alyona opens her mouth to scream for help. Before she can make a sound the ghost swallows her worm and puts a translucent finger to her full lips.
“There is no need be afraid my child. I know how it is you feel. Long time ago I come here on K-1 visa. My fiance, he also cheat on me.”
Though Alyona knows she needs to run, there is something mesmerizing about the spirits thick eastern european accent. It is powerful, sensual. She doesn’t dare move.
“Ooh what a beauty-ful diamond. I had one just like it. Before I threw it in my fiance’s face and never looked back.”
Alyona instinctively clasps her hands over her heart to hide her engagement ring. “How? How you know that, that my…”
“Oh I am the whispering winds of the night. I been haunting around your place ever since he brought you here, my darling.”
Alyona longs to scream so that her fiance may hear. So her knight in shining armour knows his damsel is in distress. But it is a silent scream. There is no use. The man does not love her anymore. Maybe he never did.
Translucent fingers tenderly stroke Alyona’s waist length waves. “ There, there. I know just how to make everything better. Just give me your ring.”
Alyona does not react.
“I SAID GIVE ME YOUR RING.” The spirits face becomes something out of a nightmare.
“GIVE IT TO ME NOW.”
Laser intense eyes and needle sharp fingers stop Alyona’s breathing and the beating of her broken heart. But they are not enough. Maybe Kentucky isn’t the NYC of Appalachia like her fiance said. Maybe he can’t buy her the world as he promised. Sure he made out with his ex at their bachelorette party . But he loves her; of all the women on Russiancupid he chose her. The kiss was just an innocent mistake. When the devilish dark is replaced by the autumn dawn he will come back to her. Alyona knows that at that moment he is worried about her. That he is searching for her. Nobody, no ex girlfriend, no spirit can take that ring from her.
“GIIVVVE ITTTTT.”The spirit utters an otherworldly screech. A screech of death. A screech belonging to a broken soul. A possessed soul.
Alyona does not budge. Love will save her. Love is the most powerful thing in the world. More powerful than distance, more powerful than temptation, more powerful than the spirits of the underworld.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh.” The spirit floats through the locked car doors. She emerges with a bloodstained knife. “With this knife I slit my wrist all those years ago. On this halloween at last I acquire a friend in this wretched wasteland.”
Alyona drops to the ground and the blood of a broken heart oozes onto the pumpkin patch.
Sarah Boyt is a student at Woodbridge Senior High School
Academy of the Heart And Mind 