Ghost Beauty

This is my try at responding to the prompt to write flash fiction.

Ghost Beauty by Alexandra Evans

The air seemed to be filled with the pungent smell of death as Johnston Murphy dreamed of intertwining his fingers with those on the hand of his fiancé. Caroline was an enchanting girl, a ghost-like mystery of porcelain skin upon a thin, shapely frame. Her father was infamous for choosing the man each of his daughters would marry, even more infamous for doing whatever it took to stick with his choice, regardless of any feelings on the daughter’s behalf. The four sisters before her were all settled down with elegant, respectable men, though all notoriously known for being those men- the ones not unlike her father, the ones who kept the year of 1839 one Johnston would despise until his death.

Such as it was, Caroline’s father had not picked Mr. Murphy to marry his daughter, but rather Benjamin Heartling, the Virginia governor’s son. A defiant child who refused to marry for anything but true love, Caroline packed a parcel and quietly left her father’s house on a night in June, the time of mosquitoes and trickles of honey on the vast wood of Oaks. She and Johnston escaped together with plans of marrying in the next town while working so they could move further north and raise a child. Although the beehives were in view, each bumble seemed to smile upon the couple, deciding to waste their sting on someone else’s skin, for Caroline was far too beautiful.

After five weeks in lodging with a kind neighbor who opened her door to the couple, they had heard word that Caroline’s father and Heartling were embarking on a trip up North to find their porcelain beauty. Terribly afraid, the couple continued their Northern journey, clinging on to the bit of hope that they may someday be able to be married and raise a family. However, the stars didn’t seem to in their favor; even the kindness of the bumble bees could not spare them from the more powerful men. Heartling was determined to claim his prize, and Caroline’s father was even more determined to have boasting right that all five of his daughters were well off, (not to mention the contracts he had each prospective suitor sign stating that half of their fortune would be passed down to his three sons who would keep up the family oil factory after their father’s death).

This much seemed true: there was no possible way the couple could live happily, considering their hunters were traveling in carriages, much faster than traveling on foot, as Caroline and Johnston were. Accepting this, Caroline sat down and wrote her love a letter while he was asleep, to be read after her father had taken her back to the family’s estate. She and Benjamin were married five days later, and word now had it that they were expecting a child soon.

As Johnston read the tear-stained letter, shortly after he had woken up in a cold sweat from dreaming of his ex-fiancée, he realized just how lonely he had become without Caroline by his side. It was just as well that he had dreamt about touching her copse, as her last moment with him was something similar to those last moments when a husband watches his bride slip over to death. She had left him just as she had entered: a surreal beauty, ghost-like, frail and pale, pulled in the direction of the stronger wind.