Dive down into the abyss. The swamp. The bog. Light plays beneath the mire, even in the deep hours of night. The illumination is Sally, the ghost of the bayou, killed and dumped here by a man hiding his crimes in the remotest of locations. Only, her spirit turns his grim playground into something wonderful, a place of beauty. Bayou Sally is not a spirit of anguish but one of celebration, a soul turned joyous for this conversion by a murderer to her true spirit, set free in this part of the land so teaming with life. She sings. She dances in the eddies of water, lounges upon the backs of alligators, wears snakes around her neck. Wild orchids are tiaras in her hair.
The killer returns to deposit another body. This next spirit is more of what one might expect - forlorn and tortured, wailing throughout the night at the brutal interruption to her life. Bayou Sally looks upon her with distaste, anger at the disruption to her home, and drives her out. If the killer insists upon bringing her more visitors, then she must persuade him to find suitable victims to fill out her court; to entertain her, love her, dress her in palm fronds and place irises in her hair.
She sings into his ear, and fevered visions crowd his mind. Over the next several months, he brings her two youths to play with her the games of her childhood, then an elderly aunt to knit her shawls of ivy and vine, then two ladies in waiting to serve her, and a young man to fawn over her. There's one place left at her table, she decides, and she needs a soul to match hers: strong and virile, cruel with passion and devoted to her happiness, and it is with this last persuasion that Bayou Sally turns from princess to queen, arm looped in the arm of her husband, as the killer takes his last victim.
2 comments:
Famous WWI Poster:
http://www.etymonline.com/columns/ww1-lusitania.jpg
Your post also reminds me of the last scene of The Piano.
Very eerie poster.
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