A Dark and Unsettling Love

I don’t know where this came from, nonetheless I like it in an odd sort of way.

Melissa kept her husband in her handbag. It was warm, dark, soft, just the way they liked it. Some might have called their love toxic, but it suited them perfectly. Sometimes he tried to escape, but Melissa soon persuaded him that such actions made no sense. 

As time passed, Melissa grew older. Still, she always carried that old smelly wool bag. She remained the family eccentric, tolerated only because she was old and alone. In fact, it wasn’t until she missed Easter brunch that anyone realized how long it had been since they’d seen her.

She was found in her home, sitting upright in her favorite chair. The condition of the body made it clear she’d been gone for quite some time.

Right at her feet was her purse. Zipped shut.

Her favorite niece, Violet, gingerly picked it up and paused with a quiet squeak of surprise. The bag was heavy, moist, and unexpectedly warm, like picking up a limp sack of warm, rotting garbage.

Despite her squeamishness, she cautiously unzipped the heavy brass zipper.

It rolled smooth as butter — parting on its own with a self-satisfied slip.

With a twitch and a sniffle, the bag gaped like a wound, and a small, mothy, man-like creature crawled slowly out of the opening.

Tentative. Careful.

Later, they all agreed, the little man looked scared out of his wits. Not that anyone was thinking clearly at the time.

He stood, glanced around the room, then turned back to look at the now deflated wool purse.

Later too, they all agreed: the bag strap had curled forward, slow and deliberate, like a hungry snake reaching for his prey. 

With a cry, he jumped out of reach and bolted through the open living room door. He was fast. Faster than he should’ve been, given his size. As if something in that purse still wanted him.

The purse made one final twitch, then deflated further, a sulfurous stench rising from the mildewed fabric.

Violet, who was standing closest, threw it into the corner of the room in disgust.

There was little question that something evil had once lived in Melissa’s purse. 

Something rotten. Something otherworldly.

Though Violet steeled herself and carefully carried the bag outside with kitchen tongs, the house itself remained heavy with a malevolent air. They opened the windows, sprayed air freshener and replaced the carpets, but nothing seemed to help. 

Violet, who was the only one who really knew Aunt Melissa, often thought the little moth man looked remarkably like her aunt’s long-lost husband, John. She had once seen a faded picture in a family album, and there was a remarkable resemblance. 

She kept that thought to herself. Frankly, it sounded crazy.

By quiet consensus, nobody discussed the purse again.

Finally, to the family’s relief, a bolt of lightning struck the house in the middle of an odd summer thunderstorm. The house burned to the ground before the fire department got halfway there.

No one could explain how quickly the flames spread.

Not really.

The end.

And that, dear reader, is toxic love.