The Wedding for the Dead (short story part 1)

Death silently crept along the dark dark wooded edge of Mill Creek the way only nocturnal creatures of pray dreamt. He was heading towards The Wedding For the Dead. The last time this ominous grim reaper had spent any lingering spell in Erie, Pennsylvania was 196 shuddersome years ago. Much like a lurid colorful leaf eerily drifting to the ground from it's perch high upon the ghost white branch of the disigenous birch it took some time to extend the cadaverous hand of death collecting all the souls cast off by the Battle of Lake Erie. Sure Death has been around a moment or two here and there to embrace the dearly departed over the years. He even took some pleasure at the Pennsylvanian conservative superstitious. How they feared his macabre presence and shivered when he entered the room to complete his unearthly task. Tonight Death had come to fulfill a promise he had made over a century ago and this would take time.

The Wedding for the Dead was to take place this autumn. Autumn, full of decay, death, and beauty, the waning period of the life cycle. At no place on Earth are peek fall colors more beautiful than Pennsylvania. Even as far back September 10th, 1813 Death remembered the fall colors had begun to show and the smell of winter was on the air. Misery Bay cradled in beauty by Presque Isle and the US Brig Niagara sunk to the bottom of Misery Bay dragging four fifths of it's 40 crew members to a shallow watery grave. History had it written this gruesome event one way. Death doesn't have a political agenda to his ominous memory. His recollection was pure. The dead. Disturbingly peaceful. The decaying ghastly in appearance. The wretched souls that he ushered on with undying ghoulish vigilance. Pure.

Commodore Oliver hazard Perry escaped Death's grip that day slipping away to the US Brig Lawrence to lead the American fleet to victory over Barclay and his Great Britain's Royal Navy. It wasn't until August 23rd 1819 that death caught up with Oliver in Venezuela. It was there on the cold Orinoco river that Death snatched Perry's soul from his rotting body thanks to the help of diseased laden mosquitoes and the yellow fever.

Death mused over his real name, Imhotep. He believed it a kind of morbid irony when a Jew, murdered some 2000 years ago, who's name means 'the one who comes in, with peace' is made Death. Not only was he Death he was the most accomplished Death in the history of souls. Imhotep could snuff the fire of a new born to harvest it's soul and turn around to wait patiently for the passing of a ancient and nearly mummified woman who remembered a time before the complexities of the modern world. It was no effort for Imhotep to cut short the career of a beautiful young starlet nearly embalm by modern pharmaceuticals while pondering the passing of her cat who's soul now head butts Death's hand luring affection from eternity. All of this was easy for Death, easy for Imhotep to execute. The Wedding for the Dead was not so easy. It went against the rules. Death would surely pay a price. Imhotep would surely pay a price he wasn't sure he could afford.