Beyond the Grave

by Edward Francisco

About the Author: Edward Francisco is the author of ten books. His poems and stories have appeared in more than one hundred journals. He lives and writes in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Excerpt

“Dearest Eddie, your philanderings will send me presently to my grave,” Virginia Clemm Poe spoke through her tears to her husband Edgar, the most celebrated writer in America.

He knew that her death was imminent, and a cloud of despair hung above his head. He loved her ardently but was anguished that he’d not been a more faithful consort. All of Poe’s flirtations, trysts, and adulteries rushed at him like a swarm of wasps stinging a poor sinner whose eternal torment was Dante’s ninth level of hell—home to betrayers of all sorts.

Even in the throes of death, Virginia Clemm was beautiful beyond words—more an ethereal spirit than a human woman. She was mesmerizing with her large, black eyes, raven tresses, and pearl-white complexion. But her beauty, as well as her spirit, was slipping from his grasp. One door was opening, another closing. Only now he was forced to entertain the excruciating prospect of living without her. Tears salted his cheeks and dripped from his chin.

“My darling,” he said at the instant her body was racked with coughs, resulting in a thin layer of bloody sputum imprinting her lips and giving her a ghoulish appearance momentarily. Poe dispatched a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and dabbed at the blood. He didn’t know at the time, but he would treasure the handkerchief as a momento mori until the moment of his own death. Now he was dizzy with grief.

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