Black Widow
By Rob Bliss


You have seen her already, and possibly forgotten her within the hour. She has the signs of beauty from head to toe: long hair, oval eyes, plump lips, small nose, and the slightest shadow showing the cleft in her chin. Her breasts are large enough but not too large. Slender waist, curved hips, long legs, and feet that could only be sculpted, they couldn’t be real.
She hides her eyes when she can, knowing they’re dangerous to both sexes. Her beauty is a weapon if she wants it to be. Her words only exist in a whisper because more is said with a tilt of her chin, the flicker of an eyebrow, a momentary crease in her brow.
The source of her power found her – or she found it – when she was eight years old. When her hair was a different colour, before she realized her appearance could be moulded into a variety of personas.
She knelt before Christ crucified in her family church, his painted wooden eyes staring down at her, blood waxed to his hands and feet, a dripping gash down his ribs. She vowed to always be pure for him, to fear him, to be his bride. No man could compete with her god.
Her first husband died in a tree. Thrown there when his car slammed into a concrete barrier. She imagined him soaring through glass, trailing a vapour of blood, until the limbs of the tree held him aloft, displaying him as a glorious death.
She loved the black she wore, the dress of fine thread, the veil of lace hiding her eyes, mouth and cheekbones better than any costume she had ever donned. The mirror showed her a persona she had never seen before, but one which fit her skin perfectly.
The insurance of her first husband made her wealthy enough to retire from the world. She shunned whatever friends she had accumulated, mere accessories to whichever persona she had worn during her married life.
She bought a small farm house away from every neighbour, surrounded by forest, her long driveway closed in by snowdrifts and an electronic fence. People forgot about her, which was her desire. She never shopped in the nearest town, but in towns distant, driving for miles there and then home.
Of course, she felt the loneliness from time to time. A short-lived, but intense, craving that possessed her, had to be satiated before it would wane and vanish, allow her to resume her life. She would venture into the city, dressed as one of her old selves. Her eyes left unshaded.
Her expertise at sex kept each man, convinced him to stay, to forego his old life, his friends, wife and children. His property became hers. So too his life.
Once she was finished with him, she knew she could go at least another year without the craving directing her purpose. But when it returned, she knew what to do. Prepare herself for its satiation. Driving to the city once again.
Now, years later, the urge has waned after having slowed down, years between cravings passing until desire no longer walked the long driveway to rap on her door.
Tucked into the forest surrounding her quiet home, on tree after tree, there hangs every one of her husbands, affairs, conquests. Some with only threads of sinew still clung to their bones, others crucified skeletons.
She wanders occasionally, around the lonelier holidays, into the forest to look at the men she once loved. Or, at least, those whom asked for, and received, the words, “I love you”.
A parting blessing – she only said them on the day before each of them died.


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I'm a Canadian writer with a degree in English and Writing. My stories have been, or will be, published in Black Petals, Horror Sleaze Trash, 69 Flavours of Paranoia, Blood Moon Rising, and Microhorror.