Headless

by Aveda Vice

The chilly air of winter wove them tighter together, always leaving a massive man-sized chasm between them as they bent their heads to their books and moved through the days like ghosts.

Every Halloween, he comes again, for only one night — the one night the world fears him most. The one night he’s distracted. The only night his cursed touch brings groans and sighs and little death, and the world has nothing to fear.

Gallops on his own steed toward every glimmer of hope, every witch buried deep in the forest, every ring of mushrooms, looking for a way to snap the hold Death has on their man.

One day, Death will take them both. When their time is over, and their visits are no more, and his half-skeleton horse carries him back to their bedroom one last time. She isn’t sure what comes after — if they might finally be together, embraced in eternity, or if they will slip away through a veil they cannot pierce.