The candlelight flickered across Carmen's face, casting a warm glow over her delicate features. Her chestnut curls were pulled up loosely, a few tendrils escaping to frame her radiant smile.
The fitted red dress she wore hugged her curves and accentuated her ample cleavage in a way that still made George's heart skip a beat after a decade of marriage.
George himself looked dashing in a charcoal suit, the jacket undone to reveal a crisp white shirt open at the collar. The dark haired man at 6'4" and well-built from years of regular workouts, he cut an imposing figure.
But the look of total adoration on his chiseled face as he gazed at his wife betrayed the softer side he only showed to Carmen.
Their elegant dining room seemed to have been plucked straight from the pages of a luxury magazine. Polished hardwood floors, crown molding, and a antique oak table set for two.
The floral centerpiece perfumed the air with its sweet aroma. In the flickering candlelight, the crystal wine glasses and china plates strewn about gleamed like jewels.
"This steak is absolutely divine," Carmen purred, smiling at her husband over her half-empty glass of merlot. "You've outdone yourself yet again, Mr. Morgan,"
George raised his glass with a roguish grin, admiring the way the deep red liquid caught the dancing flames. "Only the finest for my stunning wife on our anniversary." He reached across the small table to take her free hand, stroking his thumb across her knuckles.
"Ten years," Carmen murmured, her eyes shining with devotion. "And I love you more with every passing day."
"As I love you, my dear," George said huskily. He lifted her hand to press a lingering kiss to the soft skin. "Tonight, we celebrate the incredible life we've built together. The struggles, the joys, the passion that still burns as bright as the day we wed..."
His voice trailed off as they gazed into each other's eyes, the moment stretching out and thickening with an electric tension. Carmen unconsciously parted her full lips as their faces inched closer together.
Just before their lips met, a deafening crash shattered the smoldering ambiance.
CRASH!
The front window exploded inward in a spray of shattered glass and wooden splinters. Carmen cried out in alarm as George reflexively shoved her away, putting his body between her and the looming shape that strode through the ruined window frame.
A woman draped in tattered black robes stood silhouetted against the night beyond the window. Her face was obscured by a deep hood but her hands appeared twisted and gnarled where they emerged from the tattered sleeves, jade flames dancing around her claw-like fingertips.
"What the hell was that?" George thundered, snatching up the heavy glass decanter in a defensive stance.
The intruder cackled, a sound like nails scratching a chalkboard that raised every hair on the back of George's neck. "I am your eternal torment, arrogant fool."
Tendrils of emerald fire lashed out from her hands like blazing whips. George raised the decanter instinctively to shield himself.
However as the flames hit the decanter, the crystal vessel melted like wax, spattering him with searing liquid and sizzling droplets that burned through his Italian suit and seared his flesh.
Gritting his teeth against the agonizing pain, George scanned the room for something, anything he could use to fend off this demonic intruder.
His gaze fell upon an antique flintlock pistol mounted above the mantle, a family heirloom supposedly rendered inert. He snatched it down and aimed at the witch.
"Get back, you fiend!" he bellowed, his voice tight with the effort of fighting through the throbbing burns.
A gravelly chuckle was her only response as she raised a hand.
BANG!
George squeezed the trigger, the powder igniting in the ancient weapon with a deafening bang and billow of acrid smoke. But the leaden ball simply ricocheted off some invisible barrier around the hag, clattering harmlessly to the floor.
"Ah, the arrogance of mortals, to believe they can challenge the powers that be. Your ignorance is as vast as the ocean, and wisdom, a distant shore you shall never reach," she rasped in a voice like dry bark crackling in a fire. Another casual wave of her twisted fingers sent George himself sailing across the room to crash through one of the antique display cabinets in an explosion of wooden splinters.
"George!" Carmen shrieked, scrambling to her feet only to be brutally backhanded by an unseen force. Her slender form crumpled bonelessly to the floor, blood pooling from a hideous gash across her brow.
Gasping for breath, his vision swimming, George fumbled at the remains of the shattered cabinet, finally closing his fist around a jagged wooden shard. He hurled it with every ounce of desperate strength.
Again, the makeshift missile seemed to ricochet away before it could strike the witch.
"Such bravado!" The witch cackled, closing in on George.
"Even the lowliest worm, squirming in the dirt, serves a purpose in the grand scheme of things. I will spare your pathetic existence so that it may serve as a cautionary tale for those foolish enough to follow in your misguided footsteps,"
Then she was looming over him, seeming to glide across the floor effortlessly. Her sickly green flames casted twisted shadows over her cowl as she hissed down at him, "May you wither and die a thousand deaths, cursed one".
Vile energy lanced from the witch's claws, piercing George's chest with white-hot tendrils of anguish sinking into his very core. His back arched and he howled until he was certain his vocal cords had been torn apart, the shriek of unearthly torment drowning out all else.
"See you again, soon," Griselda said.
Then, as quickly as she'd arrived, the hag vanished in a roiling cloud of emerald brimstone.
He forced himself to his wife's side. Carmen was broken and bloodied, her eyes vacant and lifeless. "No no no..." George cried, cradling her body. "Carmen, my love, stay with me!"
But she was gone.
George crumpled back to the ruined hardwood, the last lingering sensation the vile taint of the witch's black magic worming through his seared flesh and scorched soul.
Darkness closed in, but not before he witnessed Carmen's vacant, lifeless eyes staring back at him from her broken body crumpled only feet away. George's world shattered into infinite pieces right along with his heart...