In the sprawling antebellum mansion that veiled itself beneath Spanish moss, its corridors echoing with whispered secrets, a distinctive odor of salt and gunpowder seemed to linger, an olfactory shadow of a once-resplendent past. It was in this peculiar establishment that Colonel Beauregard Drummond, battered by wars, both of the world and within himself, took refuge.
The Colonel sat facing a daunting wooden bed—an opulent and intimidating piece, exquisite yet menacing. Rumor had it that the bed once belonged to a Confederate general who had entered eternal sleep upon its ornate headrest. It was known among locals as the “危险的bed,” indicative of both its storied history and the belief that whoever slept upon it faced doom.
“Hah, danger is my old bunkmate,” Beauregard chuckled, his deep voice an auditory handshake that left an impression long after the sound faded.
Across the room, Ned, his servant and confidant who had stood by him through perilous times, responded with a skeptical eyebrow lift. “You don’t plan on testing that myth, do ya, Colonel?”
Beauregard leaned back in his armchair, his eyes glinting with sardonic amusement. “I’ve danced with death on much less comfortable dance floors, Ned.”
Ned crossed his arms, every bit the wise sage clothed in humble garb. “Danced, sure. But waltzing with an inanimate object seems mightily unseemly, Colonel.”
The air thickened, a tapestry of tension embroidered with dark humor. Night shadows stretched, creeping through the accompanying silence—an uninvited guest watching the exchange with invisible eyes.
“Do you remember Cora?” Beauregard asked, his voice softened by nostalgia but edged with the usual grit.
Ned bore the familiarity of such a query. “How could I forget? She was as unpredictable as a thunderstorm in August.”
The Colonel’s eyes softened momentarily; recollections sauntered through the corridors of his mind—Cora’s laughter, her rebellious curls, her spirit that could ignite a room or flood it with shadows, much like the elusive narratives in a Faulkner novel.
“She demanded attention, like this bloody estate,” Beauregard muttered, patting the bed’s sturdy post as though greeting an old adversary. “But she left abruptly, and yet this cursed piece remains.”
A bemused grin tugged at Ned’s lips, the sort that bore the weight of ancient wisdom and yet betrayed a touch of mischief. “She wouldn’t approve of you keeping company with enchanted furniture.”
The Colonel laughed, the sound as comforting and disheveled as an old quilt. “True enough, true enough.”
That evening, darkly poetic, offered no respite, only a mocking crescent moon hanging above. By the time the hour hand grazed midnight, Beauregard surrendered to curiosity. With all the bravado of a seasoned military man challenging fate, he approached the dangerous bed, a sardonic smile ghosting about his lips.
Morning dawned with sympathetic hues, coloring the landscape as life unfurled its banal routines. Ned discovered the Colonel propped against that formidable headboard—very much alive, much to his own surprise, snoring loudly, as undaunted by mythical tales as ever.
Ned shook his head, a laugh escaping him, fragile as the dawn mist. “Well, you survived the night—but now you’ll need your armor against Miss Abigail’s scorn for missing breakfast.”
Beauregard snorted awake, offering a salute to a non-existent commanding officer. “If the bed didn’t do me in, Ned, that old crow stands no chance.”
Thus, it was in laughter’s camaraderie that they faced the day, within the evanescent echoes of mistaken legends and forgotten lovers, cementing bonds more resilient than wood or bedtime stories. The dangerous bed remained, merely a silent sentinel to lives seeped in peril and punctuated with humor—a cherished relic in a world beset by its own tragedies and absurdities.