Corpse Bride Or, "And never see her again, though she is so pretty?" Fifteen inch stalactites hung from the ceiling. The shadow of the curtains rose with the sun; its sashes and whips stained the ice which clung to the room like toffee does to the mouth of unsuspecting victims. In the center of the room static flowed out the T.V like liquid; its gray puddle consuming the floor slowly. I don't know why but I love it here, watching the snowfall and the trees play in the wind. She said huddled in the warmth of the armchair. My fingers wrapped around the door as I looked outside the room. No one was in the hotel; as if it was abandoned overnight all that was left was the occasional crying that could be heard from the cracks in the ceiling and the sounds of birds tapping against windows. Wallpaper of an assortment of pink flowers was torn down, revealing the faces of lost people behind the wood laughing at me. Do you wanna know what I heard? Continental breakfast. They served it everyday, even after the hotel had been abandoned. They always served every meal at the lobby. As soon as I woke up piles of food would be left on a large table, with each item being hidden behind a steel egg waiting to be cracked open.
I made my plate and sat at the only table with a chair. I bit into a muffin that was moist, like it was soaked in honey for days to marinate. The walls in the lobby echoed with the voices of others; meetings, routines, dates. Its soggy carpet drenched in the newly melted ice leaving it mushy; the sound of my feet pressing against it burbled like a surgeon playing with the intestines of their patient. This whole town used to be a sacred place. Room 302 the number etched in my forehead forever and ever. We used to take trips here, always in the same room, always on the same days. On our first trip we rented a rowboat and explored the town's lake, which was a surprisingly massive body of water that had small islands in it, each one with a piece of history to see; sometimes a house, sometimes an arrowhead, sometimes nothing. People come back to life if you take them over there.
The town was covered in a blizzard; its snowfall was violent, falling like frothy tears, leaving the buildings lost in an endless haze of white. One building showed through the blizzard as I could make out the library from across the street, her eyes showed the purest of colors, her smile lobotomized me. I wanted to feel her nails gently run through my hair; coiling and playing with it—scratching my scalp. The library, to my knowledge, was the only place in the town that had the time; with every corner of the building being surrounded in donated time pieces. The interior was the same, and I remember how I walked into the library years ago, with the clocks huddled to make use of every inch; they looked like a million eyes staring at me, beating me senselessly with sticks, and the ticks of each clock synchronized, its tone shrill and riotous. She slept for days. She didn’t get up sometimes, the hours all bled into one another, she didn’t get up, she didn’t get up. I waited and twiddled my thumbs. Her dress was made of sunflowers; her crown of dandelions.
I looked at the bottle which stood on the very top of the shelf. On the inside was an old model ship named the “SS Freezer” which I learned from the Bartender who worked there that this ship used to be the Yacht where he first worked. He told me that one day he hung onto an empty bottle for so long that eventually the it sucked the whole ship inside—leaving him to be the only survivor. He told me that sometimes customers could hear the little people on the ship yell for help.
The terror of the blizzard continued to fall outside; the snow continuously layered itself on top of each other, and if you looked at it at the right angle you could make out thin lines from layers that had been packed and frozen. The blue sky streamed its image through the frosted window as if it were trying to show me something; I dreamt of beautiful hospital receptionists and disinterested cashiers from old grocery stores holding my body. There alone they wanted me. When I would get out of bed they would call my name and ask why I had to leave. but I couldn’t get out of bed. I felt bricks had been stacked up against me, like each organ and bone in my body was turned into marble. I could feel the life wheezing out of me, the weight of it all flattening me into a pancake; I could see my soul leave my body through each exhale. Alone in the house, I waited for her to come home, she was late—late as usual, late as ever, sometimes a meeting, sometimes an arrangement, sometimes it “got boring.” To pass the time, I swallowed marbles, watermelon shaped marbles, till they hung heavy, stopping me from speaking. I hated Room 302 that day. My feet fell deeper into its world; the sweat on my back was like a layer of frost. When night fell again, the blizzard continued forward, the walls of the library outside became rusted gates. The clocks outside ticked so loud that I could hear them from my room. When she's late I look at my clock, when she's late I pray for a response—when she's late I sit and think.
When the rolling sun arrived the next day the blizzard shifted; by parting its way it allowed me to see through the windows and into the library in clear focus. Its twisted shape, like a tower that was half-built and as polished as the untouched snow that surrounded it.
You don’t have anything better to do?
I really don’t.
You ever imagine a starving kid?
I haven’t.
That could be a solution.
To what?
To everything if you want it to be. She said as she handed me the tissue box.
The creeks underneath the floorboard and the grid iron marks imprinted on my shoulder, I drew an ankh on my hand, and I weeped into it; I yelled, kicked, and screamed at nothing. It didn’t hurt at first but then each tear sizzled and evaporated. My arms became light and my stomach grew hollow when I thought of all the worms I would have to see.
The library had finally convinced me to go that day; I believed that I missed something and it held the answer in its jaws. I didn’t really think out the plan well, I thought I could make it work if I just walked into the building. Maybe it was fear of the sirens outside the building that kept calling and calling or the clocks outside which when I looked away turned to eyes following me in my room. You see there’s a monkey on my shoulders, it’ll eat your brain if I tell you about it. There was no courage, I thought of going and then with a blink I was there. The area was desolate no ones going to be here for you and while I was alone the building’s clocks were in sync, the main double doors were large, painted red to hide the wood.
Have you ever told someone about it and it gets worse? You’re only making them feel bad. I don’t like labels, I’m me.
But that's all I have left.
But You still have me
The knob was rusted, with its steel coat flaking off as it turned.
So who is she? The bartender said. The wooden bar reeked of seeped in spilled drinks from long ago; the lights were warm, and made the scent fester with each second they were on.
Take the most beautiful person you’ve ever seen, multiply them by a thousand and you're still nowhere close. The familiar feeling of the clocks staring took control, You’ll take me again won’t you? She said, barely breathing underneath the humming tube light. The ceiling lights were off, with only small lamps scattered across tables in the large room illuminating the important sections about the town's history.
I walked over to the lamp in the middle, on the table was the cracked spine of a book. It read in red cursive handwriting, the exact things I needed: the person's body, a lock of your own hair, and a drop of blood. It's not that simple. This dictionary never has a word for the way I'm feeling. The words on the page began to move, the letters forming and jumbling, tied like forgotten wires. It strung the newly broken words into a mess of sentences: “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.” Sometimes she’d talk to me in random nonsense that meant nothing. Very funny.
I ripped the pages from the book. Its noise expanded as I ripped it with vertical force and the sound echoed throughout the whole building. With the reverberation traveling through the hall, all of the lights came back on, as if the noise woke them up. Slowly I noticed the clocks removed themselves from the walls and sprouted arms and legs, pushing through their metal frame to form their limbs; they turned towards me, they’re inhuman faces locking onto me and their ticks became louder and louder. Like thunder they monotonously continued the ticks, and ticks, and ticks I was the same as I was before, the feeling of sluggishness and doom meeting me as I woke up; Time stopped and soon I was forgetting how to talk to people, forgetting my own thoughts. Sometimes I’d be convinced it was normal. I looked down, my eyes trailing the carpet’s designs like exit signs telling me how to leave the building. Not too fast nor too slow, the pace of my steps made music to those willing to hear, making little thumps like cats making biscuits.
So that's it. You like being this way. You like it, I know you do.
I don’t think you’ve ever felt this way a day in your life.
While my head hung low I could still feel the clocks chase me, I could hear them ticking, and ticking, they brought out the batons again, they wanted to kill me, I know they did by the way they spoke, each tick getting progressively more callous.
The cruel still water of the lake smelt like bread rising out of the oven, the smell of flowers and wheat mixing with its gray muddled waters which sputtered its words out the side of the rocking boat. My arms hurt, I don’t think I’ve ever worked that hard in my life. She asked me to show her a smile, she promised she’d never leave. The big house across the lake looked like a castle. What did she eat for breakfast? I don’t know what we’ll talk about when we get back. I don’t want to go in for work on monday. I don’t want to teach the new guy; something about his teeth, they’re all messed up, some of his teeth are green, some blue, some red, I don’t want to know how he got it. I heard oysters could do something like that if you ate enough of them, but the number is astronomically high, like two hundred or something around that. I think I could win a competition for eating oysters, I could win one for hotdogs too, or eating a giant burrito. The blizzard doesn’t stop, it hasn’t stopped for days, someone said it’s been snowing since the seventies. The seventies? How does that work, is the place flooding? I think that explains the lake. But the lake never gets frozen. I wonder what would happen if I brought huskies to run across a frozen lake, I don’t think she’d have the guts for it, she’s scared to walk in the snow without boots and three layers of socks.
Hey, don’t row so fast, I'm trying to get this sketch finished; I need to finish the outline.
Green tiles and blue floors. Green tiles and blue floors. They lined our house's interior, sometimes if I blinked really hard and then opened my eyes the doors would disappear. Soon everything went black, and I was lost in the dark. The clocks stopped there ticking and after stumbling around the darkness for hours, I felt my lifeless hand touch the doorknob. The cool breeze against my head and the white sheets of snow in front of me were a welcome sight after the library. Little monsters waited in the dark, hiding behind buildings, looking at me from the roofs, I could feel their eyes trail me. I miss when we used to sit lonely on the sand. You used to translate the words for us. I didn't think there was more to life.
At first it was faint, obscured by the blizzard beating down, as if I was watching it through a rented VHS tape. Eventually I saw it in the distance, a ball of arms strung together into an amorphous blob. The flesh pulsated as it fought to live, with its demeanor rancid, like it was melting off the bone. I noticed it slowly crawl, its arms helped to push it to where it wanted to go. I saw it eagerly head towards me, the hands reaching towards the ground as it slowly rolled itself forward; I could hear its groans and moans, it was weeping, crying for the attention of one soul. The closer it came the more details I could see: its veins were pumping blue bile that would leak from its folded crevices, its nails were stained a deep red, and each finger had a glistening light; a twenty-four carat gold band topped with the most beautiful shining diamond.
Scuttling and scratching, the suitcase moved across the floors of the house, the tiles catching the wheels in their crevices. The old blue wallpaper, filled with yellow stripes trying to burst from the decaying, rotting, skeleton of the house. The smell of ash and grease lined the atmosphere, and hit me as we entered our tomb.
Don’t you look evil in the dark? she said. Huddled in blankets she limped through to the couch, her eyes were dead— They lost color every day and her lips seemed cracked, like canyons forming, or tectonic plates skidding away. Maybe if that was the last day I saw her it would’ve been better for me.
My chest and arms burst with adrenaline, each vein and artery working overtime, my breaths got shorter and shorter, and each color in the world became achromatic. However, my legs were stuck, like they were nailed to the floor I could feel sharp pain shooting up as I lifted my legs, and my stomach sat heavy with guilt, like I had just been caught weaving an elaborate string of lies. My legs dragged and dragged, I would use my hands to lift up my legs as slowly limped my bag of bones across the street. As I entered the hotel, the lights were turned on this time. Each light on the ceiling radiated, blazing with an orange warmth that would swelter me of the fearful haze outside.
But I'm nothing but a horrible person, there's nothing down there. I wasn’t good enough.
You were good enough. She’s better off as a buried memory than a living reminder. said the bartender washing another glass.
I spent days alone thinking of all the different women I could be with and I wasted my nights here while I could have been holding her.
But You did hold her.
I held on for all the wrong reasons. The front desk was now inhabited by a Crow, its black feathers shining, dotting and rustling as it mozied its way across the desk: from left to right. It looked at me, its beady indented eyes made me feel as if it knew everything I was going to say ten minutes in advance. After a minute-long staring contest, it lifted its wings, shook its feathers and began to speak:
“Don’t you look evil in the dark?” the Crow said, its voice was grown and mature; guttural when he started a sentence; soft when he ended it.
“I don’t think so”
“Where is she?”
“She’s dead.”
“I asked where she was.”
“I told you she’s dead.”
Shouting, shouting, shouting, she didn’t stop shouting. She only stopped when I stayed the night with her, holding her hand as she shifted in and out of consciousness trying to fall asleep. I held her hand many times. The nurses looked friendly, some talked to me about the tragedy and how “Will you ever go on!” Sometimes I didn’t want to hold her hand, I’d rather hold theirs instead. The metallic walls of her hospital room were sanguine; stained with blood and rust. The room reeked of sicken sap, like pumpkin patches days after halloween.
“You two had a good time here didn’t you. Why else would you come back? What killed her?”
“An illness.”
“Did you love her?”
“I did.”
“I think you’re a liar, a dirty liar.”
I spent days there, many days there. Everyday after work, one to take off the edge, two to remind, three to calm down, four to get tired, five to forget, six to dull the nerves in my body, seven to shut down my mind, eight to get a cab called for me, nine to make me forget my tab, ten to fall asleep. They didn’t question it, they knew I had a lot of my mind, I came back everyday. My head hurt in the morning and didn’t stop hurting till I went back again. It made holding her hand easier when I was worried about my liver shutting down. Eventually her skin turned green, and the lobs of flesh on her body expanded, consuming the bed she slept on. Her eyes became lumps of charcoal, her fingers grew, getting longer and longer, and with each passing second I could see the skin melt off her face.
Each stair cracked as I went up it. Room 302’s neighbor was open, the door had been taken off. It was inconspicuous, almost an exact copy of our room; everything from the TV to the bed placed in exactly the same spot. I stepped foot inside. The air had been dry and warm; cruel, violent wind moved towards me, it must have been a gust from a vent or the window cracked open. I stepped further, and the room began to flash with light, making me close my eyes. When I opened them I was standing on clouds. As I continued to trek forwards; I felt my chest open up, I could feel my heart was trying to escape its chamber. I could see the town below me and the mourning doves fly, each of them brushing the edge of their wings up against my shoulder. I belonged up there in the sky with each of them, fluttering and weaving around the little gusts of time, and the lasting feeling of dying with those you love.
No but I don’t think you know. You could never know. Even if you went through everything I did you still just wouldn’t know.
You’ve lost someone close to you. It’s alright I understand.
I don’t think you understand.
What other choice do you have? You’ll either die miserable or live happily.
What if I told you I did have another choice? That I could have everything I could possibly want?
If you told me that I would say you were insane. That you don’t even want what you think you want and that you’ll get over it with time. It’s going to be hard, but if you ever need to talk just call me.
He didn’t call, no one ever called, no one checked up, no one checked up before she was here, during her time with me, and after she had gone. They never checked up on me, the only one who checked up was gone. Check ups at the doctor; she had check ups at the doctor’s everyday. Near the end it's all that she lived for—a rotting carcass stretched out on a table waiting to be dissected. Check ups killed her, check ups would have killed me. But everyone who says it gets better simply doesn’t remember the good days, the days where you sat and played cards, the days where you ate spaghetti out of cups, and the days where smiles were our only concern. I decided that day that we would be reunited.
That night after my final drink I drove to her home and began to dig into the ground. Each time I struck the shovel into the ground I could hear the strikes of thunder boom next to me. When I finished digging the box was covered in mud, the rain dribbling off into the newly formed cancer which I dug into the earth. The casket opened without much force; my prying arms, my prying hands, I pulled her out and held her close to my chest—I could feel the faint heartbeat brush against me like the thorns of a rose. In the last days of her beauty all she had left was her smile. The smell of rotted flesh corrupted my nose—my eyes couldn’t bear to see her so happy. I piled her into the back of my car.
XOXO
During the drive to her grave her words stuck to me like broken bones. Like an inflexible component she wanted to break my heart, sabotaging all the moving parts, creeping in, she whispered in my ears your falling apart at the seams. Back home the air was too warm for snow. When I placed her back in her lonely home it was raining. We said our final goodbyes and from then on she stopped speaking to me. No more monsters hiding in the depths of a blizzard and no more awful birds tapping their talons. From then on it was silent; so silent that even the clocks were too scared to make a sound. The ride back to my green titled house smelt of black ice which hung from the little tree that sat atop on my rear view mirror, its aggravating pungency spreading through the entirety of the vehicle, removing the perfume of rot as if it had never been there.
I never knew my place.
It's alright, we rarely do. You’ve done your best but I think it’s important that you leave her be. Would you like another drink?
No, but a cab would be nice.
You’ll call me when you get back right?
9090
The little cinnamon squares tempted me in their bowl. Swimming like fish they went about their lives of joy and ignorance. The old commercials had them eat each other like starving pioneers stuck in the middle of a valley. Yet there wasn’t anything left for me to do other than to buy the box and hurry home. My pants were still stained with mud; my shoes soaking wet from the hours spent alone in punishment, restoring things to their natural order.
“Will this be all sir?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have a rewards card sir?”
“Yes I have one right here.” I said
$$$$$
Green tiles and blue floors once again revealed themselves to me when I opened the door to my home. The shining blue from the T.V. spited me, the great old wooden table it stood on held for its dear life as everyday the weight of the machine whirred continuously. In corners of rooms the spiders rolled back into their walls, their cobwebs stretched far and wide nobly standing and glistening in the reflection of the room's light. There on the table also stood a box of old playing cards, their edges worn down after years of use.
Full House! Beat that!
You’ve got me. I said unfolding my hand. I had nothing but a pair of queens—nothing but a bluff, a sweet and simple lie.
But isn’t it hard playing poker alone?