Chapter Ten ~ The Bride
Julia's death had spooked Harold and Peter to the rotten core of their bones, weirdly causing them to elect me as their new leader in an attempt to atone for how terribly they had treated me before. Neither boy wanted to end up like Julia, who had spent her days dreaming torments and humiliations, and was bestowed the goriest of deaths. Rhonda went along with having me as the queen, having already had her turn as leader. Madame Louisa had gravely cancelled our lessons, saying they would be resumed after the Thanksgiving holiday. We were free to roam the orphanage as well as the morgue, which became a playground now, no longer a cathedral of punishment. Perished were those cruel games, I ruled with sweetness and gentleness, we brought daylight into the icy halls of the funeral parlor and put forget me nots into the rigid hands of stored corpses. I kept the doors to the art room unlocked, and there we drew pictures to give to the dead, pictures of where they were going, we imagined valleys of rainbows and crystal blue rivers, their hearts buried in butterfly wings, and banks of snow and roses and candy. We hoped our pictures would fill their stopped hearts, so they would not have to be alone in those austere marble caskets.
Madame Louisa had grown terrified of leaving her room, she ordered the cooks to bring all of her meals straight into her bed. She was convinced whoever had caused Julia's death was also to blame for Mr. Grammel's sudden and unexplained disappearance. One morning she called me into her room, I sat at her dressing table with Slappy on my knee and she stuffed runny grits into her lipsticked mouth.
"I think I have it figured out, little miss. Ever since you got that dummy, we've had so much trouble around here. I still remember those gruesome paintings, don't you think I've forgotten! So embarrassed…I was so embarrassed that day! Since you've had him, you've become even more of a little beast, a sour little girl. I know you've had something to do with Julia and Grammel, I know it. I can't think of how you could manage to overpower them, you feeble little creature, but I know I am right, I know you are to blame, and I'll catch you before you can harm another one of my children!"
I stared mutely back at her, lowering my eyes to the food stains on her satin coverlet. She was slowly going insane.
"Do you think now that you have a little friend, you may do whatever you like? You stupid child, it is a doll made from wood and clay! It can't be your friend! There is no one in the world demented enough to befriend you. And now that you've spread your evilness, yes I can smell it on you, evil child. That piece of junk you cling to has filled your head with rotten nonsense. I can have you taken away, you know. I will call the authorities; tell them what you've done to that innocent child. I'll tell them to smash your precious dummy to get you to confess! And I'll get Grammel out of you too! You'll tell me where he is! I need him now, who will tend to the rose gardens? Oh, wicked, wicked child! Get out of my room now!"
I stood and pulled back the dusty velvet curtains of her window, looking to see it had begun to snow, and there was no reason for anyone to tend to the rose gardens, which slept deeply under the white earth. I wonder if she knew it was nearing December.
"Did you hear me, wicked girl? I said to get out! Take away that horrid dummy; I don't like him staring at me!"
Our realm of freedom and playing was slowly beginning to decay. Madame Louisa no longer paid the cooks, and so on a cloudy afternoon they took away the most expensive things in the orphanage and never returned, giving us a sad look before they shut the heavy oak door and seamlessly fell into the world we were too afraid to enter, to ask for help from. Vanessa was the only outsider to visit, and we did well to hide our crumbling kingdom from her, thankful for the cookies and cakes she brought, surviving on chocolate and sugar, which made our minds hyper and flighty and starving for more.
As leader I tried to keep up with our lessons, reading from poetry books and writing out long math problems on the blackboard which no one cared to solve. Rhonda preferred to educate herself with steamy romance novels, Peter and Harold devoured old comic books and swore to be super heroes, telling me there wasn't a need for mathematics and literature as they would be too busy rescuing damsels tied to railroad tracks or knocking out the bad guys who attempted to rob luxurious banks. You only needed to be street smart to enter that profession, they said with puffed out chests.
Days stretched out before us, filled with snow, feverish dreaming, languor and hunger. The snow grew to cover the entrance doors, so that Vanessa could no longer bring us sweets. We played games with Slappy, who had finally decided to reveal himself to Rhonda, Peter, and Harold. In my room at night, he told me they were our slaves, but he treated them fairly, and only mocked them when they were unable to hear his nasty words. We lived on water and crackers, sometimes opening the second story windows to scoop glimmering fresh ice into cups to make tasty snow cones. Peter's weight shedded drastically, we thought it was funny that we could now play music along his ribs and spine, all of us had a melody within our starving bones.
The loneliest, coldest times were during the night. Our heat had been shut off due to Madame Louisa ignoring the bills, it forced us some evenings to take shelter in the morgue, the freezing rooms were more of a comfort than the palace of ice that the orphanage had been transformed into. We had become shut away from the world, nurturing ourselves with pretend games and covering our frozen skin with forts made from blankets. Slappy couldn't understand our weakening condition, not being able to feel coldness or hunger. There was no food left for him to steal for us, and on mornings when we were too weak to rise it was he who opened the windows and collected the snow that would be our meal for the day.
So desperate we were for life, for something to crack the dullness that lingered in our heads, to warm our frosty, dreary bodies, that Rhonda began to plan a wedding ceremony for Slappy and I. I had showed her the stolen ring, the delicate antique loop of floral gold, the large snow-white diamond, and it had inspired her, she saw the wedding as our salvation, a burst of existence in our veins. Harold would be the priest, Peter Slappy's best man, and Rhonda the flower girl and my bridesmaid. There were no flowers, all had withered in the garden of snow outside, so she stole away a pearl necklace from Madame Frieda's bedroom and broke the tender strand. She would sprinkle the floor with loose pearls. As she helped me into the sheer nightgown, Rhonda whispered that she was sure Madame Frieda was dead, the inside of the room had been so musty and rank.
"It is my wedding day; I won't let that bother me!" I said in a rusted voice, speaking drained the energy of my brittle body. My reflection in the mirror showed a hollowed, ghastly bride; white lace and silk swallowing her skeletal limbs. I looked as if I had been rotting inside of a trunk for years, my cheeks were gaunt and pale blue, my collarbones collected dust, and my emaciated stomach was sure to groan all through the ceremony, along with Rhonda's. But we giggled and she handed me a bouquet of flowers made from yellow paper. It was time for the blushing bride to wed her daunting groom.
Slappy waited in the playroom, where the red Victorian wallpaper was peeling, and the moldering stuffed animals had been lined up as guests. The diamond glittered in his cold hands. His eyes grew selfish as I floated through the pearls scattered across the floor, he collected me in those green orbs which would forever haunt me. Peter stood gallantly behind him; Harold fixed his paper collar and opened a Bible that he had no intention of reading. Instead Slappy and I had written a vow to share between us.
"Everlasting. True love. I am yours. Even in death."*
Rhonda wiped a tear from her eye, Harold cleared his throat and Peter went scarlet as I leaned to kiss Slappy on the mouth, the diamond ring now fastened to my little bony finger. We would be together forever.
"Filthy girl!" someone suddenly screamed from the doorway, and I went cold with fear. Madame Louisa had attended the ceremony without our knowledge, and had watched Slappy come to life. She had seen our respect for him, our shared madness born of starvation. "So, it was the dummy all along, wasn't it!" she stepped into the playroom, her flesh still plump and healthy, but her eyes held the blazing hollowness of a woman gone out of her mind long ago. "You've tricked all of them into following you, into following this dummy! He is straight from the depths of hell, he is! I shall take him away, something I should have done in the first place!"
She lunged for Slappy and tore him from my lacy grasp, I screamed and fell at her ankles, clamping my teeth straight into the thin skin there. She yelped and kicked me away, and I cried for help, but the others only stood and watched in horror. I chased Madame Louisa out into the hall, tears streaming down my face and fingers clawing the dust she kicked up behind her. My legs ached from disuse, and began to cramp and burn, but I would not let her take Slappy away from me. Glass windows blurred at my side, the dizziness in my head blooming into a sick knot that stretched down to my stomach. She turned back and laughed, I could see Slappy biting her wrists, kicking his feet, but unable to break free from her clutches, her full-blown insanity. Quick as light she locked herself in the bathroom, I slammed into the door and pounded against it with my fists, weeping through ragged eyes, screaming through a rasping throat. Inside of the bathroom there were three marble tubs with tarnished claw footing, and the basins turning brown with grime and dust because we hadn't bothered to bathe for months. I heard Slappy clunk against the white basin of one of the tubs.
"Please, please give me back Slappy! Please give him to me!" I moaned pitifully into the door, slapping my palms against it, feeling my starved body giving up, my head flooding with blackness. I was so tired, so hungry, pale with death, sick with longing for Slappy. "Slappy please, please don't go away," I whispered, and collapsed to the floor, my head slamming hard against the filthy wood, I was taken away from the wickedness for only a short while.
I awakened to a night of blackness and falling snow, stretched upon a quilt that had been laid outside near the sleet-covered street. Groggily, I heard sirens and the shouts of men, and a hot roaring I couldn't identify. The back of my head ached, my legs still burned with pain. I lay splayed on the blanket, wondering how I had gotten there. My lungs captured the smoky, icy air and I shot up, remembering the days of hunger and restlessness, remembering the wedding, remembering Madame Louisa stealing Slappy away from me. I saw the orphanage in flames before me, and staggered towards it, my heart rattling inside of my chest.
"Hey! Where do you think you are going, you better stay back!" a fireman in a hissing yellow coat gathered me up in his arms, struggling to keep me from throwing myself into the burning building. "You can't go in there! The place is about to cave in, we can't put the fire out until more men get here!" he tried to explain, but I screamed and thrashed against his coated arms, thinking only of Slappy who was not at my side.
"Please! You have to save him! Please!" I looked around in the snow-bright dark for him, he did not linger in the shadows, nor did Rhonda, or Harold, or Peter. I was sure I would be sick although there was nothing in my stomach for me to throw up. "Please let me go! I have to get him, please!"
"This one is going crazy, she wants to go into the house!" the fireman shouted to another of his buddies, who was standing around idly with a shut-off hose dripping in his hands, the drops of water forming jutting icicles. I went feral with anger and writhed in his thick arms, but I couldn't escape them. "We could only save you and your teacher," he said to me, the words putting bitter frost into my veins.
Madame Louisa was there, laid upon a stretcher with drops of snow and ash delicately touching her forehead. She smiled as each flake fell upon her face, a play of fire and ice. I screamed for Slappy and she looked at me then, motioning for the fireman who held me to approach her. He went to her obediently, I could feel the heat of the flames bursting out of the glass windows through the gauzy nightgown Slappy had chosen for me.
"Lock this one away in an institution, I have money saved in my account, take it and use it for her, she's dangerous. There is no one who will come for her, so put her away. She'll only grow up to be crazy!" she coughed hoarsely, deep smoke clotted her lungs, and I could see then that she would die. I wanted to laugh and dance across her limp, ash-stained body. The fireman holding me gripped me tightly under my armpits and nodded. I screamed again and helplessly tried to escape. The bride on her ruined wedding night. Slappy lost somewhere inside of those flames, needing my help.
"Stop it girly, I mean it!" the fireman shook me roughly. I saw then the fire chief run out of the flaming building, his yellow coat darkened to charcoal black. He held nothing in his arms. Solemnly he approached the fireman who imprisoned me, I watched snow fall onto his seared mouth and soothe him.
"It seems someone started the fire in the bathroom, they used some kind of doll in a tub, which melted and spread fast,"
At these words, I could no longer feel the snow or heat from the smoldering doomed palace. All of the light in my world was extinguished, and sweetly I let the ash collect in my lungs and sing me into a sleep that I wished would last forever.
*Carrie and Slappy's wedding vows were taken from the beautiful video game, Rule of Rose, which has been an enormous inspiration for this story. I have added 'Even in death' from The Mermaid Princess chapter.