Wedding Guests

R.S.V.P.: Rend, Slice, Violate, & Pulverize

By, Clayton Overstreet

You Are Cordially Invited…

We are told our whole lives to never talk to strangers.

At the same time all it takes is a gold edged invitation and some streamers and people will put themselves in a room full of them.

Nina Grace looked around the room, adjusting her tight dark blue dress. She was in a pew with her parents Mary and Howard, her little brother Jackson, and her best friend Jane. Their names written on the place cards attached to the wooden seat, except Jane's. Hers just said GUEST in the same curly writing. Her father and brother were in tuxedos with matching light blue ties. Her mother was in pink and Jane was wearing green.

Around the room were a lot of other people. All in similar outfits. They had been led inside by other guys in tuxes. Ushers. Up at the front of the room stood six others on each side. Six bride's maids and whatever you called the guys who stood next to the best man. The ushers moved around the pews checking that everyone was in their proper place.

Jane hissed, "What is taking them so long? I heard them lock the big doors a while ago. Nobody has been coming in for an hour and didn't the invitations say the wedding was at five?"

Nina shrugged. "Maybe the bride got cold feet."

"Don't say things like that," her mother grumbled under her breath. "Not after what I spent on this dress and those crystal glasses. It's bad luck." There were similar conversations being mumbled around the room.

"Sorry Mrs. Grace," Jane said. "I'm just getting a little sore sitting on this wooden bench. My family doesn't really do Sunday service so I'm not used to it. Plus I haven't eaten since lunch and I don't even see a cake."

"They'll probably bring out the food after the ceremony," Nina's father said. Howard tugged at his tie. "Though I agree. This is worse than my father's funeral. At least they had cold cuts and vegetable platters."

Jackson Grace was watching the ushers as they circled the guests and moved between them. One of them met his eyes and smiled and Jackson scooted down in his seat. "I don't like it here."

"They'll get started soon dear," Mary assured him.

Jane asked Nina, "What were their names again? I know I'm just invited but I'd feel silly if I got them wrong."

"Darla Grace and Victor Wright," her mother said. "You know it's been two years since I saw my cousin Darla…"

An older woman in front of them turned around. "Don't be ridiculous. This wedding is for my niece Fran Conroy and her fiancé Wayne Gregg."

A man behind them leaned forward. "No it isn't. It's for my Aunt Lily Smith. She's remarrying after her last husband died. To Caroline Wiseman. We're all very supportive of her and happy of course…"

Mary frowned and reached for the purse next to her seat. She reached into her purse and pulled out the invitation. It sparkled in the light of the stained glass windows. Written on it in gold on the same writing as the place settings were the words YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE WEDDING OF DARLA GRACE AND VICTOR WRIGHT. Followed by the name of the church, the address, and the time. The other two reached for their own invitations and brought them out. They passed them around and all of them saw that the writing and times were the same, only the names were different.

"Well your names are on your seats, aren't they?" Jane asked.

"Of course," the man and his wife behind them said. The wide added, "We R.S.V. and everything."

"So did we," Nina's parents and the old woman said.

Nina looked around. People close to them were pulling out invitations too and showing them off to their neighbors with increased irritability. She saw several check their place cards. She looked at the invitations and said, "They're all in the same writing. Maybe it's some sort of mistake."

Jane frowned and pulled out her cell phone. She had brought it even though the invitations had said not to, for the sake of the guests. She had only come as a favor to her friend after all. "I'm going to look up the church and see what they have posted on their site. What's the name of this place again?"

"St. Catherine's on…" Mary quickly rattled off the name of the town and the address. They had flown in on Friday, since the wedding was on Saturday.

Jane typed it in and stared at the phone for a full minute before Nina asked, "Well does it say who is getting married today?"

"Nobody." They all stared blankly as she turned the phone to them. On it instead of the church's website was an old newspaper article from about ten years earlier. It showed a severely damaged building under the headline Church Tragedy. "According to this the church burned down a while ago. With more than fifty people inside. Some sort of freaky cult trapped a bunch of people inside and performed some sort of ritual meant to sacrifice them to demons. Only one guy got out by jumping through one of the windows and called the cops, but by the time they got here everyone was dead."

Jane snatched the phone away. "Don't be silly. We're sitting in it. Even if it burned down they must have rebuilt it or something." She went back to the search engine. "Well we've got the right address, but I can't find a website. Just more articles about the place being burned down by crazies."

"Not everyone has one dear," the old woman said haughtily. "This church has been around a while I'd say. They probably are just too small to bother with such things."

"Try wedding announcements," Howard suggested.

Snagging her phone back Jane typed as Mary held up the invitation for her to read. "It's spelled W-R-I-G-H-T."

"Got it." She showed them the spelling and then hit the search button. There was a pause. "Uh, nothing with wedding, but when I click on the button to take that off the list it brought up something else." She showed them the phone again. On the screen was a missing person's bulleting.

DARLA GRACE: Missing since July 5th. Friends reported that she was taking time off to attend a wedding, but when she did not come back to work the following weekend her friends and co-workers reported her missing. If you have any information please call the Dale County Police at… Jane lowered it and put in the other name. Everyone leaned over her shoulder to see another bulleting in different font from another place entirely for Victor Wright. Also last seen going to a wedding. Only he was reported missing by his parents, him being only sixteen, and his address was nowhere near Darla's. In fact it was in another state and he went missing three weeks after her.

The others quickly handed her their invitations. Lily Smith and Wayne Gregg had social media pages, but no missing posters. Nina however pointed out that neither had updated their pages in months. Fran Conroy and Caroline Wiseman however both had their names on FBI missing persona's alerts.

Her skin getting goose pimples and feeling like she had been doused in ice water Nina asked, "Mom, when's the last time you talked to cousin Darla?"

Mary looked pale as she gripped Howard's arm. "Uh, two years I think? She lives pretty far away…"

"Didn't you call her when you got the invitation?"

"No, I just sent a note saying we'd be here. There was no phone number and they included a small return envelope so we could RSVP."

"Me too," the man said. "I mean I haven't actually seen Aunt Lily in years…"

"My sister moved away years ago and last I heard my niece was in college…" The old woman trailed off.

Jane looked around the room and then back at the Grace family and the people near them. Lowering her voice she asked, "Do any of you see anyone here you recognize that you didn't come with? Like a relative or a friend of a friend? The bride's parents maybe? Anyone you recognize?"

They all looked around the room. Nobody saw a spark of recognition on any of their neighbors' faces as they scanned the crowd. Of course they had not recognized anyone else before now either, but that was the way it was at weddings, wasn't it? You got invited by some relative you barely ever saw and you came for the excuse to get out of town and maybe eat some cake and reconnect. They were not seated by anyone they knew, but hey, that was somebody else's job. It was not their wedding. They were not in charge of the seating chart. Everyone would mingle after the ceremony at the reception.

They were not as quiet as they could have been and Jane was not the only one to sneak in a phone set to vibrate. Matching them other people were looking up the information on the invitations. Judging by their raising voices they were not getting any better results.

Dun-dun-de-dun-dun-de-dun-de-dun-de-dun… Everyone turned to where somebody had sat down at the organ. A few glanced back at the red carpet and the hallway where the bride should be walking, but nobody came.

"Where's the groom?" Someone asked and it was dawning on everyone that said former bachelor, whatever his name was, was not up at the front of the room. There was no priest. Just the best man and his fellow groomsmen. And the matron of honor and her bridesmaids. All of who were smiling and seemed perfect calm despite the rising panic.

"That wasn't a wedding march," Jane whispered, her voice somehow carrying through the whole room as around them people realized what their ears had heard being beaten out on the organ's keys in deep ominous notes. Not a wedding march. A funeral march.

"I'm getting the hell out of here," one man said, rising awkwardly in his tuxedo. He tried to get past the others in his pew that were nervous but still looking around at the white streamers and the big CONGRATULATIONS banner over the front of the room. The white walls. The beautiful stained glass windows. The well dressed people at the front of the room. Surely there was just some misunderstanding.

The nearest usher struck fast. He had been circling several times and was only a few feet away when the man reached the aisle. There was a black blue and a scream as the well dressed man tackled the guy in the cheap rental suit. The usher's tux tore as he grabbed the man with no regard for his finery, tearing the suit he was wearing at the shoulders and crotch as he tackled the fleeing man to the ground. The man yelled, but it was cut off as the usher lowered his head to the man's throat. A moment later blood bubbled from his lips and he went still under the usher whose head was working back and forth. They could all hear the chewing sounds.

Someone screamed again. Another man rose up and ran at the usher, grabbing his shoulder and yanking him off. It looked like he might as well have been pulling at a statue for all the good it did at first. Then to the horror of those nearby the usher turned and let out a high pitched roar, like nothing they had ever heard before. Certainly not anything human.

The usher had changed. His skin had gone an unhealthy blue like a man who had been choked to death, his mouth stained with blood that to Nina's shocked mind looked like someone who had been too messy drinking punch. Flesh, torn from the ragged hole in the fleeing man's throat dangled from his teeth, which were now three inch fangs set in rows, not like a shark so much as a lamprey. His mouth split open and wider than any human's ever could be as if it was tearing itself wide to fit in all those bloody teeth and the shredded meat. A tongue, long as a man's forearm writhed in his mouth like a snake and they could all see the talons curving from his fingers, now stretched out longer than any human hands, as they sank into the front of the dead man's suit piercing his still twitching chest with what seemed like very little effort.

The panic was instant. Nobody knew exactly what was going on but they had seen enough not to want to hang around and ask questions. As one the thirty-plus guests stood up in the pews and started to run for it. Howard grace scooped up his young son, intent on carrying Jackson to safety.

It did no good. The guests were all trapped between each other and the hard wooden benches. All of them wore uncomfortable frilly and tight outfits meant for a ceremony, not running. Pinching shiny shoes or high heels. Dresses. Suits. And as they pushed their way to the aisle with the red carpet they were all crashing into each other in their attempts to flee.

Up on stage there were a dozen groomsmen and bridesmaids still smiling at them. The organist who Nina caught a glimpse of. A huge hunched figure in some king of black robe. It was faced away but the body under the robe was oddly shaped, huge, and the hands on the keyboard were gnarled and gigantic with scythe-like claws and red skin that looked almost scaled. And… were those black horns rising up from the hood? It was hard to tell since they were the same shade as the fabric and screaming people were running towards her, knocking her and her family around.

The panic rose as the people up front and the other five ushers began top attack, grabbing people and baring them to the ground. One guy made it to the church's double doors, huge oaken things studded with metal bolts. They had all heard them being locked earlier. Had even commented on it just a few moments before. he still tried to force them open. An usher yanked him off his feet with a scream. Nina was pretty sure she saw one of the man's fingernails rip free as he tried to yank on the door handle even as he was born to the ground by the usher, who now looked less human than the first, a purple scorpion's tail bursting through the pants of his suit and curling over his head to stab the man he had just grabbed in the eye.

Nina turned to her father intending to ask him what to do just in time to see Howard grace, still holding his adolescent son, yanked off his feet by a woman… something horrible with white skin and twisted features that had looked like a woman moments before… and into the panicking crowd of guests. She heard her father and brother scream, only to be silenced a second later. Mary did not even seem to see Nina as she unthinking followed her husband into the dwindling mob of panicking humans being picked off by the well dressed monsters shucking their dresses and suits like reptiles shedding their skin.

None of them looked human any more. Their skin was in colors no humans ever saw. Their limbs and bodies stretched and twisted beyond mortal comprehension. Some had sprouted extra limbs, not all of them resembling arms or legs or even tails. The world had become a nightmare, an impossible bad dream she was sure she would wake up from at any moment. She had to because this was all impossible. She could not even scream as she saw the old woman who had come for her niece's supposed wedding torn apart so that her organs spilled out of her ripped torso.

She did scream as a hand grabbed her arm and yanked her to the side. Nina turned and started to claw at the hand gripping her shoulder like death, feeling the nails dig into her flesh. Only she saw the hand was a human one. Looking up she saw Jane's frightened face as her friend began to pull her back the way they had come. The two of them were only alive because so far they had been in the middle of the pack and the things attacking them had just been plucking the humans from the edge for convenience's sake.

They were not stopping to feast though. After the initial kills they were moving fast, grabbing people and killing them efficiently, rather than taking their time. Grab, Slash the throat. Then grab another one. They were running out of victims quickly.

She saw Jane had her phone in her other hand, the article on the destruction of the old church back up on the screen. Later she would find that Jane had looked up how the single surviving witness had managed to escape the attack he reported by the crazy cultists he reported. She intended to follow his example.

The monsters were currently full up with killing but one saw them making a break for it. Nina was dragged by her friend towards the wall and one of the stained glass windows. It jumped but a writhing tentacle or something got caught on one of the pews by suckers or maybe it slipped on some blood. It fell into the wooden seats and splintered it, long dripping claws slashing at Nina's dress cutting through it like mist and splattering it with blood. It barely missed her leg.

Jane was terrifies beyond comprehension and any other thought. She ran at the window and through it at full speed. The colored glass was held together with lead, melted between the colored panes, so they popped free rather easily even as they shattered Both girls got cut, but Jane would not be stopped and Nina was pulled after her. They both landed on the grass outside and fell, but climbed to their feet and kept running to the street and the rows of parked cars.

Nina looked back and saw a huge limb and an inhuman face with three eyes and a mouth full of fangs and bloody human flesh. It was like seeing a cat going after a mouse if the view was from inside the mouse hole. Now Jane screamed, staring at horror as the monster tried to force its way out and after them claws reaching out to gouge bloody furrows in the grass where they had landed. The noises it was making seemed to be as much inside their heads as out.

It was Nina who looked away from the horror at the cars and saw one nearby where somebody had stuck their keys in the visor, a house key hanging down. She grabbed her screaming friend and pulled her to the car. She opened the door and pushed Jane in, getting in after her so fast she landed on the other girl's legs. Grabbing the keys she started the car and peeled out, not caring if she hit another car on the way out.

Six hours later they were in the local police station covered in blankets. The girls were in shock according to the ambulance drivers. They had come in babbling about what had happened, barely able to convey anything. Terrified, blood stained, and running on pure adrenaline. Jane had to be sedated.

Now they were calmer and had been given cocoa. They tried to tell the cops what had happened, but it was clear nobody really believed them. Nine heard someone mumble something about hallucinations and trauma. At one point she grabbed a cop's sleeve and said, "My parents. Have you heard anything about them?"

"They're still investigating."

Huddled together when the police finally came to really talk to them both girls refused adamantly the suggestion that they go back to the church. Jane told them to send as many cops as they could. Call the highway patrols. Maybe the National Guard. Nina was worried about her family, but she agreed. Nothing was getting her back to that church. Even if her parents were somehow alive. If.

It had sunk in to her at least that they were not. She wished it had been a hallucination. Someone putting something in the holy water. That she would wake up strapped to a bed or in a rubber room with her worried parents looking through a slit in the door while Nina was pumped full of morphine. But as the hours passed and the police did not come back with them or even their bodies, her hopes sank and she clung to Jane and Jane clung to her.

The cops took blood samples from her torn dress and what had splattered on Jane. Only one sample would ever be traced via military records. Not anyone either girl recognized.

When they were shown pictures of the scene the girls were shocked. The police assured them they were recent photos, but the white and almost freshly painted church they had seen when they arrived had been replaced by the same ruins from the internet article about the previous killing there. The cars were still outside and one of the windows had recently been broken out. It matched glass shards on the girls' clothes.

The inside though while still a wreck, was an old wreck. Dust clogged. Half burnt down and collapsed. With no sign of fresh blood or dead bodies, even though the cops arrived maybe a half hour after they arrived at the police station in their borrowed car. The crime scene investigators went over the place and found not a single drop.

On the other hand they also could not figure out how two teenage girls had somehow gotten a dozen cars, rentals and from places across the country, parked outside an old church. Let alone disposed of all of them when they all arrived in town at roughly the same time. No bodies ever turned up. All of them just vanished.

Eventually it was decided that the girls were innocent and whatever happened had involved them being drugged by crazies, possibly connected to the same cult that destroyed the church before or maybe copycats. Maybe they had even dressed as monsters, accounting for the remarkable similarity in the girls' stories.

Jane's family let Nina move into their house. It was not a huge burden. Her family was declared dead along with the other vanished people and the insurance company eventually paid out on their life insurance. More than enough for her to go to college. Nina had always been a good friend and they treated her like a second daughter.

Besides the girls were clearly traumatized and refused to leave the house unless they were together and spent the night rarely leaving the same room without freaking out. Not only did everyone think they were crazy, but they were all they had to hold onto reality. It was codependent and probably unhealthy, but the two of them refused to be separated for longer than it took to go to the bathroom, if that. They shared night terrors and nightmares for years and both were keenly aware that the police still considered them potential suspects.

They never married and spent their days working out of their home behind the best security system they could afford. The neighbors thought they were witches because the few times they saw inside the house they saw a bunch of symbols ranging from crosses to pentagrams meant to keep demons and monsters at bay. And no amount of therapy ever convinced them that what they had experienced was really a hallucination. Until they day they died.

Meanwhile about a month after the incident a man named Thomas Mann went to his front door to gather the mail. He flipped through a pile of bills and a magazine until he came across a gold edged white envelope addressed to him and his family. Walking into the kitchen he opened it and pulled out a gilded invitation which he showed to his wife.

"Hey honey, check it out. My cousin Shirley is getting married."

"Which one is she?"

"Oh the one that joined that motorcycle gang. I haven't heard from her in ten years, but I guess she's finally settling down. Do you think we should go? I think we can clear that weekend." He handed her the invitation.

"Sure, why not? Do we call or…?"

"It looks like we RSVP by sending back this little card."

"Fine, I'll do that. You make the plane reservations and I guess we can go out and get some decent clothes. I love weddings. Do you think they'll have a decent cake?"

Author's Note

Who hasn't gone to a party and found themselves surrounded by people they don't know? Halloween parties are often based on that idea, with everyone wearing an identity concealing costume. Your whole life people have told you not to go anywhere with strangers of hang out in unfamiliar places, but get an engraved invitation and a few decorations around the place and everyone loses their sense of danger.

Monster or human, how hard would it be to lure strangers to some out of the way place with actual invitations if you intended them harm? Think about that the next time you find yourself in an unfamiliar place surrounded by unfamiliar people. A concert. A sporting event. The movies. Or of course a distant relative's wedding.