Rocky's Horror-Wedding Special
"This is all kind of weird, right?" Lincoln asked, concerned. "I mean, I'm not just being paranoid over nothing, am I?"
"Boris does not know what you're talking about." Boris, seven feet tall and built like a malnourished scarecrow, standing beside him at the pew. He looked like he'd barely changed in the ten years that Lincoln had known him.
Lincoln considered how to clarify himself carefully. There was a lot that could've been considered weird on both the occasion, and the venue of choice for said occasion. The subterranean grotto they were in had been converted from a stormwater drain complex that had been locked off from the rest of the town's system. It had been transformed on this night into what could only be described as a gothic cathedral, complete with dripping candles, creaking chandeliers, and (hopefully fake) decorative skulls.
The company in there was equally strange, with one half looking like the cast of The Mansters (a sixties television program that was cancelled after an obsessed bunch of hippies broke into the lead actress's house and redecorated the place while she was asleep), while the other half of the aisle was dressed in the gaudiest polyester suits that Dud's for Dudes could offer. And with the poor ventilation, and the candles being the primary light-source for the venue, that half of the aisle was sweating hard.
"You know, I might go over to the other side and talk to Rusty and Clyde about this. No offense, or anything." Lincoln said.
"None taken." Boris said curtly. "Boris has had little chance to develop a rapport with you in the past."
"Maybe at the reception?" Lincoln said with an awkward smile. They both knew there wasn't a chance that either of them were going to speak a word to each other afterwards. "Anyway, I'll try and be right back."
He shuffled over to the other side of the aisle, stepping on the feet of several satin-suited members of the Spokes clan as he did so, until he'd made his way over to his friends.
Rusty was trembling and sobbing as quietly as he could, which was admittedly loudly enough to be heard from the back of the large room, even over the constant squeaking of everyone's suits rubbing together. Clyde was more composed, and more reasonably dressed in a tuxedo that had belonged to Harold, that Howard had helped fit to him. He had a hand placed reassuringly on Rusty's shoulder that the red-head was squeezing tightly enough to cut the circulation off of.
"Psst. Clyde." Lincoln said, stepping on the feet of a final guest, leading to a hissed intake of breath. "Does any of this seem weird to you at all?"
"What do you mean, Linc?' Clyde said, his voice slightly raised, both to be heard over the sobbing, as well as a reaction to his tortured hand.
"Oh, come on!" Lincoln said, mildly annoyed. "I mean the whole ding-dang thing! If you'd told me half a year ago that Rusty's little brother was going to get married at the stroke of midnight on his eighteenth birthday, I think everyone would've been a bit weirded out, even without the… Change in circumstances surrounding his relationship."
Clyde rolled his eyes, and flinched as Rusty applied more pressure. "Lincoln, I hope you're not going to make this about Lucy again."
Lincoln frowned.
"Well… I wasn't going to say it, but now that you mention it… Isn't it extremely weird that Lucy and Rocky were dating on and off for years up until a few months ago, and then Rocky gets with Haiku?"
"It happens all the time, Lincoln. Look at Stella and You. You were dating Girl Jordan for all those years, and then you hooked up with Stella last spring before midterms."
"Yeah, but Me and Stella have got chemistry." Lincoln said, insistently. "And we also didn't decide to get married the instant both of us were legal either. I mean, who does that?"
"Look, I'm not saying it isn't rushed, and it might not cause problems later on, but you've got to give it a chance." Clyde said. "And I think that, despite it being rushed, the ceremony is gorgeous. Macabre, admittedly, but gorgeous."
"That's another thing, there's something off with the invites." Lincoln said, continuing. "I know that Haiku and Lucy still aren't speaking to one another, but you think that she would've invited Persephone, right? In fact, isn't it strange that there's hardly any other girls here? Just Haiku's mom and a few of Rocky's great-aunts. It's almost like Rocky didn't have any input into the invitees at all…"
"Lincoln, is this because you're seated over on Haiku's section instead of over here?" Clyde said, narrowing his gaze in suspicion.
"I wasn't going to say… But I've known Rocky since I was six!" Lincoln said, throwing his hands up in the air melodramatically. "And it's really awkward over there trying to make conversation with the guys in the Mortician's Club! Boris doesn't blink while he's talking to you, and Dante's awful with small-talk! He's complimented my shoes six times already!"
"Look, I'd be over there with you if I could, buddy, but I've got to look after…" Clyde looked over to the sobbing friend on his right, dressed in a ruffled, red fake-vinyl suit, still looking dejectedly over to the front of the venue, over to where his brother, dressed in a flowing white polyester tuxedo, was standing alongside his dad, who was dressed in similar attire. The senior Spokes was also in tears, but had managed to compose himself more than his eldest son.
"Little dawg… We were supposed to be bachelor bros… Be each other's wing-men for another twenty years at least… But now you've gotta go and ruin it all…" Rusty's brief moment of lucidity once again lapse, as he began to blubber and bawl inelegantly and indecipherably once more.
"Look, Linc. We're all a little tense with this, but we've just got to keep the course and wait for everything to play out. Get on back to your seat, and we'll talk more afterwards." Clyde brought out his decorative pocketchief to help wipe up the mucus from Rusty's schnoz. "We can help Rusty drown his sorrows at the minibar."
Lincoln glumly nodded in agreement, and turned around to return back to where he'd come from, crushing more red-headed guests feet as he passed. He shuffled back into his spot, wedged between Boris and Dante, who were each dressed in particularly mouldering antique suits, which both sagged and pinched at their peculiarly shaped bodies.
"Hey, Lincoln. You're back then." Dante said, tugging at his collar to get some air into his ruffle.
"Uh huh." Lincoln said with a steeled neutrality.
"Where were you off to? Bathroom?"
"No." Lincoln said, his voice was steady and low. "I was just going over to talk to my friends."
"Oh. Huh. That's cool." Dante said, his gaze turning downward. "Hey, uh, those shoes of yours look pretty sharp—"
"—Does anyone know when this is supposed to start? I'm baking alive in here." Lincoln quickly interrupted, knowing the abyss that reacting to the shorter teen's conversation would lead.
"Boris is also feeling unnaturally warm." Boris commented on his right. "I prefer the icy coldness of a metal slab, or a fresh grave."
"Please, Boris, try to remain composed, for our Sister-of-the-Night's special night."
Lincoln looked over to the voice that had come from Dante's left, and saw that it belonged to the leader of the Mortician Club, Bertrand. There had been a brief window where Lucy and Haiku had co-led the club, but after a bloody coup (which wasn't violent, they'd just had a blood-balloon battle to determine who would lead), he had re-established his command over the group.
"And you, I don't want you to cause any trouble either, considering the romantic history you have with Haiku." Bertrand continued.
Lincoln took a second of looking between Dante and Boris before he realized that Bertrand was speaking to him.
"What the heck are you talking about?" Lincoln said angrily, the heat and social indignity causing him to lose his temper. "You mean the one dance we went to together in Grade School? That my sister set up? That I bailed halfway through?"
"Just don't let those feeling ruin the ceremony." Bertrand said insistently. "And the same goes for your friend over there."
"My friend?" Lincoln said, confused. "You mean Clyde?"
"Yes. We've seen how he is around her. Especially when he was French tutor in her first year in high-school."
Lincoln hesitated. They did have some history. Even if it wasn't necessarily romantic, there was a definite connection there that was something more than platonic.
His thoughts were disrupted by the aching groan of rusted iron hinges weighted by the heavy doors of the entrance to the chamber. A room full of heads turned to see a man in crimson and acid-green robes proceed down the aisle down towards the plinth that stood in front of a grand banner showing an inverted pentagram.
"Is that guy the priest?" Lincoln whispered over to Bertrand, considering him the best source for information, and the least likely to begin talking about his footwear.
"Yes. Of a kind." Bertrand said.
"Oh… So, like satanic or something?" Lincoln asked, trying to parse the meaning to his cryptic answer.
"Ha, Satanic! What a ludicrous, irrelevant concept. One borne of hypocrisy and corruption that mirrors the ideology it attempts to critique. Haiku and the rest of us prefer a non-hierarchical demonic religious service o be used for events such as this."
While all of those words made sense singularly, together, Lincoln's mind drew a complete blank on what they actually meant, leading to him to respond:
"Neat."
"We'd like to think that Lucifer, Satan, or whomever was cast out into the infernal plane countless eons ago, wouldn't deign to recreate the orders and structures of the very place he was cast out from. He would likely attempt to attempt some sort of radical demoncratic collective organisation. It's very possible that "Satan" may not have even been the elected official at all since the advent of this system, with him perhaps taking on more of a symbolic role—"
Bertrand's rant was thankfully interrupted by the swell of ominous organ pipes. Naturally, there wasn't any space to install one in the grotto at such short notice, so it was placed from a Bluetooth speaker set that someone had placed on one of the central chandeliers. The effect was similar enough to suffice.
Once again, the crowd of guests turned to witness the entrance, and saw two figures enter.
Haiku looked the vision of what could only accurately be described as "sexpot vampire bride". But her clothing was far from something you'd find from a Spectre of Samhain. The outfit was an explosion of black and purple silk and gossamer, with the veil and the tail of the dress each trailing back several feet. Behind her, her father loomed, creeping down the procession several feet after her, looking like some sort of vaudeville villain.
Lincoln looked at her, and was struck with how attractive she looked, and temporarily began to imagine himself if he was in Rocky's place… He quickly shook those thoughts away. Despite his personal reservations, and the suddenness of the occasion, he did want everything to go smoothly for the two of them. Haiku was a friend as well, and despite not being much more than an acquaintance to Rocky, he still wanted him to be happy for Rusty's sake, if nothing else.
As Haiku drew close to the front of the venue, his gaze went over to Rusty and Clyde. Rusty had managed to be quietened somehow, perhaps with a gag of some form, but as Lincoln turned to look at Clyde, he noticed that his friend was completely struck with the sight of the bride gliding down the aisle. Clyde's jaw hung open freely, and even amongst the sodden mass of the groom's guests, he was noticeably sweaty.
"Jeez, hold it together, Clyde…" Lincoln whispered to himself.
"What was that?" Bertrand whispered to him sharply, startling him.
"Nothing!" Lincoln quickly replied with a stilted cough.
Finally, Haiku stood opposite to Rocky, and while his face was placid, and a bit greasy, hers had a mysterious smile upon it that hinted at countless hidden emotions. Both the teens' fathers stood opposite one another, with Rodney's lip trembling like a shack planted on the San Andreas Faultline.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, eithers and neither's," The priest began, bringing out a low and ominous tone. "While normally at this point we would begin the ceremony, due to the peculiar legal nature of the ceremony, we have to kill some time before we get to the vows, otherwise we run the risk of waiting for five minutes before the bride and groom are allowed to kiss one another to seal the deal, so to speak. So, right now, we're going to sing some hymns dedicated to our Lord of Darkness for, as well as his elected representative, for twenty minutes or so. I'm aware that many of you may not be familiar with these songs, and unfortunately, due to the short notice and prohibitive printing costs we weren't able to bring along any lyrical material, so we'll try and go extra slowly so everyone can get the gist of things…"
Suddenly, the loud crack of thunder, and a swarm of bats entered the site through the opened doors. Lincoln was pretty sure he could hear some muted cheers and sighs of relief underneath the screeching of the winged rodents, as they fluttered up to the roof.
Haiku stopped staring at her betrothed, and looked lividly at the location of the interruption.
"Lucy…" She said, the word coated with deadly venom.
"Haiku."
The word was spoken softly, but its volume seemed to be omnipresent to everyone in the room.
As people began to look around for the source near the entrance of the room, the priest gave a sudden cry of alarm as Lucy, six-feet tall since her seventeenth birthday, somehow appeared behind his five-foot, eight-inch frame.
"Dad, Rocky. It's okay. I can handle this." Haiku said, indicating that they should back away and take a seat. Her father stalked off to seat with Haiku's mom, cape raised as he leered menacingly at Lucy. Rocky didn't seem to respond with anything but silent confusion, and needed his dad to steer him down to a free seat beside Rusty. The priest slunk towards the side of the room, away from any candles had a chance of dripping on his robes.
"You really thought that you could steal him away from me after all those years we spent together?" Lucy said, circling her best friend like a wolf seeking for a sign of weakness in its prey.
"You think I'd just sit by and let you horde him all to yourself?" Haiku said, mirroring her friend's stride, sticking astride her like a shadow. "I know your secrets, Lucy. You thought that we would all fawn and fall to our knees while you displayed your magicks without us knowing that you had an extra source to draw from… That I wouldn't be able to figure out why he was so alluring? Well, Rocky is mine, now. And once we exchange our vows and bind our fates together, you'll never be able to take him back from me."
"That's why I'm here, Haiku." Lucy said, solemn and righteous. "So that never happens."
Haiku gave a dry laugh.
"Do you think you can stop me on your own? I'd have expected you to at least get Persephone's help."
"She said she wanted to remain neutral between us." Lucy said, stiffly. "But even without her help, I'm more than a match for you, Haiku."
"Perhaps if I hadn't taken the time to prepare this arena for just this outcome." Haiku said smugly. Suddenly, she raised both arms, and the lights from the candles all began to simultaneously flicker.
"Ancestors! Those bound to bone and earth, protectors of me since my time of birth! Emerge from rest and reverie, arise to strike my enemy!"
Lincoln, who had been content to simply bring out his phone to record the spectacle until then, glanced at the walls, which began to shimmer with shadow. In each alcove where the skulls had been laid reverently between the lighting. From each leering skull, a twisted ectoplasmic face began to emerge, and floated menacingly towards Lucy.
"Do you want to walk out now, or should the spirits of my ancestors take you out kicking and screaming?" Haiku asked.
"You aren't the only one who has spiritual allies." Lucy said, a barely perceptible grin began to stretch across one cheek.
Before Lincoln could parse what was happening, a crowd of ghosts suddenly descended from the ceiling, beginning to swirl around in a miasma of formless fog as they began to strike out at their spectral counterparts.
"OOOOOHHHH SNAP!" Lincoln heard a squeaky voice from beside him, who he immediately identified as Dante. "GHHOOOOST FIIIIIIIIGHT!"
Lincoln took the hollering as a cue to drop down and shimmy over towards the other side of the aisle to his friends. As he made his way to the middle of the aisle, a sudden stampede from the Spokes side of the aisle ended up trampling over the top of him. After the rush of people subsided, Lincoln groggily crawled towards Clyde and Rusty as the spiritual battle proceeded overhead.
"You alright there, Linc?" Clyde said, as soon as Lincoln flopped face-first onto the floor in front of him.
Lincoln raised a shaking thumbs-up in response while he took a few seconds to raise his head once more.
"Sorry for my sister bursting in and the wedding being ruined, Rocky." Lincoln said, the words spilling out like yolk from a cracked egg.
Rocky didn't respond, instead taking out his phone.
"It's okay fellas," Rodney said, placing a comforting arm between the two of them. "Reminds me of my first wedding."
Rusty had broken out of his malaise, and while he was sniffling, seemed to be holding things down once his brother was no longer up on the stage.
"I'm just glad that I get another day with my little bro as a free man." Rusty said, giving his younger brother, who tried to concentrate on the phone on his hand, a bone-crushing hug.
"What was that whole thing that Lucy and Haiku were talking about with… "power", and "allure"?" Lincoln asked woozily.
"Ha, well, if I'd have to take a gander at it, I do recall an old bit of family history that might fit the bill." Mr. Spokes said, rubbing his speckled chin. "Something about the first Spokes being over in the colony in Salem, and some accusations about Goodie Spokes laying with an incubus."
"I guess that's a reason why all us Spokes have that undeniable animal magnetism, huh, dad?" Rusty said.
While Mr. Spokes chuckled lightly, his friends were silent.
For a few moments, the five of them took in the view of the ghost fight. There wasn't much in the way of objective form going on in there, but the eerie lighting and fog, as well as the occasional thrown chair, certainly added to the atmosphere. Across the aisle, Haiku's family, as well as many of her assembled family, sat stiffly, waiting for the ruckus to resolve itself, while the three male members of the Mortician's Club hooted and Hollered as the ghostly warriors fought overhead.
The men's attention was captured by a light coughing from their side. Lincoln was surprised to see that Persephone giving a little wave towards them all.
"Persephone? Are you here to fight with Lucy or for Haiku?" He asked, his thinking not quite clear.
"Neither." Persephone said lightly. "I was actually hoping that I could perhaps get a coffee with Rocky here, while this conflict between Haiku and Lucy is resolved."
Rocky raised his gaze, along with a single eyebrow, then looked over to his father.
"Aww, go ahead, champ. These two will probably be at it for a while."
Rocky shrugged, putting away his phone, and walked off arm-in-arm with Persephone.
