Total pages in book: 55
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52976 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
I glare at myself in the mirror.
I don’t even know how long I’ve gone without it on and what that’s done to my vulnerable half-soul. Have I compromised my health? Have I put myself in danger with my recklessness?
West, I could really use the other half of my soul right about now.
“Okay,” I finally decide, with no choice left. “Let’s get this over with.”
“But first, your bowtie—again.” My mother gets to work while ignoring my shivering—which she clearly assumes is “just my nerves”.
If only it was.
The hallway is a blur as my mom guides me, hand on my back. Nothing about this building feels familiar anymore, even though I’d paced around it hours ago. The doors all look suspicious, like any one of them is about to fly open with a toothless, eyeless ghoul coming after me. I feel misty fingers that aren’t there touching my neck, reaching for me, pulling on me. “C’mon, stop slowing down, hon, move those two cute feet of yours,” sings my oblivious mother as my wide eyes dart around, paranoid as fuck. Every damned shadow in the building plays with my mind, changing shapes, elongating like a reaching hand, turning into creatures and faces.
Ice cold dread has pitched a tent in my stomach by the time we reach the doors. I’m shaking so hard, I feel like either I jumped onto a massage chair backwards or popped a vibrating butt plug up my ass at full power.
I try to distract myself. “Where’s D-Dad?”
“Inside. Don’t you remember the whole talk we had last night? I’m walking you down the aisle. All three of the dads are inside.” She rubs my back. “Goodness, you need a Xanax, son.”
The chatter on the other side of these doors grows quiet. A cue has been given.
“It’s time,” whispers my mother.
Then the doors open. Before me is a sea of faces. Pixelomenon friends, nearly all of them in costume. A few Spooky Beans employees I recognize. Several of Byron’s friends from the theater off 7th Street he designs costumes for.
Between those faces—costumed and otherwise—I see several I know shouldn’t be there. Each of them has furiously glowing white eyes. Hair that stands up on end where it shouldn’t, tangled and colorless. Some of them are skeletal. Some of them, transparent and misty. One of them looks like a horsehead with fiery eyes. Another is only half there, flesh sliding off the bone.
It’s just an illusion. That’s what I tell myself. They are all just peek-a-boos from the Realm of the Dead.
They can’t hurt me.
Every one of my fears is alleviated the moment I look forward. At once, the whispers and visions of the dead are gone. All I see is Byron at the front in his handsome Pumpkin Prince suit, made of a gorgeously entwined black and orange material with swirls threaded through that look as shiny as volcanic glass. The colors match my bowtie exactly the way he said they would. It was his secret project he’d been working on ever since I said yes. His hair is immaculately fixed as always. His skin glows. His eyes sparkle. I feel like I’m walking into a dream.
It isn’t until I reach the front that I see the flicker of worry in Byron’s eyes. “Babe?” he whispers, concerned.
“I-I’m fine,” I assure him, my voice significantly shakier than I intended it to sound. I restrain my shivers and try again. “I’m f-f-f-fine.”
Yeah, that wasn’t any better.
But before Byron can say anything, the woman in a regal sorceress’s robe standing next to us up here—the officiant—starts the ceremony. “Welcome, friends and family of Byron Neal and Griffin James. We are here today to celebrate the joining of these two—”
Byron mouths the words: “Are you okay?”
I force my lips into a half-grimace-half-smile and nod in answer. I’m pretty sure I look like Hell itself just backed a truck over me ten times.
He takes hold of my hands. That’s when his eyes go really big. “You’re cold,” he mouths.
Yes, we’ve pretty much mastered the art of reading each other’s lips over the years, if it isn’t obvious yet. I can legally put it on my résumé. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Maybe you’re just too hot,” I mouth back.
When the room is silent, I peer around, then quickly realize the officiant is staring rather expectantly at us. Oh, crap. Did we miss a cue?
Mercifully, she is polite and seems to assume we’re just a pair of nervous soon-to-be-newlyweds. “You may speak your vows,” she repeats with a kind smile.
I face Byron. I wished the circumstances weren’t so dire, otherwise I’d be speaking to a far less freaked-out face. “Byron, my love, m-m-my everything, my comfort when I’m d-down and my j-joy when I’m happy. We’ve come a long way from ‘Calvin’ and ‘the cute b-barista down the s-s-street’.” It’s remarkable that I remember the vows I wrote. Something else takes over as I speak my vows, talking about how rivers intersect, how stars collide in enormous faraway miracles, how destined our love felt from the moment I saw him through the glass of Spooky Beans Café. There is something about gazing into Byron’s eyes that focuses me. There is something about my focus, too, that seems to put Byron more at ease, because his eyes soften as he listens to my words. “I love you more than life itself,” I conclude. “I am the luckiest s-s-soul—” Oh, if I only knew the state I’d be in when I wrote these vows. “—s-soul to h-have found you. I can’t wait to s-start our lives together.”