the series of r/nosleep | volume one: the {smile} series

{W}edding

Face the mirror. Are you alone? Yes.

Close your eyes. Are you still alone? No.

Open your eyes. Is anyone there? Just me.

Close your eyes. Who is there now? We.

A white gown custom made to be worn by me for a man I have already forgotten. A two year engagement climaxing at an empty altar. I kneel before a different one. I serve a different one. I am the different one.

He, the one will become my everything, He comes in my dreams. When I'm awake and aware He slips messages in whispers. Through reflections I see my other. Through mirrors I find my home.

"World, meet Greta," were the words I heard before language touched my tongue. "Greta, meet the world," are the words spoken by my gift to her own child weeks later, a child that won't be born until He whispers to her at her Awakening.

An ornate church on a crested hill. Large steeples framing an early morning sun. I arrive early to prepare. A gaggle of childhood friends, pampered and liquored, toting bags and a plastic-sheeted dress sneak by the priest who feigns obliviousness to the breakfast champagne and nervous excitement. We commandeer a back room that smells of frankincense and mothballs and sprawl about the floor like made-up starlets in silk pajamas lamenting our supposed loss of future freedoms. Old wives recount war stories of their first times and newlyweds flash giant rocks that blind them to their giver's inadequacies. The poor ones without a mate or any future of marriage silently smile in corners as the rest of the conversation screams "We, we, we" without a "Me" in sight.

"We are excited for my husband's promotion," one yells over the glistening karat weighing down a fattened finger.

"But won't you be moving?" asks a poor girl; single, alone, and frightfully happy.

"Yes, but it is what we want."

"But what about your diner?"

"I'll sell it."

"To who?"

"The young girl who works the counter; she makes the most delicious pies."

"But it was your dream."

"Ah, but we decided to move so we can pursue his dream."

The conversation continues this way, married hens and single chickens clucking at each other as I, the in-betweener, the one in marriage limbo, stares at my twin in the mirror.

Close your eyes. Are you alone? I wish.

Born to a family but raised in another home, I was never alone. Seven siblings that looked nothing like me, or each other for that matter, and even less like the two adults who absently loved us long enough for them to procure another replacement. "We can't have children," they'd say. "So we take care of those thrown away by the ones who can."

Now I'm surrounded by seven girls who are closer to me than my brothers and sisters, both those blood and adopted, and yet I am only drawn towards the mirror. What is it about reflections on one's wedding day? Why must a bride, capable enough to see herself in three angled full-length mirrors, need to seek the validation of others on how she looks? Why not just ask the mirror what it thinks?

Close your eyes. You are alone.

A twirl. A cascade of cloth in a simple mirror. A glimpse. A peak. A smiling face when I was frowning. Out of the corner of my eye, looking away at something on the floor, an intense feeling, a prickling sensation at the nape of my neck, of being watched. Of being studied. Of being beckoned.

"We've decided to have a baby."

The conversations slip over me. I'm pulling on layers of fabric. Someone zips me up. I do a turn in the mirror but my reflection stays put. Grinning.

"We love our new golf membership."

I'm staring, shaking my head, blinking until my eyes water. My mirror twin laughs and bows. Black beads drip out of clouded eyes. Long nails tap the mirrored glass between us.

"We've decided to hire a nanny."

A fog billows from beneath my dress, pressing out on corset strings until they bind against tight knots. My lungs swell for the first time. High heels click on the tile in the hallway, click on the wood in the rectory, and scratch on the gravel as I escape to the parking lot. Fleeing my friends. Fleeing the other. Fleeing myself.

I just need to breathe. I just need to calm down. I just need to see. Every car window around me shows my reflection as it points, and laughs, and covers a broken grin.

Open your eyes. Are you still alone?

I drop to my knees ruining a dress that was never for me, not the me I've become, not the me I was planned to be. I scream and duck beneath windows where a familiar face presses against the glass. She's mute to my madness. She's silent to my terror. The other girls are looking for me, calling out a name that was never mine. Begging me to come back. Begging me to become a "We".

"It's for your own good," one yells while drinking enough alcohol to temporarily erase her husband's infidelity.

"You'll love being married," another one says with the sticky sour rasp of a war prisoner.

"You're never alone with me," His voice whispers in my head.

I gather the cotton and lace and pull myself to feet that walk under new guidance. They arrow towards the back of the lot where a limo for the dead rumbles in idle. I stare into a tinted window, into eyes that I've stared at for years, but never really saw. They blink. I don't. They crease at the corners as smile contorts her face. I tilt my head unwillingly as if I'm being forced to study myself. She nods. I feel myself being stretched into the other, like pulling taffy apart over a flame. White flutters as my vision goes.

Close your eyes. Is anyone there?

Hands grasp my shoulders, forearms hook my waist. I'm lifted, dragged backwards on broken heels, and pulled away from the wedding day hearse.

"Think about your husband," one says into my ear, ignoring the fact that I haven't said yes.

"Think of your children," another one chirps, oblivious to the hundreds I would eventually steal.

"Think of yourself," He whispers through the wind.

The black limo that is not a limo turns in a wide arc; the driver unseen but staring. Hinges creak as the rear door swings open. On rails where a coffin should be sits a single wild flower. A purple beacon in this world of black. A single moment of lucidity resting on reflected chaos.

Open your eyes. Who is there now?

I bat at the hands that helped me just moments before. I push at faces tangled up in empathy and confusion. I kick at the air until shoes slip from my feet. I scream.

"Let her go," the married women say.

"Bring her back," the single women yell.

"Come to me," He whispers above the roar.

My twin, seated deep in darkened glass, opens her arms in an embrace, the reflection shimmering in the slow morning heat. I break from the grasps of the women, charge through the huddle and dive into the back of my chariot. The engine roars to life as tires spin and kick up gravel into my sisters' faces. A burst of laughter swells in my belly and works its way out of a confused mouth. My head spins, rights itself, and then spins again.

The driver, as the car propels down the sloping hill escaping the church's shadowed steeples, turns back towards me and smiles. "I've been waiting for you," he says through a mouth that doesn't open.

"Me?" I ask as my face shifts. Bones creak beneath the skin. My blonde hair twists into brown curls. At that moment, as my old life seeps out onto the floor around me, and I am reminded of who I am since being stolen away at birth, I yearn to become a "We".

He nods. "Are you ready?"

We look at him with new eyes. We smile. We say, "Yes."