Growing up I was always obsessed with folklore, fairies, ghosts, goblins, mermaids, vampires, werewolves, zombies and all the like.
So when I found out the story of 'The Corpse Bride', a Jewish, Russian story, I instantly fell in love and started reading it every day, despite its short length and lack of any real description except a few snippets. Most short stories were written that way, back then.
It was just another usual day.
I woke up from my bed; hearing my old-fashioned alarm clock going off, and slammed my fist into it, only to realize the silver clock was battery operated and was easy to turn off..
"Damn." I groggily muttered humorlessly. "I'm gonna need a new clock."
I pushed the covers off myself, then rolled out of bed, nearly falling to the ground.
My coordination was never that great when I first woke up.
I took my shower and started the day.
I didn't particularly care this day about what I wore, so I just picked a plain, short-sleeve green T shirt and a pair of blue jeans that had been pretty worn over the years, and then, checking on my jet-black spiked hair once more, I set out.
I thought it'd be humorous to reenact the story I read, place a ring on a tree branch for kicks and then dance around it saying my wedding vowels.
It was just a stupid story told by superstitious people who were dead now and forgotten to history, and probably not even known in their homeland.
So I set off into the woods.
I walked for quite sometime until I finally saw an odd-shaped tree sticking out if the ground, and so I approached it and stood in front of it.
Strange enough, it looked like a bony finger, just like in the story.
So I placed the gold band I had bought a few years back for my then fiancée, and placed it on the stick, cracking up at what I was doing, and then said my vowels.
Once my vowels were over, I felt the ground begin to rumble and the Earth began to split; the bony hand raising up while I hesitantly took a few steps back; stunned at what I was seeing.
This couldn't be.
It was just a story.
It was just a story told to scare kids and make them behave so they wouldn't be running amok like little demons.
Even though I kept telling myself this was all just a story, I couldn't deny what I was seeing with my own, two, black eyes.
In only moments, a figure was standing in front of me.
It was a woman.
She was about an inch shorter than me; I was five foot ten.
She had long, dark blue hair, expressionless, wide eyes, violet eyes.
She was dressed in a tattered, moth-bitten, white wedding dress that showed off some of her bosoms, and had one arm, her left, which had decomposing flesh on it, and one ark, her right, which was nothing but pure bone.
"I heard every word...And...I do.."
When I heard this, I think I fell backwards.
I scurried away from her, backing away on my hands and knees in reverse, terrified of the beautiful abomination that was...The Corpse Bride.
"Who are you?" I asked, spooked.
"Rosa. Your bride." She a answered.
I was too terrified to even speak.
"So," she tipped her head to the side; her violet eyes still blank, devoid of emotion, "you too, you do not love me, either."
I swallowed; staring at her with wide eyes, and although my mouth was open, no words would flow through them, and so I just sat there staring like an idiot, at a loss for words.
A glint of regret and pity coursed through my face, and I felt my face go pale, just as it did the first time I had seen her face to face.
I rose up from the ground.
"Rosa!" I quickly spat out; extending my left arm out.
"It's fine..."
She soundlessly whispered, making it more than obvious it was anything BUT fine.
She started to walk away.
"I couldn't find any real love when I was alive...So why would finding it when I'm dead be any different."
"Stop!" I commanded.
"Yes?" She turned to look at me.
I walked towards her; my feet crunching on dead, fallen leaves and old withered sticks, crunching them beneath my walk.
I stopped once I was in front of her, and she just stared at me; her soulless eyes making it impossible to tell what she was thinking at that very moment.
I bit my lip.
I felt pity for her.
I felt bad that everyone she had fallen in love with had hurt her.
She was murdered for pity's sake.
And here I was denying her, ME! Who swore on her hand, her finger, with that band, that I'd be her loving husband and stick to her, showing her unconditional, limitless love at all times.
I took off her tattered, raggedy, moth-eaten wedding dress.
Beneath it she was wearing a shift. It almost looked like a second dress, but it was in fact underwear.
She watched me silently; her face still as ever, but her emotionless eyes watched.
Once she was fully naked; I gazed upon her body.
She really was something from her time.
A true, ancient beauty.
Her body was so small and delicate looking, such as you'd expect from a woman around her time.
Her body was perfectly slender, even if it was starting to decompose from all the long and harsh, unforgiving years that had passed.
Her sweet breasts weren't very large, but they were perfectly round and ample.
Not exactly bumps, but not exactly as big as her head, either.
Her tender nipples were large, but were darker than her blue skin.
Her pussy was still in good shape, plump, ripe looking lips, but it was blue like the rest of her body, and there was a small toft of hair above her lady lips.
The flesh around her neck was slowly tearing off, and beneath it, I could see her neck bone sticking out.
There was a small hole above her nipple as well, where tissue was rotting, just like her neck and her left cheek.
Bone being exposed.
It even looked like her belly button was missing, and there was a large hole, showing her left ribs; her bones.
But I think the most part that caught my eye before any of this was: Even though her lips were intact, her teeth were showing from where flesh had rotted off or had been cut off; flesh which should have it covered up, to hide the inside of her mouth, it was gone.
I steeled myself mentally, and, placing my hands over my shirt, pulling it over my shoulders and neck, and then my head, I kissed her blue, lacerated lips.
I felt my eyes widen, and a feeling of disgust I had never quite experienced in my life; my stomach churning when I actually tasted her inside my mouth.
She tasted like death.
She tasted like years of rotting decay, like what I imagined that maggots would taste like.
It was the most foul and indescribable taste I had ever had the displeasure of experiencing.
