Work Text:
Today is the best day of Scott’s life.
Or, that’s what he’d been told his entire life, anyway. But, really, if this was the best day of his life? He kinda hoped it was his last, actually. Geez, what a scam. He’d like a discount on his next life, please and thank you, ma’am, ‘cause this one, see? Defective, faulty, absolutely bottom of the bin. Helloooo, yoohoo? What’s it take to talk to a manager around here? C’mon, least they could do was offer him a refund, maybe throw in a coupon or two, too. After all the Gods had put him through, hethinks, he deserved some compensation.
Looking at it plainly, in the end, there isn’t much difference between a wedding and a funeral.
Mm, actually, no. There was a difference. A big one. At least, during a funeral, people acknowledged it was a tragedy. They mourned the life being cut short, the misfortune befallen, the cherished person being lost with the appropriate solemnity and sadness and all that. At a wedding, though? Nope, your parents celebrated the loss of their child. Friends, family, everyone you’d ever met raved about how lucky you were to be having your spiritual, physical, financial, legal and emotional autonomy robbed instead of grieving the death of the person, the personhood, being lost.
“Lost” wasn’t even an apt term, really. No, let’s be frank: this was a murder. This was a gruesome, messy homicide, and not only were all his friends and family witnesses, they were all gleefully complicit in the manslaughter of his selfhood. They toasted to his passing, laughed along as his father delivered his eulogy, distant relatives cooing about how big and handsome he looked in his cerements as the floral bearers drowned the church in roses and peonies to try to disguise the stench of blood and rot coming from the carcass they’d all helped flay alive.
Strange, isn’t it? To go through the five stages of grief for your own death, that is.
He didn’t even realise it was happening at first. But, y'know, guess that made sense, given the first stage was denial, after all.
He didn’t want to believe it. It was like a weird, foggy fever dream, a nightmare, the reality of what he’d known would come his entire life not really hitting him ‘till he saw the suit, the altar, the aisle, the light at the end of the tunnel, that’s when it really came like a slap to the face, the panic breaking through like a dam, gushing and torrenting through his mind like a tsunami. He was a slave at the auction, a dog at its last visit to the vet, he was a man who was being giddily led by the wrist not just to his murdersite but to his own funeral.
Anger, then. He tore up his suit to try to postpone the wedding, threatened to punch the embalmer wanting to fix it, imagined biting his bride’s tongue and swallowing it during the ceremony until they both choked on the blood and died on the altar before they could finish their vows. He decided against it, though. That would be too poetic; romantic, even. He wanted to set fire to the altar, to go out screaming, thrashing, to be killed fighting tool and nail instead of euthanised like a wet dog. He wanted it to be ugly. Revolting. He wanted to make them retch.
After that, sooner than he’d have liked, bargaining. He could try running again. He’d never get far. Where would he go, anyway? He didn’t know how to survive in the wilderness, and, even if he did, humans weren’t solitary creatures, he’d go mad in isolation, probably. His only other option was homeless and inevitably getting beaten to death in some alleyway for getting cold feet at the altar by the bride’s jacked sister or something. This wasn’t the sort of thing he could back out of and still expect to have a place in society. If he ran, he’d only make it two steps, if he was being generous, before being shot in the back like an escaped convict.
So, yeah. Given his options, he’d given up on bargaining pretty quick, he’d think. Guess that meant he was in depression now, huh? Yep. That tracked. Sure felt like it, anyway.
The officiant was thin and skeletal, dressed in silken, black robes. The fabric pooled around his feet, making him look almost limbless, as if levitating at the podium’s edge instead of standing on it. Really, all he needed was a scythe in the other hand to complete the look.
“Pearl Escentmoon,” the reaper droned, “do you take Scott Smajor to be your lawfully wedded husband from this day forward — to have and to hold, in good times and bad, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health; will you love, honour, and cherish him for as long as you both shall live?”
His wife-to-be looked beautiful, he thought. Like a corpse after a trip to the mortuary cosmetologist. Her face was snow-white, prettily pale in the way only a person could be after being drained of blood and filled with formaldehyde as she whispered, “I do.”
“Scott Smajor, do you take Pearl Escentmoon to be your lawfully wedded wife from this day forward — to have and to hold, in good times and bad, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health; will you love, honour, and cherish her for as long as you both shall live?”
Funny, that they were asking him that. Like he had a choice. Like he could say no. Like he hadn’t said no a trillion times already, like the only reason he was here wasn’t because he’d said no so many times his throat’d given out. No, no, no, no one would ever listen, anyway, so he might as well tell them what they wanted to hear, right? It wasn’t like he had any other options, honestly.
“I do.”
The dark figure continued, “Pearl Escentmoon, please repeat after me…”
“—Scott,” She smiled, teeth white, too white, like she’d drunk a bottle of bleach before the ceremony. He wished he had. “With this ring, I thee wed, and I do promise to love, honour, and cherish you, in good times 'n bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health. 'Til death do us part.”
He was going to take her last name, probably. Not usually tradition, for the groom to take the bride’s, but given her family’s esteem, he’d likely be forced to, anyway. It didn’t bother him as much as it should. Having his name taken, that is. Maybe because all the love he’d had for his family had died the day that he had — the day they’d sent him to his grave. Maybe it was petty, but he felt vindicated that, even if the name on his tombstone wouldn't be his, it wouldn't be theirs, either.
“Scott Smajor,” the pale horseman turned his gaze to him, “please repeat after me…”
The words felt numb in his mouth, tingling against his tongue like barbs, sliding down his throat like a sip of pesticide: “With this ring…”
He didn’t think this was acceptance. Not really. Not yet. No, this was more surrender; resignation.
It felt surreal to tie the knot to his own noose. “...in good times and bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and health…”
He had fought for a chance to live. To live for himself, for the life he wanted, the chance to do more than survive, to thrive. But, now? He was tired. Tired of fighting for an unattainable goal. Tired of fighting to keep his heart beating and chest rising. Too tired to keep fighting a rigged game where the system would always win.
He finished, “...until death do us part.”
Ironic, for as the ring slid over his finger, and the lid over his coffin, he couldn’t help but feel that he was already dead.