Bridezilla
Fiction by Natasha Sanders-Kay
You’re in the red carpeted lobby of a grand old hotel, frantic in a sea of tuxedoed and gowned guests — your guests. Cocktail tables, grandfather clocks, various antiques, and chandeliers are decorated with white ribbons and roses.
The ceremony’s supposed to start soon, but you’re not ready. You’ve been crying, you have no make-up on, you’re not wearing the dress. Late to your own wedding.
The emcee — some rando — cheerfully announces there’s been a slight delay due to a family fight. Not ‘emergency.’ ‘Fight.’ Classy.
Feeling even more sorry for yourself, you roll around crying on the floor. People walk on by. You watch their feet. Wish you had nicer shoes on.
Pick yourself up and get to the elevator. Rush out its doors the second it lands on the nineteenth floor, ignoring your buzzing head, surge of vertigo. Stumble to your door, room twenty-seven, and wave the magic key card. The light blinks red; the door won’t budge.
Return to the elevator, press the button for the twentieth floor. The twentieth floor has the same room numbers as the nineteenth — what the hell? You find room twenty-seven, wave the card. Red.
Try another floor, another room. Another, another.
Start going room to room, waving the useless card. Red. Red-red. Red-red-red. Red.
The numbers on the doors keep changing. You try room twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, reach the end of the hall, return the way you came to the elevator and as you pass the same rooms, the numbers on their doors say eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
Sweating, you look around to ever-empty hallways, no help in sight. Your hands flutter and your chest hardens. Dry sobs start to choke your aching throat. Feel your face contort, your insides twist, a seizing sensation — blackout.
Come to in the bathroom of your suite. Actually, it doesn’t look like your suite, but most of your things are here. Make-up bag on the counter, bridal gown hanging on the back of the door. First it feels like you’re watching yourself in bird’s-eye view from the ceiling, then you’re eye to eye with your reflection in the mirror, face pink and puffy. Burn in the shortest hot shower you can manage. Quick blow-dry of your messy mane, no time for styling. Accidentally stab your eye while applying liner. Fluster through mascara, lips, splash of jewellery — go! But wait, what about the dress?
Open your eyes on the other side of the elevator doors, back in the lobby, where the ceremony awaits, or is it in the banquet hall around the corner?
The mirror across from the elevators reflects a startled bride. Were you in your wedding dress the whole time? Were the mazes of wrong rooms all a fever dream? You think what a sight you must’ve been before, raging on the floor like a crying gorilla in your bridal gown. If that was real.
Realize you’re holding a pot of hot coffee. Half-remember brewing it in the room while you were racing to get ready. Had to wake up. The guests would probably like some too.
By the mirror there’s a table on wheels, cloaked in white tablecloth, fine china arranged with white rose petals. You fill the porcelain tea cups, arms shaking, coffee sloshing.
It doesn’t matter what was or wasn’t real before, all that matters is right now: Time to get married.
Carefully, tea trays balanced on still-trembling arms, you walk toward the crowd that spills from around the corner. Any second now, you’ll hear the music with your cue.
But no one notices you. They don’t appear to be waiting for anything. They’re moving and chatting amongst themselves with plates in their hands. Inside the banquet hall, guests are seated at tables, eating, laughing. Others are dancing.
You’ve missed your own wedding.
Heart sinks. Blood boils. Tears brim. Belly growls.
See what’s on the plates: The cake’s been cut. Stomach erupts into a roar, becomes a deafening roar right out your mouth — you don’t care. You tear the veil from your face. Stomp between tables, snatch fistfuls of leftover cake from abandoned plates, stuff it in your mighty mouth, smear your face with it, a mess of chocolate and lipstick. You wonder who the fuck ordered chocolate wedding cake, then who the fuck cares. Start yanking forkfuls of cake from people’s hands, people still seated, still eating; smash their dishes and raise your arms in triumph as you chew, crumbs drooling down your chin.
March up to mingling guests, rip the cake from their plates, too, fistful after fistful into your raging maw, double-fisting, and now you’re pounding your chest, screaming to the ceiling between gulpfuls, cake across your cheeks, speckled in your hair, sliding down your throat, your chest, your wedding dress, gobs of it slopping from the arms that shook so hard earlier, the hands that still shake now, clenched in fistfuls of cake that are yours, all yours, for after all, it’s your day. »