Beyond The Carnival

“So this is the wedding dress?”

The assistant held it carefully from the silk hanger as though it were a body being lowered into a grave. White Gucci satin, impossibly expensive, impossibly pure. Tiny diamonds stitched along the neckline glimmered beneath the yellow lights of the changing room.

“But the groom?”

“Yes,” she smiled faintly. “Someone unexpected.”

The woman behind the counter looked uncomfortable.

“Well… congratulations.”

“Don’t worry,” the bride whispered, almost to herself. I  know what I'm doing. “

Outside, dusk collapsed into neon darkness.

The fairground was alive that night. Carousels spun violently beneath coloured lights. Children screamed on rusted rides while drunk men staggered between stalls carrying melted sugar on sticks and bottles of beer. Music cracked through old speakers, distorted and warped and very loud. Too loud.

She moved through the crowd slowly in the wedding dress, the train dragging through mud and cigarette ash. She knew what she was doing.

Then she saw them.

The sisters.

Huddled together at a tiny circular table near the edge of the carnival. They never separated. They never spoke to outsiders. People claimed they had invented their own language in childhood after surviving some unnamed horror inside the old mansion on the hill.

No one knew for certain. 

Their gowns were grotesquely beautiful. Towering silk structures ballooned around them like royal costumes from another century. Emeralds and rubies dripped from their necks in thick almost suffocating layers. Wherever they walked, the crowd parted instinctively.

No one looked directly at them for too long.

It was said if you listened carefully enough to their strange language, eventually your own thoughts began changing shape. People are afraid of strange, of not knowing,  and they were strange (...)

The wedding procession erupted through the carnival like a street theatre. Strangers clapped and cheered. Flowers were thrown high into the warm night air. The bride raised her hand, showing two tiny platinum wedding bands covered in diamonds.

Everyone celebrated.

But inside her mind something cold remained untouched.

Because the man she had married lived inside the decaying mansion beyond the carnival gates. And inside that house lived the silent sisters and his mother, a woman people described in whispers, no one said their names out loud, like they had some unknown  illness passed quietly between generations.

Best to stay away.

The mansion stood at the far edge of the coast road.

Palatial once.

Now dilapidated. 

Inside, the chandeliers still worked despite layers of dust thick as velvet. Ancient clocks ticked endlessly in different rooms. Curtains smelled of cigarettes and mould. 

She wandered the hallways alone carrying her shoes in one hand.

She would find the phone she'd hidden earlier that day, she would call him, he would come and take her out of here when the time was right.

Then she would find a room where she could sleep alone.

The telephone rang before she even reached the bedroom.

Sharp.

Sudden.

Waiting.

“Where are you? You married him? Now where will this take us?”

“Don’t worry,” she replied calmly. “I know what I’m doing.”

But even saying the words made her stomach twist. 

Because she really did not fully know anymore.

She removed the stained wedding dress slowly, stepping out of it like shedding skin. Dirt marked the hemline. One sleeve had torn during the celebration. Her long hair fell loose across her shoulders as she collapsed onto the enormous bed.

Sleep arrived instantly.

Heavy.

Drugged.

Downstairs, the groom returned home hours later.

Alone.

He had never been married before. In truth, he had barely known how to behave during the ceremony. He seemed confused by the entire ritual, as though marriage were merely another object someone had handed him to keep.

His elderly mother sat waiting in the kitchen beside a flickering lamp. 

She poured tea into a saucer.

He drank from it obediently.

“I don’t like her,” the old woman said.

Her voice was soft but poisonous.

“You have always been mine ever since you were born. Why do you need her?”

He stared blankly into the tea leaves gathering like drowning insects at the bottom.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just like her.”

The mother’s eyes narrowed.

“But I don’t understand why she wanted a wedding dress. I bought her beautiful rings. She is now my wife. Whatever that means. ”

Outside, wind rattled the ancient windows.

The old woman leaned closer.

“Well, get rid, son. Get rid.”

Silence settled between them.

“She will spoil everything.”

Upstairs, asleep beneath layers of dust and velvet darkness, the bride dreamed of the two sisters standing beside her bed speaking in their impossible language.

And for the first time… she understood every word.