Fic: Damnation, with veil.
Title: damnation, with veil.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sometimes hell isn't what you expect it to be.
Once more, my eyes trail over my body looking for imperfections. It's like looking for a flaw in the Mona Lisa. There's none. I am the perfect bride, with the perfect wedding on the perfect day. I have worn my hair up, because that is his preference, twisted into a tight coil that leaves my throat bare. He likes the vulnerability of it. The feeling of trust he thinks I must have in him to expose myself in that way.
Nature compressed every major pathway of life into a narrow structure engineered for maximal mobility and made us weak. He finds pleasure in my weakness, my pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, his lips against my throat inhaling my nakedness because he thinks he has none. Except me, I make him weak.
I have nothing but contempt for his blindness.
I take the time to pin my veil in place. The pale gauzy white stands out against my hair dark as it curls in soft wisps around the veil. My bouquet is a dense mass of perfect yellow roses, the symbol for freedom and sympathy.
Call it passive defiance. He hates yellow. I know this the same way I know he likes his manhattans dry and sex that lasts for days.
He said he wanted me to have everything my heart desired, but since he cannot love me I have settled for the perfect fairytale wedding day. I always dreamed of yellow flowers when I was a child so I would have them. He insisted. It pleases him to make me happy. I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Happy would be marrying a man who loved me. I smooth the front of my dress just as Fred comes to tell me it's time.
She says I look perfect, but her smile is brittle and false. She is picturing herself in my place but the picture is flawed.
This is perfect. I am perfect, because he wants me to be.
Picture perfect down to the last detail, like the paper dolls my mother made me when I was a girl. Every edge meticulously cut out. Every dress, every curl every face drawn carefully on whatever scraps she could find so I had someone I could play with. Paper children in vivid colors for her cardboard child dressed in grey.
That's what I am. A cardboard woman turned into real flesh by a man of flesh. Built in his image of womanhood. I am amazed at how alive I look smiling in the mirror, the perfect bride on her wedding day.
I am not a woman he could love. It isn’t a secret. But he wants me and that will have to be enough. I force my eyes to brighten my stance to change. I will be a happy bride.
The smile was what got him in the end I think. Like I have a secret, the way my smile changes, it can be happy, mocking; sometimes he says it looks sad. At night in bed he say it is filled with secrets that he wants to discover day after day. I told him I have no secrets, only truths.
My smile was sad then, but I said yes when he asked me to marry him. I said yes and regretted it, because it means someday he'll know what it is he married; if he doesn’t already.
I will make him hate me, but until then I will be his. I form my mouth around the words, love, honor, and obey.
For one second, I allow myself to forget that I am not the woman he loves. For one brief second I look into his eyes and cannot fathom the betrayal I will make him suffer.
I wonder if this is why women cry at their weddings.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Sometimes hell isn't what you expect it to be.
Once more, my eyes trail over my body looking for imperfections. It's like looking for a flaw in the Mona Lisa. There's none. I am the perfect bride, with the perfect wedding on the perfect day. I have worn my hair up, because that is his preference, twisted into a tight coil that leaves my throat bare. He likes the vulnerability of it. The feeling of trust he thinks I must have in him to expose myself in that way.
Nature compressed every major pathway of life into a narrow structure engineered for maximal mobility and made us weak. He finds pleasure in my weakness, my pulse fluttering beneath his fingertips, his lips against my throat inhaling my nakedness because he thinks he has none. Except me, I make him weak.
I have nothing but contempt for his blindness.
I take the time to pin my veil in place. The pale gauzy white stands out against my hair dark as it curls in soft wisps around the veil. My bouquet is a dense mass of perfect yellow roses, the symbol for freedom and sympathy.
Call it passive defiance. He hates yellow. I know this the same way I know he likes his manhattans dry and sex that lasts for days.
He said he wanted me to have everything my heart desired, but since he cannot love me I have settled for the perfect fairytale wedding day. I always dreamed of yellow flowers when I was a child so I would have them. He insisted. It pleases him to make me happy. I bite my lip to keep from laughing. Happy would be marrying a man who loved me. I smooth the front of my dress just as Fred comes to tell me it's time.
She says I look perfect, but her smile is brittle and false. She is picturing herself in my place but the picture is flawed.
This is perfect. I am perfect, because he wants me to be.
Picture perfect down to the last detail, like the paper dolls my mother made me when I was a girl. Every edge meticulously cut out. Every dress, every curl every face drawn carefully on whatever scraps she could find so I had someone I could play with. Paper children in vivid colors for her cardboard child dressed in grey.
That's what I am. A cardboard woman turned into real flesh by a man of flesh. Built in his image of womanhood. I am amazed at how alive I look smiling in the mirror, the perfect bride on her wedding day.
I am not a woman he could love. It isn’t a secret. But he wants me and that will have to be enough. I force my eyes to brighten my stance to change. I will be a happy bride.
The smile was what got him in the end I think. Like I have a secret, the way my smile changes, it can be happy, mocking; sometimes he says it looks sad. At night in bed he say it is filled with secrets that he wants to discover day after day. I told him I have no secrets, only truths.
My smile was sad then, but I said yes when he asked me to marry him. I said yes and regretted it, because it means someday he'll know what it is he married; if he doesn’t already.
I will make him hate me, but until then I will be his. I form my mouth around the words, love, honor, and obey.
For one second, I allow myself to forget that I am not the woman he loves. For one brief second I look into his eyes and cannot fathom the betrayal I will make him suffer.
I wonder if this is why women cry at their weddings.