A tear rested in the crevice of her collarbone as she fastened the back of the dress. She fumbled with the zipper a few moments, her arm growing weary from reaching behind her for so long. A half-grunt, half-whimper escaped her from the exertion and she finally released the thing, collapsing onto her bathroom stool in defeat.
Carrie stared at herself in the mirror. This was supposed to be the happiest day of her life, but tears rolled down her pale face. Three days ago she had been expecting this day as if it were the beginning of her new existence; that is, because it was. A girl’s wedding day was supposed to transform everything. She had the perfect dress, perfect fiancée, perfect church . . . and while she would meet all three of those things today, they wouldn’t be what she sought or expected them to be. She wore the dress now, but she didn’t feel beautiful. She was going to the church in a few minutes, but she wasn’t excited. Her groom hadn’t caught sight of her, so bad luck wasn’t the reason for the concern. Her hair should have been in deep curls, twisted by hairpins behind her head delightfully and cooed over. Her mother and best friends should have been there to help her get ready, constantly and continuously telling her how lovely she looked, how excited her husband was going to be when he saw her, the works. She should have been happy.
Instead she bathed in a burdensome trench of depression. She wished her mother could have been there, but she had given up her family for this one thing, the person that she loved and wanted to spend the rest of her life with. Nearly a year had passed since she had left the Muggle way of life she had adapted to after Hogwarts and stepped into the Wizarding World once more to be with Christian. But that had brought uproar from her family, and they had renounced her because of that decision. Her family knew not of the magical world, so their views of it were not expressed lightly; their hate became more apparent as their daughter transformed more into one of them each time she visited home. She was no longer welcome in her own family.
Smoothing the dress along her legs and over her ankles, she told herself that this was what Christian would have wanted. She quickly drew her limp, straight hair back into a white barrette to complement the dress. No curls were in the forecast today. She didn’t even feel like stepping out of bed and putting on clothes, no less dressing up to go to a funeral for the man she loved. Still loved.
A plummeting sensation in her abdomen erupted again, and she dashed out of her seat to hurriedly lift up the porcelain toilet cover, vomiting into it for the third time that morning. She leaned over the foul water, spittle rolling pitifully down her chin. Carrie bit her lip to stop the flow of tears. Her nostrils were burning from the acidic smell. She didn’t even care that her mouth now caressed a toilet seat, a place where germs roamed mercilessly. She sobbed piteously, her thoughts roaming and remembering that she needed to arrive at the cathedral in less than thirty minutes. But she had the finest excuse -- one that even the most practiced swindler of a secondary school would be unable come up with: My husband-to-be died the day before our wedding. It was true as well, and the body now being prepared for viewing inside the church could confirm it. She was allowed to be thirty minutes late. Hell, she was allowed to be thirty hours late, they wouldn’t start without her.
She finally found the strength to stand. Her legs wobbling, she pushed herself with a mumble from the toilet bowl and poised her heels to balance. She could hardly walk in heels period, not having to wear them on occasion, and she especially had no business doing it now. She didn’t need to be concerned about falling on her face with all of the other things she had to worry about. Screw it, she thought, sitting down on the counter and unclasping the buckles near her ankles. She threw the shoes across the room, and with a thunderous CLOP! they landed forcefully against the ceramic washtub. She wouldn’t be surprised if her bath started leaking when she turned on the water later that day she had hit it with so much force. There could very well be a crack hidden on its side.
Baths and sleeping were her only solace. The scalding water slipped her mind into simplicity, not depositing him away completely, but at least easing the pain to some extent for that moment. The peaceful slumber helped her to escape her feelings, but she soon had discovered that her dreams, rather nightmares, always found her no matter what time it was. Disfigured bodies, representations of Christian visited her while she slept, always telling her that he had never loved her and it had all been a pretense. Those wide, unseeing eyes, that horrifying mouth that dared reveal themselves to her never failed to turn up while she was sleeping. Images of his lifeless body formed in her mind once again and she shivered, shaking her head furiously to purge her mind of that awful picture.
After gathering up her purse and finding a pair of flats, she sat down on the couch to gather her thoughts. She put a thumb to her lip and pressed it to her teeth and bit down several times. Shredding the skin on her lips, a metallic taste crept along them and she knew she had drawn blood. Carrie always chewed on her lips when she was deep in thought or upset, which showed. When she was distressed she always displayed swollen and chapped lips unlike any others.
Her eyes strayed to the candle across the counter upon returning to the bathroom for the third time to confirm her appearance. Vanilla in scent, the wrappings had stated that the vapors released from its flame produced a calming effect within the body. She found a match and lit it immediately before her departure for that one final moment of tranquility to envelop her.
Carrie watched the dancing flame as it swayed and fluttered mercilessly on the wick. On impulse, she placed her right hand directly into the fire. After only a few seconds she pulled her fingers to her breast protectively, her fingers throbbing with fresh pain. Her mind compulsively concluded that she had wanted to ensure that her heart’s cruel emotional pain hadn’t numbed the physical as well. She inspected her hand with great caution and worry, careful not to injure it any further. It wasn’t a nasty burn. Besides her hand being lightly dusted in black soot and inflamed, no serious harm had been done. Too bad. Perhaps she would have received a note to excuse her from the funeral. That would have been a great reason not to go. She blew out the flame after only a minute, finding that not even her favorite scent of candle could pacify the tingling nerves she felt all over her body.
She rolled her eyes and sighed at her pathetic attempts to skip her fiancée’s memorial service. She could definitely kill herself: that’d ease the pain and fulfill her plea. But Carrie felt better about herself than to just end everything. There were too many family members, friends she had to worry about yearning for her presence as well. Besides, she had yet to make things right with her parents, if that were to ever even be possible. She couldn’t give everyone she knew two losses in such a short period of time. It wouldn’t be right.
Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t believe herself. Of course she was going. To the service, to see the long list of people who never knew him but continued to offer words of comfort, to the long drive to the graveyard, where she would plan on pulling over at a gas station at least once every thirty minutes to lock herself in its dank, dirty bathroom to weep, and then, ultimately, to the cemetery, where she would have to watch Christian be lowered into the filthy dirt of the very earth she stepped on. She would never see him again after this. How on earth could she even think about not attending it? She knew within that she couldn’t imagine confronting such an atrocious thing as seeing Christian’s dead body, but she had to. She had to say farewell to her lover, once and for all. Tears once again came to her cerulean eyes at the thought of how he would be put into the cold, hard soil that would shortly freeze over with winter’s oncoming chill. She began to consider what he would look like after a day below the ground she walked on. A week after. A month. Ten years. Would he still be her beloved, handsome Christian, or would the worms and maggots devour him as if he were just a peace offering from the heavens? Would the coffin have been sealed correctly? Carrie couldn’t bear to think on this subject. She preferred cremation, to spread his ashes in places he had loved to overlook the worms, but she couldn’t stomach the thought of burning him up into chunks of dust and cinder either. There wasn’t much she could think on. Only that Christian was dead and she would never be with him again.
The very last time she would ever glimpse Christian, he would be dead. She wanted to keep his healthy, breathing image inside of her and embrace it, to hold on to it forever and never let it go. But she had already seen him dead. No, she hadn’t gone to the church beforehand, nor had she seen him at any other time. Carrie had been the one to find him.
Christian had appeared to be fighting, a wand only a foot away from his outstretched hand. He had been murdered in his own home and no one could even begin to guess why, especially Carrie. He had always been such a thoughtful, caring individual that prided himself on supporting others and living life to the fullest. His good looks and charm had succeeded in helping him get far in life. Why anyone would even want to kill him was a secrecy. After he had been murdered he had been placed on his bed in his own home and abandoned there. To any person just passing by the room he would have appeared to be in an intense state of slumber, but if one would have ventured nearer they would have discovered his eyes to be open and mouth twisted in a startling scream that hadn’t gained the chance to surface. On a visit to his house for dinner that very night, Carrie had unlocked the door with her own key when there had been no response with several knocks and ringings of the doorbell. After finding his car in the garage she had shouted for him, hoping he would reveal himself from another room just not having heard the door, but it had not been so. Finally, upon venturing to his bedroom to see if he was in the shower, she had discovered him on the bed, unmoving and silent. After moving closer, with each passing step and shout revealing to her that something was indeed wrong, she had reached him. His face had been contorted into a terrified expression, his mouth twisted in a ghastly shout. And worse, those eyes. The same eyes that she had spent countless hours staring into, speaking to, loving, were now just vacant and unresponsive. Frightened, Carrie had shaken him with her hands quite forcefully, rocking him starkly back and forth trying to ease him out of his sleep, begging with her screams for him to wake. But he had shown no response and only stared at a wall across the room with eyes that no longer understood. His bare back had still been warm, sweaty, actually, from the stress. If he were still warm, then there could have been a chance to catch his murderer. But it was to no avail. After fleeing from the scene and down the stairs she had only found the door wide open. The attacker had obviously just departed, leaving the chances of catching him or her next to nothing now. Her screams had alerted the neighbors and the Ministry had been called. She was found in the corner of the room where his body had been discovered, crying piteously for him to return to her with her knees hugged to her chest.
As of yet, the Aurors had recovered nothing. The last spell that had been emitted from Christian’s wand had been a heating spell, typically used to assist in the progression of cooking food, which explained the covered dinner on the dining room table. No clues had surfaced; no person had come forward to confess. But Carrie still held on to the optimism that the team of Aurors on the case would capture Christian’s executioner. That was about the only thing that kept her going now. That and her bubble baths.
If she had any wish to see his real body for one last time, she would have to pick herself off the ground once more and walk out that door. She had to say goodbye. After this day there would be no more of his visits, no kisses or embraces that would make Carrie’s legs weak and her long for his presence before he even left her. No longer would any of his sweet words or compliments reach her ears, helping her through the day. Never again would she feel the warmth of his hand slipping into hers. While she was awake and rational, by no means would she hear his voice, see his lively face. Only the face that she had seen at the morgue came to mind, the ashen and pale Christian she longed to remove from her memory. There would be nothing. She wouldn’t even have a husband to hold on to. Now she only possessed pictures and their engagement ring as a reminder of the life she could have had.
She crossed from the bathroom to her own bedroom. Christian’s mother had brought over a few of his possessions the day before: it had only been a few t-shirts she had given him, photographs, ticket stubs of their nights out on the town. While it had been a nice gesture, Carrie had been horrified, finding the things repulsive, impossible to gaze at. How could she have brought over things that reminded her so much of her love? Rage boiled inside of her at the memory and she immediately had had the mind to call Christian and pout, but cold reality had soon washed over her when she remembered that he would no longer be able to pick up the phone.
Upon shuffling through a few boxes, Carrie finally came across the correct container she was searching for. One of Christian’s shirts, the one she had bought him for his birthday only a few weeks ago, was folded and stacked neatly under the others. She quickly lifted it from the pile and brought it to her chest, embracing the fabric as if she had had her love back and returned safely to her from the heavens. She brought it to her face, taking in a slow, deep breath, filling her lungs and senses with the sweet scent of him. His aroma still clung to the cloth, along with a dash of his signature cologne, but it was quickly fading. Imagining that he were standing in front of her, Carrie pictured him in those washed out blue jeans he loved, a smile to accompany them. That picture allowed her to be strong. She let it embody her, fill up every inch of herself, especially her heart. A piece of happiness unfolded inside of her for the first time in a while, and she felt her responsibilities take effect. This protection would do for now. She had to be at the church in a few minutes or she would be late.