Chapter Thirty

 

Manhattan, New York, 2032

 

The dress felt wrong, too tight and not long enough. The mirror had lied when it showed a dress to my knees and slightly baggy.

“Is it hot in here?” I asked Mike.

“No, stop asking that and quit fidgeting with your dress. You look great, calm down.” He sounded annoyed, but I didn't recall asking him if it was hot before this.

My eyes darted nervously, searching the crowd for the one face I dreaded seeing. One I hadn’t seen in so long I didn't recall it the way it might’ve been, only the way it was when he screamed at me and tore at my clothes.

A sea of dark clothes and gloomy faces filled the small church on Pierre Street.

When her parents made their way to the front of the church and sat, heads held high and eyes dry, I felt sick.

They’d abandoned her, sold her into marriage to save their livelihood and then abandoned her when she needed them most.

I hated them and didn't even know them. We had never met, except that one phone call, that one cry for help.

Lana’s coffin sat at the front, closed casket naturally. By the end, she’d been hardly more than bones and skin.

Her death lay heavy on my heart, and shoulders, so I leaned on Mike as I wondered about things. Things like had I left her unresponsive, all those years ago when she first got lost in la la land, would she have ended up here sooner? She could have avoided the entire tragedy by remaining unresponsive and slowly fading. My conscience wouldn't be clearer, but Gilda would be alive.

A man I didn't know but assumed was the priest, got up and began speaking. His words floated in and out of my ears as I stared at the vibrant photo of her, taken before she’d met me. It was black and white and almost like artwork. But if you looked close enough, in the flecks of her eyes, you could see the moving pictures. You could see the world she lived in. You could see she was already lost, well before she met me.

That didn't soothe my aching heart. I was the villain of the story. For a time, I told myself the mayor was. I thought the machine might have been and perhaps we were victims of it together. Sometimes on stormy nights, when thunder and lightning struck and I jumped, scared of the shadows around me, I thought maybe Lana was the bad guy. Lana with her scissors and her empty chest.

But those were lies that villains whispered to themselves.

The fact I had the brass balls to show my face at her funeral said things about my ability to lie to myself that I hadn’t considered until now. In fact, none of us deserved to be here. We had all failed her.

The man holding my hand, feeling the sweat on my palms and the hellfire licking at my soul, he knew the truth. He knew that I was the villain, I was the bad guy, I was the one pretending to be something I was not.

I was never a friend to Lana.

I was never a doctor to Lana.

And I most certainly didn't save Lana.

I condemned her to a death that she asked me for, a death I had no right in granting.

Like loads of scientists and doctors, I had acted like God. I had acted like I knew better than he did. I had acted like the grim reaper, doling out services in the name of science.

And now I sat in his house and I listened to his words, I burned a little from my guilt. But it was nothing compared to what I deserved.

Lana had died quietly in her sleep, her vegetative slumber. Sleeping Beauty who would never be kissed awake by the handsome prince. For sleep was her prince.

I was the old queen, the haggard witch, who had used magic to transform herself into something beautiful. After she cursed the princess to sleep evermore.

I glanced at the huntsman next to me, the one who knew of my evil ways, and sighed.

He scowled, knowing full well what was happening in my head. His eyes obviously went back to the priest’s as if telling me to pay attention, and homage.

But I didn't.

I couldn't.

For the moment I’d turned my head to his, eyes caught my stare. Cold, hateful eyes. They shot arrows at me, trying to pierce my heart, but like the clever queen, I rarely walked around with my heart in my chest.

I’d given it to the huntsman to safely keep with his.

Seeing the mayor in the corner with his henchmen made me realize I’d been wrong about one thing. I always told myself the reasons Jonathan couldn't come to me in la la land was that my level of denial wasn't as strong as Lana’s. But the emptiness I felt when I stared at the accusatory glare suggested I was wrong.

All along I’d been in denial, cold sociopathic denial.

I took no more blame than I’d allowed myself from the start, even though he tried to give it all to me. No, I believed that the mayor had his share in this too, and I would be damned if I would take the entirety of her death on my shoulders.

I glared back, sneering a little even. I was no longer afraid of him. I’d brought my own henchman.

We were all guilty, all of us, some more than others and the mayor wasn't anywhere near innocent.

I turned around and feigned listening, as a man who didn't know Lana spoke on her behalf. He was the only one who did. Not a single other person spoke, for no one knew Lana in the end. Even I had lost her.

When it was over, I didn't stay and offer condolences to anyone. I didn't need to. Who did you tell you were sorry for helping someone commit the suicide they’d always longed for? Her parents who had done nothing to prevent it? Her ex-husband who had tried to fake it once for her and had driven her to try to commit it in the first place? Or myself, the person who had been closest to her but dragged her so far down that she committed murder?

No, none of us were owed anything.

I left the funeral with the ending of my book firmly in my mind.

Lana was finally freed to go to heaven and see the real Danny and tell him all about the life they’d lived together in a world of her making.

I linked my arm with the huntsman’s and let him lead me past the mayor who I subtly flipped off when we got to the door.

The shocked look on his face became the one I recalled. I lost the image of him ripping at my clothes and tearing my skin and replaced it with absurdity and hatred. I catalogued him that way.

In the end, I would vilify him in the novel. I would lay more of my blame at his feet. The end of the book would do Lana justice as the victim and the mayor the horned devil. I would place the syringe in his hands and have him be the one who shot her full of that last dose, the one she rode out the remaining years with.

I would make her a true Sleeping Beauty, a true Snow White. I would build a glass container and place her in it, frozen as she dreamed of a different life, but captive in this one. And the vile mayor would be the one holding the old-fashioned key.

It was a good ending.

It did my story justice and left the reader with a pain in their heart. The reader could choose the ending they liked. Either seeing the girl trapped in the casket surrounded by the rainy day that never seemed to end, listening to the droplets ping off the glass case.

Or, ending the story as she did, in the world she created.

It was exactly like Choose Your Own Adventure.

And when the asshole mayor read the story, which I knew he would, he would understand that I blamed him far more than I blamed myself.

Another lie, but who was counting at this point?