The Coronation

She recalled the smell of purple carnations and the freshly embalmed dead, her fingers permanently drenched in memories of her mother.

The old woman always told her away from marriage, ever since her father left for a younger woman. They’re like funerals, she said. Everyone comes to mourn a future lost in the waves of life; the only difference is we know where it goes after the wedding.

Melissa hated her mother.

The hag was elderly and one toothed, ghosts of bruises staining her contorted and repulsive physique, her burly arms and awkward gait. She could barely believe how someone of her stature could be birthed from a witch. Melissa busied herself with the newspapers her mother threw in the trash can, reading through the health and beauty sections with timid eyes and bony fingers. They contained useful information, whether or not it was for her; she’d read how red meat and processed foods caused cancer, while anti-oxidants and fruits may prevent it. Since then she’s volunteered to cook her mother’s meals, leaving plates of crusty bacon and fried chicken so oily and crisp it would make Colonel Sanders blush.

She never ate at the dinner table to watch her mother digest her poisons. She barely ever ate, in fact. It made her stomach swell in all the wrong places, her thighs touch, her collar bones fade into her flesh. These little flaws, quiet imperfections, only normal girls have those—it was insulting. She was a goddess in her own right, and she felt no sympathy for anyone who treated her as less.

Melissa had a crush.

He was the only person Melissa thought deserved to touch her dark braids (an effort that devoured two hours of her time every morning before school, and an extra one after to undo before bed), the only man able to contain her splendor in his arms. He was the high school’s class president, bound to take the honor of King on prom night, bound to choose a young duckling with clown makeup and wrinkles by her tomato lips as his Queen. She doesn’t deserve him, Melissa reasoned, spying on the couple at lunch. She never deserved him.

Melissa did.

Melissa deserved the world, and it didn’t even have the courtesy to give her a King.

His name was Jay—she considered changing her name to Daisy, just so she could make the (admittedly cheap) literary allusion. Like the sentimentally ostentatious and often pretentious teenager she was, she thought of herself a Gatsby, watching her destiny fall into the grasps of another, less attractive figure. Perhaps the genders were then reversed, and the bit about her cruel end by the American dream wouldn’t occur considering she was in England, but it was a fascinating comparison nonetheless.

The boy glided down the halls with ruffled blonde hair and a smile that could melt magnets, his hands too gentle and frail for the cold banging of rusty lockers, too genial to hold the black haired bimbo in his arms. Melissa didn’t even know her name. Why would she need to? She had all the information she needed; he was hers, and the bitch was in her way.

“I don’t know, Jay,” the Goth Cunt asked, looking up to Melissa’s trophy as if it were her own. “I don’t think I’ll fit in with the prom kids. I mean, I don’t even have a proper dress--”

“Of course you do,” Jay interrupted, shutting his blue locker. The school halls hummed with energy, students nearly bumping against his back as they fled to their classes. Melissa watched the two, intently, her blue eyes glimmering underneath half an hour’s worth of eye shadow. “You wore one last week, remember?”

“Yeah, but--” the Goth froze. “It was white.”

Jay laughed. Melissa swore she could hear the angels chorusing, the bells tolling on their wedding day. “You look beautiful in white,” he said. He pulled out a finger, caressing the girl’s face. Melissa imagined it was her face being touched, her whole being desired. “You’d look beautiful in anything.”

The bitch needed to die.

The bell rang. Jay murmured a curse, turning to his slave. “See you later, Christie,” he kissed the girl on the cheek, fleeing to his class. The Goth Cunt stared out into the open in quiet, smiling like the buffoon she was. You don’t deserve him, she wanted so much to say. You don’t deserve anything but a trailer park, eight kids, a drunkard husband and death by lung cancer.

Instead, she put on a smile, striding towards the girl before she could leave. “I heard you were looking for a dress.”

Christie turned to her, black eyes wide open. The ant shrunk in her presence, adhering to the state of matter. She stuttered for a moment, like Forrest Gump if he was stupider and more annoying, glaring at her. “I--”

“I can help get you one, if you’d like,” Melissa offered, grinning. “I have just the right one back home. You’d love it, I promise.”

The Cunt arched a brow. “—Why?”

“Well, why not? We’re friends, aren’t we?” Melissa laughed, draping an arm over the girl’s shoulder. She made a mental note to take a hot bath afterwards. “And besides, I’m not using the dress, anyway. The color, it doesn’t suit me at all.”

Christie watched her in stunned silence, still stuck at the word ‘friend’. “W-what color is it?”

Melissa grinned. “Red.” She said. “A gorgeous shade of red.”

…

She recalled the white carnations on prom day, hiding the scent of sin on her skin.

“The little princess getting her crown, isn’t she?” Her mother told her as she came out of her room, donning a purple, form-fitting dress with white carnations stuck to a black belt. “Don’t forget to buy another box of tissues when that crush of yours breaks your heart.”

Go fuck yourself. She turned away, picking up her bag from the coat hanger by the door. She looked at her mother through the kitchen door, watching her intently. The woman was taking swigs from a bottle of whiskey. “I assume you aren’t going to pick me up when I’m done?”

Her mother eyed her in vague interest. “You’re old enough for the bus, aren’t you?”

Melissa nodded, holding herself from rolling her eyes. “I’ll be back at eight,” she said, smiling sweetly. “I left some leftover chips and a burger from McDonalds, if you’re looking for dinner.”

Her mother nodded, sipping at the bottle once more. Just as she was about to leave, she said: “And Melly,” she turned to her, groggily. “I just got a call from some poor girl’s mother. Christie, as I recall. She says her daughter left for some shopping and never came back—she’s calling every single other girl’s mother in the county, and some of the boys, too.” She paused. “I assume you didn’t see her.”

Melissa stopped, her breath caught in her throat. “No,” she said, without a change of expression. “Probably not.”

The hag’s dark eyes glimmer in piqued interest, before sinking back into indifference. “Good.”

Melissa came to the party late.

She cursed her mother for that under her breath, before joining the others on the dance floor. The DJ, a bratty teenage boy in sunglasses at six in the evening, had a shitty remix of some pretentious Indie song that already sounded like it was made just after the hung over singer puked into his toilet bowl.

Jay was standing in the middle of the flood, his face painted in neon pink and shades of red. His blonde curls were drawn back with an erotic glimmer of gel, shimmering across the room like a sign. “Have you seen Christie?” he’d yell to his friends, his voice booming over the epileptic music. Every shake of the head he got, every murmured ‘no’, every look of confusion widened Melissa’s grin. The music synchronized into the scene, the party slowing in her head.

Touch me, yeah
I want you to touch me there
Make me feel like I am breathing
Feel like I am human—

“Hey,” she strode to Jay’s side, offering a smile.

Jay turned to her, eyes heavy with worry. “Oh. Hey.” He looked around again, ignoring her for a few minutes. “Melissa, right? Have you seen Christie by any chance? She and I were supposed to meet an hour ago?”

Melissa gritted her teeth, struggling to retain her smile. “Actually, yes. She said she couldn’t come—it really wasn’t in her taste,” she said, fluttering her eyelashes in the most intriguing manner possible. “I guess she’s just not into prom. It’s a shame; she would’ve looked lovely in the dress I picked out for her.”

Jay returned to her, suddenly interested. “What?”

She looked away, pretending she had worse things on her mind. “Hm? Oh, you didn’t know?” she said. “She bailed. Had some weird vampire convention to go to—she’s really into that community, you know, and she doesn’t want to sully her reputation by dancing amongst…commoners.” She shrugged. “C’est la vie. I suppose she had better things to do.”

Jay paused for a moment, his face contorting in an almost humorous manner. “No. She wouldn’t do that,” he laughed, awkwardly, before returning to a dull melancholy. “She promised she’d come. We’ve—we’d planned it for months.”

Melissa turned to him once again, something resembling sympathy smeared over her face. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine how you must feel right now,” she glanced around the party, the blinking lights melting the silhouettes around them. “Do you have anyone to dance with?”

Jay looked to the ground, denial still clear in his eyes. “No. I mean, I did, but--”

He stopped. She smiled, making sure to put an extra coating of sincerity in her expression, before eagerly reaching for his hand. The moment they touched, she knew it was meant to be. “Well, prom’s not forever,” she said, chuckling nervously. Melissa wasn’t nervous. Nervous would suggest she could fail. Nervous would suggest she was flawed. “Why waste it by moping around?”

Jay glanced at their intertwined fingers, panning up to her slowly. “Yeah,” he said, laughing quietly. “Yeah.” The music burned eternally into her memory, a soundtrack fit for any coronation.

--She sought death on a queen-sized bed
And he had said,
"Darling, your looks can kill,
So now you’re dead."

…

She recalled the smell of red carnations, the day her world ended.

It was everything she could ever want and more. Prom night extended into the rest of her twenties, falling into dates every Friday, kisses every Saturday, and things that shouldn’t be spoken of on Sundays. He was her only exception, her humanity, her first flaw, her sweetest damnation—she watched as he cut off her wings, and savored the fall before the landing.

The ring alone could’ve bought a vital organ.

“Melissa Monroe,” he said, kneeling on one knee. She remembered it well; they were in an expensive French restaurant on a snowy Christmas evening, the kind defined by the clinking of wine glasses and clattering of knives instead of the food. She didn’t mind. They’d just finished the main course, when he called for ‘dessert’—the waitress came, then, carrying a small black box. It might as well have been transparent, considering how stereotypical the situation was. “Will you be my wife?”

She was happy. Or, at least, she pretended to be. She grasped at her mouth like the model actress she was, close to crying. That’s what girls do when they get proposed to, isn’t it? She wouldn’t know. She was never meant to be a girl. “Yes,” she whispered, hoarsely. “Of course.”

It was the greatest and worst thing that could ever happen to her.

The wedding plans were outrageous. She spent hours screaming at caterers over the phone who couldn’t get her cake the way she wanted it to be, arguing with her fiancé about if it were to be in a church or a beach house, pondering over where their honeymoon would be. She never felt more fulfilled, yet more unsatisfied.

Her mother, in the meantime, remained out of the process entirely. Melissa was perfectly content living in Jay’s three story mansion while her mother rotted in their old suburban home, dealing with her new in laws every morning while she rode Jay every night.

“The girl’s trouble,” Jay’s mother once whispered in the kitchen, while Melissa was standing outside the door. “She’s nothing like Christie—you may think she is, but she isn’t. Christie wasn’t beautiful, but she had a bigger heart than anyone I’ve ever met. Melissa…I don’t even know if she has one.”

“Mother,” Jay’s voice sighed against the wooden door, vibrating. “Don’t—don’t compare her. She’s not what you think she is.”

“I could say the same to you.”

“I’m twenty one!” he half-shouted, amidst awkward but frustrated laughter. “Can’t you let me make my own decisions, just this once, without criticizing them?”

“I’m nearly sixty,” his mother replied. “And if I knew where my choices was leading me, I would’ve begged my parents to criticize every single one.”

Mothers. They’re all the same.

The day of the wedding eventually came about. She had a veil over her face and Jay’s brother on her arm, walking down the aisle in her white dress. Jay’s family filled both sides of the pews, with Melissa’s aunts filling just at the front of the altar. She would’ve been ashamed for having so few relatives to speak of, but she couldn’t mind. At least her mother wasn’t here.

Jay took her hand in as she stepped up the altar, smiling. He stared, morosely, into her blue eyes, as if trying to catch a hint of indecision in them. “You look beautiful in white.”

Just like Christie, she could hear him think. It nearly made her grimace. “Thank you.”

The priest said what he needed to as she waited for the part where she’d have the chance to say “I do”, looking into her husband-to-be’s eyes. There was only one time when she looked away; it was when her mother came through the door, donning a shabby black dress and a dark trench coat. Their eyes met, briefly, and she took a pause.

“Do you, Jay Hayden, take Melissa Monroe as your lawfully wedded wife?”

You should’ve listened to me, her mother seemed to say. You should’ve looked away while you had the chance.

“I do.”

But she wasn’t going to let her ruin it. It was her wedding day. It was her fairy tale come true. So what she had to get rid of an undeserving cunt with a push and an ocean? She’d do it a thousand times, if she had to. Her mother’s disapproval wasn’t going to get in her way.

“And do you, Melissa Monroe, take Jay Hayden as your lawfully wedded husband?”

Say it, her mother said, in her mind. Take the coronation. Take the fantasy fulfilled. Take the dream, knowing you had to be someone else’s nightmare to get where you are.

“I do,” she said, quietly. “I do.”

…

She couldn’t remember the argument.

It was all a blur, a mess in her head. She—she thought she remembered the mansion’s silence, a half-empty glass of wine on the table. Jay was at work. He’d always been working, then. Even with his parents help, the crown weighed heavily on both Jays’ head and hers, but with different levels. Melissa watched her husband as he immersed himself into his work, stood silently as their long nights of secret kisses melted into his empty side of the bed. She drained her husband’s stash of whiskey every now and then. It barely helped, but the warmth reminded her of his embrace.

He came in, one evening, dropping his briefcase and reaching out to hold her. She didn’t even turn to look at him. It became a tradition, afterwards; he became accustomed to her callous responses, her cold stares. Their disdain slowly fuelled the flames sparked by their passion, and soon it became the definition of their marriage.

It was midnight.

She had been binge watching Mean Girls for the fifth time in the row, slicing an apple while chewing at the meat inside. Jay came through the door, wordlessly plopping down by her on the couch. They never even said hello.

“I don’t think this is working out for us,” he said.

She looked at him. At first, her reaction was dulled, bored. But there was death in her eyes. Jay would soon realize there was always death in her eyes. “What do you mean, honey?”

Jay leaned in, blinking at the screen. “I—I mean, I don’t know,” he confessed. “You just—we’re different, now. Something’s changed. Something important. I just—I don’t feel like you’re the girl I met on prom night, you know?” he looked at her, his eyes oversaturated with hope and soul. “The Prom Queen. The Aphrodite of Appleton High. Melissa. The Melissa I fell in love with.”

Melissa stared at him. Was it her face? Had she grown bags under her eyes? Had her collar bones shrunk? She touched her cheeks, as if looking for the reason he wouldn’t want to be with her. “You’re overreacting.”

“I’m not. I just, I don’t feel like I am.” He said, holding a defensive position. “You’re not—we aren’t compatible anymore.”

How dare you? She glared at the King she’d married, frowning. How dare you? “Is that it, then?” she said, almost laughing. “You want a divorce?”

“I--” he paused. “I don’t know. Probably, if we aren’t going to counseling.”

But perfect couples don’t go to counseling. Happy endings don’t need therapists, they happen on their own. She made sure they happened on their own. How dare you? “Do you know what I’ve done to get you?” she started cutting the apple in her hand in two. “Do you know the things I had to do to make sure you didn’t go to some worthless bitch?”

Jay stared at her, confused. “What are you saying?”

“You think I just dropped into your lap, Jay?” she stood up from the couch, throwing the apple his way. “You think I just followed your way after all this time? I had to wake up three hours before you even got out of bed just to make sure I look decent for you, and you nearly had the gall to pick a Goth instead of me?”

“What--”

“That little cunt didn’t even look pretty under all that eye shadow,” she laughed, madness taking over. “You should’ve seen her face when I shoved her over the harbor--”

She stopped herself. Jay glared at her, confusion slowly shifting into antipathy. “What?”

She couldn’t remember what happened after.

She had flashed in and out of consciousness, covered in scars and someone else’s blood. There was a body on the coffee table, with a knife lodged in his chest. It couldn’t have been Jay, she reasoned. It couldn’t have been her prince. It was another monster, another dragon getting in the way of her fairy tale. Of her happy ending.

She did the last thing she thought she’d ever do.

She limped to her handbag in the kitchen, dialing her mother’s number. Her mother picked up almost immediately, and she slumped against the island counter, sobbing. “He’s dead,” she cried into her mother’s soothing voice, her makeup dripping off. “Oh my God, he’s dead.”

“What did you do to him?” her mother asked, urgently.

“I--” she paused every now and then. “I—I think I killed him.”

For the longest time, there was no response. At last, her mother called back: “Wait there, and don’t move. We’ll get through this together.”

…

She recalled the smell of purple carnations and the freshly embalmed dead, her fingers permanently drenched in memories of her happy ending.

Melissa wasn’t sure how her mother did it, but she did it. Melissa’s clothes were burnt, the knife taken care of, and Jay’s death was conveniently pinned on a business rival. Melissa stood in front of his closed casket, staring at a bustle of carnations arranged over it. She could hear Jay’s mother weep as four men struggled to carry the casket up, walking it out of the church doors.

Her mother, the old hag of her late remembrance and the fairy god mother of her most recent ones, stood by her, dressed in a black gown with floral patterns on the chest. She turned to her, blinking. “Why did you do it?” she asked, “Why didn’t you just report me to the police?”

Her mother paused. She could almost feel a smirk playing on her lips. “You think I’d let your father run away with another woman?” she laughed. “Nobody gets a happy ending, Melissa. Not in this world, nor in the next. But you know,” she touched Melissa’s shoulder, smiling. “We were close.”