Corpse Bride (The Novelized Version)

Victor's Wedding Present

AUTHORS NOTE:
Hi everyone. I apologize that I haven't updated in so long (particularly you Sarah). I've just been really busy with school. I hope you forgive the long absence. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this next chapter! On with the pages!

CHAPTER SIX:

"Victor, darling, where are you?" called the corpse bride in a sweet, mellifluous, sing-song voice.
Just as Victor had exited to flee the scene in the bar, the bride had turned around at the last moment to look at her newfound husband's expectedly happy face, but instead had seen him rush out of the room with a terrified expression, crystal clear on his visage.

The bride had only felt a mild pang of hurt at her husband's actions, but understood that maybe things had gone a bit too fast for him to take in. Though he'd certainly handled it better than she did.
She recalled the time that she had first awoken in the colorful land of the dead...

(Flashback)

"Ugh...oh..." groaned the bride with pain.
"She's comin' to everyone," said a rough voice (which she now knew belonged to Mrs. Plum).

The bride opened her eyes to find herself on the wooden floor of the pub and observed the colorful scene around her. The bride stood in order to get a better look at the walls surrounding her. Corpses everywhere and the brightest colors she had ever seen. How could this be possible? She'd always been taught that there were only two to go when you died: the pure, clean, holy brightness of heaven, or the scalding, burning, torturous heat of the flames of hell. Why were there corpses everywhere? Why would she... be... down... there..."Oh, God."
Fascination and wonder turned to fear and panic as the bride touched the spot on her ribs under her right breast when she felt a gaping hole where flesh had once been, sticky with drying blood.
A gasp, a whimper, then tear after tear began falling from her eyes as her knees collapsed under her and she fell to the floor in a crumpled heap, sobs and cries escaping her lips.
The pub seemed completely shocked by the volume her cries came at, but they were not surprised by her actions in the slightest. A stout woman in a decaying chef's uniform waddled over to where the bride lay crying and sobbing. She put a soothing hand on her back and rubbed circles as means to comfort the poor girl the way a mother would her daughter.
The bride couldn't repress a shudder at the touch of the old woman. Her hand was cold- no not cold- it had no feeling of warmth, nor cold at all. It was just there.
"No," managed the bride, her throat ragged and rough from crying. This was some sort of nightmare, or a sick, twisted joke.
She motioned to put her hands over her face but stopped short when she saw them. They were blue.
Blue like the rest of the corpses in the room being respectfully quiet, but carrying on their business none the less. The bride seemed to admit defeat, and leaned into the old woman's comforting embrace as she realized that there was no getting around one simple fact:
She was dead.
~
Over time the bride had become used to her surroundings and had learnt all of the names of the people she'd be spending the rest of eternity with.
There was Mrs. Plum, the kind lady who had comforted her during the first few days of her time there; There was Bonejangles, the smooth talking, music lovin', cool cat who ran the pub's entertainment and had developed his own style of music which he called 'jazz'. Later on, he even honored her with a song he had written himself.
Then there was Alfred, the skeleton who wore an expensive looking magenta suit. He often talked about his wife, Gertrude, whom he had left in the land of the living for nearly 5 years at the time. He always said that he'd be forever faithful to her, and would wait for her until she joined him in death.
The bride had found that all the corpses in the land of the dead were really very amiable, and kind, and upon further thought and realization, she found that they were really just people, people whose time had finished on earth and had come down here to enjoy the rest of eternity, with no troubles at all. She figured that they had no reason to be unpleasant or quarrel as they were deceased, and nothing really mattered anymore... for most anyway.
It seemed that even though the bride was content with her new afterlife, if she were honest with herself she wouldn't be truly happy until she had found someone to love, or she'd be forever known as the Corpse Bride.
So, on the fifth anneversary of her death she made a vow to find her true love, who'd love her and set her free, despite the fact she was dead.
(End Flashback)
~
This vow had brought Victor to her and she couldn't be happier. Now if she could just find him.
"You know, your boyfriend is kind of jumpy," said the voice within her head belonging to the maggot who served as her afterlife-long companion. Although, he was usually helpful, he really could be a pain in the neck.
"He's not my boyfriend, he's my husband," she corrected wiggling her bony fingers in front of her which beared the ring Victor had proposed to her with.
"Victor, where've you gone?" she called.
She gasped in surprise as her right eyeball flew from its socket and she scrambled to catch it.
"Hey, I'll keep an eye out for him," quipped the maggot leaning out from the hole in her skull.
She rolled the one eye still in its socket and gave an exasperated sigh.
"Oh maggot, what would I do without you?"
~
"Alright, maybe the forest was a bit too much to ask for. Now, how to get out of here..."
Victor had been wandering the streets of The Land of The Dead since he had escaped the pub, and despite the fact that he had escaped the energetic scene of corpses, he was still quite unnerved by the fact that this place actually existed, which didn't help the fact that he had absolutely no idea where to go.
So far he had successfully avoided the corpse lady who insisted on calling him her husband along with things like 'darling', and 'sweetheart' (he could hear her call for him from the town square).
As he hid himself from sight behind a large concrete stone on which stood a statue of a skeleton horse, he listened intently for the sound of the bride calling his name, though how she knew it he didn't know, he hadn't told her after all. When the calling finally ceased he looked out from his hiding place and decided that maybe now was a good enough time to make a run for it.
Cautiously, Victor slowly stepped out and began walking in the direction of an empty ally he'd spotted while hiding.
Shifting his eyes side to side rather quickly to scan the area it seemed he was in the clear. With this he quickened his pace and walked towards the ally.
"Just a few more meters... come on, just a few more ste-"
"There he goes! He's getting away! Quick! Quick! After him!" yelled a voice Victor knew belonged to the unsightly maggot residing in his quote 'wife's' head.
He stopped short as he turned in the direction of the voice to see the bride stare at him with a gaping hole in her head where her eye would be, instead it rested in her hand at the moment.
"Oh God! She's spotted me!"
Victor sprinted as fast as he could towards the ally as he heard the bride call his name once more.
He ran past a small 'second hand shoppe' that literally displayed blue individual arms with hands attached for sale in giant barrels outside. Though rather unnerved by the sight of something so literal, Victor continued running down the small, dimly lit road.
He looked through the ally which seemed more like a long hallway filled with empty coffins. He knew the bride was gaining on him and decided that hiding was his best option, but where?
Looking at the coffins, and hearing his name called again, he decided to hide within one in hopes of blending in with the scenery. He quickly stepped inside one that was open, closed his eyes and crossed his arms in the fashion of a mummy for effect should she decide to look in his direction.
"Victor? Where've you gone?" called the corpse bride, a desperate, frustrated note in her voice.
Peeking through one eye, Victor saw that she had walked right past him.
He was about to breathe a sigh of relief, when the breath caught in his throat as he saw the largest black widow spider he'd ever laid eyes on.
Victor wasn't very fond of spiders, especially black widows, even though he enjoyed entomology. The way their spindly legs navigated expertly across their webs was beautiful, but when they moved, it was usually to kill another unlucky bug who'd happened to become ensnared by the glistening spider web. Once Victor had seen a butterfly caught in a web who was struggling to escape and Victor was about to release it with the help of a stick when a rather large black widow crawled off of the branch toward his hand. Though it was on the other side of the web, the sight of the shiny black arachnid with the sinister red hourglass chilled him so badly that he yanked his hand back and the guilt of leaving the poor butterfly to its doom had made him develop a certain fear of the creatures.
His disliking wasn't helped when the spider asked a rather disturbing question, "Married huh? I'm a widow. "
Victor gasped and swatted the giant widow away with his hand and ran as though his life depended on it (when in reality it didn't but one could never be sure).
He turned and continued running down the opposite of the direction he came which turned out to be a small street of closed shops confirmed by the street sign that read, "Cyanide Street."
As Victor passed the leaning, corroded lamposts lit with dying candles, and darkened shop doors and windows he heard the bride call his name again. This only propelled the rate of his desire to get away skyward.
He ran and ran through the twisted cobblestone street and stopped only when he saw a corpse man sweeping the ground outside of his shop using a ratty broom with a worm eaten handle.
In his moment of hysteria Victor grabbed the corpse by his shoulders and shook him as he said frantically, "Please help me! There's been a mistake. I'm not dead!"
The corpse wore a confused expression as Victor shook him a final time when suddenly his head fell off of his neck and down to Victor's feet.
"Oh!" Yelped Victor, flinging his arms back and sprinting away. He came to a narrow archway when his path was blocked by a corpse dressed in a fine suit walking in his direction.
He tried to move but so did the corpse, each moving in the same direction each time.
Victor tried to sputter his apologies out of habit but the corpse had begun to speak first.
"Excuse me," he said before splitting in two, right before Victor's eyes.
Said eyes widened in disgust and horror, but he didn't have time to gawk, the bride's calls were getting louder, indicating that she was getting closer. Victor's sensitive ears picked up every syllable of his name and he now (more than ever) considered himself lucky to have been bullied as a boy. His senses were heightened and would alert him of any danger that might be present.
Panting for breath Victor stopped short as he came to a high wall with a few bricks and cracks sticking out at odd angles.
Hearing his name called once again, Victor realized he was cornered.
"Dead end," he said, fright obviously present in his voice. He looked around frantically seeing only walls and the corridor he'd just come down.
"Oh, God! I'm trapped!" He whispered.
In his moment of desperation for an escape, Victor realized that his only way out was up.
His sensitive fingers began to graze the wall and feel for the cracks and bumps that could support his weight of 51 kgs.
One crack to another...one brick to the next.
Grunting and straining, Victor slowly made his way up the wall, his goal of freedom was only a few meters away- "Only a few more cracks and I'll be free."
His arms burning and his breath begining to falter Victor finally grasped an iron bar part of a small rail guarding the ledge of the floor above.
Overjoyed, his adrenalin surged eradicating the pain in his arms making him reach out to grab another bar and for a fleeting moment he believed that he was free with just one more hoist over the railing- that is until he realized that what his right hand had grabbed was the skeletal leg of the bride.
He looked up to face her with an audible gasp.
"Could've used the stairs, silly," she mock scolded, a smile on her face.
"Oh! Ow."
She reached over the railing and picked Victor by one arm with only one of hers, was he really that light?
Setting him down on the wooden floor the bride looked to be extremely happy at finding her husband and seemed to not care that he had tried to escape from her.
She gracefully twirled, her veil and bottom of her gown twirling right along with her, "Oh! Isn't the view beautiful? It takes my breath away. Well, it would if I had any," she gave a small chuckle at her own joke.
Breath heaving, and haunched over with his hands on his knees, Victor struggled to slowly regain his breath. It was then that he lifted his head and was able to get a better look at the bride.