#this is a little sneak peek from my corpse bride au!

[hargrove-mayfields]

Day eleven of the Horror on Cherry Lane Challenge!! today’s prompt is decay!

Billy’s been dead for, how long has it even been at this point? Probably at least a decade by now. He hasn’t asked permission to visit the overworld since then at least.

It’s alright though. He likes being dead. After all, there are no societal concepts in the underworld. Nobody around to tell him who to love and where he’s allowed to go. He can drink all day with whoever the hell he wants to, and being trapped down here means his handsome face hasn’t even rotted away to nothing yet, excuse the stupid maggot in his head.

And it isn’t like he’s lonely. His best friend jumped off the town bridge a month after his own death and a day after his girlfriend was killed by a jealous man she was arranged to marry with. The only other person he really missed was his little sister, and she popped up a year and a half after he died too. Poor girl froze to death sitting out at his grave.

He was never erected a real headstone, mostly because nobody but her cared when he died. See, Billy had a reputation. Everyone in town knew the real reason he turned away all the pretty young women his father hand picked for him. That little secret was what got him killed after all.

The best thing he got memorial wise was a handmade marker that his sister and a friend of hers made. They placed it in the woods, though far away from his body, mostly so nobody would find and destroy the little marker, or worse, his corpse.

It’s a touching thought.

But it means Billy isn’t as unbreakable as he thinks he is. When the never ending party that is purgatory gets to be too much, he returns to the spot where he was killed. Sometimes he visits the hand painted stone, and sometimes he doesn’t. His excuse being that he has nothing else to do to get away, but Max and everyone else can probably read him better. They know he doesn’t cope well with being dead.

And maybe Billy did lie about being lonely before. Because he has Tommy and Carol and Max, but simply put, they’re dead. Nothing ever changes and it’s depressing, even more so when he has to wake up every damn night and face the sickly bluish-pale skin and gaping wounds and decay on all the people around him. He isn’t alone, but he misses when he had freedom and a future and a life to look forward to.

He’s bored of death. So as he does, he goes and pouts under his tree. On the anniversary of some date he can’t remember, is when that finally changes.

Just before he’s about to give up his sulking and return to the inevitable, a pretty boy stumbles into his woods. He’s out too late and wearing a crumpled suit. Gleaming in the moonlight, he carries a small silver ring, a wedding band more specifically.

The boy holds it delicately between slender fingers, and pours his heart out into the nothingness. His voice echoes off the dying trees, the silent air of a snowy night.

Billy listens just because he can, pities the boy because he knows the feeling of forcing himself to fall in love with someone. Knows even better what happened when he tried to break out of that.

It sounds like wedding vows he’s practicing. Something about the whole scenario makes the suit Billy stole from his father and hand-altered, the shining brooch and the gloves and little crown of flowers as dead as he is all from his mother, even more ironic. Makes his chest feel tight in a way that is definitely not just from the bleeding hole in his ribs.

And then the pretty boy slips the ring, presumably meant for his belle, whoever she is, onto Billy’s finger.

For Billy, that’s everything he ever wanted. He died trying to get that. Let his guard down and ended up moping in the dirt, half decayed and trapped in between his happiness and suffering.

He hasn’t even seen the boy's face, but his voice is lovely, airy and thick like honey. He sounds like he’s from around here, whereas Billy came from out of state, maybe from old money. It doesn’t really matter. It’s a nice break from the monotony of death to hear such sweet words from such an even sweeter voice.

Not that Billy’s naive enough (though perhaps he is heartbroken enough) to really think those passionate declarations were meant for him, but he’s not dumb enough to let the moment pass either. Not after his last beau stabbed him in lieu of such affections.

When the boy tries to take his ring back, Billy literally takes the opportunity by the wrist, bony fingers digging into warm, living flesh, and he doesn’t let go.