Your Time Will Come

I looked into the mirror for the last time that morning and was disgusted to see the cowardly, spineless creature staring back at me. She was a beautiful creature though, lips a dark rouge against her paper white skin, and jet black lashes longer than life. Her eyebrows were perfectly plucked, and irises bright and seductively beautiful.

I had no idea who she was.

How could she, I, let this happen? Why had I spent the ungodly hours of the morning getting ready to watch the love of my life be married off to someone else? To watch him be married to my sister. My sister, who I would do anything for, but I couldn’t believe would ask this of me. His eyes flashed into my vision, pleading, helpless. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the memory was burned into my brain, and it danced in the darkness of my eyelids. I couldn’t unsee it.

I knew he would visit in the night. He always put things off until the last second, and his final fight for me was no different. When the quiet knock on my hotel room came, I would have known it was him without the signature rap of his knuckles that he had a habit of sounding on any hard surface when he was nervous. When I opened the door, his scent consumed me, and I could picture perfectly how our bodies would melt together if I would only let them.

Our spirits called to each other, and I knew he was drawn to me the way I was to him. Like a pair of birds of prey, we circled and clung to each other, locked in a beautifully tragic spiral of death, plummeting for the Earth at a horrifying speed, but refusing to let go, despite the impending doom.

Our options were these: run away, and face the fear and shame we would live the rest of our lives in, finally admit we were in love, and face the speculation and gossip in not only our families, but nearly the entire surrounding 10 miles of their hometown, or accept defeat, and live with an excruciating pain in our minds and their hearts. No matter what we did, our doom hurtled toward us faster than our fragile minds could comprehend.

Why hadn’t he come earlier? If he had come earlier maybe we could have fixed it. We could have pleaded with my sister, Eliana, begged her to speak to our parents and call the whole thing off. She would too. I knew it. She would say “Catrina, my love come here,” and she would pull me closer until my head was in her lap, and her slender fingers running through my long dark hair, a start contrast to our glowing white skin. And then she would slowly coax the truth out of me, the same way she did when we were children, and she promised not to tell the headmaster if I told her where I was hiding Jodie’s shoes. And when I finally told her, she was true to her word, and she soothed me and wiped away the tears from my racking sobs, and made it all better. Just how she would now.

But she hadn’t, had she? She knew of our affection. She knew of our love in school, and while it wouldn’t make sense for it to burn as bright today, wasn’t it still wrong for her to have him without any regard for my emotions?

Not that how I felt would change the situation in the slightest. At the end of the day, my sister was a better match for him. She was the oldest, and considering our families gradual decline in power, it only made sense for her to marry up, lest someone discover their crumbling facade.

So, instead of inviting him into my room, and giving our bodies the satisfaction they desired, I slapped Leopold in the face as hard as I could, relishing the resounding clap my soft skin made against his stubbly cheek. It was the only contact he would get. I refused to stand back and watch him to ruin this for my family, to watch from out of my body as his hands reached for me, and pulled me closer and closer until we were one in both body and mind, no matter how loud my heart cried out at the sight of him.

The shock on his face was unfathomable, and I knew he couldn’t, wouldn’t understand why I would do such a thing. He would not allow himself to reach the conclusion that I would do such a thing for Eliana, after I had spewed nothing but hatred for her to him for the past year.

When he finally spoke, it came out in barely a whisper, and as he pleaded with me, I filled my mind with nothing but contempt in a desperate, last ditch effort to remove the grip that overwhelming desire had on my judgment. I could never fully release the hold he had on me, but in keeping my face stony as he stood in front of me, a man in pain showing it in a way they never do, I effectively rid myself of any hopes of us finding our way back to each other, the way we had countless times .

I hated myself for what I had done. Did I regret it? That was still to be seen. People kept telling me my time would come, that as the youngest I would be desirable soon, and before I knew it I would be marrying too.

They didn’t understand. Eliana thought organizing the wedding would be a good distraction from the mindless staring I had been partaking in, and tasked me with being chief architect of her big day. Did she know she had already driven a knife through my spine? Surely the pain on my face revealed the agony I felt when she twisted it, somehow leaving a vicious, angry red gaping wound in my heart.

Months of preparing and planning, and hours in the week before agonizing over the final details of a wedding I would attend but not be a part of. So much time spent poring over seating charts and guest lists and schedules and venue details and caterers and all of the stressful conversations and arguments I was supposed to enjoy with him, I did alone, for him.

She did this to me. I hadn’t agreed to this, I would never agree to this. Yes I had pulled the final strings, and it was my fingerprints that could be found all over the crime scene that was their fabricated love story, but it couldn’t really be my fault. I refused to believe it. I wouldn’t let the blame fall onto me.

Even though they will find my body with hours to go before the wedding, they will not call it off. The show must go on, and they will simply explain how Catrina was not feeling well, and will not be in attendance. Leopold will know right away what I have done, and Eliana will beg him to tell her why his face has gone gray and lifeless. My mother will be both horrified and disgusted, and my family will gossip about what a rude child I always was. But for me, to prove them wrong, to create my own future in which my time did not come, is enough to let them be right for once.