Jolt

This is a short working about the social construct of marriage.

She always hated wedding bells because of the feeling they sent jolting through her body. Like when you are at a concert and you can feel the bass rippling through your chest. The thought of anything unnatural  coursing through her body made her uncomfortable. But it was fine, she would be far away from them soon in the cottage up in the woods, where she new husband and her would celebrate their honeymoon. She did not want the honeymoon, she felt t was unnecessary.

In high school one evening driving in his car they had agreed to get married at forty if neither of them were already constricted by spouses. It’s not that she was not happy to be marrying him. She liked him an awful lot, and was truly thrilled to be spending the rest of her life with him. He had become a best friend, someone she would never wish to be separated from, so why not get married to him anyways?

The cottage was only two hours from their small town but the ride seemed to take forever. The black pavement turned to gray boring gravel, and the other cars morphed into green shadows, that all cast shadows on each other. He was complaining that the car is too hot, and she that it was too cold. But she agreed to turn the AC on when he complained that he felt like he was being suffocated. When ever he brought up suffocation it  sent an uneasy chill through her body. She always suspected that they day his father drowned triggered a growing of fear of not being able to breath in him, even though he never admitted it. And she was right.

When they finally got to the cottage stars were already littering the sky, like small white portals to heaven in the darkness. They agreed that they were both exhausted from the wedding and to go to sleep. She crawled into bed and reminded her new husband to turn off the light when he was done in the bathroom.

She was going to wait for him to join her, partially because she wanted to cuddle, but mostly because she didn't trust him to turn off the light. But before he came to bed she was quickly swallowed by sleep and was greeted not so kindly by the same dream that had greeted her hundred of nights before.

She is lying in a hospital bed next to an unusually square nurse. Everything smells like the foam dentist put in your mouth during a regular checkup. She notices the straps restricting her arms and legs. Like every other night she can do nothing about them. She jolts her head up as she hears screaming. No matter how many times the dream prances through her sleep the scream is never any less jarring. A scrawny nurse has pressed a button on a machine a brunette woman is connected to. The women writhes in her bed but there is no obvious cause of her discomfort, other than it has something to do with the machine. The terror she experiences every night returns as she realizes she is connected to the same machine as the brunette, but she is experiencing none of the same feelings. The brunette women stops screaming which causes her to turn her head back to her. The brunettes face is now as pale as everything else in the hospital.

Now comes the recurring realization that everything is white. Her bed sheets, the brunet's bed sheets, all white. The nurses uniforms, the nurses hair, all white. Looking at her shoulders she realizes even her hospital gown is white, as well as the brunettes, and as well as the blonds who she notices again for the first time. It’s not the kind of white that implies purity or innocence. It is an evil white. As though the hospital walls had once been covered in a terribly beautiful mural. As if there had been monsters painted there once, or fire, or maybe small demons all engulfed in crimson flames, but now all of this had been covered in a thick layer of white paint. As she imagines all the horrid possibilities of the evil mural on the wall she can see them start to leak threw where shadows are cast on the wall by the hospital beds and the tall machine. The white paint is old and yellowing but only in the corners. Her attention moves from the yellowing walls to the scrawny nurse who is now pressing  a second button on the machine which sends the recently realized blond women into screaming fits. She makes a connection between the blond and brunette. Their writhing comes in surges, each more violent than the previous.

The white cords attaching the blonde to the machine catch her eye and she follows them up to the daunting box. She finally takes a good look at the machine. It is covered in possible settings, and switches that are impossible to understand. Several meters quiver as the blond screams. The machine has only three buttons, one of which is currently being pressed down by the scrawny nurse. The one next to that is the one the nurse had pressed down for the brunette. She is faced once again with the striking realization that the third button must be for her.

The blonde stops screaming and again is engulfed by the same paleness as the brunette, who is still in the room. The square nurse comes to her arms and chest , checking the connection of the cords and she begins to scream but to sound comes out, as this is only a dream. Her body shakes as the square nurse looks over her white cords next the machine. She can’t breath. She can’t move. There is nothing she can do but quiver as the nurses exchange nods and the scrawny nurse creeps her hand towards the button. Her hand moves over the meters and switches, casting a black shadow over the machine as it rises towards the button designated for her. A she shakes her head violently she catches glimpses of the word electrocution on the square nurse’s clipboard. Then the sight of an eel startles her and she realizes it is the scrawny nurses shadow. As if the nurses pale skin could no longer hid the monsters in the rooms now there are many eels, like black and gray ghosts shifting through the shadow together, but they are stuck within the shadows boundaries. The head of an eal turns pale blue as it slithers  onto the button and then first surge of electricity races through the girl's body.

This was the first time the grand finale of the dream had happened. Previously it had stopped with the eels head turning blue on the button but for the first time the girl was feeling the electricity taking over her body. For the first time she was sent into screaming fits as her body writhed in its bed. Her screams echoed through the hospital like waves of thunder then finally blackness came over her. Now she was aware that she had been dreaming but she could not open her eyes. She was stuck in the eternal blankness. Not blankness that hides murals of monsters, but pure white.

For a brief moment she opens her eyes and sees her new husband lying next to her. The room is dark all but the bathroom light, which was still glowing as her husband must have forgotten to turn it off. His head is face down in the pillow trapped between the bottom of the headboard and the stacked pillows on their mattress. She puzzled by her husband's chest, which is not rising and falling like a sleeping person's. His body is completely still. Her eyes trace his jawline which is covered in alien paleness. Then, almost as if a sheet had been draped over her she was dragged back into the blankness, where she would stay forever.

For the weeks following the newspaper will tell the same story about the tragedy of the newlywed lovers who died the night of their wedding in their sleep. The man whose head was stuck being pressed into his pillow, and the women who had died due to a mishap between an old waterbed and a faulty lamp during a power surge. Both had been dead before the cottage burnt down with several trees around it. The papers will tell the story of two who died just as their new life together was starting, but the truth is their they died of everything they were afraid of, finishing the old lives they had always spent together.

Author's Note

metaphors clear? symbolisim clear? what did my view o=point on marriage seem to be to you as the reader?