Formaldehyde
When Ivy told me that her mother wanted to buy her dress, I
was shocked. Ivy’s mother barely had a penny to her name and there was no way
she could afford to buy a wedding dress. “But babe, my parents said they’d pay
for the whole thing, your wedding dress included. Your mother doesn’t have to
spend a penny.”
“She wants to Archie, and anyway neither of us think it’s
fair that your parents pay for everything. You know there’s no arguing with my
mum.” Ivy rises to her tiptoes, giving me a swift kiss on the cheek before she
exits the house, swinging the door shut behind her. I sigh, how can a morgue
assistant who works three days a week afford to buy my Ivy the dress she wants
and deserves?
I wake up on the morning of the wedding to my older brother
Andy, jumping on the end of the bed. “Come on baby bro! Get up, you’re marrying
that hot piece of ass today, don’t wanna keep everyone waiting!” He practically
shouts into my ear. I push him off the bed, watching as he thuds onto the
floor. “Don’t you dare call my wife to be a hot piece of ass. Only I can say that.
Come on man, she’s gonna be your sister-in-law.” I scold him, wondering why I have
to be the serious one. “Okay, we better stop fucking around, I got to get to
that church before my bride.”
The church is filled with guests when we arrive, family and
friends. Everyone is mingled in together to mask Ivy’s lack of family but that
doesn’t matter, soon my family will be hers too. I take my place at the top of
the aisle, Andy standing slightly behind me. He is actually taking things
seriously now, holding on to the rings with all his life, he knows I’d kill him
if he lost them. The room is alive with constant murmurs and the occasional cough,
and it stays like that for about ten minutes, until the organ begins its
chorus. Almost immediately, the room falls quiet.
I take a deep breath and look at the door, trying my hardest
not to smile as it slowly opens. The first thing I see are her feet, two silver
stars poking out from a sheet of ivory. I slowly raise my eyes, taking in the
sight of her dress, it fits her perfectly, hugging every curve and highlighting
her breasts whilst not revealing too much. It looks expensive, I can’t help but
wonder how her mother bought it. But I push that thought to the back of my mind
as I look at her face. Glowing a nervous pink, she slowly steps closer and
closer to me. Everything is moving in slow motion.
Her meadow green eyes are twinkling, holding me in a
breathless trance. Her lips are painted in a soft pink, shaped in a smile as
captivating as her laugh. Her copper hair falls in thick ringlets around her
shoulders, I wonder if it smells as good as it looks. But as she makes her way
up the aisle, the light seems to distort her image. Suddenly her face seems
pale and shallow and her lips are moist and slightly white. She is only half way up the aisle. I think something
is wrong.
Just as I reach out to her, Ivy falls forward with no one to
catch her. Her limp body crashes to the floor. I fall to my knees beside her, cradling her head in my
lap. “Ivy, Ivy sweetie! Can you hear me? Ivy?!” My voice comes out in a broken
panic. She isn’t breathing and I can’t find a pulse for the life of me. A
sulphuric smell attacks my nose but I ignore it in desperation. “Someone call
an ambulance! Please, someone do something!” I can’t lose her, not today, not
ever.
“Mr Kennedy, your fiancé, she died of something called formaldehyde poisoning. It’s very rare. I’m sorry to have to ask but do you
know how this could have happened? Does your wife work with dead bodies? Has
she had prolonged contact with a dead body?” I look up at the medical examiner
standing before me, he is a little man with oversized glasses perched on his
nose. I’m hearing his words but I just can’t take anything in. I look to Ivy’s
mother for support.
“I’m Ivy’s mother, Melissa James. Ivy never came into contact
with a dead body, that’s my line of work. My Ivy was a lawyer.” She speaks with
a strange conviction in her tone.
“Hmm, okay Ms James, did your daughter wear anything from a
dead relative perhaps? For the wedding, you know the old, ‘something borrowed,
something blue- “
“You bitch! What did you do? Where did you get that dress
from?” I throw my words at Melissa, letting all my anger out. The medical
examiner looks mildly confused, it was rude to interrupt him but I don’t care,
this bitch did something to her own daughter, my Ivy.
Melissa sits down, head in her hands. “I didn’t know it
would kill her”, her voice is barely a whisper. “I wanted so badly to be the
one to provide Ivy with her wedding dress, I’m her mother for God’s sake. I
couldn’t afford one, I tried my hardest, I really did.”
Again, I make an interruption. “I said, what did you do?”
“I stole the dress, off a dead body that came into the
morgue for cremation. The lady was in her wedding dress, the service was over,
I didn’t think any would know. The dress was perfect for Ivy. It was the best dress I could have gotten.” Melissa looks up, black tears staining her pallid cheeks.
“How long was this dead lady wearing the dress for?” The
medical examiner looks thoughtful.
Melissa shakes her head. “A week? I don’t know.”
“That explains it then. I won’t tell you the all technical
stuff, now isn’t the time. But what I will say is, Ms James, the dress you gave
your daughter killed her. The dress itself would have had traces of formaldehyde
from its previous owner’s corpse. Your daughter must have breathed these traces
in, meaning her body couldn’t process her natural levels combined with the
added levels from the dress thus poisoning her. There was no way of knowing this was
going to happen, I am deeply sorry for your loss, Mr Kennedy, Ms James.” He
shakes my hand and walks away, leaving me with Melissa, the one person I hated
most in the world.
“I don’t want you to come anywhere near my ever again. You
killed the best thing that ever happened to me. I will plan the funeral and the
wake. You will turn up and then you will disappear from my life
forever.” My words are perhaps needlessly harsh but I can’t bear to deal with
this bitch anymore. Melissa sniffs and nods, a fresh wave of tears rolling down
her cheeks.
“Archie, I’m sorry, I really am. I never meant for any of
this to happen, I was trying to help. I should have just let your parents buy
the stupid dress.”
I walk away from my former mother-in-law-to-be and walk
straight into funeral planning. On the day of the funeral, I once again find myself standing
at the top of the aisle. Everything feels so different this time, everyone is
silent, looking at me with eyes filled of sympathy. No one makes a sound when
the door opens. This time, only one thought crosses my mind.
This time, she made it up the aisle.
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