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Weddings are supposed to be the happiest day of a person’s life. But, as Marko laid in bed next to his fiance, he felt nothing but a suffocating, paralyzing fear. No matter how much he tossed and turned, his body refused to rest. Clara slept peacefully. She had sunbleached golden hair that cascaded down her back gracefully, her body moving up and down in time with her breathing.
She was beautiful. An image of a perfect future. They met in college, and clicked instantly. Marko had never been a particularly driven student. He was a Pre-Law student, and she was an English Major. If they hadn’t met, Marko was sure he would have flunked out. He much preferred hanging around the city’s dive bars to attending class. Every day he fought the urge to pack up his dorm room and take the train back to Albuquerque.
But Clara was a saint. She knew exactly what she wanted her life to be, and for some reason Marko was a piece of that puzzle. They fell into each other hard and fast. Marko liked her confidence. Not many girls have the guts to march up to someone in a packed lecture hall and demand to be taken out to dinner. Clara had a way about her that filled rooms. She could carry a conversation with a brick wall if so inclined. She spoke every word with a lilt, so you never knew when she was done talking. And she never was. And her laugh was loud and boisterous. Marko especially liked that. Her energy was infectious.
He threw his head back down onto his pillow, crossing his hands over his body and trying to slow his shaky breathing. His clothes felt too tight on his body and the grainy texture of the freshly-cut hair on the back of his neck was driving him mad. To his left, his tuxedo was displayed hanging from the curtain rod, swaying ever so slightly with the movement of the white lace drapes.
It was a boring suit. Marko hated it. Clara had picked it out, and Marko was accustomed to always following her lead. She knew what she wanted. Maybe that’s what Marko liked so much about her. She had it all figured out.
Marko sat up in bed, tossing his legs over the side and facing the tuxedo head-on. It was hard to picture himself wearing it. Sure he had tried it on when they picked it out, and once more at the tailors, but no matter how hard he tried he couldn’t recall the memory of himself in the mirror. It was all vague flashes of a foreign body. He remembered how it felt on him. Slightly too tight. The seams pressed into his skin and his collar choked him.
Standing from bed, quietly as to not disturb the still peacefully sleeping Clara, Marko picked up the gold wristwatch he had left on his bedside table, and glanced at the face of it briefly. 1:47AM.
Marko was getting married in about 12 hours and he couldn’t even stomach the thought of wearing his own tuxedo. Even looking at it made his gut wrench and his eyes start to burn. He slapped the watch onto his wrist and walked from their bedroom. He needed air. Or maybe a drink.
He settled on the latter. Throwing on slippers, he left his bedroom and followed the hallway to the kitchen, breaking open his well-loved bar cart and pouring himself a glass of brandy, not bothering to mix it with anything. The goal of tonight wasn’t to enjoy himself. He wanted to drown every doubt he had.
Clara deserved someone better than he was. He still couldn’t fathom why she picked him out of the boys in their class. She deserved someone that would be a good father to the children she wanted. Someone who actually had a plan to apply to law school. Someone that didn’t dream every day of catching a train to the middle of nowhere, and disappearing.
When Marko finished the glass of brandy, he didn’t bother to pour a new one. He took the bottle by the neck and placed it on his lips, sending the bitter, dark liquid straight down his throat.
Marko isn’t sure what possessed him to walk back down that hallway, bottle still in hand. His feet could barely form a straight line. He crashed into a console table, sending the ornately arranged flowers crashing to the floor, no doubt staining the carpet with the muddied water in the vase. It barely registered to him as he trudged back through their house.
He paused in front of he and Clara’s bedroom door, peeking in through the gap in the frame. She laid unmoving still, a gentle smile creeping at her lips. For a moment, he considered walking back in and crashing into the mattress beside her, burying it all once and for all. But his feet dragged him away, walking down the hall past two more doors, and turning into the spare bedroom where he knew she had been storing her wedding dress.
Marko knows you aren’t supposed to see the dress before the ceremony, but he had heard Clara gushing about how gorgeous she thought it was. And no matter how happy he felt for her, because he knew how excited she was when her plans came together, there was a deep, singeing jealousy that corroded away Marko’s insides. A sick, dark desire that he knew he wasn’t allowed to entertain. Clara had everything Marko wanted: passion, motivation, direction. But most of all, at her core, she knew who she was.
Marko felt like a stranger to his own thoughts. Every choice he made was at the discretion of someone else. Marko clung to Clara because, as he left his family and moved into adulthood, he realized that there was no one left to show him where to go or what to do. He spent most days a husk. wandering from room to room waiting for someone to direct him. An actor in the world's most underwhelming play.
Limbs dull and aching, dragging behind him like dead weight, Marko stumbled into the guest bedroom, and threw open the closet door. There, a beautiful garment of white lace and satin hung on the rack. It had been freshly steamed before they went to sleep, and the beautifully crafted matching shoes were set out nicely beneath the dress. Marko’s breath shuddered as he looked it up and down. Clara would look stunning in it. He could imagine the way it might cling to her curves, her arms looking ever so delicate in the lacy off-the-shoulder decals, and her long, dark brown hair cascading over her shoulders.
Marko ran over the last thought again. Her long, dark brown hair. He remembered her laying in bed, and her golden locks falling over her shoulders. It took a moment for the dissonance between those images to click into place. Clara never had brown hair, and yet the image of a gorgeous young woman standing in that dress slowly formed with dark features, deep brown eyes and bouncing brown waves.
If you were to ask Marko what made him do what he did, he would tell you it was a mixture of alcohol and exhaustion. But, deep in his heart, he knew that there was a growing dark chasm inside of him, and every moment that he let the world just drag him along, that void grew. At any moment, he knew it might consume him. That fear, the stale everpresent want for something more, made his hands draw up the waist seams, and slowly remove the dress from the hanger.
Marko ran his fingers up and down the fabric, tracing a path to the zipper on the back. Slowly, as if he were scalping a live animal, he drew the zipper down with shaking hands. He passed his palm over the internal lining. It was soft. It felt like a cloud, loose and flowy. He thought back to his tuxedo, unintentionally bunching the delicate cloth in his grasp as he did.
Marko inhaled a sharp, audible breath, and in the same motion dropped the dress to the floor to free his hands. He knew that if he didn’t do this quickly, his mind would catch up to his heart and he’d realize the mistakes he was making, and trudge back to his normal life down the hall. In a whirlwind, he was ripping off his pajamas, tossing them around the room haphazardly. Shirt first, then pants, stumbling over his uncoordinated, intoxicated body.
He stepped into the dress on the floor, fumbling his feet to get them through the entire garment. He stared down his naked body, the dress balled in the floor beneath him. His body swayed side to side, and his neck had been seized by inebriated weakness, unable to hold his head on its own anymore.
He flung his body downward, grabbing the dress by the neckline and pulling it upwards. He heard one of the seams rip as he did. He didn’t care for some reason. He pulled the gown up his body, pulling it over his shoulders. He awkwardly spun as he tried to reach behind himself to yank on the zipper. That venture failed, so he let the dress slump awkwardly off his back. He tried to stand straighter to stop it from slipping down his body.
His head dropped again, looking to the floor. His hands were trembling at his sides. He could hear every breath he let out, and his heartbeat felt like a loud, pounding drum in his ears, overpowering the world around him. Marko stood, alone in a dust filled closet, in a dress made for a woman he was supposed to be married to tomorrow. He felt a buzz in his mind. His whole body felt like static.
Stumbling over himself, and his steps catching on the train of the dress, he walked out of the closet, finding a full length mirror propped in the corner of the bedroom. Even with the only light in the room coming from the open door to the hallway, he could see the outlines of his own body. The dress didn’t cling to him the way his brain thought it should. It didn’t cascade delicately down his arms. He looked himself in the eyes. Then, hesitantly raised his hands, still shaking, to his head, dragging his short brown hair over his face, desperately trying to stretch his curls as long as they could go.
He felt like a freak. And yet, something in his heart burned. He felt something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. He dug his nails into his face. The sensation was a welcome change to the nothingness he had lived in for years. Then, on his finger tips he felt liquid. Warm, falling tears. The burning from his heart had reached his head, and he could not keep it in. It ripped from him like pulses, his whole body convulsing as cries escaped from his throat.
He fell over himself, crashing to the floor, fists to the ground with his face buried in them. He heard the dress rip once again, unable to accommodate his frame as he curled into himself. Somehow, he still didn’t care. He wished he could rip the dress off and take his skin with it. He wished that he laughed when he saw himself. He wished that he had the guts to walk back into their bedroom and crush all of this night into a small box, throwing it deep into the dark blank vacuum that he had made of his life.
And then, a silent, barely audible voice came from the doorway. It was gentle. Soft. Feminine. It almost felt like it was taunting him in this moment.
“Marko?” Clara’s voice faltered.
Marko turned to see her, standing in a loose silk robe. Although her voice was kind, it always was, her face told a different story. Her eyes were wide, brows raised and furrowed together. Her lips were pressed tightly, her jaw shaking to hold a breath in. She was horrified. Marko understood why.
He pulled his face from the floor, twisting it to match her gaze. His body never stopped shaking, his breaths shallow and useless. He wished he had hair to hide behind.
“What are you doing?” She squeaked.
Marko tried to stand but failed miserably, drunkenly falling over himself again. He conceded to sitting up on the floor, leaning his body up against the bed frame, knees propped in front of him, awkwardly splaying the dress around him.
He choked as he tried to speak as he desperately tried to catch his breath. But his heart was pounding, and his throat felt like it was closed on itself. “I’m- I’m.. sorry,” He began before coughing as he tasted his tears. “I don’t know what's wrong with me-” He stuttered on every syllable.
Clara stepped forward, as if approaching a wild animal in a cage. Every step was careful. Marko instinctively curled in on himself again, facing away from her in shame. She knelt beside him, slowly reaching a hand to his shoulder. He tensed under her grip.
“Baby, what's going on?” She made an effort to sound comforting, but behind her low tone Marko could sense her fear. Her hands, although trying to be grounding, almost shook more than Marko’s. He looked at her. Clara traced up his neck, holding his face. He didn’t like how her hand’s presence made him suddenly much more aware of his stubble.
“I can’t do it.” Marko snivelled.
Clara pursed her lips, petting Marko’s face with her thumb. She looked down to her dress, ripped in several places, then back to her fiance. She gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod, and all of the tension in Marko’s face dropped in an instant, as he released a deep breath he didn’t know he was holding in.
Clara closed her eyes for a moment, pulling her hand away from Marko and scooting so there would be a gap between them. She glanced back at him, and sighed.
“Don’t let anyone see you when you go.” She mumbled. “And leave my dress, please.”
She stood quickly, leaving the guest room and slamming the door shut behind her. Marko tore the dress off his body. He was feeling shockingly sober now.
He took a moment to hang the dress back in the closet, despite the damage it had undergone. He zipped it up carefully around the hanger, savoring the fleeting moments of the satin against his skin.
Marko wasted no time packing a bag. It was nothing but bare essentials: a few outfits, toothpaste, a wad of cash that was supposed to be a wedding present. Clara laid in bed pretending to sleep as he ransacked their bedroom. He could hear her softly snifflingly.
Marko grabbed one final thing as he left: His old guitar that he hadn’t played in a number of years. It had been collecting dust in their studio for the better part of 2 years. Slinging it over his shoulder felt like a reunion with an old friend. He didn’t bother to wake Clara up to say goodbye. He didn’t want to torture her any more than he already had. Instead, he crept out of his home, locking the door behind him before tossing his keys down a gutter drain.
He walked out into the road, turning to look back one more time. He saw Clara standing in their window. She had opened it, and was leaning on the windowsill. He held a hand up to wave to her. She did not wave back. Her face was stone cold, unreacting. Unmoving. Eyes locked on Marko in a daze. She mindlessly wiggled the engagement ring off her finger. And, in a flash of anger, she threw it with more might than Marko had anyone ever do anything. It vanished down their street into the night. She slammed the window shut.
Marko ducked his head. He looked at his own ring. Unhurried, he slid it off his slender finger, placing it on the floor. He hoped she could see its subtle glint reflecting off the dark concrete.
The train station was four blocks away, but somehow that was the most difficult journey of Marko’s entire life. It was four blocks of leaving behind every person he had ever known, every comfort he had ever enjoyed, and every future he had ever been promised. But with each step he felt that dark pit in his stomach being overtaken by a desire for something more. Something that finally felt within reach.
He booked a ticket to a far away city: Santa Carla, California. He liked the name. It reminded him of someone he held very dear.