Termino.
Ecclesia
--
That night felt like an eternity. The decision Hiro had to make wasn’t easy, but another minute in this hellish room was going to drive him insane. He had to do something, anything at all, to get answers. Staying put wasn’t going to do him any good. The man made an appearance once again the following day, assuming an air of nonchalance. “I assume you have indeed made up your mind,” he remarked, his eyes almost twinkling.
“Yes,” Hiro heard himself say. “I accept your offer.”
This response evoked immediate delight in the stranger’s face. “Very well chosen. I see that your decision-making skills remain unaltered. You’re a free man, Mr. Inayashi. Leave before I change my mind.”
“What about — ”
“All in due course, my friend. Leave.”
Hiro found it rather odd, but the temptation of freedom was far too strong. He caved in, taking step after step to leave the cell. With each step, he had a falling feeling, as if he were hurtling through empty space, his vision growing progressively blurrier. To his bewilderment, the man and the cell he was confined in seemed to dissolve before him, almost like they were melting into white nothingness.
And then there was silence.
Silence. Plain, simple and excruciatingly unremarkable silence broken by the distant music. The distinct harmony of Here Comes the Bride could be mistaken for anything other than what it was. Hiro found himself drowning in a world made of ivory. The pews, the flowers, the cross. Everything, just spotlessly white. The feeling of absolute vacuum was too overwhelming for Hiro to even breathe. He sought for any semblance of familiarity as he looked around for something to anchor him to the present.
That’s when he saw her. Clad in her most expensive piece of clothing, her wedding dress. Looking as ethereal as the day he first laid eyes on her. Hiro’s wife was walking down the aisle of the church. She ambled towards him with a bouquet of white roses in her hand and her veil trailing behind her. The flowers adorning her hair, however, were askew. Hiro could also see thorns in them. That’s wrong. This is not supposed to happen. But he couldn’t help but smile at her lovingly as she took her careful, mincing steps towards him.
The little flower girls didn’t look happy. The one on the right had a single red flower in her basket. As he looked closer, the girls appeared to be expressionless. But she had a smile, one which used to light up his bleak, colourless and lifeless world.
“Yumi,” beckoned Hiro, as his wife approached. She looked so beautiful in her wedding attire. Completely otherworldly. She looked up into Hiro’s eyes. She opened her mouth to say something. As soon as her lips parted, an ear-splitting howl filled the air.
Startled and horrified, he started looking around for the source. Panic-stricken, he didn’t realize that his wife was very still. She just stood there motionless as Hiro kept trying to hold on to even a dream of himself, his sanity.
On taking a few more steps towards the howls, the back of the hall started dissolving like hands waving away mist in the air. A door appeared, hanging off of a wooden frame with cobwebs decorating the edges and some disconcerting marks on the wood, which looked like someone had dragged their fingernails across it. Like a dream, Hiro couldn’t really relate this image which he was seeing to something he actually knew. As he drew closer to the source of the sound, a hand shot out of the door.
One by one, in a haphazard manner, more hands shot out of the door. Hiro’s heart leapt into his throat and as the hands touched his arm, he could see visions with flashes of brilliant colour and vivid intensity.
Hiro struggled against those hands to free himself but paused in the middle of his endeavour as he spotted a ringed hand. A wedding ringed one, to be precise. It seemed as if time had slowed down to a honey-like consistency. The familiar hand, looking withered and frayed, reached towards him.
He hadn’t realized that his legs had given way until he felt a pair of hands cup his face. Hands so familiar…
And then the voices stopped. The door was still, the hands were still. A macabre shot taken right out of a horror film. His wife-to-be was smiling again, as charming as ever. His heart skipped a beat once more, but for the right reason. The shrivelled hand seemed to be beckoning for help despite being still, its familiarity like a dull, persistent ache. But the woman of his dreams was right in front of him. Everything he had dreamt of as a little boy and much more.
“And now for the vows.”
Hiro chooses to ignore the hands and continues with the wedding.
