Only she remembered the silence of her wedding day.

Everyone else swore her wedding was the perfect affair. The church bells were ringing, the roses were in full bloom, and her husband stood at the front next to the priest. Her husband smiled, beaming as he slipped the ring onto her finger. The photographs proved it happened, rows of happy faces frozen in joy. Her mother told everyone the story as if it were a family legend. Little did they know, the emotional depth of that day was far beyond what they could perceive. 

But that is not how it is remembered, the day, not the comfortable kind, but the suffocating kind. When she stepped into the church and the sound of silence rang through her ears, she could hear her own heart beating, thrumming against her rib cage. It was like walking underwater. The organist's hands pressed against the keys, but no music played. Guests clapped their hands, but made no sound. Their guests' mouths were smiling, but their teeth didn’t move. This was her truth, her memory, her perception of the day that no one else seemed to share.  

And him. Standing at the altar, his face was her husband's, but his eyes were wrong, too black like a coal thrown into snow, too steady as though they had no life. She remembered her pulse stuttering as though it was trying to say something, but couldn’t find the right words. Her breath locked in her chest. Something whispered inside her: This is not the man you love.

The next moment, she was smiling in photographs, like nothing had happened. She said “I do”, yet the ring was already on her finger. The papers were signed. Everyone insisted she’d spoken the words as clear as day.

That was the night the dreams had begun.

In them, she was walking down the aisle over and over again, and every time the aisle was stretching and stretching. The guest turned their head in unison, their faces blurred like paint had been smudged on a canvas. At the altar, her husband waited, but his mouth opened too wide, stretching and splitting at the sides. When he spoke, the sound wasn’t his voice, but a low hum, like a swarm of insects buzzing in her skull.

And in the morning, when she woke up, her pillow would be dusted in black ash.

She stopped talking about it. The first time she told her mother, “ I don’t remember saying I do?”, her mother would laugh, pat her hand and say, “Nerves will do that, every bride feels the same way.”

The Second time, she told her best friend Samantha, the maid of honour. Samantha just smiled, just for a second, like a mask had slipped off her face. Then she blinked, straightened it back into place, and said, “You were glowing, the happiest bride I have ever seen.”

The third time, she told her husband. His face did not move. He stared at her, unblinking, for what felt like an eternity. He then tilted his head, like a curious dog and asked softly, “Why would you say that?”

The way he said it made her chest tighten; the way his lips didn’t match the words made her want to scream. 

After that, she said nothing about her wedding day to anyone. 

But the wrongness followed her; whenever she entered the kitchen, she found grains of ash in the sugar bowl. At night, when she rolled over in bed to look at her husband lying beside her, his eyes would already be wide open, staring at her in the dark. His breathing never matched his chest. It rose and fell on a rhythm too slow, too even, like a machine that was imitating life. 

The worst was the wedding photo.

It was a framed shot of them both at the altar, placed on the mantel by her mother. Everyone would see how happy she was in the photo, except her. When she really looked at the picture, she wasn’t smiling; her mouth was wide open, screaming in terror. 

And the thing lying beside her wasn’t her husband; no one else seemed to notice. 

The photograph became her obsession. She tried to show people, pressing it into their hands, demanding they examine it, “look at my face, look at my face, I am not smiling, I am screaming “

But every person she showed saw a beautiful, happy bride, glowing, blissful and radiant. Even her best friend laughed. 

She stopped going to sleep, ash was piling up on the nightstand, like soft piles of burnt paper. Her lungs ached when she breathed. At night, the dreams become sharper, the aisle, the blurred faces, the humming became louder, thrumming through her veins. The man at the altar, smiling too widely, stretched his hand towards her. 

That night, she woke to a sound; it wasn’t her dream. This was real: a low, steady humming from the other side of the bed. Her husband's mouth was closed, but his chest thrummed. His ribs shivered with the sound. She froze, and the humming grew louder, rattling the headboard. Her husband's eyes snapped open, two pits of black caught the moonlight shining through the window. 

And then he softly spoke in a light whisper, “You don’t remember, right?”

Her throat locked tight as though she was being strangled, she tried to scream, but no sound came out of her mouth, but the ash was there, in her mouth choking her. 

The next morning, her husband kissed her on the cheek like nothing had happened. The sunlight spilt across the floor. Life was ordinary again. 

Except…. On the pillow beside her, pressed into the sheets like a stain, was the imprint of a ring. Not gold or silver, a blackened circle, burned into the fabric, as though something had made it claim. 

And still no one else saw it 


Only she remembered