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The days all blend together. Helen’s not quite sure if that’s from the monotony, the strict hourly regimen they have her on, or the medication that leaves her feeling fuzzy. She doesn’t know what day it is or how long she has been here. She has lost time almost as much as she has lost herself in this place.
She does the exact same thing every single day.
Wake up. Take drugs. Shower. Food. Therapy. Lunch. Lounge room. More therapy. Drugs. Dinner. Sleeping pills. Sleep. Repeat.
Again and again and again.
She has grown accustomed to the sounds of the tv in the part of her day that has been branded “socializing time”. She sits in this tiny room, on a peeling couch, and stares at nothing. During this hour, she gets to stare at the sterile walls of this room instead of the sterile walls of her own.
The buzzing of the tv becomes a comforting background noise. The volume is too low, the channel is always some boring newscast that only shares futile and unimportant news about celebrities long forgotten. The presence of the big box where the tv sits feels almost like a sick reminder. Her alleged means of distraction, a pitiful metaphor of her. Trapped behind bars and locked, not loud enough, stuck, unable to move from the place it has been forcefully parked, forgotten by everyone around it, white noise .
She barely pays attention to it. Until she hears that name.
At first, it feels like a hallucination. Madeline Ashton occupies a sizable amount of her brain, takes over most of her thoughts. She thinks about her all of the time. She thinks about how pretty her hand would look around the blonde’s neck. About sneaking poison into the chardonnay she likes so much. About stabbing. About doing it with her bare hands. About kissing her. About fucking her. About having her say I’m sorry over and over again while she punishes her.
No matter how much she tries. Madeline is always on her mind.
She is the only thing the meds haven't been able to tune out. Helen can barely take notice of herself anymore, existing more like a spirit haunting these too bright white walls than a corporeal form. She doesn’t feel hunger, or tiredness, or lust, or anything really. All she feels is Madeline.
So when she hears the name coming from the tv, she assumes her brain is playing tricks on her again. When she hears the name one more time, she almost considers talking to her doctor to up her dosage. On the third time, she finally turns to the tv.
“The royal wedding. Coming live to you, the union of Madeline Ashton, Hollywood’s sweetheart, and Ernest Menville.”
She can feel the bile rise to her throat.
Some part of her had held on to frivolous hope. She has grown accustomed to Madeline taking things dear to her. Clothes, make up, jewellery, friends, boyfriends. Nothing has ever been sacred in their union. She expected her to take Ernest, deep down. She never expected her to follow through.
She never imagined Madeline with a man. Contradictory thought, given the parade of them she has experienced through the years. But still, she could never picture Madeline with a man - the same one at that - sharing the rest of her life. She’s not sure if she expected the woman to be alone, perish surrounded by bottles and people on her payroll. Maybe she expected to be the one next to her. Her enemy until the end.
That dinner was truly a turning point for Helen. It was finally the last straw that broke her already fragmented psyche. But she expected it not to mean too much for Madeline, in the end. She expected her to give Ernest a tour - making sure it was loud enough for her to hear from the couch downstairs - and never see him again. Take and move on. Like she always did.
She doesn’t remember what happened after she got the wedding invitation. She vaguely recalls pain, constriction, medication, and sleep. She assumes she lost it. She knows she got a scar out of it.
The paper is hidden in one of the few books cleared out for her. Stored safely at grabbing distance. She routinely runs her fingers through the names engraved in gold. Madeline Ashton. Ernest Menville. Joyful union.
The gold is marked by blood. Her own. Dragging her fingers through it until her fingertips bleed. Until her fingerprints vanish. Madeline erasing another part of her identity. Meticulously and painfully.
As the countdown for the transmission grows nearer, the heartbeat in her ears grows louder. She can no longer hear the constant murmur that surrounds her. She can’t hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, which usually works like a metronome to her thoughts.
She tries grounding herself. Tries focusing on the feeling of the string in her hands, tied so tightly against her fingers that it cuts off her circulation. Tries focusing on the chalky taste still on her mouth from the pills she started taking last week. Tries focusing on the chair parked down in the corner, one of the legs dangerously close to splitting in two.
None of that works.
The countdown gets to zero, and she prepares herself. There are dancers and flashing lights that make her dizzy and make her stomach churn.
It feels like the air stills when Ernest shows up on the screen. He’s wearing the tuxedo she took him to buy for Madeline’s opening night. It feels like a sick joke. Surprisingly, the sight of him elicits less of a reaction than she expected.
She supposes she never loved him. He was nice, strong, handsome, and reliable. So, she fell for him. Seeing things in a new light, she realizes he was never really any of those things. She needed him to be them, so she believed he was. She has always believed more than she should.
He stands at the end of the pew, looking lost. Surrounded by people dressed in flashy clothes. She scans the people she can see. None of them are familiar. It stands to reason Madeline would have to pay for the extras in her own wedding. In any other situation, Helen would be the only genuine person at her side. She is lost in her angry ramblings when the music cuts.
Then she walks in.
Helen holds her breath. In a pink dress, with a train made entirely of pink roses, Madeline looks absolutely magnificent. She’s so focused on the women that she can’t even feel when the string makes a gash on her finger.
She watches intensely the other woman. Observes her expressions, her actions, how she portrays herself. The fake animation is sickening. She looks beautiful.
Her dress is gaudy, over the top. Pink, like she always suspected it would be. Madeline’s hair is a shade blonder than usual, loose in princess curls. For a second, she almost looks innocent.
When the officiant welcomes family and friends, it’s almost enough to make her laugh. Maybe she would have if her brain wasn’t so muted. She’ll never know. There are no friends. There is no family. Helen was all there was.
The rose on Ernest’s lapel is the same shade of baby pink as Madeline's dress. She thinks bloody red would have been more appropriate for the occasion.
The entire thing feels fake, plastic. Fitting.
There are opera singers, commercial breaks, and advertisements. It’s all commercial. Madeline’s desires always are. She can see every label in every drink, every flower arrangement, every dress; every object comes attached to a name. All perfectly manufactured.
It almost makes her feel pity. Almost.
The only attempt at genuineness comes from Ernest. Of course he would. He was conniving, back-stabbing, easy , but at the end of the day, he tries. His love is performative, but present. He loved Helen, at some point. She wishes she had loved him back. He loves Madeline now. He loves her body, her alluringness, her power, her presence. Facets of her. But loves her nonetheless.
He will never love the parts of her that Helen does.
He is quickly drowned by the opera and she’s almost grateful. She doesn’t know if she could bear listening to the words that should have been said to her. Should have been about her.
She is no longer his person. She was never her person. She belongs to no one.
Helen can’t dwell on how it should be her there instead. How it should be her facing Ernest. How it should be her facing Madeline.
The only momentary respite she gets is when Madeline doesn’t kiss him. She turns and looks at the camera, a smile almost genuine. It almost feels like it was meant for Helen.
She wants to rip that pretty smile off her face.
The clock rings, and it elicits the first proper reaction out of her. She needs to see more. She’s had her first taste of Madeline in months and - like always - she is addicted again. But her time has ended, and the monotony of her day must continue.
She doesn’t move. Her eyes never leave the screen.
She feels a faint presence on her shoulder, but pays no attention to it. Nothing could make her look away. Not the calling of her name, not the shaking of her arms. Madeline has her undivided attention.
She still doesn ‘t look away when she’s being forcibly removed. When she’s screaming, thrashing, flailing. She doesn’t look away until she feels the needle in her arm and nothingness taking over her.