Third Leg. And Fouth. And Fifth. And…

The church drew in a sharp breath.

William’s pale nails scratched for purchase on the slimy carpet. A wet moan gurgled in his throat, stirred by a hollow wheeze. We watched in shivering silence as he crawled out of the box: shoulders, waist, hips, knees.

His gaze flitted around the room. When his eyes found me, they clouded with sadness before rolling back in his head.

He collapsed onto the altar’s floor. I was by his side in the next second, wiping the mucus from his face. His lips were blue, his skin cold and slick like a bullfrog’s.

“William,” I called out.

No answer.

Gently, I tapped his cheek. “William. William. William!”

“...Julia,” he groaned at last. My god, he sounded so hoarse, so weak, so wounded. If only I had been honest with him, told him how I truly felt – but it was too late for that now. It was all my fault that he got hurt, and even if he wasn’t my happily ever after, my heart bled for him all the same.

“William… I’m so, so sorry.”

“... who is it?” he mumbled. His chest heaved.

“W-what?”

“Who is it?” A spasm coursed through his body. I took his hand in mine, and he gave it a firm squeeze, his fingers coiling around mine. Still, he didn’t stop trembling.

“William! Someone, please, call a doctor, he’s having a seizure! William, it’s okay. I’m here. It’s me – it’s still me, Julia. You’re gonna be okay.”

His eyes squeezed shut before flying open. Red, jaundiced, and full of rage. “Who is the other man?” he roared, his arm wrapping around my bodice. Startled, I made to smack his arm, free myself, but instead of the satin sleeve of his suit, I hit the flaccid meat of a tentacle.

My mother’s shriek split the air.

William – or whoever wore his skin – lifted me off the ground as if I were weightless. Held me high in the air. A hunter posing with his trophy. On the ground, the box rattled. More tentacles, skittering, clicking, squirming and spilling out.

A bridesmaid went down first – a friend of Blaine’s more than mine – seized by the ankle. Her plus one came to her aid, smashed the tendril’s tip with a chair. But where he bruised the flesh, it puckered like a mimosa, shrivelled and fell, and from the raw tissue beneath, two more tentacles stretched and grew, thin and nimble, peppered with suction cups and lathered in ooze.

Then came the best man – William’s friend in high school, roommate in uni. Sliced through three tentacles with a steak knife. A fourth shackled his wrist. A fifth pilloried his neck. Then my father. Slipped on a puddle of pus with a swarm of tentacles on his tail. Then William’s father hung from the gallery by another. Then –

Blaine! I scanned the nave. She was nowhere to be seen. Was she hiding? Did she get away? As happy as I was that she was spared this fate, uncertainty poisoned my relief. Wherever she was, I could only pray she was safe. All this carnage and chaos… Remorse burnt in my gut. But if something happened to her, I would sooner be dead than live with that corrosive guilt.

A growl simmered in William’s throat. Was he satisfied? I glanced at him, and he glanced back with a serrated smile. Without warning, he crouched, then leapt to the heavens. His free arm, now another tentacle, punched through the painted ceiling.

Shards of the Wedding at Cana burst into the air, before raining down upon the gabled roof. Afraid, I ducked into William’s tendril. But that only meant I could not see the piece of stone hurtling towards my skull.

With a crack, my neck went limp, and my vision dark.

* * *

I awoke to the stench of sizzling rot, the sound of crackling firewood.

But for the flames, the night was absolute. The forest swirled around me, a twisting nether of branches. A trail slithered out from an opening between two trees, a black line drawn on the ashen grass. On either side of it, the shape of humans. Mother? Father? Blaine?

The dry film on my tongue turned bitter with dread. Tentacles lined the aisle, their tips swollen to look like heads, their bodies bulging with every breath they feigned to take. My arms and legs moved on their own, but that did little to help. The same clammy shackles bound them in place.

“Good evening,” William said from behind me. His putrid breath scraped the side of my face before his hand followed suit. Human fingers brushed the hair from my cheek, exposing a patch of skin for him to lay his lips on. Cold and wet, a kiss of slime and sinew. “Shall we pick it up from where we left?”

“William, I– ” choked out, but he shushed me before I could continue.

“Shh, it’s okay. What’s done is done. The past is in the past. But the way forward must start with a long look behind us.” William heaved a shaky sigh, veins rearranging beneath the chalky flesh of his forehead. A bulbous knot pulsed in his neck, but he croaked it back down. “Tell me about him,” he continued in a low voice. “Who is he? How long have you known each other? Where did you meet?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“The cunt – ” he shrieked, then gasped, his jaw unclasping, then rehinging. Sweat, spit and bile oozed down his chin. “– who stole your heart. He took you from me once. I will make sure it won’t happen again. So please, Julia.” He shivered. “Be honest. For once, please, be honest for our sake.”

I froze, my eyes wide with fear, his eyes black with anguish. Was his torment the tentacles’ influence? Or did they merely dig deep into his soul, uprooting his fears and insecurities – his rage and his jealousy – laying them bare for all to see?

William loved me with all his heart. He had loved me since we were both children, and I had known this from the moment I learnt what love is. But in that same moment, I realised that however pure and sincere his feelings for me were, I would never be able to reciprocate them.

I thought that by keeping this a secret, I would be shielding him from all the pain. But I know now that all I did was sow the seed of doubt inside his head. And the more I ignored the elephant in the bedroom, the more those doubts grew and festered and metastasised into the monster I saw before me.

I tried to blink away my tears, but that was nothing more than a band-aid on a broken dam. How long had he blamed himself for not being enough? How long had he toiled away, trying to build himself into my ideal partner?

Too long. Ten years too long.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, William,” I began, my voice racked with regret.

He roared again, “Who is he?” and though I shrank in terror and swallowed down all my words, they all came bubbling back to the surface soon after, like they always did. But this time, I would not let them simmer beneath a closed lid.

“You were perfect, William. You are and have always been everything I ever wanted in a partner, and then some. Kind, patient, understanding, helpful and forthcoming, and –” I gulped a sob “– words could never express how much I hate that I’ve been stringing you along all this time. It was never your fault that I was distant. That there was this invisible barrier between us that no amount of sex and gifts and holidays and therapy could tear down.

“Because I never loved you like that. I never loved any man like that because I just don’t love men.

“I’m a lesbian, William. And I’m so sorry.”

William tilted his head. His mouth opened on a silent question that he didn’t get to speak. He staggered back. The tentacles in the audience writhed.

A screech fractured the clearing. One by one, the tentacles’ heads burst, their flesh withering, the dry husks hissing as they melted into the pool of pus beneath.

My shackles melted away. I fell to the ground. Two paces away, William curled into a ball, his shoulder blades cracking, bones and joints rearranging and tearing at his suit.

Cautiously, I padded over on hands and knees. He didn’t notice me approaching. But when I reached to comfort him, he recoiled with a sharp wail.

“Get away from me!” Anger coarsened his voice, but beneath it, beneath all the fury and frustration, sadness swam. It brimmed in every tight line of his contorted features, shone deep behind his eyes, resonated with every sharp note of his lament.

He didn’t wait for me to try and reach out again. Once more, he crouched, but far from leaping away, he dug his arms into the ground. I watched his body disintegrating into an amalgamation of tentacles, a swarm of worms that burrowed into the earth. Only a black stain remained to remind me of him.

I took a long moment to recoup my wits, then a longer one still to stagger back to my feet. My gaze trailed along the starless sky. A grey column of smoke splintered the thin veil of clouds. Was the church on fire? The town in the valley below? I shuddered at the thought of more destruction, brought on by my fickleness, my foolish hesitation.

But the past was in the past. What was done was done. The journey back would be long and difficult, the path scattered with red-hot coal. But every painful step forward would be taking me further and further away from this very moment. Until I’ll be able to look behind and see no trace of a life lived in lie.

Slowly, I started through the forest. The brush whispered the song of the wind. The moon’s smile poked through the bramble. I narrowed my eyes almost closed and, despite myself, sighed in relief.