Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition Chapter 1355: Story 1355: The Dead Wedding Crasher

The chapel stood miraculously intact.

A skeletal building of cracked stained glass, leaning pews, and dust-choked air.

But to us, it was a cathedral.

A place where we could rember the world before the screams.

Ella had found the dress in a thrift store—still intact, surprisingly unstained.

White lace, a bit yellowed with ti, but beautiful in the way only old things can be.

"I always said if I got married, it'd be simple," she laughed, adjusting the veil made from a torn mosquito net.

I stood at the altar, heart pounding harder than it ever had during a raid.

She walked down the makeshift aisle, boots under the dress, machete at her hip.

No music.

No guests.

Just us.

And the ghost of a world we used to dream of.

"Do you take each other," the preacher—an old, friendly radio voice on a hand-cranked tape player—intoned from the altar's edge, "for better, worse, hunger, and horror?"

"I do," we both whispered.

A kiss.

Soft.

Quick.

Necessary.

And then—

A crash.

The side door burst open, splinters flying.

We turned in unison, weapons out.

It was a man—or what had once been one—wearing a torn black suit, a boutonnière still wilting on his lapel.

His mouth was chewed away, jaw slack, dragging one leg behind him.

"A guest?" Ella joked, though her grip tightened on her machete.

He stepped forward with a moan like a rusted hinge.

Then two more shuffled in.

A flower girl with rotting curls.

A ring bearer whose hands had been gnawed to the bone.

We backed toward the altar.

"Great," I muttered. "The undead RSVPed."

"I knew we should've eloped," she shot back.

It wasn't a battle.

It was a desecration.

The chapel echoed with the clash of steel and the wet sound of bone breaking.

We fought like newlyweds defending their honeymoon suite—with fury and fire.

The flower girl lunged at Ella; she caught her mid-air and slamd her down with a grunt.

I grabbed the undead groom by the lapels and drove a dagger through his eye socket.

He fell at our feet.

Right on the white runner we'd found, now soaked in red.

When it was done, we stood panting among the bodies.

Stained glass cracked behind us.

Light pooled on blood-slick floorboards.

Ella sat down on a pew and started to laugh.

Not manic. Not broken.

Just… amused.

"We made vows," she said. "Didn't say anything about a reception."

I sat beside her.

We took off our weapons.

Held hands.

And though the dead had co, though the vows had been interrupted…

our ceremony remained.

Not untouched.

But unbroken.

Love, in a ti of rot, is still love.

Even if the guests try to eat you.