Read Annabel: A Delirium Short Story for Free Online Page A

women agreed that this was just, and so the executioner was brought forward, and with his ax, he sliced the baby cleanly in two.
And the baby never cried, or so much as made a sound, and the mothers looked on, and afterward, for a thousand years, there was a spot of blood on the palace floor that could never be cleaned or diluted by any substance on earth. . . .
     
    I must have been only eight or nine when I read that passage for the first time, but it really struck me. For days I couldn’t get the image of that poor baby out of my head. I kept picturing it split open on the tile floor, like a butterfly pinned behind glass.
    That’s what’s so great about the story. It’s real. What I mean is, even if it didn’t actually happen—and there’s debate about the Legends and Grievances section, and whether it’s historically accurate—it shows the world truthfully. I remember feeling just like that baby: torn apart by feeling, split in two, caught between loyalties and desires.
    That’s how the diseased world is.
    That’s how it was for me, before I was cured.
     
    In exactly twenty-one days, I’ll be married.
    My mother looks as though she might cry, and I almost hope that she will. I’ve seen her cry twice in my life: once when she broke her ankle and once last year, when she came outside and found that protesters had climbed the gate, and torn ate she willup our lawn, and pried her beautiful car into pieces.
    In the end she says only, “You look lovely, Hana.” And then: “It’s a little too big in the waist, though.”
    Mrs. Killegan— Call me Anne, she simpered, the first time we came for a fitting—circles me quietly, pinning and adjusting. She is tall, with faded blond hair and a pinched look, as though over the years she has accidentally ingested various pins and sewing needles. “You’re sure you want to go with the cap sleeves?”
    “I’m sure,” I say, just as my mom says, “You think they look too young?”
    Mrs. Killegan—Anne—gestures expressively with one long, bony hand. “The whole city will be watching,” she says.
    “The whole country,” my mother corrects her.
    “I like the sleeves,” I say, and I almost add, It’s my wedding . But that isn’t true anymore—not since the Incidents in January, and Mayor Hargrove’s death. My wedding belongs to the people now. That’s what everybody has been telling me for weeks. Yesterday we got a phone call from the National News Service, asking whether they could syndicate footage, or send in their own television crew to film the ceremony.
    Now, more than ever, the country needs its symbols.
    We are standing in front of a three-sided mirror. My mother’s frown is reflected from three different angles. “Mrs. Killegan’s right,” she says, touching my elbow. “Let’s see how it looks at three-quarters, okay?”
    I know better than to argue. Three reflections nod simultaneously; three identical girls with identical ropes of braided blond in three identical white, floor-skimming dresses. Already, I hardly recognize myself. I’ve been transfigured by the dress, by the bright lights in the dressing room. For all my life I have been Hana Tate.
    But the girl in the mirror is not Hana Tate. She is Hana Hargrove, soon-to-be wife of the soon-to-be mayor, and a symbol of all that is right about the cured world.
    A path and a road for everyone.
    “Let me see what I have in the back,” Mrs. Killegan says. “We’ll slip you into a different style, just so you’ll have a comparison.” She slides across the worn gray carpet and disappears into the storeroom. Through the open door, I see dozens of dresses sheathed in plastic, dangling limply from garment racks.
    My mother sighs. We’ve been here for two hours already, and I’m starting to feel like a scarecrow: stuffed and poked and stitched. My mother sits on a faded footstool next to the mirrors, holding her purse primly in her lap so it won’t touch the carpet.
    Mrs. Killegan’s has