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

always been the nicest wedding shop in Portland, but it, too, has clearly felt the lingering effects of the Incidents, and the security crackdowns the government implemented in their aftermath. Money is tighter for practically everybody, and it shows. One of the overhead bulbs is out, and the shop has a musty smell, as though it has not been cleaned recently. On one wall, a pattern of moisture has begun bubbling the wallpaper, and earlier I noticed a large brown stain on one of the striped settees. Mrs. Killegan caught me looking and casually tossed a shawl down to conceal it.
    “You really do look lovely, Hana,” my mother says.
    “Thank you,” I say. I know I look lovely. It might sound egotistical, but it’s the truth.
    This, too, has changed since my cure. When I was uncured, even though people always told me I was pretty, I never felt it. But after the cure, a wall came down inside me. Now I see that yes, I am quite simply and inarguably beautiful.
    I also no longer care.
    “Here we are.” Mrs. Killegan reemerges from the back, holding several plastic-swathed gowns over her arm. I swallow a sigh, but not quickly enough. Mrs. Killegan places a hand on my arm. “Don’t worry, dear,” she says. “We’ll find the perfect dress. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?”
    I arrange my face into a smile, and the pretty girl in the mirror arranges her face with me. “Of course,” I say.
    Perfect dress. Perfect match. A perfect lifetime of happiness.
    Perfection is a promise, and a reassurance that we are not wrong.
     
    Mrs. Killegan’s shop is in the Old Port, and as we emerge onto the street I inhale the familiar scents of dried seaweed and old wood. The day is bright, but the wind is cold off the bay. Only a few boats are bobbing in the water, mostly fishing vessels or commercial rigs. From a distance, the scat-splattered wood moorings look like reeds growing out of the water.
    The street is empty except for two regulators and Tony, our bodyguard. My parents decided to employ security services just after the Incidents, when Fred Hargrove’s father, the mayor, was killed, and it was decided that I should leave college and get married as soon as possible.
    Now Tony comes everywhere with us. On his days off, he sends his brother, Rick, as a substitute. It took me a month to be able to distinguish between them. They both have thick, short necks and shiny bald heads. Neither of them speaks much, and when they do, they never have anything interesting to say.
    That was one of my biggest fears about the cure: that the procedure would switch me off somehow, and inhibit my ability to think. But it’s the opposite. I think more clearly now. In some ways, I even feel things more clearly. I used to feel with a kind of feverishness; I was filled with panic and anxiety and competing desires. There were nights I could hardly sleep, days when I felt like my insides were trying to crawl out of my throat.
    I was infected. Now the infection has gone.
    Tony is leaning against the car. I wonder if he has been standing in that position for all three hours we’ve been in Mrs. Killegan’s. He straightens up as we approach, and opens the door for my mother.
    “Thank you, Tony,” she says. “Was there any trouble?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Good.” She gets into the backseat, and I slide in after her. We’ve had this car for only two months—a replacement for the one that was vandalized—and just a few days after it arrived, my mom came out of the grocery store to find that someone had keyed the word PIG into the paint. Secretly, I think that my mom’s real motivation for hiring Tony was to protect the new car.
    After Tony shuts the door, the world outside the tinted windows gets tinged a dark blue. He turns the radio to the NNS, the National News Service. The commentators’ voices are familiar and reassuring.
    I lean my head back and watch the world begin to move. I have lived in Portland all my life and have memories