Sleeping Beauty

SHORT FICTION

I should have never answered that phone call. I could have probably saved myself from this. I hate going to funerals, they make me all shaky and stuff. I hate everything that reminds me of death and dying. I mean what’s to like about it right?

But I guess I have no choice but to come here. It’s Vanessa after all.

“Charm,” Auntie cried as she hugged me. “Vanessa, she’s… she’s gone now.”

“I know Tita.” I told her, almost nonchalantly.

Vanessa was my other half. No, she’s not my twin. It’s just that we’ve been so close calling each other best friend just wouldn’t do. So for us, we are half of each other. Weird huh? But we’re not into anything occult and stuff.

“It’s such a sad thing,” I heard one of the guests say. “She was so young.”

I peered into the coffin and saw her. She looked like a wax dummy. That’s what I’ve always thought about dead people in coffins, wax dummies. And Vanessa was the biggest wax dummy of all.

“Bitch.” I whispered, “look at you now, looking like wax. I told you before didn’t I?”

A month before, Vanessa called me up to tell me about a photo shoot she had somewhere.

“You should have heard the photographer!” she said ecstatically. “He said I photographed like a dream!”

“Yeah!” I said. “Good for you.”

“You’re so mean! You dismiss me so easily!”

“Well, what do you want me to say?” I wasn’t in the mood to talk. I had all this deadlines to meet and she was just going to rant about her perfection. “You won’t photograph like a dream forever you know!”

“I know! But I won’t let that time come.”

“Charm,” Auntie said suddenly, “would you be kind enough to give a little eulogy? Who would know Vanessa outside the house but you?”

“Well, sure.” I said with a faint smile.

Now what to say about Vanessa? Vanessa – is a model. One of those beautiful girls you see in photos. Long eyelashes, prominent cheek bones, pouted lips framed in a perfectly shaped face. Of course, not to state the obvious, she has long legs, and a long torso. She never gains too much weight because, well, she would rather have you know that she’s a genetic mutant who does not gain weight no matter how much she eats. But in truth, she’s bulimic. I don’t think her mother knows though. She likes partying and enjoying her life to the fullest. Getting wasted and getting high are not in her book though. She says she feels like her soul is being stolen when alcohol and all those other toxins are in her system.

“Oh please! I never said that! I said that those toxins will kill off my perfect cells and make me age faster!”

Oh yeah, that’s what she said at my birthday party. She was so pissed at her boyfriend, James, for making all those jokes about her saying that she lost her soul. Come to think of it, I haven’t seen him yet.

In any case, that’s Vanessa. She’s a nice person, she’ll give anything she has for the people she cares for. But Vanessa is obsessed about beauty.

“Look at my mother,” she said once.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking.”

“Would you have thought she used to be a beauty queen?” she asked me while she was drinking her fruit shake.

“Well,” I answered. “Yeah!”

“But you wouldn’t think she was that beautiful now. She’s so old. She has all those lines on her face. And would you look at those legs!”

“You’re too hard on your mom! You know, one day, you’ll get old and fat and…”

“Stop saying those things!” she slapped my arm. “I promise that I will never look like that!”

Ok, now where was I? Oh yeah, obsessed with beauty. I probably should scratch that out. People should remember her as…

“People should only remember the beautiful me!” she said. “I won’t let people remember me like an old lady with a cane.”

“That’s not really far from happening you know.” I told her. “With your bulimia and stuff, you could die young.”

“That would be nice! I won’t have to see myself go ugly!”

“How do you ever face yourself in the morning?”

“With a smile!”

… as… a person who likes to see beautiful things and has beautiful dreams. Ugh! That is so ugly. She is so going to kill me. Heck! She’s already dead.

Now, what if I tell them – looking at her now, you see a beautiful girl at the prime of her youth sleeping soundly, dreaming of a better future, and probably, she’s just waiting for that prince of hers. But Vanessa never liked Sleeping Beauty.

“I never really liked this story,” she used to say. “It has such a sad ending.”

“What’s so sad about the prince and the princess getting married?” I used to ask her.

“And what’s so happy about that?”

“Getting married? I don’t know. You tell me.”

“She could have slept forever. She could have been forever beautiful in the memory of the people that had known her.”

“Right…”

“I mean think about it. She could have just slept and died sleeping. She wouldn’t feel pain. Most of us don’t have that luxury of dying in your sleep.”

“That’s morbid.”

“Hmph! I bet you I can be a better Sleeping Beauty!”

Yeah, I guess telling people that she’s a young beautiful girl sleeping through the ages might not upset her that much.

“She was such an angel,” Auntie suddenly said. “I just wished she didn’t die that way.”

“She died alone huh?” I said. She must have overdosed herself and slept.

“No,” she said as tears welled up in her eyes. “James killed her.”