All Dolled Up!

Charlie’s POV

“Aren’t you going to try?” she asked, after bobbing out three apples on her own.

“Well, I’m not really into this,” I said. I usually avoided apple bobbing, mainly because the thought of all the germs from everyone’s mouths mixing into a bucket like that… the mere thought made my stomach do a somersault. Well, it was only Charlotte and I here, so I guessed I could have a go at it. “But, I guess I could give it a shot.”

Charlotte ended up winning that by two points, and afterwards felt confident enough to even want to watch another horror movie. Like a real, modern-day one.

“Let’s actually watch the rest of Annabelle,” she said.

“You’re sure? You’re not going to ask me to stop it in the middle again, are you?”

“Nope! I have conquered my fears!”

It was clear as we continued to watch it that she had conquered nothing, but she was able to get through the whole thing. “I don’t get it… what happened at the end?”

“Uh, it’s kind of hard to explain,” I told her. “But… basically the demon is free now?”

“And then what?”

“We’d have to see the other movies,” I told her.

“No more for tonight,” she quickly said and then switched off the television.

“Alright, ready for dinner?” I asked her. Normally she didn’t eat more than a few bites, but this was more about atmosphere than anything else.

“Oooh,” Charlotte said as she saw the candles set up in the dining room. “This looks amazing!”

“Thank you, candlelight dinners are my specialty,” I said.

This didn’t get the reaction I’d expected as her face fell for a second. I had made something for us that night, though thankfully the meal itself was not creepy in any way. She only had a few bites, which I had expected, but I couldn’t help but take notice of the downturn in her mood.

“Charlotte, if there is something that’s bothering you, please let me know.”

“Bothering me? No, there’s nothing bothering me,” Charlotte said. “This is amazing by the way.”

“I don’t mean about the dinner,” I said, a tinge of annoyance in my voice. “You’ve been acting… well, not like yourself for a good while. Look, I know there’s something bothering you, so if you’d just tell me what it is, I could see what I could do about it. Was it something I said?”

She was extremely evasive. “It’s… it’s something dumb, you don’t need to worry about it,” she said.

“Even if it’s dumb, if it’s bothering you, you should let it out,” I said.

“It’s just…” she began, but then trailed off. I got nothing but silence for a minute as she played around with the food on her plate without taking a single bite. “I…” She then looked up at me. “Did you have a candlelight dinner with Josephine too?”

I didn’t know how to react to that, because that was the last thing that I had thought she might ask.

“What… does Josephine have to do with this?” I asked incredulously. I had not even mentioned her name in the last few weeks, I had no photos of her lying around, and the only thing that could’ve possibly even been faintly related to her was that ring which I still had stored in the glove compartment of my car. She couldn’t have seen it recently. “Did Suzy bring it up?” It was the only explanation I could think of.

“No,” she said. “You brought it up - you’ve done these things before, haven’t you? You’ve done them already with her… but these are the first times for me…” I didn’t know how to respond to that.

“Is that it? Are you jealous of her?”

“I know it sounds moronic,” she said. “But, I can’t help but feel that every single time that you look at me, you’re comparing me to her, aren’t you!”

“I’m not though,” I told her.

“But I can’t get the thought out of my mind,” Charlotte said. “You… were going to marry her one day, weren’t you? Or at least you planned to?”

“I-I-look, Charlotte, Josephine and I were a thing in the past at one point,” I said.

“How come you never bring her up then?” she asked. “You seem to go out of your way to talk as little about her as possible.” She didn’t say the next part out loud, but I understood it nonetheless - “Does that mean that you still have feelings for her? Is that why you don’t talk about her? Because you think if you do, I’ll realize that?”

“Charlotte, we did not end things on good terms,” I told her. “I don’t want to think about her anymore.”

“You still have that ring.”

“I would’ve thrown it into a lake to get rid of it, but if you haven’t noticed, I’m tight on money right now,” I said, struggling to keep the venom out of my voice. Why was she bringing things like this up? We were having such a nice time just fifteen minutes ago! “If I got a good price for it, I would sell it.”

Charlotte didn’t answer that directly, but said again, “Whenever I see you looking at me, I can’t help but think whether you’re judging me, or comparing me to her.”

“Charlotte, I don’t,” I told her. “Trust me, she’s one of the last women I’d want to see right now.”

“I know…” she said, and seemed to shrink in her chair. “It’s just that…” She trailed off, not finishing her sentence. “You have other people with you. Your family. Mine is gone and all I have is - you. The idea of someone taking you away from me…”

If I wasn’t used to dealing with difficult people, I think I would’ve snapped. But, I did realize that that would’ve been extremely counterproductive, and I tried to think of something to placate her. This didn’t seem to be coming out of nowhere, but it looked like Charlotte had let these thoughts simmer for some time.

“I understand that Charlotte,” I told her. “You think that because you’re tied to this house, and I’m not, that I could just get in my car and drive away one day, never to return?”

A single tear fell down the left side of her cheek. “I know you’d never do it… but…”

I got up and approached her, taking her hand in mine. “And what do your deductive skills say?”

She sniffled but the corner of her mouth still twitched. “They say… that you’d never do it… but you have to understand…”

“Charlotte, I’m not going to leave you,” I told her. “And I promise that one day I’ll find a way to turn you back into what you were before this, even if it’s the last thing that I do. Not only will I leave this house one day, but you’ll do it with me. We’ll walk out of here one day, together.”

Charlotte wiped away her tears. “I know…”

“Do you really want to hear about Josephine?” I asked her. “I don’t want to think about her any more than necessary, but I can give you a short version.”

She shook her head. “If you don’t want to talk about her, don’t. I’m more than happy to know that you want to move on from her. I’m sorry that I even reminded you of her. But, there is one thing I wanted to ask, if you don’t mind…”

“Sure, what is it?”

“Why do you still have her ring?” she asked. “Shouldn’t she have kept it, even if your engagement was broken off? I can’t even begin to wrap my head around it.”

“She, well, Charlotte - like I’ve said earlier, something happened to me while I was working as a nurse. I was, to put it mildly, a different person after that. I was no longer fun to be around, and she picked up on that. I think she was hoping that I’d pull myself together - the rest of my family probably thought so too. But, I couldn’t. I didn’t. She broke things off, and from what she told me she had found someone else rather quickly too. Someone who I guess could give her a better ring than the one I did, and I think she might’ve even felt sorry for me and just gave it back,” I said. “I mean, I was just going to sell it anyway, but… couldn’t get a good price for it. Looks like they really ripped me off the first time when I bought it.”

“That-” Charlotte said, then used a word to describe Josephine that I’d never heard Charlotte utter before. She seemed to be quite surprised herself and clapped her hands over her mouth instinctively, and I chuckled. “Apologies- my mother would’ve washed my mouth with soap if I’d said that in front of her!”

“Yeah, but look, I don’t like how she left either, though now that I’ve had time to think about it, I can’t blame her either for it,” I said.

“Charlie, don’t think like that,” Charlotte said. “A woman who’d abandon her husband like that doesn’t deserve to be married.”

“We weren’t married.”

“But, you almost were, weren’t you? What if that had happened a year after you were married and she decided to leave you then?” Charlotte asked. She then perked up. “I was going to save this for later, but let me show you this right now…”

“Show me what?” I asked her.

“A song I made,” Charlotte said. She led me to the synthesizer, though I guess given her costume a violin would’ve looked more suitable in her hand. Maybe I should’ve gotten her a prop? Eh, it was too late to think about that. “I’ve been working on this for a while. My father had a special tune he’d play for my mother, I tried to learn how to play it from hearing him play it, but I would always get a few notes off. I tried again and didn’t remember, but I decided to rewrite parts of it. It isn’t fully done yet, but I wanted to play it for you anyway.”

The song started off dark and melancholic, almost enough to be mistaken for a Halloween melody, before gradually picking up in both rhythm and tone until towards the middle, the notes were conveying gratitude and happiness. Charlotte still didn’t have it all down, I could see that as she missed a note here and there, and even had to pause for a whole three seconds in the middle, but she persevered regardless. The whole piece lasted four minutes. “I’m sorry it ended so abruptly, I still need to polish the ending.”

“It was amazing,” I told her. Any irritation I’d had was now gone - and I was mightily glad that I hadn’t chosen to start letting my frustration show with her earlier. As a matter of fact, most of my anger was likely residual from Josephine, and not directed at Charlotte.

Had I made a mistake? Should I have complained about Josephine more? I hadn't, as in my opinion, people who complained too much about their exes were usually terrible people themselves, though perhaps that might have made Charlotte happier? “It’ll be even more amazing when I finish it,” Charlotte said. She then glanced out the window. “There’s still time left.”

“Yes there is,” I said. “Want to watch another movie? I’m sorry, but I’m out of things we can do that are Halloween-themed.”

“Uh, actually, could you help me with something?” she asked. “I’d like to get out of this costume, but I’m having trouble with this part here.” She said this while pointing to a button near her collar. I went to help her unbutton it when she kissed me on the lips, her lips as delicate as rose petals.

It turned out that she had no trouble whatsoever getting out of her costume.