Skeleton Marriage

A story about skeletons, marriage, and questioning of the system.

The daily life of a prop skeleton is pretty average. We sit in places, looking somewhat spooky, sometimes we pop out to scare humans who have no spines. Most of the time though, we just serve as models for anatomy, since biology students seem to need a real skeleton™ to study. Overall, there’s really nothing that special going on during the day. It’s pretty simple to comprehend.

But then we get to the weird parts of the day; When most humans are asleep, things get a bit ridiculous. You see, we see humans, and envy their daily lives. Well, not humans, specifically… We envy the skeletons inside them. Given birth to live inside of a human skin, instead of hanging limply from a string. Honestly, it’s much more appealing to me. So, in short, we emulate the human skeletons.

During the depths of the night, we get up, and start going to places that are abandoned after darkness strikes. The few small children skeletons go to school after the janitors leave, along with one or two skeleton teachers. The worker skeletons go to work in random places. Usually it’s a large place, that getting a bit done goes unnoticed. This upsets those who want to be shoemakers. Honestly, why would a skeleton want to be a shoemaker? I don’t know.

And we also emulate human emotions. Fear, happiness, love, anger… We take these emotions, and act on them.

Thinking about this all, I stood in a gorgeous and barely lit hallway. Pots of pastel-ish flowers sat upon white pedestals, and pink ribbons were strewn across the top of the white walls. It’d be a joyous atmosphere if everything wasn’t so dark. But hey, prop skeletons didn’t have eyes anyway. I can see just fine.

I stood in grubby formal wear, since I had dug this outfit out of a trash can behind a tailor’s store that was going out of business. I was the same as nearly every other prop skeleton, white, bony, and mass-produced. We all even had the same high-pitched, annoying voices. But tonight, I was the man of the hour. Or woman. I didn’t have a distinct gender since I was a generic prop skeleton, but for the night, I was the man of the hour, and my partner, my bride, she was the woman of the hour. Even if she looked exactly like me, and which was kind of creepy. We had been sitting in the back of a storage unit together for a few years, so of course she was the perfect pick for marriage. We talked a lot, about all the junk that our owner had left in the room.

Eventually, we overheard that the owner was getting married to some random girl he had met the night before. Upon hearing this we had decided that if two random people who had just met and had no possible chemistry established yet could get married, we could too! We took to the skeleton marriage office, and got a skeleton marriage license. And with that, they told me I needed to gather the following things: a formal outfit, a ring, and a cake. I have no idea why we needed a cake, really

A door opened at the end of the hallway, and I was brought back to reality. I saw a bony hand beckoning me towards the door. Confused for a moment, I walked towards it, and gave it a low-five. A typical human greeting, truly. A bony head,a bit better-painted than my own popped out from out of the door.

“Why? Why would you slap my hand? I did nothing to deserve this kind of abuse. A scientific skeleton like me has only done right by you, setting up this whole thing, and you slap me down, like an annoying fly?!” The weirdly offended skeleton said.

With a look of confusion, I replied, “Arnold? Is that you? For a second I thought you were Lucas. Either way, I apologize. What I was doing was a “low-five.” It seems to be a typical form of greetings or a congratulatory gesture between humans. Either way, it seems to be done between companions. I am sorry if it offended you, Arnold.”

He was silent for a second, “Ah, I see! I apologize for so rudely snapping at you.” He came out of the door. He was dressed in a version of my formal wear that was browned and yellowed in many places, with white shining through. He continued on, “I must praise your observations in the fields of human behaviorisms, Gregor-”

“It’s Norman.” I interjected.

“What?” He replied.

“My name. It’s Norman. It’s rather rude to forget the man of the hour, is it not?”

He put a bony hand to his bony chin. He seemed to be deep in thought, till he jolted in shock. “Wait! We need to get you out there, the wedding’s about to start! You need to get to the altar, quickly!” Arnold said, pushing me through without a proper reply. I felt a bit irritated, but I just let that slide for now.

I was pushed into the wedding hall, where a woman in a beautifully gross dress stood next to a man in a ripped priest’s outfit. Both of them had the same face. And in front of them was a gallery of skeletons. All with the same face. I walked through the middle, rushing. I had been meant to show up first, but it was a bit too late for that. We could reverse the roles, since we already were bending the rules of life and death by simply existing.

I stood across from the woman in the bride’s outfit, who had put weird paper towers in the chest area to symbolize that she was female. Honestly it looked quite odd, and I was wondering why this was even necessary. It only added to my inner confusion about how she looked like me. I was starting to feel disgusted.

The priest began to talk, reading from a cover-less bible in his hands, “Dearly beloved, we come here to-day to celebrate the union of two beautiful skeletons. While I am unable to read, and therefore unable to properly convey what this bible is saying… I assure you all, that there is nothing more beautiful than this moment right here. Two young, aspiring skeletons are coming together. I think all of us could only wish them the best of luck.”

He pretended read off a bunch of random sayings that felt disjointed, before he came to look at me.

“Now, Young Horati-”

“It’s Norman. My name is Norman.” I interjected.

He waved his hand at me, and went on, “Young NORMAN. Will you take this beautiful woman to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“I will.” I replied.

He turned to the other woman, my beautiful wife. “And you, dear Bethan-”

“It’s Cassey.”

This time, the woman looked at me, tilting her head to show confusion. “What? My name’s Nathaniel, it always has been. And I’m not sure why you decided to change your name, Burt, but at least keep my name the same. I prefer it this way” she said, shaking her head. And then suddenly, a voice arose from the crowd.

“Wait, Nathaniel?! What are you doing up there? Our marriage is supposed to be next week!” A young male skeleton rose up from the crowd, dressed in a similar outfit to mine. He seemed to be in a state of confusion. And then another skeleton stood up, and yelled towards me.

“Norman?! What are you doing with that girl? We were supposed to get married yesterday, and you didn’t even show up!” She said, mildly irritated. She really didn’t care that much about the marriage. It was more of the novelty that came from it that she wanted. Still, mildly irritated is much worse than no irritation. I walked down, slumping my shoulders, when everyone stood up from their seats and started to flail around in confusion.

It was then that I realized that I had forgotten what my dear Cassey was wearing. And chances are, so did she for me. It finally hit me, at this moment.

“Why are we having a marriage at all, if we are all literally the same?” I screamed, clutching my head in frustration at this question that had been burning in the back of my head. Everyone turned towards, tilting their heads.

I sighed, “Don’t you all see it? Everyone I met today has mistaken me for someone else, and I have mistaken them for someone else. I mistook someone I have known since my first home for a random stranger I never met or interacted with before. How am I supposed to know who I’m marrying, if they don’t even know who I am?! Do I even know who I am? There’s nothing to differentiate us from one another, and someone might have just switched my name a day I was feeling like not bothering, and I might have just gone with it!”

In that second, the skeletons started to talk between each other, and scratching their heads. They all did the same thing.

The bride from before, looked at her chest area. “Why do I need breasts exactly?”

At this very moment, the skeletons’ daily lives crumbled. For the months after this, they sat together in huge councils, trying to find the answer to this complex riddle. Were they to make up a strange register to write down what skeleton was which? Were they to just give up on the idea of emulating humans?

The answer became even more convoluted, once they looked inside themselves. Literally.

“How are we even alive?! I propose we make a request to the humans to have scientific studies on why this is happening! They will solve all of our problems.”

It didn’t. The world went into chaos…