The Monster of the Corpse Bride

Chapter 3

"A Lord Barkis, sir." The butler spoke. Gave for Lord Everglot to look at the card with the name written "Lord Barkis Bittern".

Suddenly, the same slender, respectable, older man with pale blue skin, sharp elf-like ears, and pure white crow hair, who had been in the square a few hours before the rehearsal, came into the room. When he was standing next to Lord Everglot, he was sitting in a leather chair, but he was expected to see him for the first time with his surprised look.

"I haven't a head for dates." The pale blue-skinned guest, named Lord Barkis, spoke softly and gently. However, he slyly smiled. "Apparently, I'm a day early for the ceremony."

Since then, Lady Everglot has taken the card from her husband's hand to read it. However, Lord Everglot tilted his head as close as possible to his wife, whispering past her ears.

"Is he from your side of the family?" He asked quietly.

"I can't recall." Lady Everglot replied, she had no idea how to remember Barkis than he had come here from her family. But she won't remember who he is. Then she turned to the butler. "Emil, a seat for Lord Barkis."

At once this butler deserved it, he got a seat for Barkis, so that he could sit more comfortably when looking at Victor and Victoria in front of Pastor Galswells, who they looked at him in surprise but how he came here in rehearsal. But Victoria's parents didn't invite him without permission, did they?

There was a brief silence.

"Do carry on." Said Lord Barkis, waving his hand to give the two unmarried couples continued in rehearsal.

"Let's try it again, shall we, Master Van Dort?" Pastor Galswells spoke to Victor with his stern look.

"Yes. Yes, sir. Certainly." Victor repeated while Victoria lit his candle. And quickly he waved his left hand over his head to hold on to her at rehearsals.

"Right." The priest corrected the position of Victor's hand from left to right.

"Right." Victor replied, only guessing that he was using his left hand, and crossed his right hand with a candle in his left. "Oh, right!" He looked closely at his hand, then Pastor Galswells. "With this... This..."

"Hand." Pastor Galswells rolled his eyes in indifference, once again reminding Victor of his mistakes.

"With this hand..." Victor recited, almost modestly taking Victoria's left hand with his right, while reading his vows. "...I... With..."

But he and Victoria flinched at the table as they walked over to them without taking a step because of his awkwardness.

"Three steps, three!" Pastor Galswells shouted again, tapping his crutch on the floor in anger. "Can you not count?! Do you not wish to be married, Master Van Dort?" He asked Victor.

"No! No." Victor shaking his head in disagreement.

"You do not?" Victoria responded with a surprised impression, raising her eyebrows.

"No! I meant, no, I do not not wish to be married." Victor rephrased the sentence, gradually getting nervous. "That is, I want very much to..." Suddenly, when his speech stopped, an obsessive fly circled around his head, he tried to reshape Victoria from his mistakes, but this fly constantly bothers him, because it smells a little invisible fish through his face, but he waved them to fly away from him, however it did not refuse to fly away for no reason. "I said I want very much to..." He waved his left hand at the fly again to get out of here, but it still hasn't given up. "I... I.... Will you get this fly out of my head? It bothers me."

When Victor was horrified to see that someone had grabbed the fly, it was just a long pink tongue coming from Lord Everglot's mouth, he forcefully stretched his fly tongue back into his mouth, swallowed them quickly, and croaked like a toad. However, his wife who looked at him seriously and allegedly shook her head so as not to give him a decision for their daughter and young boy to spoil the rehearsal which would offend them. And he rolled his eyes, not wanting to look at his wife's attention.

"Pay attention! Have you even remembered to bring the ring?" Pastor Galswells asked aloud if Victor had brought the ring for Victoria.

"The ring? Yes. Of course."  Victor took the ring from his pocket, but in the meantime Mr. Van Dort blinked one eye and raised his thumb at his wife as a sign that he had given his son to make the better decision to put it in Victoria's finger during rehearsal so that it would never fall out of his hands.

However, the moment he held the ring with his index finger and thumb, he was suddenly dropping them from his hands, which made Victoria and their parents a big shock from his coincidence. He quickly bent his left leg on his knees, holding the candle firmly in his left hand, and his right he was trying to grab a ring that also slips on the air and then on the floor.

"Dropping the ring! This boy doesn't want to get married!" Pastor Galswells loudly stated that Victor had committed suicide.

Then Victor quickly grabbed the ring in Lady Everglot's dress in time, and she gasped in amazement at what the boy had done with very incomparable coincidences. Eventually he stood up, and successfully holding a gold ring on his right hand, except for a candle that had disappeared somewhere. Suddenly Victor guessed that his candle had fallen on Lady Everglot's dress, so that a small fire began to ignite on the dark red dress, and a slender woman in fright tried to shake the fire from her dress to extinguish it. It was a huge terrible chaos. Then Lord Everglot came up with leather chairs to help his wife put out the fire with his angry, disappointed look at Victor's intentions.

"Out of the way, you ninny!" He muttered indignantly. He pushed Victor out of here, and began stomping on Lady Everglot's dress in the fire.

But Mr. and Mrs. Van Dort also joined them to urgently help Lady Everglot put out the fire, except for Pastor Galswells, who, wearily, closed the book and laid them on the table, slowly shaking his head and sighing softly in disbelief that Victor failed in the rehearsal case.

Van Dorts and Lord Everglot tried their best to put out the fire several times, but the fire was still burning. Finally, when someone poured red wine on the dress, when the fire was finally extinguished from the wine.
When all four old people began to wonder, and did not notice who did it. They tilted their heads, suddenly saw Barkis with the impression that he was noble holding an empty golden cup, since he himself extinguished the fire, threw the cup behind him, but the butler so often grabbed them by using a metal plate.

There was a brief silence.

The parents of two unmarried couples are constantly staring at him in surprise. It was then that they were interrupted by an angry Pastor Galswells, who approached them from the table.

"Enough! This wedding cannot take place until he is properly prepared!" He announced that Victor and Victoria's wedding would no longer take place when the clumsy man would rather spend only time training and learning vows without incident.

An annoyed pastor approached the frightened Victor, coldly glancing at him, he tired of Victor with his mistakes and confusion.

"Young man, learn your vows." Pastor Galswells spoke coldly.

Victor had no choice but to answer for his obedience, but he realized that he had seen his parents and Victoria's parents look at him with angry expressions of frustration, which he had deliberately ruined. For the time being, he walked back to the door behind him, quickly took the latch to open it, and frantically ran out of the drawing room so that no one in the rehearsal would see him.

"Well, he's quite the catch, isn't he?" Lord Barkis said, who he stared at with a shocked Victoria, who covered her hand to her mouth, with the unexpected impression she saw that Victor had awkwardly ruined the wedding rehearsal, and that gentle pale blue-skinned man smiled mercilessly at her.

And she frowned sadly at Victor with great apology and regret that he did not manage to prepare everything in the world to be attentive to tomorrow's wedding.