Chapter 6 - The Twenty-Foot Screen
The electric motor above the altar whirred to life with a low, mechanical hum.
The massive white projector screen began to descend slowly from the vaulted ceiling, dropping down directly behind the bishop, blocking out the grand stained-glass window with twenty feet of blank white canvas.
The entire sanctuary went dead silent.
"Julian," Eleanor hissed, taking two steps toward the altar stairs, her voice trembling with a terrifying mixture of fury and desperation. "Julian, stop her! Grab the remote!"
Julian snapped out of his trance. He lunged forward, reaching out with both hands to grab the small black device from my grip. "Claire, give me that!"
Before his fingers could touch my wrist, my father stepped up onto the altar platform.
My quiet, bookish librarian father did not hesitate. He stepped directly between Julian and me, planting his broad shoulders like a wall, placing one heavy hand flat against Julian’s chest, and shoving him back three feet with violent, decisive force.
"Touch my daughter again, Julian," my father said, his voice terrifyingly quiet, "and I will tear you apart in front of God and everybody in this room."
Julian stumbled back, catching himself against the carved wooden communion railing. His best man took a step away from him, completely stunned, raising his hands in surrender.
Above us, the high-definition ceiling projector hummed to life, throwing a bright, blinding beam of blue light across the dark sanctuary.
The screen flickered.
And then, in pristine 4K resolution, towering twenty feet high above the altar of Saint Jude's Episcopal Church, the interior of my bridal suite appeared.
The room was instantly recognizable to everyone in the audience: the light blue silk wallpaper, the brass valet rack, the bouquet of white roses sitting on the vanity table.
The timestamp in the bottom corner read: 11:14 AM.
Two hundred people held their breath simultaneously.
On the twenty-foot screen, the heavy oak door opened. Eleanor Vance stepped into the frame, carrying her heavy canvas tote bag, followed immediately by Julian in his tuxedo.
"Hurry up and lock it," Eleanor’s voice boomed through the church's multi-channel surround-sound speaker system, echoing off the stone walls with horrifying clarity.
In the front row, Eleanor Vance stopped breathing. Her hands slipped from the wooden pew railing, and she sank back into her seat as if she had been struck in the chest with an iron bar.
"Mother, this is insane," Julian’s recorded voice thundered overhead. "If she catches us—"
"She isn't going to catch us," Eleanor’s voice sneered from the speakers. "She’s at the bakery picking up the groom's cake. We have twenty minutes."
The video continued to play uninterrupted. Two hundred guests sat in absolute, paralyzed horror as they watched Eleanor pull out the red wine, the cold coffee, and the green bottle of bleach.
In the third row, the Mayor of Boston leaned back in his seat, his mouth hanging wide open. Beside him, two managing directors from the European investment acquisition group stared up at the screen with cold, disgusted expressions.
On screen, Eleanor pulled my mother’s ivory dress from the garment bag and threw it into the porcelain bathtub.
The sound of the red wine splashing across the pearl buttons echoed through the sanctuary like gunshots.
"If she finds out it was you..." Julian’s recorded voice pleaded weakly from the speakers.
"She won't," Eleanor’s recorded voice snapped back. "She will assume it was a bitter vendor, or an accident... She has no money, no connections, and her father is a retired librarian living on a fixed pension. She needs this marriage far more than you need her."
A sharp, collective gasp of pure outrage erupted from the pews. Several of my mother's former teaching colleagues in the middle rows began to cry aloud.
And then came the climax of the video.
On the twenty-foot screen, Eleanor pulled out the pearl-headed pin and the cream cardstock, scribbling four words in black ink. She pinned it through the lace and handed the green bottle of bleach to her son.
Julian took the bottle.
The camera captured his face in crystal-clear close-up. The small, dark, arrogant smile that touched his lips as he looked into the bathtub was visible to every single person in the church.
"She really thought she was going to outsmart you, didn't she?" Julian’s recorded voice boomed through the sanctuary speakers. "She actually believed I was going to give her fifty percent of the voting shares in the merger trust once we signed the registry today."
Julian stood on the altar platform, staring up at his own face on the twenty-foot screen, his skin completely drained of color. He looked as if he were going to vomit onto the altar rail.
"Turn it off!" Julian shrieked, turning toward the choir loft, his voice cracking into a high-pitched, pathetic scream. "Turn it off! Someone turn it off!"
Nobody moved. The organist sat frozen in his bench, his hands hovering over the keys, his eyes wide with horror as he watched the screen.
On screen, Julian tipped the bottle.
The sound of the caustic bleach pouring over my late mother's dress echoed through the church, followed by Eleanor’s low, satisfied laughter as they both turned off the bathroom light and walked out.
The video cut to black.
May you like
The projector beam faded.
The sanctuary of Saint Jude's fell into a silence so profound, so absolute, that you could hear the soft, rhythmic ticking of the brass clock on the choir loft wall.
