Horrific Shorts: Zombie Edition

The wedding dress was ripped, streaked with ash, and singed at the hem.

But it was white.

Or it had once been.

Now it was the color of war.

They found it in the ruins of the Willowgate Chapel—once a sacred sanctuary, now a scorched shell.

Tess spotted the gown first, pinned beneath a fallen beam in the bridal suite. The veil fluttered faintly, caught in a breeze that carried the scent of ash and roses long dead.

Milo reached for it.

"Don't," she warned.

"Why?"

"Because things that look beautiful here usually mean something horrible happened."

Still, they recovered the dress.

And beneath it, tucked inside a scorched suitcase, they found something stranger:

A gas mask.

Polished. Unused.

Modified with painted roses across the filter.

Straps hand-stitched with lace.

A name carved into the frame: "Eva."

And below that, in sharp, deliberate writing:

"I wore this on my wedding day. Not because I wanted to…

…but because I had to survive loving him."

Milo sat down hard.

Tess read the words again and again.

There was a story here, buried beneath fabric and filter.

A bride who'd walked down an aisle in poison air.

A wedding sealed in apocalypse.

A kiss behind filtered breath.

Later that night, Tess put on the gown.

It fit. Mostly.

The hem dragged. The corset sagged. But somehow, it clung to her like it remembered how it once held love.

Milo stared.

"Don't say it," she warned.

"I wasn't going to," he said, holding up his hands. "Just… never seen you like that."

"Like what?"

"Haunted."

She looked down at the soot on her chest, the way the veil hung like a ghost over her shoulder.

"Maybe I am."

He sat beside her.

"You think she survived?" he asked.

"Eva?"

"Yeah. The gas mask. The gown. She was ready."

Tess looked out across the remains of the city, glittering in fragments of moonlight.

"Maybe she survived the day. Maybe even the month. But no one wears a wedding dress in a gas mask because they're safe. She probably walked down that aisle knowing she'd never make it to an anniversary."

Milo leaned closer. "But she walked anyway."

They sat in silence for a long time.

The stars above them blinked, indifferent.

Somewhere below, the undead shuffled.

But up on that rooftop…

A girl in a burned gown and a boy with fire under his skin shared a moment that felt—

Human.

The next morning, Tess folded the gown and left it in the chapel, beside the gas mask, arranged like an offering.

She added a note.

"We found your armor, Eva. And we remember."

Because love in the apocalypse isn't always kisses or vows.

Sometimes, it's choosing to wear a dress when the world burns.

Sometimes, it's hiding your tears behind a mask just to say "I do."

And sometimes…

It's surviving the ceremony, even when the reception never comes.