Today is supposed to be the happiest day of my life. It's my wedding day. In one, short hour, I'll be standing across from the man I love saying my vows and pledging myself to him until death envelops me in its cold embrace, but if my life were filled with warmth and love until then, then I don't think it will be too bad. I'll be content. In one short hour...

I look into the floor length mirror and admire my dress. It was my mother's wedding dress before she died and fits like a glove on me, like it was meant for me on this day. The white lace and full skirt makes it look elegant. It's the dress I imagined wearing as a little girl when I had fantasies of this day. My hair cascades down my shoulders in soft curls and my makeup is flawless. Mother would say I look like an angel.

The room I'm in grows cold as I mourn my mother not being here. I miss her so much. Forty minutes until a perfect, happy life. In forty minutes, the sting of sadness will never overcome me again.

I here wedding music begin to play. It's odd, the wedding doesn't start for forty minutes. Their just running the last walk-through, I think...

Now I hear the minister begin to speak "We are gathered here today..." and curiosity creeps over me. Slowly, I make my way to the great hall where our ceremony is supposed to be held. Then I hear my beloved's voice begin to recite his vows. Panic consumes me and I begin to run. Thirty minutes until my wedding and the happiest moment of my life...

My feet are pounding on the carpeted floor, the sound is muffled. Rounding the corner I see a ghastly sight before me. It's a grand, beautiful wedding ceremony. My beloved is at the altar with a woman that looks like an angel in a wedding gown I imagined as a child. Her hair cascades softly down her shoulders and her makeup is flawless. She looks like an angel. She isn't me though. She is an intruder upon my happiest day. Twenty minutes until my wedding...

I'm frozen where I stand. My feet are glued to the floor and I feel as if I was slowly sinking into a pit of quicksand. He's marrying the wrong girl. He's marrying my twin. I flashback to the night my mother died. She'd been sickly for a while and diligently I had cared for her. My sister offered to relieve me of my post for a while and grateful for the opportunity, I allowed her. After I rested a little, I returned to care for my mother. The door to her room was ajar and I looked in. I saw my sister poisoning my mother and watched in fear as the life slowly faded from her eyes. My sister was locked away, how she escaped I don't know. I look at my future husband, he must not know that she isn't me my mind screams. I must stop this before it's too late, I must save my beloved. Ten more minutes until my wedding...

I begin to rush forward but then the most heart wrenching words leave his lips. He says her name and smiles. He knows she isn't me, yet he's still going to marry her. A gasp of horror escapes me as they kiss and seal the marriage. They turn to me hand in hand and smile.

All my nightmares and fears come rushing back. My world bleeds of color as the clock chimes five. This was when my wedding was supposed to start. There's not anymore time. I feel the earth crumble beneath me and am stuck floating in a vast expanse of darkness. I'm living one of my nightmares. With tears streaming down my face, I fight my way out of the darkness and away from these people who betrayed me. The cold fingers of death now seem welcoming to me. I stumble out of the hall and up the stairs of what was once a beautiful church, but now seems a heartless prison to me.

I climb flights and flights of stairs, blinded by the red hot tears that are streaming down my face and crash through the glass of the clock tower. I'm plummeting to the ground I realize and think of what my mother would say if she saw this sight, a beautiful bride in white with cascading hair and flawless makeup falling from the sky. "Why, she looks like an angel" she'd exclaim.

I'm filled with thoughts of my mother and the betrayal that has befallen me as the ground steadily looms closer and closer. It is in the last seconds before I make contact with the earth that I realize that death isn't cold like I once thought, but rather warm and inviting. It is life that embraces a person in coldness in pain. With that last thought, I am content.

Today was supposed to be my happiest day, and it is. It is the day I realized the truth of life and death. In death I have found my happiness because I'm spared from life's pain. It's five-twenty now. I should be walking down the marble steps of the church with the people I care for surrounding me throwing rice and wishing well as me and my husband run hand in hand to the waiting car that would take us to our life. Instead, I'm laying on the ground and with the last moment of my life I here a child ask their mother "Mommy, is she a fallen angel" as his or her mother shrieks hysterically. I smile and the last thing to cross my mind before I'm carried by the tide of death is "Yes I am".