TODAY WAS the wedding. Noel could feel it in the air, in his mom's flushed and bright face, in the presence of relatives he only saw once a year exiting and entering his house, in Cheryl's brooding disposition.

She had pulled him into the bathroom, the only room in the house that wasn't occupied by crumpled bridesmaid dresses and charcoal face masks.

"What's the plan?"

"Plan? There is no plan. My mom is getting married today."

"Noel-"

"There's nothing to talk about." Noel stated firmly, yet he couldn't look Cheryl in the eyes.

Cheryl stood there in the bathroom for a moment, as if she was waiting for something, anything, to change, but Noel's expression remained fiercely determined resulting in a large exaggerated sigh to leave her lips. "I'm going."

"Going where?"

"To meet with Todd."

"I thought you broke up with him."

"What gave you that idea?" And Noel thought to the warbled phone call Cheryl had with Myron back in Wood Acre, he was pretty sure Myron told him Cheryl wanted to get back together with him.

"Nothing."

"Come on the least you could do is tell me."

"When you called Myron, he said you were distressed-"

Cheryl then let out an incomprehensible strangled noise, she looked past at Noel, her eyes on the rows and rows of expensive acne products. "It was a moment of weakness. Temporary insanity." Her voice was small, muted. "Todd is good for me."

"A person shouldn't be good for you, you should be good for yourself." Noel breathed out slowly, although Cheryl didn't meet his eyes, Noel looked straight at her.

"I don't even know what that means." Cheryl looked at the acne products again, salicylic acid, hydroquinone, benzoyl peroxide, alpha hydroxy acids, sulfur. "I'm sorry for what I did the first day I came here, I deserved to have those bottles thrown at me."

"I forgot."

"You don't forget things like that." Then they're eyes met, Noel found it uncomfortable, stark, way too real for their status with each other, but it felt needed and when he had left the bathroom, with a stuttering heart and a placid expression, he thought Cheryl wasn't too bad at all.

----

"Oh Noel!"

"Good morning, Aunt Yoko." Noel smiled wanly at his mom's sister, ever since she had swanned through his doors she was acting as if this was her wedding, she had snapped up Noel's mom and had locked her up in the master bedroom, nothing but dresses and makeup and chaotic bridesmaids were allowed to enter, Noel hadn't seen his mom all day.

"The groom was looking for you."

"What? Ron?"

"Yes, he should be outside I think." Then Yoko turned away from Noel and slipped into the turbulent master bedroom, her long elaborated braid swinging as she bounced away.

Noel despondently dragged his feet outside. The first thing that hit him was smoke, thick and heady, it's plumes fogging up the air and choking Noel's throat, it came from Ron's cigarette, dangling lazily from his taut lips. He stood with his back against the Jeep parked in the driveway, clothed in a wrinkled shirt and navy slacks. He surveyed Noel with a slight quirk to his lips, a rancid gleam in his eye.

"Noel."

"What do you want?" The smoke was bothering Noel, the air was too humid and sticky, or that might have been his skin burning up from the inside, he wasn't sure.

"We should talk, stepfather to stepson." Then Ron opened the car door swiftly, slipping in front of the steering wheel and staring Noel down with his pondwater eyes. Somehow, Noel knew this wasn't a suggestion, but a demand.

He was about to walk to the backseat but Ron clacked his lips loudly, using his eyes to motion to the passenger seat next to him, Noel slid in their wordlessly, keeping his gaze on his lap.

The car began to lurch forward, screeching asphalt on tarmac roads. Ron wound down the windows on both sides and spat his cigarette out aggressively, once done he wound it back up, a potent smirk on his lips.

"Do you know my problem Noel?"

Noel opted to stay quiet, his heart was pounding in his chest, blood rushing to his ears and cheeks.

"I was in an unhappy marriage for many, many years, the only good thing that came out of it was Cheryl being born." Ron began to wind down the windows again, in doing so Noel noticed that his side of the car door was unlocked, he mentally made a subconscious note on that.

"Do you know why the marriage was unhappy? Well Rose, my ex wife, she wasn't perfect. Her hair was too long, her smiles were too fake, her clothes were too cheap. Imperfect things anger me, they're like an impossible itch that's difficult to scratch." Ron wound the windows up again, he scratched his chin, one hand resting on the steering wheel lazily.

"You're probably thinking, 'you're not perfect'". Then Ron let out a cynical, dry laugh, Noel wasn't thinking anything.

"Of course I'm not perfect, that's the gist, that's the point. Imperfect people need perfect things, and that's when I found Kim. Her hair, her eyes, her smile, simply perfect." Ron's tone was light, lovestruck even, but then his voice turned horribly menacing. "But then she came with baggage."

He grabbed at Noel's arm with one hand, revealing a small pocket knife taped to the inside of his sleeve, he danced it across Noel's pale skin, lightly skimming it across the flesh. "Baggage in the form of you." Ron clacked his lips again, his mouth turning into a putrid snarl.

"You are imperfection in its truest form, a disgusting face, rife with disease and bacteria, a horrid lingering smell, a horrid personality." Ron dug the knife into Noel's skin, blood pooled out and dripped across his arm slowly. Noel tried to snatch his arm away but Ron's grip was tight and firm.

"You were a bad presence, ugly in your demeanor, ugly in your speech, ugly in the way you behaved towards my daughter and Kim." He glided the knife across Noel's skin effortlessly, Ron's voice began to pick up in anger.

"I was supposed to move on. I was supposed to be happy. I was supposed to have the perfect family." Noel swore he could feel nothing, but the trembling of his body and tears building up in his eyes stated otherwise.

"No matter what my father says, if I can never be perfect myself, I will achieve perfection from somewhere else!" The knife suddenly dove deep into Noel's arm and he let out a strangled cry.

"P-please." He breathed in a futile effort to numb the sudden excruciating pain, yet Ron continued his manic verbose.

"You!" Dig.

"You!" Ron's other hand left the steering wheel and joined the placement of the knife, as he spoke, he spat at Noel in the face, slimy and cold.

"You! Were exactly like me. Imperfect, and I hated it."

The next events was a blur, a blur of a massive lorry hurtling its way down into a car with no driver, a blur of Noel finding a sudden insurgence of power and nudging his right elbow to open the car door on the passenger side, leaving him flung into a sticky mossy bush, the taste of his own blood raw on his lips. A blur of a sickening impact, a smash, a collision, a crash.

Then flames.

Large and unkempt, unruly and chaotic, the Jeep erupted out of nowhere, and with that Ron's spirit perished and anarchy reigned in the form of a distraught shaken lorry driver, panic stricken civilians and 911,

911.

"Hello what's the emergency?"

"There's just been a car crash-"