Just One Kiss?

She is beautiful. Almost too beautiful. The peace of her slumber transforms her into an otherworldly being. She is a goddess. And she is everything Dave Charming has ever, ever wanted. She is all he has ever dreamt about. This woman has visited him in his dreams. She has haunted him in every moment of his life, both sleeping and wakeful. She has invaded every fibre of his being until there’s nothing left but the desire to be with her.

Forever and ever. 

Happily ever after.

They are one.

This is Dave’s destiny.

He has given everything he has to find her and be here in this moment. 

This is the culmination of all his efforts. He has fought the good fight with every single breath and now, at last, he has his prize.

He gazes upon Ella White and his eyes sparkle like the glass baubles on a Christmas tree. Flames flicker this way and that. His passion for this woman is self-evident. He has arrived, and the end is nigh.

This is where Dave Charming really begins.

This is when it will all make sense at last.

*

Dave Charming had a good start to his life. The very best of starts. He was a product of a fierce and pure love that knew no bounds. His mother was a romantic and she found the man of her dreams against all the odds. In a world where all the good men were taken or had gone into hiding, she walked into a supermarket, of all places, and the rest was history.

The problem was that her dreamboat had history of his own, and a lot of it.

When she broke the news of the product of their joyous union, Dave’s mother was confronted with the dark and sordid reality of her situation. There was no man before her, only her own dream, reflected back at her. Behind the mirror there was nothing. She didn’t even see him walk away. It were as though he were a vampiric mist, and having taken everything from her, the mist drifted on to feed elsewhere.

Even so, Dave’s mum didn’t give up. She tried, and she did her best, but she was broken beyond repair. Truth was that she was broken well before her dreams were stolen from her. People like the mirror man preyed on vulnerable people like her. Damaged and fragile people like her were rich pickings, and they never saw it coming. No one ever saw it coming, but they liked to think that they would. 

For the first three years of Dave’s life, his mum did everything she could to build a life for the both of them, but in the end, it all got too much. Some would say that Dave got too much, but he never saw it like that. Maybe he should have. 

Dave was found on the doorstep of the local orphanage. Too big to be left in a basket of reeds, he was discovered sitting there. In one hand he held his blanky, a threadbare and dirty piece of material that comforted him in times of stress. That unhygienic scrap of germs was duly removed and he never saw it again. In his other hand was a well-thumbed copy of a legendary tale. This he was allowed to keep. Dave’s only memory of his mother was her reading this book to him over and over again. She cried when she read it. Sometimes, she couldn’t get through to the end.

“Never give up on your dreams, Davey,” she would tell him, “those dreams are your life. They are your destiny.”

Dave could no longer remember his own mother’s face, but he remembered those words and every single word of the tale she had read to him.

He also remembered the pain of loss and the hungry hole that abandonment had created within him. 

He never tried to find his mother after he left the orphanage and entered the world alone. He knew from the day she had left him that there would be no one left to find. The mirror man really had taken everything from her, and once she let go of Dave she floated away on the breeze, up and away to a better, kinder place.

*

The only thing that ruins the moment – his moment – is the infernal beeping of the machine by her bedside. Dave pulls away the wires that connect the object of his desire to a machine. That attachment to a corrupt and twisted reality is all wrong and he has to put an end to it. But instead of the nauseating pulse of the machine’s breathing ceasing, the machine now screams a warning. 

“No!” gasps Dave.

He shakes with rage and frustration. This intrusion is too much. This poisonous, narcissistic modern world is no place for his love. She deserves better. She is better. In a bitter frenzy, he tears at the screaming beast’s tendrils, seeking to silence it, but his efforts make no difference, if anything, the screams intensify and Dave knows that the alarm call must be responded to. He has fought all his life for this moment. Patiently, he has bided his time and swallowed back the frustrations that his quest laid upon him again and again. He endured, because he had a cast-iron certainty that this day would come. 

There was nothing else.

There could be nothing else.

He lifts the machine high above his head. His arms judder beneath the weight of the wailing beast, but Dave does not feel the weight of it. He has tackled fiercer monsters than this. He has prevailed again and again. Shifting the protesting lump backwards, he almost overbalances, but then he thrusts his arms forwards and dashes the thing against the far wall. The sound of its destruction is satisfying and Dave savours the sight of the fruits of his labours for a moment, the silent aftermath soothing his tortured and nervous soul. But then he hears shouts and the worrying rhythm of rapid footfalls. There is no time to waste. Hastily, he returns his attentions to his beauty.

Stepping forth to be at her side, he tenderly caresses her face with his hand, “I’ve waited a lifetime for this,” he whispers softly.

Then he does the one thing he knows he must do.

He kisses her. 

The kiss is chaste, but there is passion behind it all the same. He sighs as their lips meet and he has an overwhelming urge to cry. He fights that urge, fearing that he would crumble into nothingness were he to give in to it. He holds himself together and savours the culmination of all of his efforts.

It is done.

He stands up and waits for the magic to happen. 

He stands, and he waits. Barely attending to the bangs on the door behind him. He’s heard worse. They won’t get in. Not yet anyway.

His brow creases in consternation as his beauty lays stock still. She should have awakened by now, he thinks, and just as he is about to lean over her, her eyes flash open. 

But those eyes are all wrong. There is no peace in them. No serenity. This is not the look that Dave was expecting. Now he’s not sure exactly what he was expecting. Gratitude? Love? Joy? Maybe all those things, or perhaps none of them. He realises that what he wanted was a promise in that first look. The promise of a connection. But there is none of that here.

Her eyes widen in a look of abject horror and her back arches. She lets out a low, ragged breath. The air escaping her lungs is a lava flow of sharp edged glass and it hurts Dave to hear it. Worse is yet to come, though. As the last of that tortured breath leaves his beauty’s body, she goes slack and the light in her eyes goes out. 

Her light goes out, and Dave is left alone all over again.

“No!” hisses Dave, “no you don’t! Don’t you dare! You can’t do this!”

He’s been cheated one time too many already. Abandoned and cast aside. Buffeted from the feasting hall by the callous hand of a cruel world. Enough is enough! Without thinking, he leans over the prone figure of his destined true love and he breathes life back into her lungs. He gives her everything he has, because he is nothing without this woman. He will do anything to rouse her and help her live again.

Anything.

She’s his everything and there is nothing else. Without her he’s just another abandoned orphan who has never experienced the enlivening warmth of true love.

He breaths another breath of life into her, willing her to awaken. Urging her to live. Wanting her to be here with every fibre of his being. Desperate for that connection. Reaching out across the chasm that separates this life and the next. Daring to dream.