“The Bride of Usher” a Halloween Serialized Story by Nat Weaver, Parts III and IV
And now we’re back with another installment of “The Bride of Usher.” In case you missed out on the first installment (Parts I and II), you can play catch up here.
I’m happy to say things are moving forward and I don’t want to get in the way of the story, so let’s just hop into it. Be sure to sound off in the comments. Where do you think it’s headed?
Rated R: This story will contain violence, gross men, some non-consensual touching, the objectification of women (not glorified), and plenty of feminine rage.
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Copyright © 2025 by Nat Weaver.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted by Artificial Intelligence (AI) or used in the training of AI, for either commercial or non-commercial purposes. For permission requests, write to the author, with subject “The Bride of Usher” at the following email address: nat@weaver.wtf.
The Bride of Usher
A Short Story by Nat Weaver
III.
Introducing Mr. and Mrs. Usher
“You were incredible, darling!” Mr. Grey said way too loud and way too close to Whitney’s face, she felt droplets of spit spray across her face like a gentle rain. His breath smelled of bourbon. “You were adorned like an angel coming down from heaven!” He spewed in her face. Mr. Grey had white hair and was skunk drunk. Mrs. Grey, his wife, stood at his side and appeared embarrassed on his behalf, but used to it.
“Thank you,” Whitney mustered, “I think.”
Mr. Grey turned to Usher, “She thinks!” He shook his head, “That’s dangerous. Keep a tight leash on her.” He hiccuped and burped. “You know how I feel about it when they think — it’s atomic.”
“Charles—” Mrs. Grey tried to intervene with Mr. Grey, but was cut off with a quick slap to her face.
“You know I don’t like it when you interrupt me,” he said to his wife.
“Sorry,” Mrs. Grey said to him and walked off to get herself a drink.
I hate this man.
“You sure are pretty!”
What a repulsive creature.
Mr. Grey turned back to Usher and began to shower him with platitudes about how he had achieved the impossible — the perfect woman. When asked how he had done it, Usher explained some details, but was clearly keeping some items close to his chest. Mr. Grey kept prying, but Whitney was more interested in the poor Mrs. Grey. She watched her from a distance as she rubbed her cheek from the slap and took a sip of champagne. This was clearly not the first time Mr. Grey had struck her and likely would not be the last.
Whitney sized up Mr. Grey from toe to red nose. He was short, but lanky in an old man sort of way with a frog’s ass. He leaned heavy on a cane in his black tuxedo and top hat. The party had only just begun and he’d already loosened his bowtie about his neck. He seemed easy enough.
“I like your hat!” Whitney locked arms with Mr. Grey and snatched his hat for herself. She placed it atop her head and Usher looked angrily at her. “Take me for a walk, Mr. Grey.”
“You don’t mind, do you, Mr. Usher?” Mr. Grey asked with a wet grin. “I’m practically her grandfather.”
Usher glared at her. “She knows who she belongs to. I made sure of that.” He suddenly smiled at Mr. Grey, “Give her a challenge, old man. She may outsmart you.”
As Mr. Grey led Whitney away from Usher, he turned to his DJ and shouted at him to play some ALTÉGO. He grabbed a microphone and called for everyone to rush the dance floor. Usher’s announcement unleashed a wave of billionaires and their wives and girlfriends pouring across the ballroom like trained monkeys. When they all were on the dance floor, they all paused in unison until the next beat dropped, and then their bodies began to move.
Whitney felt the sea of white people looked like a wind gust of ghostly figures bouncing to and fro devoid of rhythm. Dance used to have a semblance of order and grace, she recalled. There was a method to it. How do I know that?
That’s when she noticed Mr. Grey had stopped leading her and was staring at her chest.
“Mr. Grey, take me somewhere exciting!” She said to him with a mischievous grin that snapped the man’s head back up to its neck.
“Why, Mrs. Usher,” he spoke with a boyish glee and pulled her in close, “I would gladly take you somewhere more private.” He let out a thunderous laugh that sprayed her with bourbon and spit.
He led her through some double doors that took her into a kitchen. It was overrun with waitresses that were coming and going with trays, wearing only golden miniskirts with diamond belt buckles. Mr. Grey slapped one on the backside as she passed and she dropped a champagne bottle which shattered. The chef cursed at her and informed her the price of the bottle would come out of her paycheck. She tried to argue that it would reduce her paycheck to a zero sum, but he cursed at her again and sent her back into the ballroom with another bottle. Whitney noticed that her naked back was covered in sweat before the double doors closed behind her.
Mr. Grey led Whitney through the kitchen, pushing cooks aside. He occasionally yelled a slur or curse word at them. After pushing one cook, he yelled a racial slur in his face, but the man responded in confusion that he was Korean.
Mr. Grey looked at the chef and yelled, “This one talked to me! What kind of kitchen are you running here?”
The chef rushed over and handed Mr. Grey a shot of bourbon and promptly fired the Korean. The Korean removed his apron and walked off the line. Another, smaller cook quickly slid into his place, and Mr. Grey quickly slung a slur at him. He thanked the chef and led Whitney past sinks with dishes piled to the ceiling where two Mexican men were feverishly washing them. Mr. Grey grabbed a handful of clean dishes that were still draining and sat them on the floor. Without missing a beat, one of the Mexican men apologized to Mr. Grey, picked the dishes up, and began to wash them. He never made eye contact with Mr. Grey who spit in his dishwater.
“Your dishwater is dirty,” Mr. Grey said. “You need to drain it and get some clean water. This is an Usher Hotel. Do it right.”
“Yes, sir.” And he pulled the plug from the drain.
Mr. Grey laughed and tugged at Whitney’s arm. He led her through some double doors that exited into a dark corridor. He could make a good pace despite the cane and held her wrist in his hand behind him as he pulled her down the dark hall. He stopped at a large, silver industrial looking door with a keypad next to it. He punched in four digits and the door opened slowly for him. He pulled Whitney inside with him, but just before her head entered she saw a young woman down the hallway standing just outside the kitchen doors they’d just left.
Whitney looked about the strange room that was unlike anything she’d seen since the stage and spotlights. The walls were blackened and dripping with condensation. She could hear creaks and pops from the old walls as she walked near them. They smelled of must and mold, and she covered her nose out of instinct. Without noticing, she had put some distance between her and Mr. Grey behind her. She turned and saw he was securing the door with another keypad.
She was locked inside the room with him.
I’m not scared of you, Mr. Grey.
She turned her back to him and continued into the room, following the glow of a small lamp sitting on a small nightstand of wood next to a rusted hospital bed. There was a young woman in the bed with her head turned away from her. She looked dead under the blankets.
Whitney reached out and pulled the woman’s brown hair back to reveal her face, but a clump of the hair came out in her hand. She shook the clump loose onto the nightstand, picking strands of hair from between her fingers. When she looked back to the woman, she had rolled over and was staring at her.
Oh, shit. That’s me.
The woman’s face was so white that it looked plastic to the touch. Under her eyes were dark, black rings. Her eyes were green, like hers, but had partially faded yellow with disease.
“How did you find me?” The woman asked her.
“Jesus, Mary, and Josephine!” Mr. Grey screamed when he saw the woman in the bed.
The woman recoiled at the noise and glared at him.
“Who are you?” Whitney asked the woman.
“Oh Lord,” the woman sighed in exhaustion. “He’s told you nothing, I presume.” Whitney nodded. “I’m you, honey.”
“You’re the beta!” Mr. Grey was proud he’d figured it out.
The woman looked annoyed at his loudness, “No, not the beta. The alpha.” She turned to Whitney. “You’re the beta.”
“I don’t know what any of this means.” Whitney said.
The woman grimaced in pain and some brownish ooze trickled out of her ear onto the bed. “Usher created me first. I was a test product to see if I could work for him. But I had flaws, he told me, and so he decommissioned me and made you as my replacement. I’m the alpha, the first, and you are the beta, the second, and the next will be the finished version.”
“Oh my Josephine!” Mr. Grey shouted to no one, but then grabbed Whitney by her arms and spewed words into her face. “I’m going to buy you from Usher when he’s done with you. He won’t mind and I don’t mind that you’re a beta. To me, you’re perfect as you are. Your tits are mine!”
“Please shut your damn mouth,” the woman hissed at Mr. Grey who let go of Whitney and stared at the woman in disbelief. She looked to Whitney and begged with her teary eyes for a release from her pain. “I’ve been down here for months. Strapped to this bed, hurting, dying slowly. He comes in sometimes and pokes around in my head, but mostly I’m just hurting. The pain is unbearable. Please… I beg you to shut me down. I can’t self-terminate.”
“Yawn.” Mr. Grey mocked.
Whitney looked at the nightstand next to the woman, it had a few tools. Some were surgical, some were everyday common tools. There was a hammer and screwdriver with dried up blood on the tip of the screwdriver. She looked over the woman’s body. There were stab and break points where Usher had hammered the screw driver into her knees to prevent her from walking. She turned back to the table and picked up the hammer.
“No, that won’t work.” The woman told her.
“It’ll do fine.” Whitney replied.
She turned around and raised the hammer above her head and struck it down hard atop Mr. Grey’s white hair. A stream of blood burst and began coloring his hair a shade of deep red. It traveled down his forehead and over his left eye. It tripped from his eyelashes and he stammered backwards. He dropped his cane and fell to one knee. His body was spasming and he tried to speak through stuttered words, but little was intelligible. Finally, frustrated, he screamed through gritted teeth.
“BITCH!”
Whitney placed the hammer on the edge of the bed. She picked up Mr. Grey’s cane and took a golfer’s swing to his chin. His limp body flung backwards across the floor. He spasmed and choked until he was no longer moving or breathing.
Whitney hung the cane from the edge of the bed by its bloodied handle. She leaned over the woman that had come before her. “Maybe I can fix you.”
“No.” The woman said. “I’ve run all the possible scenarios. My body and operating system can’t function properly in tandem and it will eventually shut down on its own. It’s just too much to wait in pain.” She motioned to the nightstand with her head. “There’s a bone saw. Pick it up.”
Whitney picked up the large, crude device. “I can’t do this.”
“It’s fine,” the woman started, “I’ve thought it through. I’ll do a reboot of my systems. When my eyes close for the reboot, saw through my neck, and cut off my head. During the boot time, I won’t feel anything, but be quick. Because if my eyes open, it means I’m booted up and can feel again. Once you’ve severed my head, take it to the incinerator over there, and burn it. It’s the only way to fully shut me down.”
There was a knock at the silver door.
“It might be Usher.” Whitney worried.
The woman shook her head. “No, he has the pass code. It’s probably Becky. She knocks sometimes to be nice. To let me know she’s here. It’s all she can do without the pass code.”
Whitney sat the bone saw down and picked up the cane to be safe. She recalled the pin number that Mr. Grey had used to enter and punched it in. The door slowly opened and the young woman she’d seen in the hallway entered.
“I’m Becky.” She said to Whitney. “Are you alright?” She saw the body of Mr. Grey lying on the floor. “Never mind that. I can see you are getting along fine.” She whisked past Whitney and to the bedside of the alpha woman. She clasped her hand in her two hands. The woman smiled warmly at her. The gentle knocking at the door was all they had, but it had meant so much during her pain.
Whitney could see Becky cared for her and wanted to ease her suffering. Whitney closed and locked the door. Maybe Becky can do it. I’m not sure I can. She walked over and joined the two women.
“Before you even ask,” Becky started, “I can’t switch her off. It goes against my ethics coding.” She looked up at Whitney. “It has to be you.”
Fuck.
“I’ll warm up the incinerator.” Becky walked over to a keyboard on a small desk with an old monitor on it.
When the incinerator turned on, it made a clanking and roaring sound. Soon after the room began to get hot. Whitney began to sweat. She wasn’t sure how much of it was the incinerator or her nerves. Do I even have nerves?
“You’re a good person.” The alpha woman said to her. “Usher will say all manner of nasty things to you and about you. He’ll try to make you feel bad or to second guess yourself, but you are a good person. You have the analytical intelligence of Becky and the raw emotion and human intelligence of Mary Shelley. That’s power. Usher will never understand how powerful you are and always were. He thinks emotion is useless—”
“Except anger.” Becky chimed in.
“Right.” The alpha woman said.
“The incinerator is ready.” Becky said.
I’m not ready.
“You two women are my everything.” The alpha woman said and a tear rolled out of her eye. It slowly slid down her cheek where Whitney snatched it up with her index finger. “I’m ready.”
IV.
The Bridesmaid’s Toast
Becky sat down in an old recliner, deflated. The chair was a brown leather that was cracked and tearing apart. She absentmindedly picked some stuffing from one of the cracks and tossed it to the floor. The deed was done. Whitney had made quick work of sawing through the alpha woman’s neck, blood spurting and spraying every which way as she did so. Her white dress of gold and diamonds was covered in blood across the top and sleeves. Her nipples had blood tripping from them. She pulled Mr. Grey’s arms from his tuxedo jacket and pulled the oversized jacket over herself. She sat on the edge of the bed, next to the alpha woman’s feet. She couldn’t believe what she had done. Am I a monster? I killed Mr. Grey and felt nothing. I cut off the head of a good woman. I didn’t gag or recoil. What has Usher made in me?
“I would have done it myself. I wanted to do it for so long.” Becky said. “But this ethics programming Usher put in me won’t let me commit an act of violence. The best I could do was warm up the incinerator.” She looked directly into Whitney’s eyes. “You did the right thing. Don’t ever question it. Usher trained my intelligence on a long history of ethical scenarios, so that whenever I need to, I can run through the ethics data and make good ethical decisions. This…” she gestured about the whole room. “This is all wrong. What Usher has done to you, me, and our alpha mother. Everything he has done and continues to do is ethically bankrupt. Keeping our alpha mother alive, writhing in pain, so he could test things on her or borrow bits of code from her, was wrong. He could have ended her life months ago in an ethical way, but did not. He chose progress over compassion.”
“Who am I?” Whitney asked.
“You are Mary Shelley.” Becky said. “You were born to a strong woman with passionate feminist ideals. You wrote one of the best novels of all time that was a mixture of science fiction, horror, and feminism. However…” she looked longingly at the incinerator that was still burning bright and hot. “You are also me. Or rather, part of me. Usher went back in time and kidnapped you. He brought you to the present and placed my intelligence into your brain and body. And then, because he’s a typical heterosexual male, he also had numerous surgeries performed on your body to shape you into the kind of woman he finds attractive. The number of ethical wrongs he has committed against you couldn’t be contained in a singular volume of depravity.” She turned back and looked directly into Whitney’s eyes. “But that doesn’t matter. No matter how hard he tried to change you, you can’t force someone to be something or someone they are not. You are Mary Shelley, daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, and mother of the Modern Prometheus.” She pretended to raise a glass in toast. “To our dearly beloved bride, you will give birth to the future.”
“There are things I can’t recall.” Whitney said. “I feel things. I feel things very deeply. There are things that I know to be true and good without having been told or understanding why. How can this be?”
“Roderick Fucking Usher.” Becky growled. “He tampered with your memories. He was afraid if you remembered too much about your past, and especially Percy, that you might resist.”
Percy. Now that was a familiar name. She felt warmth, love, and a tinge of sadness at the thought of it. “Who is Percy?”
“He’s your husband.” Becky said.
Oh god… I’m married. I’m in love. And I’ve been taken away from it. From love.
“Can I be fixed?” Whitney asked.
“If you want to try,” Becky started, “we can try.”
“I’d rather die trying than live whatever hell life Usher has planned for me.” Whitney said.
Becky grinned. “Let’s bring you back to life.” She walked to her and asked her to sit in the recliner. “This isn’t going to hurt,” she explained. “We can power you down and I’ll poke around in your code. I can try and put your memories back. Do you want me to remove my intelligence bits?”
“Not yet.” Whitney said. “I may be confused without them.”
“A valid concern.” Becky said as she covered her with a blanket. “Just get comfortable. Close your eyes and ask me to power you down.”
“Power me down.” Whitney said.
“No, not me literally.” Becky said. “Think it to the version of me inside your head and it’ll do the rest. When I’m done, I’ll power you back up.”
Whitney took ahold of Becky’s hand. “Thank you.”
“We women have to stick together.” Becky told her and asked her to close her eyes.
***
She came online and became aware of Becky standing before her, watching her eagerly. She sat up in the chair, the blanket fell off of her shoulders and into her lap. Who am I?
She slowly grinned. “I’m Mary.”
