The WORST wedding you can dream of.

The Red Wedding by Maurice Bay

A fictional short story.

⭕️ The Marine Biologist

She silently scans through the dinner menu, hoping that the couple would ‘do-the-right-thing’ in the midst of their wedding celebrations.

After all, it is well documented that sharks are poached cruelly for their fins before they are tossed back like garbage where they slowly ble*d to de*th.

She shakes her head in disbelief.

Shark’s fin soup was the second course and she briefly contemplated getting up and leaving.

The little amount that people cared filled her with disgust.

⭕️ The Vegan

Across her, sat a practicing vegan who gave up meat after he saw live drunken prawns skewered straight into boiling soup.

He was on a vegetarian menu at the wedding and noticed the increased agitation on the Marine Biologist’s face. This made him sick to the stomach.

Do all animals not have a right to live? Do we have to inflict so much pain on them?

And what is she on about shark’s fin. Don’t all animals matter?

Or do we only pick and choose the ones that do.

He shakes his head in disbelief.

As she avoided the shark’s fin and chewed on the shredded chicken slices and dried scallops, he felt his fists clench involuntarily.

The little amount that people cared filled him with disgust.

⭕️ The Waitress

At a neighbouring table, the new banquet waitress blushed with embarrassment as she fumbled whilst cutting the Hong Kong styled Soon Hock for the guests.

There wasn’t sufficient training for them to scoop the fish with the spoon and the fork but she did whatever she could for the dining guests.

Unfortunately as she serves one of the slices to an exquisitely dressed lady, the fish slips out of the spoon into her Chinese tea.

“CAN SOMEONE GET THIS GIRL REPLACED?”

The rich lady snaps as the manager comes to profusely apologise while demanding that the his newest staff member go to rear of the ballroom.

“I’m going to be fired again for sure!” She thought to herself, wondering how she was going to pay off her family’s snowballing debts.

The social worker assigned to their household had found her this token job where her brothers and her could barely pay a fraction of the liabilities their father had incurred.

“The government is useless. This trickle down economics only benefits the rich,” shaking her head defeatedly. “Look at all these people, having the time of their lives drinking away and eating decadently in the midst of an economic crisis.”

“While common folk like us,” looking down at the oversized leather shoes that she borrowed from her brother, “dread waking up in the morning every day. Fearful and terrified about how we can make ends meet.”

“Is this the Singapore that we know and love?”

She shakes her head in disbelief.

The company would write her a S$36 cheque the next morning and dismiss her with no hope in sight to meet their looming financial deadlines.

The little amount that people cared filled her with disgust.

⭕️ The Photographer

“Next table brothers please standby. Bride and groom look here. Everyone smile.” He reminisces bitterly while the photos are uploaded onto his MacBook.

It was 11PM at night and new footage about the w*r in Gaza was streaming into his phone.

While incessantly tapping the next button and reviewing the day’s photographs, he is suddenly filled with rage about the helplessness of his current situation.

“Innocent lives are t*ken in Gaza while I’m simply sat here editing photos,” he declared. “Is there nothing more I can do?”

“Is there nothing more that the community can do while my brothers are being sla*n on the field?”

“IS THERE NOTHING MORE THAT OUR GOVERNMENT CAN DO WHILE G3NOClDE IS HAPPENING DAILY?” slumping into his chair.

He shakes his head in disbelief.

All of us partying and acting like nothing is happening when crimes are committed on a daily basis. And all we have is a free PaIestine hashtag.

The little amount that people cared filled him with disgust.

⭕️ The Journalist

The groom looked across the bed to see his newly-wed wife contorted and passed out in an incredibly awkward position. He flicked on his phone and received a notification from The New York Times that there was widespread famine in Gaza as the Israeli forces move in to contain Hamas. He cringes at the term ‘widespread famine’.

“Congratulations on your wedding brother,” he spots a message coming through at 12:09AM. It was from a Tigrayan guide who had taken him through the war torn Ethiopia and Tigray region back in 2023. “Thank you how are you my man?” He texted back.

“We are fine. We will find a way,” came his same defiant response.

Palestine had seen d eath tolls of tens of thousands. His hometown of Tigray had seen ethnic cIeansing in the hundreds of thousands, one of the d*adliest conflicts in recent history.

S*xual v*oIence was rampant and widespread famine was threatening the lives of another hundreds of thousands.

“Just because they live in a sh*thoIe region in the world doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve any attention or aid,” the journalist thought angrily.

“Are they not human beings too? Don’t they deserve the right to live? To fend for themselves? Are African lives less valuable than Palestinians?”

Do we only care about the Middle East because of our own selfish agendas and profits? Is this not a bono fide eth nic-cleansing-g*nocide in Africa that is ongoing while the world turns away?

He shakes his head in disbelief.

It doesn’t matter how many articles I put on CNA about the Ethiopian-Tigray crisis. Nobody cares.

The little amount that people cared filled him with disgust.

The End. 🎬

The writer wishes to express that it is a beautiful thing to not be apathetic about all these issues.

Only the nice, wonderful people care enough to express themselves about pressing issues and causes that they believe in.

But expecting everyone to fall in line with the same agenda is an endlessly uphill task and one should not be too discouraged if people don’t care.

Just my two cents.