Graffiti on a Wedding Dress
I have lived my whole life in Brooklyn and very rarely have I gone into Manhattan. All that traffic and all those tourists just to see some buildings that are a little bigger than what I have on my side of the river. I never really thought it worth the hassle. But when I announced my engagement and began the hunt for the perfect wedding dress, my maid of honor dragged me across all the boroughs, including Manhattan. So it’s really thanks to her that I ever met Percy Maelock in the first place.
It had been a long day before Percy Maelock ever became a part of it. We had already seen four bridal shops in three boroughs. I was exhausted and more than ready to just call it a day. Nothing I’d tried on so far had been even close to perfect and I was one bad design away from throwing in the towel and walking down the aisle in a pair of jeans. But my maid of honor wouldn’t put up with any quitter’s talk, so we pressed on to our fifth and final appointment of the day.
As much as I was dreading it, this last shop had actually been a godsend in so many ways. It only took two dresses for me to fall completely in love. It had the perfect neckline, perfect slit, perfect everything. I even started to cry the moment I saw myself in the mirror. The attendant pop some champagne and scurried off to find the "I Said Yes to the Dress” sign for the obligatory photo-op. And just as I was about to declare the day a perfect success, in walked Percy Maelock. Well, more fell in than walked, really.
He was covered head-to-toe in paint. It =looked like he had been viciously attacked by a barrage of paintballs, leaving him an obnoxious representation of the color wheel. Our attendant, who clearly knew this living piece of art, shrieked the moment Percy tumbled across her threshold. She dropped the sign and scurried over to Percy’s side, fawning over him like he was a child who’d been wounded on the playground.
“Oh my god, Percy,” she said. “Who did this to you?!”
“He’s right behind me,” Percy coughed as he struggled back onto his feet. “Quick! Lock the door!”
But it was already too late.
In charged a man whose clothes were more paint than fabric. HIs face was hidden behind a respirator. He held a paintball gun in one hand and a can of spray paint in the other. He looked like he had been pushed into a vat of toxic paint and was now a supervillain with the power to control colors. Seeing him standing in a room filled with obnoxiously expensive white dresses and veils was a moderately terrifying sight.
“I told you want would happen if I ever saw your face again,” the Paint Villain said, or something along those lines.
“Come on, Oswald,” said Percy. “Surely we can talk through this like gentlemen.”
What happened next was so fast and so unexpected that it’s all kind of a blur to me. There were several loud bangs and the sound of shattering glass. Paint was flying in all directions. My maid of honor had tackled me to the ground and behind a display rack just in time to avoid being covered in a wave of neon green paint. I peeked around the dress I had literally been wearing only ten minutes early just in time to see Percy knock the Paint Villain to the ground and hastily tie the man’s hands behind his back with a ribbon from a nearby display.
“Look what you’ve done!” shrieked our attendant as she crawled out from under a toppled rack of what were now utterly ruined dresses.
The whole shop looked like a mutated cross between a battlefield and a Banksy installation. If there was a single dress left that had survived without a drop of a paint on it, I would have been impressed. Percy looked equally as horrified by the wreckage around us, even as he continued to hold the Paint Villain on the ground.
“Oh no, your dress,” I heard my maid of honor gasp as she got to her feet and took in the wreckage.
“Thankfully, that’s not your dress,” explained the attendant. “That one was just for display. We would have ordered another from the designer for you to have tailored, but this one’s definitely ruined. They’re all ruined. This is going to cost us a fortune.”
“Can someone help me with this guy?” Percy groaned as he continued to throw more and more weigh on top of the Paint Villain.
My maid of honor didn’t even hesitate. She marched over to the struggling duo, threw in a couple fresh kicks of her own, before dropping her whole weight down onto the man as though he were a sofa. Relieved and now having the use of his hands back, Percy reached into his pockets and pulled out several wads of tightly wound cash.
“I think this should more than cover things,” he said as he handed the money to out attendant. “I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I was certain Oswald would have avoided following me in here, what with all the whiteness. But some people just have no manners at all.”
To this day, I still have questions buzzing around my head that I know I’ll never get the answers to. Who really was the crazy graffiti villain that attacked the bridal shop? What weird history did he have with Percy Maelock that led to such colorful destruction? How did Percy have so much money in his pockets to cover all the damage done and why did our attendant trust him so much to not only accept that cash without question but to also leave Percy’s name completely out of her statement when the police finally arrived?
What I do know is this: that this attack on the bridal shop was the best thing that could have happened to me. As much as I loved the dress I’d tried on, I weirdly loved it even more after seeing it covered in paint. I know the whole “wreck the dress” thing was trendy, but I never would have guessed to do it before my wedding. The moment I saw it, I knew I needed to have it exactly the way it was with every splotch of color intact.
My wedding is coming up in just a few months and I can brag that I got my one-of-a-kind dress completely free of charge. After all, Percy had bought every last dress in the store with money I can only assume was stolen.
My maid of honor and I followed the attendant’s lead that day of keeping any mention of Percy out of our statements. After all, we didn’t even know his name at the time. I only found out who he was well after the fact when I went back to get his name and a potential mailing address from the attendant so that I could send him an invite to the wedding. After what happened, you can bet I’m hoping beyond hope that he actually shows up so I can properly thank him for buying my dress and giving me one of the craziest stories I’ll have to tell my guests. My mother-in-law-to-be still hates that I’m planning to wear a dress covered in graffiti, but I love it and that’s all that really matters.
~ Submitted by Andrea Hollander
Percy Maelock Quote of the Day:
“Never trust a woman who favors their left shoes. They are most certainly up to something, and history would clearly demonstrate that it either involves passion fruit smoothies or heinous crimes against the shrimping industry. Perhaps even both.”
A Note from the Editors:
This was one of the stranger submissions we’ve received as it doesn’t really feature Percy Maelock spreading his lies. Instead, this genuine sighting features him out in the world leaving questions unanswered while sowing a considerable amount of confusion and chaos. We have no doubt that had Andrea Hollander been given the chance to question Percy on what events exactly led up to the bridal shop battle with the Paint Villain, it would have been his usual brand of obnoxiousness. For both your sake and the sake of your guests, we sincerely hope that your wedding invitation does not find its way into his hands.
