The Desert Carcass and His Funeral

A second death...

Rain drizzled erratically on the mahogony roof of the chapel. The sound was quiet, but deafening in the silence of the looming expanse of a room. I was early.

 

I sat in the back right-hand corner, on polished wood benches with Bibles in pockets attached to the backs of seats in front of me. Worn notepads and blunt golf pencils sat forlornly in their designated pouches, and in the ceiling above me twinkled a glittering chandelier, as if laughing at the world below. I sat with my shoulders hunched and my head down, reading Vehemence.

 

I had told Mr. and Mrs. Ellmore that I wanted to sit alone. They respected that, so they sat near the front, closer to my father's plain coffin, whispering amongst themselves. I ignored them. I did not want to be here. I did not want to see my father one last time. I did not want to hear stupid preachers going off about what a wonder life he had, because that was wrong he didn't have a wonderful life, he had a very plain and ordinary life.

 

And I didn't want to give a stupid speech about Father in all his wonder and greatness and how much he meant to me, because again, he was not wonderful, he was not in any way greater than anyone else in this chapel, and above all, in the last month of his life he was hardly my father.

 

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Father had quit his job soon after Mother's death. When I walked home from school the first day of his unemployment, he was lying on his bed staring straight up through the ceiling with his mouth hanging just slightly open, eyes dull, the wrinkles creasing his face seemingly deeper and greyer than before. He did not notice me. I slipped quietly back out and locked myself in my room to do my homework, like it would make a difference. But there is something vaguely repelling about a carcass drying in the torrid heat of the desert sun, and locking myself away from it helped dispense the feeling slightly. Because even then it was already obvious he was no more than a carcass. I sat on my chair, looked down at my cast, looked over at the hole in the wall, and felt like I was stuck in an inescapable Cage of Life and there was no way out, and unlike other peoples' Cages of Life I didn't particularly like this one. I put my head in my hands. I wondered how long Father had just been lying like that on his unmade bed, staring up through the ceiling to worlds and times I had no knowledge of.

 

About a week later I caught him sitting despondently at our kitchen table drinking booze like no other. He was drunk, but he said nothing to me when I walked in. His eyes were red and his head tilted at an odd angle, the bottles clinking on the floor, one wavering slightly in an unmoving hand. Suddenly I was afraid.

 

Very, very afraid.

 

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That one Saturday morning I woke up and made myself breakfast, Fruit Loops, chocolate milk, a large dose of Halo 4. At noon I made myself lunch. Ham and cheese sandwich, and another dose of Halo 4.

 

Late in the afternoon I got bored of Halo 4, so I opened up my schoolbag and began to study Newton's vastly uninteresting laws of motion, which was 25% studying and 75% staring blankly off into space. Then I realized that Father had not awoken yet.

 

I was getting over Mother's death. I still hated myself, of course. But I barely managed to shove all those feelings into a little suitcase and fight the suitcase from exploding for all it was worth. I could survive without Mother. I could survive with the guilt. The past is the past, it's the future that matters... right?

 

"Dad. Dad, wake up." I'm shaking him, lightly. Gently, even.

 

"Dad..."

 

He did not wake up.

 

"Dad! Wake up!"

 

"DAD!"

 

It suddenly occurred to me that he looked very, very dead.

 

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I slapped him. As frigging hard as I could.

 

I took a cup of water, dumped it on his tired face and watched as water trickled down his cheeks like tears and soaked into the bed sheet, slowly, surely.

 

I punched him.

 

I threw him off the bed.

 

Then I started screaming because this was the last thing I needed to happen. I barely made it through the first death. I would not live through the second. I could not live through the second. Father could not be dead. He could not be dead. If he died... he is dead. You knew he was dying and you did nothing about it, you b*****d. And if to consider the figurative phrase, "a wave of panic," I would be no more than gory remains plastered to the ground at the titanic impact of the crest of a tsunami.

 

It took me thirty minutes of sobbing my eyes out to pluck up the willingness to pick up the phone and call 911.

 

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I refused to give my designed speech at the funeral. Mr. and Mrs. Ellmore tried to force me, but they couldn't force me publicly. So I stepped up to the stage. Looked out, over the heads of the multitudes of people watching me disinterestedly from the audeience. And all I said, standing before this sea of people whom I barely knew and I knew Father barely knew, was, "He's dead. I don't see the point of speaking of him anymore." And then I walked straight out off the podium, straight out of the room, and locked myself in a bathroom stall and pretended that I was not actually crying.

 

Even though I was.

 

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A long time later, I heard Mr. Ellmore call for me, so I came out of the stall and followed he and his wife out of the chapel. My tears were long gone, and I told myself I would refuse to speak to the worried couple, refuse to tell them anything, they had no right to know anything, they didn't know anything.

 

It turns out, I didn't need to try. We drove back to the orphanage. They spoke nothing of what had happened, despite their obvious concern.

Author's Note

Are the giant paragraphs a little imposing? Should I chop them up into smaller pieces to make it more readable?

Reviews

[Rayne-Alexandria]

This its great. I think the longer paragraphs are fine, everything reads well and flows so smoothly. Keep up the great work, I can't wait to see more you.

[Alice Locke]

Thanks! x)

[Rayne-Alexandria]

No problem :)