Introduction

Introduction

August 14^th, 2009

It was a closed casket service. Gavin knew it was because of the state of the body"so mangled and cold. He wondered if they had even tried sewing the remains back together, but then he thought they had not even bothered.

            He sat in the front row of the church, watching as people said their goodbyes to the dark, lacquered coffin. It was funny, really, seeing people he had never met in his entire life who were more distraught than he was. Women wore tiny black veils over the top halves of their faces, carried handkerchiefs in their gloved hands. Men wore black suits and ties.

Appropriate, Gavin thought, trying not to roll his eyes.

Owen didn’t deserve any of it. Not the expensively carved wood, the service, nor anyone’s kind words of remembrance. Because even though all of the good people thought he wasn’t, Owen had been pure evil. He took more lives than he supposedly saved. He was power hungry"vicious"like any Vampire would be. The service was even held at night, so that his Vampire friends could attend without becoming weak. How thoughtful.

Gavin didn’t plan the funeral though. One of Owen’s secretaries did it. Kelsey, he thought her name was. He secretly wondered if she thought of his father as more than just a boss. Those thoughts quickly drifted as the minister approached the stand.

“Friends, we have gathered here today to pay our respects to Owen Wyatt. Though he does not stand among us, his spirit will linger on, touching our hearts every day…”

The man went on about how kind Owen had been, how generous. Gavin wanted to either laugh or throw up at the nonsense he was spouting. His father didn’t deserve to be talked about so highly. He wanted to get up on the stand and curse his father’s name, but he didn’t think that would be appropriate in front of the cameras"or in a church. One by one, people got up to speak, telling stories about the good things Owen did and so on.

Gavin didn’t listen to any of it. Instead, he watched the people around him. Most of them were either crying, nodding at whatever the speaker was saying, or sleeping. He wished he was doing the later of the three. There was one woman sitting a couple of pews over who was wailing like a lunatic while another woman tried comforting her.

Gavin’s eyebrows pulled together as he reached out for her mind, gently pulling at the woman’s inner consciousness. He didn’t like what he found. The woman had been in love with Owen"she was devastated by his death. She was remembering the nights they spent together. Of each kiss she stole from him. It sickened Gavin thinking of his father being with different women. He fought the urge to throw up.

The minister got up again after the last random person spoke. “We will now be pleased to hear from Gavin Wyatt.”

Gavin looked up at his name, realizing that was his cue to go to the pulpit. He rose and walked leisurely past his father’s body. He stood in front of the hundreds of people that were gathered in the building and took out his speech. They were not his words. Kelsey had written it for him because he didn’t even care enough to say a single word. Clearing his throat, he began.

“Owen Wyatt was an extraordinary man, in many forms of the word. He was a strange man. He was a surprising man. But most importantly, he was a man of passion. He worked his hardest for my family and I; he loved my mother until the day she died. Even after their divorce when I was very young, he kept her picture on his desk as a reminder of how much he cared for her.” He stopped for a moment, his lip quivering slightly as he thought of his mother, but he continued begrudgingly.

“My father took pride in his work. He created a company from the pits of nothing and turned it into one of the most profitable and generous businesses in the world. I am proud of his work and of the strength he showed me through the years. Even in times of trouble, he stuck through it and kept going.” His voice cracked the way it always did when he lied. “And I know I must do the same, even now. Though he is now gone and is to be buried in the earth, I still live on. I will push through this strongly, as he would have me do.” To add some drama to the people watching at home, Gavin wiped his hand across his cheek and sniffled. “He will be with me always, standing there looking down on me with my mother beside him.”

He looked down at the pulpit and shook his head. To anyone else, he knew it would look like denial or sadness because of his father’s death, but that wasn’t why. In fact he was relieved about Owen’s death, and that sickened him.

He raised his head from the paper and looked over at his father’s casket. “To a man who will forever remain in our hearts, and to whom I owe my own life. Rest in peace, father.” Inside, rage poured through him, he wanted so much to rip up the paper, kick over the casket, and leave feeling proud of himself, but he did not. He walked off the stage with his hands in his pockets and sat back down.

The rest of the service went by quickly. There were a few hymns sung and prayers spoken, but Gavin hardly paid attention to any of it. There was a type of wake after the casket was lowered into a deep, narrow hole.

He didn’t attend. Instead he got into his car and starting driving back to his home. He didn’t think sad or angry thoughts anymore. He was numb. He needed to feel something. Anything. His numbness was to become insanity if he did not make himself show some type of emotion.

He pulled up to his home and turned off the car. Gavin sat there willing himself to cry, or to scream. He did not. He could not even open his mouth as if to form some type of curse. He just sat there and stared at the dense, far overgrown woods that surrounded his house. To anyone else they would seem unfriendly; a place where evil goes to play. Gavin did not see them that way. He thought of them as his own personal hideaway. It was away from the world, from cities, and away from the creatures he so despised.

He loved his father once, before his mother died. Before she knew that her son was an abomination created by her husband. Before there were any fights. Before Gavin started understanding that he was listening to the inner consciousness of his family instead of the words that poured from their lips. It was the time where he was naïve to everything. He believed that his hair was meant to fluctuate colors and his eyes were meant to turn red when he got upset. He didn’t know any different. His father would look at him with pride in his eyes. If only Gavin knew then that the pride wasn’t for his son. Owen was proud of himself.

When his mother realized her son was just a science experiment, she killed herself. Gavin was ten years old. He found her sitting in her bed, leaning against the headboard, her wrists slit vertically. Blood was everywhere. On the pillows. The bed. The sheets. Her face. The revolting scene had made him immediately run from the room to escape the look of peace that was written so plainly on her cold face. The smile that was so freely placed on her countenance haunted him more than the ghastly images of her suicide.

Gavin’s brother, Felix, was only six when their mother died. After that they were sent to live with their father again. They went through nannies like water, unable to keep one for over two months. They were taught different languages. They were put in fighting classes so they could know how to defend themselves, as his father wanted. But when both Gavin and his brother turned eighteen, they left and didn't come back.

It had been three years since his brother’s disappearance. When people brought up the topic of Gavin’s family, he simply didn’t acknowledge that he had a family. Gavin had started a new life apart from the only two living people that shared his blood. Now all he had was his brother, and he had no idea where he was.

He blamed his father for pushing away Felix to the point of not wanting to keep in touch. It was one of the reasons why he hated his father so much. And yet, he still felt a pull in his heart whenever he thought of him. There was love there, though very sparse. Owen was his father after all. Gavin may have hated the man, but he was still family.

Thinking of the love he had for his father made tears come to his eyes for the first time since Owen died. He tried blinking them away, but failed. This overwhelming sense of loss was the emotion that he had been searching for earlier. But now, he wanted to forget about his father and of the awful things he did. He wanted it to be over.

Author's Note

This is the beginning of my second novel. The first is called The Observer Instinct and is published.
Tell me what you think!