Lacking Fragments: A Novel (Completed)

Chapter III: Graveyard Visitors

3. Graveyard Visitors

I didn't attend her funeral.

     I used to have the time to do so—to take a stark visit; to get one last look of Maya's embalmed body—way back in my thirties, yet I still didn't do it. Main in coward reason I explained already. But as for my agenda in this trip of the mainland, it wouldn't be the case now in terms of where she was buried.

     Through the letter I read this morning, before I took shower and packed two days's worth of clothes for me and Kiki, I'd know exactly where my old friend was buried. Early on, I received a map in the cemetery's entrance, a graveyard map; helpful to locate Maya's tomb. "West Side, F17," said the lady on the letter. She was a relative, she said too. An aunt of hers. I read all these in the same letter I found in the doorway of my apartment, my old apartment— I kept it. In it, the place of her funeral and its exact location where her coffin would be taken place are indicated. 'West Side, F17,' she said.

     My daughter and I went to that cemetery. This dusk, by the time we had finished our early dinner, we went there, while waiting for the evening to appear in the skies. Darkness was coming.

     In the cemetery, right at the peak entrance, Kiki had her grip on my shirt as we walked in through the looming shadows; though, it was me in the first place who told her to do so— I told Kiki to never let me go; I told her to grip at my shirt as tightest as she could. Because a little while ago, when we were having our dinner in McDonald's, I said something of an overlooked superpower of any father. Fathers, I said, the ones with emotional connection with their daughters, have the power to protect them from any harm.

     "In a cemetery, things kind of get weird and scary," I said. "You're gonna have to take a grip on me, if I'd be protector." With her eyes shook widen, finger halted with two French fries waiting to be eaten, Kiki nodded at my request. "But don't worry. We'll be okay."

     "Will there be zombies?" asked Kiki.

     "I don't know," I said. "At least, not yet. I don't know yet. Zombies, no zombies— whatever. We will know it when we get there. However, I think there won't be one."

     "How sure are you?"

     "Well, zombies are fiction."

     "Maybe not anymore someday in the future," she retorted. "We didn't even bring knives. Or swords, or anything that kills zombies. To survive. How are we going to beat them down? Do we really need to go there at all, Father? I'm having doubts..."

     I nodded yes, that we still needed to go there. How I had been running away for years to avoid what is and been there. Too long. But to assure my daughter even more, by then I told her I'd protect her from monsters or evil gods we'd encounter. If she never loses a grip and sight of me, I'd be able to protect her from anything monstrous. Or anyone. I promised I'd fight back to everything harmful. Which, for that, she went on eating her fries, as if the thought of being frightened by monstrosities had vanished completely into thin air. Into nothing.

     Now here we were, deep inside the cemetery. With graveyard map in the palm of my hands. Given by someone who guards the entrance, an old ermitanyo.

     Prepared, I brought flashlights in the baggage I prepared this morning. Two in number. I'd be using one for myself, while the other I gave to my daughter. Something to utilize; we switched them on. With these flashlights, Kiki and I kept walking through the piles and columns of niche of different dead people. Tombs. Dead newly buried or long forgotten, it didn't matter— the cemetery had an atmospheric air of adults and children deceased. Either they died by accidents, incidents or suicides. Only the beloved ones know. Followed by our cold entry in the said cemetery, each minute passing by around my grey wristwatch, my daughter and I got nearer and nearer to her grave.

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