🗸 the quintessences of cherry & cigarette

|| postlude ||

Trapped. A bee in amber.

Devin feels nothing, and then everything. Then again, nothing. Empty within, empty without.

It's been like this for the past five days. Now, walking to the funeral service, in the midst of a crowd, Devin is surrounded by mourners. Yet, he is estranged. Detached and suspended, he's stuck in a nightmare that won't let up.

As he trudges along the winding, cobbled lane towards the church, the nothingness is clawed apart by fear. They call it the 'House of the Lord', but the path Devin walks cuts through the valley of death and the looming archway leads into his hell. And from beyond the thick amber that confines him, he can hear distant snippets of the news anchors rattling into their mics.

"... Outside the collective funeral service being held for the six fatalities from last week's school shooting..."

"... All of Jeffersonville has come together..."

"... Toby Evans's address vandalized..."

Devin tries to think about something other than what he will find inside. Anything.

Vaguely, he registers that he's attired in black suit and tie, and he has a brief memory of struggling with the cuffs. When he looks down at them, they're still undone. His trembling fingers work in vain, so he pauses, inhaling a breath that momentarily fills the hollow, dull ache behind his breatbone. His gaze sweeps up; the sky is overcast and rumbling, like it was the day he had revealed his identity to Cerise Jane Miller.

So many eternities ago.

Shaking himself free of that afflicting daze, Devin steps forth and scales the stairs leading inside. Even from this end of the nave, his sight lands first on Cerise's portrait in a line of five others. There she is, a smile hinting at her lips, unbecoming against the open-casket that sits grimly behind and seems to leech on the serenity of the picture.

A sob wrenches free of him, dry and rasping. He doesn't recall falling or sinking, but there's a man suddenly holding him by his arms and pulling him up. Through the haze of tears that burn his eyes, Devin can see his lips move, soundless and wordless. The amber is closing in; it's hard to hear, it's hard to move. It's hard to breathe.

Somehow extricating himself from the man's grasp, Devin struggles out of the church. In the same floating and detached loss of time that all days went by in, he finds himself in his truck. Soaked from the rain that he never remembers being in, he sits behind the wheel, shivering, crying. That hollow ache now is an infinite stretch, and at the same time, it is innumerable sharp stabs. All the while, he thought it the grief of something important being taken, but now he knows it is the abject pain of something critical being broken. Something was fundamentally broken inside him the moment the life left Cerise's body, and its shards are still there – slashing and eviscerating him from within.

Every swig he downs of his father's whiskey, Devin hopes it will numb that pain like it had numbed so many other pains before. Then the bottle is empty, the pain remains nonetheless. Unaffected, ever-consuming.

So, he decides he needs to get away from this cursed church. From this cursed town. From everything. Everything.

It only takes that thought for Devin to floor the gas pedal of his Chevvy; he drives away from the casket that holds everything that was ever dear to him. The sky sends a retributive storm pummeling to the earth, and it rivals the storm raging in his heart – the sheets of rain as unstoppable as his tears, the lightning as thunderous as his agony and his anger. He drives until he has left Jeffersonville behind, and he drives farther still, speeding along the highway with no intention of stopping.

Fresh sobs wrack through Devin and he can hear his own denial being screamed at god – or at the absence of him. He demands to know why any of it happened at all. The answer arrives around the road's bend curving along the mountainside – blinding lights. Devin doesn't know if the white flash is an answer at all, but he takes it as one. By then, the amber around him has hardened; he's paralyzed, all his impulses are frozen.

When the impact finally comes it is bone-rattling, shaking up his very foundation, sending his world spinning endlessly. He hadn't thought the pain in his chest could get any worse, yet it has become explosive and alive, a fire coursing through his limbs. The birling ceases to show the sea's gaping maw, teethlike crags and roiling waves of a tongue reach for him.

There's but one thing in Devin's mind – the poem he'd written for Cerise Jane Miller. The one he'd been too afraid to elegize at her funeral because that would mean acknowledging that she is dead.

that little kiss you stole, it held my heart and soul

and like a deer in the headlights, i meet my fate

don't try to fight the storm, you'll tumble overboard

the tides will bring you back to me

The emptiness returns with the frigid waters. This time, it lasts.

***