Scales

Chapter 1 🥀

New York, 1961.

It was a terrible day for a funeral.

That's what Alistair thought once he saw the darkened sky getting filled by dark, heavy clouds. The wind was picking up, and the smell of humidity in the air was getting stronger. It would rain pretty soon.

The entire day felt like it dragged itself in slow motion.

The priest continued doing his job, through the bad weather and the circus that was being performed there.

"In your mercy look upon this grave, so that your servant may sleep here in peace..." Preaching, was that even the correct term? Not that he cared, Alistair was anything but a religious man.

He decided to stay at the back of the crowd that gathered at the cemetery. There was a bit of everything there; good friends, bad friends, nosy people, curious people. But worst of all, the gossip people. Humans had a tendency to love gossip, he himself would never be able to understand the pleasure of it. But others did, and they seemed to always do it at the most inappropriate times.

He looked forward and glanced at the beautiful white casket adorned with gold next to the hole on the ground and then to the people closest to it. The family. The mother was inconsolable. The father, a man known for being stoic in any situation, looked like a ghost of his past self, ready to have a mental breakdown. His face was wrinkled, and his eyes sunken from grief, while trying to comfort his wife who sobbed on his shoulder. The sister, whose blue eyes were always filled with so much life and sparkle, were dulled by the pain of losing her big brother. She was the one that found him. Lisa, was her name.

Lisa seemed to have recalled some memories of her brother, because soon she started sobbing. And the louder she sobbed, the louder the others sobbed too. There were journalists, and big-shots of the industrial world. After all, when the prodigy of one of the biggest companies in the country dies, it is bound to catch a lot of attention from the peers. Good, and bad. Alistair kept looking at everyone, and they all seemed to do it for the pictures.

Fake. Irritating. Disgusting.

He felt sick to his stomach witnessing the worst in humanity. Still, his heart would break little by little for the one laying inside the beautiful casket. In his life, he had been through countless deaths and funerals. But this one had to have been one of the worst to memory.

His lover, the love of his life, was dead.

While dwelling in his own pain, whispers from two ladies in front of him, perked his attention.

'Ah, here we go.' He thought to himself.

"I heard he had a male lover." A blond woman with her hair in an updo whispered to a brunette. They could whisper all they wanted, Alistair would still hear it as clear as if they voiced it out loud. At that moment he cursed his hearing.

Slowly little droplets of rain started to come down, in a light drizzle. Everyone took their umbrellas out wanting to avoid getting wet.

The brunette gasped, holding her hand up against her rouge lips. "He didn't! How scandalous!" She whispered back to her instigator.

Alistair stared at both ladies in front of him. He knew them. The blond one was Marjorie, The Wall Street Journal owner's wife. A cynical, hypocrite woman, that the only thing classy about her was the social status her husband gave her. Marjorie leaned in to whisper some more. "And! Apparently Joshua was dumped by this mysterious lover. Quite scandalous, indeed!" Marjorie continued. The brunette, the wife of Bellevue Hospital's notorious surgeon, Dr. Petersen shook her head in disapproval.