The Outsider

Part 8

The words hit me like a punch in the gut, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. My mind scrambled to process what Jasper had just said, but it didn't feel real. Couldn't be real.

"Gone?" I whispered, barely recognizing my own voice.

"Yeah," Jasper's voice cracked, betraying the emotion he was barely holding back. "It happened this morning. Heart attack. He didn't make it."

Everything around me seemed to blur, the city melting into a background of meaningless noise. The streets, the people, the sound of my own footsteps, it all faded into the distance. Only Jasper's words echoed in my mind.

Gone.

My father. The man who had been the purest, most hopeful person I'd ever known. The one who had held onto goodness even when the world had stripped everything else from him.

And now, he was gone.

"I... I don't know what to say," I muttered, the words falling flat, hollow. There was nothing to say. Nothing that would make sense of it.

"I know," Jasper sighed, his voice quiet now as if the weight of it all had finally caught up to him. "Just... just come home, okay?"

"Yeah. I'll be there soon," I managed to say before hanging up.

I stood there, staring blankly at the phone screen, my hand still gripping it tightly as if that could somehow keep me tethered to reality. The city buzzed around me, indifferent to what had just happened. People kept walking by, unaware that my world had just shattered.

My father was gone.

And I had no idea how to feel.

The funeral came quicker than I could process, a blur of days slipping by without much meaning. The air was thick with grief, the kind of quiet, suffocating sadness that lingers, leaving no space for anything else. I stood among people I hadn't seen in years, people I didn't really care to see, all here to pay their respects to a man they hadn't really known.

The church was packed, filled with old friends, distant relatives, colleagues, and neighbors. They were all saying the right things, murmuring condolences, offering hollow words of comfort as if that could fill the void left behind. I hated every single one of them for pretending they understood what we'd lost.

Jasper stood beside me, staring at the casket like it wasn't real. His face was pale, his eyes glassy, red around the edges from hours of crying. He hadn't said much since that phone call, and I didn't push him. There wasn't anything left to say. Our father, the man who had been everything to us, was now just a memory, lying in a wooden box.

I couldn't bring myself to cry. Not here. Not in front of all these people. Instead, I let the numbness settle over me like a blanket, keeping the pain at a safe distance. I looked at the casket, but I couldn't picture my father inside it. The man who raised me, who believed in me even when I didn't believe in myself, couldn't be reduced to that. It didn't make sense. None of it did.

As the priest droned on, reading from the Bible, I found myself drifting, lost in my own thoughts. 

I thought about how much my father had suffered in those final years. How the system that he had always trusted failed him. He had been too good for this world, too pure for the game we all played. And now he was gone, while people like Nate and Samantha continued on, living their shallow lives, oblivious to the pain that lurked just beneath the surface.

It wasn't fair. But then again, nothing ever was.After the service, people lined up to offer their condolences. I stood there, numb, shaking hands, nodding along, pretending to care about their meaningless words. Jasper stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the ground. I could feel the weight of everything pressing down on him, on both of us.