A Half Remembered Tragedy

Death of a Poet

For the friend I am afraid to name. I think of you from time to time. My door is cracked just so, in case you ever wish to return to me. I wasn't lying.

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"No one wants a half remembered tragedy. You must know the width of the knife and how it ruined you, the organs it kissed" -Olivia Gatwood, Life of the Party. 

If funerals are fatal, they should've checked for a limp pulse.

They buried her anyway; on a sort of afternoon one never hopes to endure. Despite the lack of wind, the cold air chilled the bones and crept up the neck. Ladies tightened their scarves, and gentlemen shoved their hands deep into their pockets. A thick overcast made the world look gray. Headstone unmarked, and the dirt crumbling, they buried the woman. The only present funeral attendees being odd onlookers with a morbid sense of curiosity, the grave digger, a priest off a shady website, and the hearse driver. The priest muttered some non-committal, non-denominational or religion specific prayers (if you could call it that) of a general peace in the after-death.

The mourners did not attend the funeral; they knew better. The small group of them, separately, catching glimpses of their friend's last moments above the earth. From glancing out a restaurant window from a strategically chosen seat, or passing by on the sidewalk, collar up against the cold, hiding a dabbed tear behind the premise of allergies, they paid their respects. The death would make the papers, just barely. Tucked in an advertisement next to another for Go Go Gummies! For Go Getters and Guilty Pleasures! The small memorial would be passed by those who didn't know where to look. In a few days, the death would be forgotten, nothing to show for the life lost.

For a moment, the world seemed to be red, a bold, inferno that not even Dante himself could envision, reflected infinitely by the glass walls of the towering buildings. It consumed the city in a hellfire that it deserved. Just as quickly as it burned, it extinguished, and the light softened into a dark glow.

On the twenty-eighth floor of building 116, in an unlit office, stood Paris Wilks. He gazed out the large picture window. The red rims around his eyes had faded, but his jaw remained locked. Staring at the same space on the sidewalk, his mind reached miles away, not even focusing on the space below the streetlight. Thus, he hardly noticed when a dazed and disoriented young woman stepped into the light, leaning against the pole near collapse.

The phone on the desk behind Paris rang with a bellowing charm. Jolted out of his thoughts, Paris whirled around to snatch the receiver. He exhaled the lump in his throat before answering. "Yes?"

"I'm sorry to bother you, sir. I hope I wasn't interrupting." He heard his secretary typing away on the other end.

"No, no not at all. What is it?"

"You have an impromptu appointment, sir."

Paris frowned, rubbing his eyes. "Office hours closed at five. I'm not taking any more appointments this evening."

"I know its unorthodox–"

"Then why are you calling me?" Paris heard his secretary sigh into the phone. He smiled slightly, her annoyance with him felt like karma for requesting a meeting so late.

"There's a young woman downstairs, the one buried today. They don't know what to do with her. They said–they said you would see her."

Paris hesitated with his answer, instinctively turning his head to the window. By now the woman was inside, and he had no hopes of catching a glimpse under the streetlight. His secretary waited for a reply. "Why would they say that?"