The Life Of Mars

Chapter 1-The Funeral

It had been a week since I had found the bodies of my parents left in the road by the killer. The police were so shocked that a murder had occurred in the county after about 150 years. Crime had reduced to an all time low mostly because there was no one left on the planet to commit crimes, really. Most people lived off planet or were serving in Starfleet. The only places where crimes occasionally occurred were the bigger cities like New York, San Francisco, and London, where population remained, though it was steadily dwindling there as well. But this wasn't the case with my parents, of course. No one really knew what the case was with my parents, not even the police. The killer hadn't left even a shred of evidence which could serve as a lead; I told the investigators about the piece of bloody cardboard that I had seen, but that was a dead end as well due to the fact that the blood on it was that of my mother's. After a week of looking, but not finding anything in the empty, dying desert, the homicide unit (which consisted of only 4 people) finally decided to call it quits, and my family's murder descended into the dark pit of cold cases.

My parents couldn't have an open casket funeral because their bodies were too badly burned. It would be grisly to show their mourners a pile of ashy, blackened bones that once were their colleagues. The authorities wouldn't let me see them after they got to the scene, I quote that their reason was, "very inappropriate content for a 17 year old".  Inappropriate, my butt. I was the first one to even find them and I was also their eldest child. It made sense to give me their burial rites, right? Wrong. Apparently, Dean's "godfather", Martin (who had never even bothered to come see us) was flying from San Francisco to conduct it. There would be no get together, no will reading, and no last wishes at my parent's funeral. Martin had already scheduled their cremation to commence upon his arrival in two hours. Can you believe that, a cremation? As if they weren't already burned enough. Anyways, after the cremation, we would meet with lawyers to discuss our estate. Dean and I had no living relatives except for Martin, who wasn't even a blood relation, he was just named Dean's godfather after he was born. He didn't even have a single obligation towards me. In that aspect, I was completely and utterly alone.

"Dean! Mars! How wonderful to see you!", Martin crooned. Apparently, he was a manager at some hotshot company that was mining Trysuptium in Delta Vega and other colonies outside Starfleet's reach.

"Hello, sir!", Dean mumbled politely. I, on the other hand, didn't even bother replying. I snickered quietly at his outfit; he was dressed in a silver-metallic blazer with matching dress pants. Oh, and did I mention the purple bow tie? Talk about a Doctor wannabe.

My brother and I were still in our humble school uniforms, which consisted of a white oxford shirt, a red plaid skirt for me, and some off-white chucks. Even though our parents' lives had been cut short, the police still wouldn't let us miss more than 5 days of school.

"Well, let's get on with the cremation, then, shall we?"

The ride to the funeral home was filled with silence. Dean, nor I, wanted to have a conversation with Martin.

Martin finally breached the awkward silence, and asked, "Do either of you know that you're moving to San Francisco to live with me?"

"What!?" Dean and I spat out simultaneously.

"Can't we just stay here? I'm turning 18 in 6 months, I'm sure I can handle myself."

"No, no. It's against your parents' will."

"I'm not included in the will, though."

"Yes, but Dean is. Dean must move to San Francisco, but you are under no such obligation. But you wouldn't want to abandon your brother with me would you?"

Dean caught me with a puppy-dog eye stare, that said, 'Please don't leave me with this psychopath', and Martin had caught me at a dead end. I sighed. I guess I was going to have to live in San Francisco after all.

"No, I guess not.", I finally replied.

"It's settled then! You'll love it there. Not at all like this dingy, desert, ghost town."

How dare he call Phoenix a dingy ghost town! It had been suffering ever since the oil reserves had run out, and the world moved on to cleaner energy, but it was still an oasis of life in an otherwise never ending desert. I looked out the window and saw my school building.