If people hadn't shown up, I probably would have lay there forever until I joined her. I curled up in a corner as the police and the paramedics rushed around and took samples. I watched through my bulging blue eyes as people came in and drew a line around my mothers body like she was a piece of evidence and I watched as a paramedic crouched down on front of me and spoke but I couldn't hear what she was saying. She looked deeply concerned as I stared through her, unblinking, with my long brown hair sitting in my face as though I should want to move it but I barely knew it was there.
It took a while for my mind to work and my ears to function but when they did I heard so much noise. Everyone seemed to be shouting orders or saying they'd found something or asking who the hell did this. I wondered if they had looked in my bedroom where Chuck's body lay next to the lamp that I had murdered him with. It was like a mystery game and I knew the answer but I couldn't tell because I was the secret keeper. I chuckled humorlessly.
Cassi in the bedroom with the lamp. I win. Next round.
But no one ever mentioned a body in the bedroom. They said that my mother was stabbed and the knife had fingerprints on it that weren't mine and that was that. I was too deep in greif to even care.
I slept at dad's house that night while he arranged the funeral with my Grandmother over the phone. I would have preferred sleeping in my own room in my mother's house if there hadn't been a dead body in there.
it's not in there I looked he's gone it's not over though
I was sure that I was going crazy. Dead bodies don't rise into the air and shake and thrash and their eyes don't turn red. They don't disappear into thin air and when they bleed on your carpet they leave a goddamn ugly stain.
it took it all with it it wants to use it the blood and the body it wants to use it
I spent the week after my mothers death sitting in my room in dad's house as he tried to force feed me and make me talk about my feelings. I didn't sleep at all the night before the funeral. I just sat in the dark on my bed, staring into nothingness and thinking about nothing. The morning of the funeral was the first time I left my bedroom all week, except to use the bathroom.
I wore a plain black dress that had been my mothers. It's neck line was high up, it stopped above my collar bone. It was so long that I had to wear heels to stop myself tripping over it and it was very roomy. Dad choked on his cereal when I walked into the kitchen.
'Holy shit' he whispered under his breath, I could tell he felt guilty for it because he swallowed the mouthful of cereal and smiled sympathetically, 'You're brave for coming today. Are you feeling OK? You're so... white'
His voice trailed off a little. He looked afraid of me. I went to the bathroom to look in the mirror for the first time in a week and instantly understood where my dad was coming from.
My skin was so white I could have been dead, my blue eyes had deep, dark circles underneath them and I told myself I couldn't see it but I could. There was a flash of something in my pupil for a second. Something red.
I pushed the thought out of my head and went back to the kitchen. My dad and I sat in silence for about a half hour. It wasn't awkward, it was something else. Cold. It was a cold silence because I knew he didn't care about me before mom died and all this was was pity and he knew, too.
My Grandmother came in without knocking as she always had, she was my mothers mother but she didn't feel uncomfortable doing this in my dad's home. She didn't respect him enough for that. I feared that when she saw my face she would react like dad did and pity me but she didn't. I stood across the room from the front door where she stood and when she saw my face there was a mixture of fear and knowing etched on her face.
My Grandmother could hardly be classed as normal. She believed in things that other people thought were crazy and she always wore eccentric and colorful clothing. Today, however, she was dressed in a long black dress with long sleeves and a necklace with a black 'dream catcher' dangling from it. She wore a large black hat which looked an awful lot like a witches hat but I didn't find it funny as I normally would if she wore such a hat. At that moment the hat seemed less like a joke and more like a sign.
I thought about telling her about Chuck but I couldn't do it. I had to remember that her daughter had just died. She walked past me as though she was trying to avoid making eye contact with me. As my Grandmother spoke in hushed tones with my father, I stood quietly, feeling hurt that my Grandmother didn't want to comfort me or even let me comfort her.
'Come on, Cassi, it's time to go' My Father said, awkwardly, and I followed him out of the front door.
I tried to ignore the fact that my Grandmother had walked quickly out of the door on front of my Father without a glance at me but I couldn't help but let it hurt me. My Grandmother and I had always had a great relationship. When my parents were still together and they would fight all the time, I would call my Gran and she would make me feel like things weren't so bad. She could always make me laugh.
The drive to the funeral home was a long one. Noone spoke a word and my Father wouldn't stop looking into the mirror at my face and looking like he had seen a ghost. I had agreed to say a speech at the funeral and was going over it again and again in my head. I just hoped that I wouldn't cry too much; or at all.
When we finally reached the Funeral home, we stepped out of the car and walked silently into the hall. There weren't many people there, just my aunt and uncle, their kids and some people from my mothers work, college and high school. I couldn't hear a thing that anyone said until the words,
'And now Jane's daughter would like to say a few words'
I stood up clumsily and made my way to the front. My throat closed up and I had to push the words out of my mouth,
'My mom told me to be myself, because the people who don't like me are out of their minds andI shouldn't talk to crazy people, anyway'
I smiled, this was one of the nicest things that my mother had ever said to me.
'She... She loved her family so m-'
Drip. Drip.
'So much and... um'
Drip. Drip.
The coffin suddenly caught my eye. There was something dripping from it.
'She even loved dad. She just didn't-
Oh my god, that's blood. Why is noone screaming?
like him.'
I cut off and walked slowly to the leaking coffin. I reached out my hand to touch it, to let the blood run onto my hand. My fingers were inches from the blood, I could feel the warmth on my finger-tips when the coffin's lid opened about two inches and a hand reached out from the darkness, It wasn't my mothers hand. It was old, the bones were covered only by a thin layer of grey, mouldy skin. The nails were long, green and full of dirt, like they had dug their way out of their own grave and broken into my mothers coffin.
I tried to scream but it came out only as a squeek. I fell back in fright but my father caught me.
'What the hell was that, Cassi?' my Father asked as we sat in the Funeral Homes garden, out of sight from all of the watchful eyes.
'I don't know, I mean it just reached out. It was so scary'
'What reached out? Cassi, what the hell are you talking about?'
I couldn't even reply. Had noone else saw it?
It was there it was real it was real
When I wouldn't say anything else on the subject, my Father reluctantly took me back into the hall. My Grandmother was slow to look away as I swiftly turned to see her. Her face was different than the rest, she looked less shocked than as though I had acted exactly how she had expected.
