Act of Kindness

Prologue

12/09/1989: Nightingale, London.

I should have known as soon as my mum had announced that we were going to a funeral on a Monday evening in mid June. She just walked into the house, slammed her bags at the entrance and yelled at nobody in particular.

"Boys! Funeral. Monday," was all she managed to get out before closing her bedroom door never to be seen again (until the next evening).

Now there I was. No-one or anything made a sound.

Not just for a minute or two. No. This was true and deep awkward silence. It was so silent that I bet you could hear the dead guy rotting away in his coffin. Nobody out of the twenty one people that I knew there made a single attempt at starting a conversation in the two hours it took to witness the sermons and the prayers and then finally the inevitable burial of the dead person we were all there for.

Finally, after my curiosity got the better of me, I turned to my mum who was standing in between my brother and I while pretending to look depressed.

"Mother," I started, "Who's the dead guy?"

He was someone's grandad apparently but he was not the reason that nobody talked during those two hours.

What I'm trying to say to you is that at that funeral on a Monday evening in June, there were only twenty one people whom I knew (and I had counted very carefully). One of them was my darling mother, one my brother, eighteen were all my ex-girlfriends as of the beginning of this funeral and the last was the ghost of my dog.

*

"Have you seen my eye? I've misplaced it," my brother whispered across my mother. All the heads in the room snapped at us and the family of the deceased added an extra death glare on top of it.

"What do you mean you've misplaced it? We've only been here for five minutes. Also you're so disrespectful. It's probably just at home," I turned to face him and sure enough, one of his eyes was missing. He simply nodded but returned his attention to the service. A few minutes passed before he was back at it again.

"But I really can't see very well."

"Was that some kind of joke?"

That conversation did not progress anywhere interesting.

About ten minutes later the priest decided that he needed a break from his job so he just stood up and left the building. At this point the church should have erupted into small murmurings and whispers between the families present but instead we were once again surrounded by pure silence.

This silence was worse than before. This silence was also accompanied by 18 glares in my general direction, all of them ignoring the fact that my brother was actually missing an eye. They all had clear priorities - making me suffer being at the top of their priorities.

This may sound cruel, you think, almost vile on their part. Surely at a funeral the main focus should in fact be the dead person? Not some minor miscommunication.

To be frankly honest with you, I deserved every bit of the death glares.

My original mistake happened only out of kindness a few months ago. I was at school, books in one hand and my girlfriend on the other. At this point in time she was my only girlfriend. I dropped her off into her classroom before proceeding to head to mine only to be stopped a few steps into my journey.

It was a girl in my class.

"Hey. We should totally hang out at my house on Monday."

She accompanied what was basically a demand with a small giggle and a quick brush with her hand through her hair. She clearly liked me. Now I, being the kind person that I am, didn't want to break the poor girl's heart. So my response resulted in me having two girlfriends which at the time seemed perfectly fine. I had no choice. 

Until another girl came up to me; a family friend who I had known for years. Once again I couldn't help but be kind and before I knew it I had three girlfriends.

This proceeded to become a regular thing for me, seeing as I was so popular, and soon all of my girlfriends saw me once every three weeks because the rest of the time I either had tennis practice or pneumonia. It was almost becoming so time consuming that I needed a secretary to deal with all my meetings or a second version of me to take over sometimes.

That's where my brother came in - my twin brother.

He quickly caught onto what I was doing as soon as I was confessing my love to more than one girlfriend. He had run into some funding problems after losing his eye for the first time; a tragic rugby accident. So his natural brotherly response was to make a deal involving money with me. I was to pay him to go out with nine of my girlfriends which was meant to be a win win situation. It worked perfectly fine for about a month during which my brother promised to make sure that he had both of his eyes at all times and I also finally had time for homework. My grades started going up and I was surprisingly happy with my girlfriends; my life started getting better and better.

Until all of us accidentally ended up in the same room at the same time.

Which room? That room. At this random guy's funeral on a Monday evening all of my girlfriends found out about each other and my doppelgänger.

Everything went to flames when they saw me enter the church before the proceedings, accompanied by my brother. They all smiled sweetly, unaware of the surprise they'll have when my third girlfriend walked up to me and kissed me in the middle of the church for all to see.

I tried to apologies and explain the big misunderstanding but none of them understood. You would've understood and listened to me. I know you would've. 

I turn my attention back to my itchy bedsheets that I had cocooned myself in a few days ago for the first time. There's no use explaining the story because I'll never see any of them ever again.

"Who are you talking to?" I snap up from looking at my lap towards my mother.

"Max," I replied. She gave me a look of distress mixed with very, very subtle sympathy and I had to look away due to its intensity and sheer awkwardness. I know she doesn't believe me. It's the reason why I'm even here in a looney dump and not home. 

She doesn't believe you're real, Max. She thinks you're a hallucination; an image that I just can't get over. Of course you're not. You're more than that. You're the reason I met Sophia.

"I have to go now. I'll see you soon, okay?" My mother abruptly stood up from her seat when she noticed that I was going into my own world again.

"Bye."

With our curt goodbyes, she left the room, the echo of the door slamming shut haunting the empty white room in this white building. I proceed the day by taking various pills with side effects worse than the reason that I actually take them for. I read a little. I sleep a little. I cry a little. Then my eyes focus on the clock above the door where my mother had left through. It was now 6:17am.