Searching for a Perfect Day

Day 3-4

Chapter Three: Days 3-4 : Friday-Saturday/Wake-Funeral

The number of guests are dwindling with maybe twenty-five to thirty littering the entirety of the house. Elsa checks on her wristwatch, bites an inward sigh at the time: 9:47 and looks across the room to where her sister is having a morose conversation with an older gentleman. 

They hadn’t spoken since last night, the abrupt end of their conversation not something either one wanted to reopen. 

So, the silence prevailed. Of course they had spoken to each other—a good morning, a hello, small snippets that wouldn’t be construed as conversation to an onlooker’s perspective. It was a bit lucky that they were both too busy all day with the wake preparations; the situation had been easily pushed to the back burner. Even if given the time to think it through, Elsa still has no clue on how to fix this ongoing problem of strained silences between her and her sister. Not without divulging the biggest secret she has, and she’d rather have the silences and her sister than risk the entirety of their relationship and end up not having her at all. 

Back to square one. 

She sighs, outwardly this time and makes her way to the open caskets at the edge of the living area. The funeral director had called not too long ago saying that he was on his way to pick them up. Ten, sharp. The need to see them one last time takes her again, and before she knows it, she’s there, standing in between two white coffins, her father on the left side and her mother on the right. 

Alexander, with a nary hair out of place is wearing a black three piece suit. Just three feet away, Helene is wearing a navy blue dress, her white skin a heavy contrast against it. He looks roguishly handsome. She looks achingly beautiful. 

And she hates it. She hates how they look like. 

This was the first thought that graced her mind seven hours ago when the funeral director had come in with a bunch of men to haul the caskets into the house, and the thought hasn’t receded in the least.

The gashes, cuts, and bruises that were staining their bodies were gone, but not without consequence. Make-up. So much…it made them both look completely artificial—as if they weren't human to begin with. When the caskets had first been opened she literally stood at each of their sides for a little less than five minutes, staring at either one of their chests. Maybe a naive part of her was still alive and hoping for something impossible…a rise of the chest, a beat of the heart…Even after knowing this feat is beyond the realm of a miracle, the child in her was still desperate to cling on to something upon seeing them. And that same feeling disintegrated in the same moment. 

Lifeless doesn’t even come close to explaining what they looked like. They barely looked like the people she remembered back from when she saw either of them last. No blemishes, freckles, wrinkles, imperfections. The evidence that they lived their lives…were masked over…in favor of heavy makeup. It almost makes her want to lean over their lifeless figures with a sleeve over her hands so she can wipe all the artifices away. 

“It doesn’t look like them.”

She’s unable to hide the sharp inhale the sudden voice behind her elicits, but she wipes the surprised look quickly enough when Anna stands at her side. She only has half a mind to agree.