The Burning and the Burned

Family Portrait I

The corpse of Wren's father swayed and rotated slightly. The man's head seemed to tip at an odd angle, so Wren figured his father had at least managed to get his final act right, and that was commendable enough. He closed the front door quickly and glanced out through the peephole; the street was empty. Really, the man ought to have picked a better location than the entry hall. But no one had seen, so there was no harm done, aside from the fact that he'd chosen to hang himself from the banner Finch had worked so hard on. "Happy 8th Birthday, Wren" it read—or had, anyways—in intricate, hand-stitched letters. Now it was completely unusable, and they'd probably have to throw it out along with the body. He'd gone as far as to cut the little fabric squares off and toss them to the side, and Wren wondered if perhaps he'd done it out of spite, because he knew for a fact that Finch had left plenty of perfectly usable rope in the workroom.

He sighed and shook his head. At least he'd been considerate enough not to shoot himself; scrubbing the bloodstains out of the carpet would have an almost unbearable task for the two boys to undertake alone. And they would have to do it alone. That, Wren knew right away.

Finch would be home in half an hour or so on a normal day, but since it was Wren's birthday, he thought perhaps his brother would try to get home early, and that meant there was no time to spare.

Two minutes had him at the top of a stepladder he'd hauled from the workroom, hands wrapped in scraps of an old shirt, muscles straining as he sawed through the rope with a steak knife. About halfway through, it snapped, and his father's corpse flopped unceremoniously onto the ground. His fingers fumbled to untie the rest of the rope from the ceiling beam, and he tucked it into his back pocket before climbing down.

Wren held his breath, and the house was filled with a deafening silence. For a moment he almost wondered if he'd lost the ability to hear at all. Slowly, tentatively, he unwrapped one of his hands and reached out to brush his index finger across his father's bare cheek.

"Agh—!"

A strangled shout escaped his lips, and he collapsed onto the ground, hands flying over his ears. The thud of his small body hitting the ground resounded throughout the room and echoed back to him almost mockingly, and then, mercifully, the house was silent once more except for his ragged breaths. He lay frozen beside the corpse for a moment before rising suddenly to his feet and violently shoving his hand back into the cloth. He set to work then, returning the ladder to the workroom and dragging the corpse into the living room and throwing a blanket over it.

He flopped down on the couch, chest heaving from the exertion. The ceiling was darker than usual. Or was that just his imagination? It seemed to creep in at the edges of his vision—the darkness—like fog, like tendrils of vines. He blinked and it was gone.

He rose slowly to his feet, stumbled slightly, regained his footing. He stared at the wall a bit, then stole a glance at the corpse in the corner of the room. It hadn't moved. Of course it hadn't; it was dead, and there was no one else here.

He walked, slowly, stiffly, over to it again, and crouched beside it.

"Hey, Dad," he whispered, delicately lifting the blanket over the man's face.

Crouched there, face-to-face with a corpse for what he supposed was the second time in his life, he noticed something he hadn't seen before. It almost twinkled, the small spot of blue paint, seeming to burst with light before it settled back into the shape of a tear.

He peeled the blanket back further, really inspecting the corpse for the first time. He noticed the ring right away. He'd always noticed it, even when his father was alive: as long as he could remember, it had glowed with a sort of pulsating white light, shadows drifting across its surface like ripples in a pool of water. Now, though, it shone even brighter. Without thinking, he reached out and pulled the ring off the man's finger, stood suddenly, and dashed to the kitchen.