Red Hotel

01 | last letter

01 

last  letter

I'm late to the funeral. It's because I wasn't planning on going at first, but then guilt talked me out of my cowerdice then talks me into a bigger guilt when I arrive just in time for the lowering of the grave. I don't even get to say goodbye. But then again, I'm not planning to.

I woudn't know what to say to the woman who single-handedly raised me since I was three. How ironic. But then again, it could be because I'm not ready.

I sit at the back, hands burried deep in the pockets of my black trench coat. I must look like a mysterious woman who had a hand in the death of Rosalia Merthel Bisset because I'm not crying. I'm not crying because I cried all the tears I have on the plane, then on the bus, then on the taxi, then in my hotel room when I checked in, in the only hotel in New Hills. The only hotel for humans, that is. I don't think I have any tears left to cry.

I want to cry. There's still an elephant sitting on my chest and only crying will make it disappear, but my eyes and soul are sick and tired of it already. So instead of crying ( I wouldn't say mourning, because I am mourning. I'm mourning so much I feel like my soul is pulling at my heartstrings to leave my body), I watch the others. I didn't know there will be others. I didn't know Nana was close with anyone enough for them to attend her funeral.

I want to know who they are, what they were to Nana, but they're intimidating. Distant, perhaps, in an odd way. They're all sitting with their legs crossed, backs as straight as streetlamps. And they're all dressed in a way that tells me they're extermly rich and immune to the cold wind blowing around us. All the women, all three of three, are in black, knee-length dresses. No socks to keep their legs warm. The men (there are four of them) are in suits so I guess it's only the women who are immune.

I'm sitting in the back, hunched, folded in two, shivering and trying to rid myself of this sadness by crying. I'm failing.

The grave is lowered six feet under with a wet squelch. It rattles my bones and sends another shiver up my spine. That's when I cry. When my mind realises, for the upteenth time in the last two days, that Nana is really gone.

I don't know what do without her out there, in this corner of world, drinking herbal tea and writing me a letter a month that reads more like the promonitions I find in fortune cookies. Except longer. The letters, that is.

But her last letter is different.

I rub the perchament paper between my fingers. I don't know what to think of it and I'd rather not think it now. I get up and walk away. I can't keep watching them haul soil and throw it on her coffin. Instead, I walk back to the hotel. New Hills is a small town in the middle of nowhere, known best for its huge forest and gloomy weather all year round. The sky is dark, grey, angry, the coulds are overcharging. I'm not worried about rain. Like I said, New Hills is a small town, I'll be at the hotel before the first lightening.

And walking helps. It gives me time to think, although I don't want to think. But I'm so anxious over the letter that I can't help but think about it. I can't help it. I can't help but fret. Fear and anger coil in my stomach like a two-headed snake. Every emotion, every head, is pulling my heart the other way. I'm angry Nana died, but it's more complicated than that.

I teeter off to the side of the road when my stomach churns again, bitter bile building up in the back of my throat. The walls of my neck close and open, like it's another heart lodged between my head and chest. My hand fall flat on the bark of a tree as I double over, gagging, dry heaving, crying.