The Second Writer Games: Life and Death

Semifinals - Funeral Crashing - Jaelyn Lopez

It was only just a few minutes earlier I was at the large church staring at the dead body of Lily Heartfelia, and now I'm behind some sort of stage or other, still clutching onto my axe. I pull the heavy weapon tighter to myself; who knows what kind of traps might be lurking in this seemingly innocent place. There's a soft murmuring in front of the stage, so I hide my axe behind the curtain and cautiously look outside. There's a wide raised area right in front of me, almost resembling a stage but not exactly. And in front of the stage are a group of people, all in black, talking quietly amongst themselves. Is this a funeral...why am I at a funeral? And the better question is, why am I in real life?

I am in real life. That means the nightmare is over.

I run quietly into a wing closer to the people, and really take a look at the stage. There are pictures and a coffin and a podium; this definitely is a funeral. Then I skirt bravely forward but still not being seen to see whose funeral it is, and once I take a closer look at the pictures, I nearly fall to the floor in shock. A group picture from Everest, a family picture, a selfie I had guiltily taken when I was fifteen or sixteen; the pictures are of me. This is my funeral.

I scan my eyes around the people in front wearing black, and look for people I recognize. And I do recognize most of them. There's my mom and dad in the front, looking ever so elegant and putting on their bravest most dignified face for this occasion, for me. Mom is wearing a full-length black dress with no design, and Dad has a nice simple suit on. My heart wells up with pride and sadness and I have to physically control myself from running down the stage to them. And then there's the older man from the Everest expedition...Joseph if my memory is right. Looks like he did make it all the way back down safely, although I have doubts he actually managed to get to the top. Actually, there's the rest of the group there too. Sherpa Asa and Ian and Gabe and the rest of the mix I knew by name but not by anything else. Desperately, I look around for Maggie, my friend who might have been killed to torture me in the arena, hoping that was just an illusion. She wasn't with the Everest group and she wasn't near my family; I was starting to think of the worst. But then I see her in the back corner, her long blonde hair falling almost to her waist and her startling blue eyes glistening with tears. I sigh with relief at the fact that she's still alive but then nearly break down into tears when I see how emotional some of these people are over me.

Someone steps up to the podium and I hide quickly behind a wing of the backstage. He taps on the microphone a few times and delivers a few prayers and hopeful lines, causing some of the audience to smile slightly and the rest to shed a silent tear. I look over to my parents, and see that they are still holding the dignified and calm facade, yet their actual sadness is shown by the red rims of their eyes. Maybe I should just show myself from backstage and run into my parents' arms, like Tom Sawyer or something. I feel so bad for this...so much effort and love, and I'm just standing backstage watching it all.

My mother steps up to the podium after that, giving a short speech about what a great child I was and how happy they were when they found out I was accepted onto an Everest expedition. She concludes saying that she hopes I'm in a better place now, and steps down for my dad to talk. Once he finishes talking, he steps down for one of my grandparents to talk, and he steps down for Sherpa Asa. By this time I'm silently hyperventilating behind the stage, thinking to myself of how awful it is of me to let them continue with this. But I can't show myself; that just wouldn't be right. They would suspect trickery. They would suspect that all this was on purpose.

Then Sherpa Asa steps down and Maggie nervously steps up to the podium. She clutches onto the microphone with her pale hand, using her other hand to brush off a strand of blonde hair that had fallen onto her face. Her Swiss accent is clearly shown in her nervous speech, and it is all I can do to not run onto the stage and hug my friend, and my parents, and everyone who came to this occasion for me.

"...and Jaelyn, she was my only good friend on the expedition," she explains, her voice cracking slightly at my name. "We said we would climb the Alps together. Once Everest was done we were going to summit Mont Blanc and the rest of the seven summits. We had grand plans. But she never got to finish climbing Mount Everest, and the way things turned out, neither did I."

My breath catches in my throat at that last statement. So they never finished climbing Mount Everest either. They probably turned back because of the avalanche.

"And now, of course, we'll never get to summit Mount Everest together, or climb Mont Blanc, or carry out any of the plans we had. I know she died doing what she loved, which is great, but more than anything I wish God's plans could have worked out differently. Jaelyn was young. Even though the Everest trip was a flop she would have had so many more chances. Maybe we could have taken some of those chances together. But, now isn't the time to long for what could have been; it's to honor someone close to me, to all of us. Rest in peace Jaelyn. I hope there are plenty of mountains to climb up where you are, because sometime in the future when I join you, we're going to summit them together."

I just sit backstage, hidden by the darkness of the wing, letting silent tears fall onto the ground while still choosing not to reveal myself, because I am a coward.