“Elijah,” she croaked. Melinda’s voice sounded strangely disconnected gently pressing through the cell phone and assaulting my ear with its desperate pleading. As she uttered my name, her voice cracked - the first shatter of a fragile façade, breaking into millions of tiny fragments. “Elijah.” She reiterated my name again, and I knew the first splatters of tears were rolling down her cheeks, already raw from last night’s endless sobbing, horrible retches that would lull her into a false sense of security, a brief reprise from the terrible movie playing across the backs of heavy eyelids, closed to provide cover for stinging, red eyes that bled tears. “He had bought me a ring. He was going to ask me to marry him.”

Melinda’s call had woken me up at two, her name flashing across the cheap Razor’s screen. I dreaded flipping open the phone to listen to the haunted tones that would issue from her trembling lips, stumbling to form whatever words she felt destined for me to hear, listen to with a kind heart and undying patience. Well, I wasn’t very patient; that was for sure. “I know, Melinda. I know.”

“We was going to give it to me on my birthday, Elijah. A week. We would be engaged, we’d be getting married.” All the hope that had been riding on that one word died as soon as she spit the sentence out, a wave of uncontrollable sobs ceasing any incoherent speech from the girl.

“I know, I know. He loved you so much, Melinda. Please don’t cry anymore. He wouldn’t want you to cry like this.” Jacob hated to see anyone cry, especially his special Melinda. Once, shortly after graduation, when Melinda’s grandmother passed away, he had stayed up all night to keep her laughing, to keep the inevitable tears at bay for as long as he possibly could.

A loud sniffle was my only response; I could tell she was trying to stifle the shuddering gales of tears streaming down the gentle slope of her face in iridescent ribbons. “You’re right, but it’s so hard. It’s so hard, Elijah. I don’t think I’ll ever be right again.” She paused, trying to catch the breath that had stuck in her throat. “He loved you too, Elijah. His mom told me that he was going to ask you to be the best man. You were his best friend.” Another stint of silence, pregnant silence that killed the air. The phone connection crackled, choked static that echoed in both our minds. Suddenly, Melinda allowed a choked laugh to claw up her throat. It was sincere, but hideously stifled. “Sometimes, I used to think he liked you more than he did me.” I could imagine the crumpled smile forming on cracked, chapped lips chafed from shuddering breaths.

I was startled she could even utter such a sentence. “Melinda, you know better.” My voice was vehement, and heat flushed to my cheeks in an angry fluster. How dare she say something so outrageous, how dare she muddy Jacob’s image. “Don’t say that again. I don’t think you realize how much he loved you.”

“I know. That was stupid of me to say. So stupid. It just…” She faltered, either searching for another word or fighting off the tremble that clung to each word. “It’s like a part of me has died with him. I just, I don’t things will ever be the same.”

“It will. Things will get better. It will be all right.” Sam walked into my room at the moment, his big brown eyes gobbling up the scene in front of me. I teetered precariously off the side of my bed, rocking back and forth in attempt to keep my voice strong, so that Melinda could feed off it like some sort of all-healing elixir. I had to do that much for Jacob, to keep her sane and nurse her back into some faint whisper of the person she was. All the liveliness had drained from her voice; it was dead, some strange accent marking it. Grief. Horrid mourning grief that snickered while we bathed in its thick scent that would stain our skin and follow us forever, like a demented puppy trailing after its abusive master. We were now married to grief, unhappy spouses. Sam nodded his greeting to me, and I nodded back; his diminutive frame darted through the bathroom door, and I could hear the shower begin to run. He was washing away this hurt, the shared hurt that was palpable and thick throughout the apartment. “It will be all right.”

We wouldn't be okay. That much we knew entering this long road that stretched ahead so far I couldn‘t see the end - a narrow dirt road with sickly twists and turns. Neither of us could see the end, Melinda and I. It would be a while before we'd be close to "all right" We both knew it, but denying it now was the first shaky step, the very first nervous baby step to reestablishing our former statuses and recovering from this festering weakness boiling sickly in our stomachs. I ran a shaky hand through a bedhead mess of hair, sighing lightly. It was a while before she answered.

The sound of her breathing, like the palm of surf slapping morbidly against a drastic shore of carved rocks with dangerous serrated ends, was all that I heard for a while. I latched onto it, using it as a crutch.

“Maybe, but I’m not sure. It’s all happening so fast. The wake’s at five; that’s why I called. And the funeral will be tomorrow.” Something inside of me twisted dangerously. Tomorrow? Tomorrow we’d be burying him, six feet underneath the ground, tucked away safely so we could rid ourselves of every waking memory of him? He was a person, not a burden. It was too early. I shuddered, suddenly cold though beads of sweat had formed at the crown of my head. “Tara’s been great. She argued with the funeral director for at least the hour before they’d even think of making plans for her.”

I was silent, horrified, unable to speak to her anymore. I had taken the phone from my ear, about to close the phone decidedly before she filled the void.

“Elijah, I want you to come. I know this is hard, but please come. Not for me or anyone else, but for Jacob.” She knew me well. I hated the idea of death, the very thought of funerals caused my skin to erupt in clamminess, my stomach to churn dangerously. I could already smell the bile and feel the tears I’d been desperately keeping at bay clawing my eyes.

My voice was small as I spoke. “I’ll be there.”

“Thank you.” Melinda’s voice was smaller. “And Elijah, I hate asking you this. But, will you be a pallbearer?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.” I didn’t even think about it, didn’t want to. “Listen, Melinda… I’ve gotta go.” And like that, I had closed the phone and tossed it across the room. End of discussion.

The tears came almost immediately, and I quickly jammed my fist deep within my mouth, not far enough to draw vomit, but close enough. The room pinched together, the walls closing in on me as the room slowly spun and dizzy circles danced in my line of vision; things began to slant, and I was afraid the clutter on my dresser, squashed in a small corner of the tiny room, would spill onto the floor like a waterfall of useless knickknacks. I had shattered, finally. Each stifled sniffle crunched the cracked glass of my self-control and tears seared from my eyes, like faucets. I caught them with the tip of my tongue. Grief tasted strongly of salt.

“Are you okay?” Sam had glided to the door of the bathroom, resting his back against the doorway. A towel, probably dirty because I hadn’t done my laundry in at least three weeks, was wrapped haphazardly around his thin, feminine waist. The prominence of his collarbone was amplified without his regulation sweatshirt, the thick bone stretching porcelain skin taut. The fringes of thick brown eyelashes skirted across his cheekbones as he looked down, suddenly self-conscious. A cloud of red crept onto his cheeks and he gathered the hem of the towel-skirt, holding it tighter to his body, protecting his modesty. Water dripped from his messy brown hair, a rhythmic pattern that matched the hitches in my breathing. Drip, cry, drip, cry, drip, sniffle.

It was a dumb question. “Yeah. I’ll be fine.” I wouldn’t. Not anytime soon at least. The back of my hand automatically went to wipe away snot and tears caught on spider web eyelashes, like drops of pearly dew. My hands were still shaking.

He offered me a tentative smile. “Do you want me to go with you to the wake?” My conversation must have wafted into the bathroom as he was showering. “I don’t mind at all.”

“Thank you.” I don’t know why I didn’t just say no. Probably because deep inside my mind, plagued with manly pride, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to drive myself to and from the damn wake. I’d need Sam again tomorrow, too. I think he knew, could see it written on the newly formed lines of my face; perhaps it had hidden beneath the fading purple stain that blotched over an eye, its fingers reaching onto my cheek. War wounds from a fight merely two nights ago, when Jacob was still alive, probably sound asleep with his girlfriend tucked securely underneath his heavy arm, lips pressed against downy soft curls.

Sam nodded knowingly. “Don’t sweat it.” His voice was calm and gentle, yet low enough to show he could relate to this. He knew. Maybe he had lost a father, or some other vital relative; maybe his dearest cousin was hit by a passing truck, or cancer had slowly overtaken a beloved uncle, metastasizing until it slowly ate away all his organs. Anguish was similar.

I slid off the edge of the bed, and moved my feet that were heavy as lead towards the bathroom door. As I passed Sam’s tiny figure, he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder, channeling his sympathy through uncertain fingertips. My head hung low, a curtain of black hiding the frown that suddenly clamped my mouth and fresh tears that rode the curve of my nose before plummeting to the dirty linoleum floor.

--

I didn’t even have to tell Sam to drive. He took the keys from me before we’d walked out the door, him wearing some borrowed clothes from my cluttered closet of a floor. They were nicer than mine, and fit him well, surprisingly; I think they were from high school. At least he looked put-together; I had thrown on a pair of barely decent jeans, and some dark gray shirt that mirrored the somber mood that hung heavily around my heart. I felt as if the skin hung from my bones, graying with misery; the bruises, badges of shame, I wore were a starting contrast to the canvas of flesh. Light purple, emulating the rich color of a mountain sky, circled underneath both eyes. I played the part of a zombie well, sitting in the passenger seat without a word passing from my lips. It unnerved Sam, who chanced glances at me at stoplights on the way to the funeral home, a good forty minute drive out of town, the closest one. How many people had been buried in the cemetery adjacent to it? I wondered if the ground had grown stale with the decay of hundreds of people, the skin slowly rotting from their bones.

My life had become a torrent of bad luck, sucking me into its jet stream and dismembering me along the way. How long would it be before I had turned into nothing but dust floating on an absent wind? First Hannah, and then this. A cruel shredder had eaten away at the tapestry of my heart, and only the frayed remains had been left to my name. I was victim to fate, to sadistic grief.

By the time we arrived at the wake, I could barely walk. I lurched forwards with each shaking step, and Sam had to guide me with his gentle hand, like a rag pressed against fevered flesh, on the small of my back. We walked into the door, and instantly I was enveloped by hordes of bereaving souls, the very friends who had known and loved Jacob as well as I. They offered condolences that I barely listened to. Sam slipped into the crowd of mourners, each offering solace to one another in anecdotes and whispered words of gossip.

Brandon had his arm around me, squeezing my shoulders in the equivalent of a hug. He had pulled his dreadlocks into a ponytail, a sign of respect considering the boy had never once done this in his entire career as an asshole. “Melinda demanded a closed casket, and Tara agreed. But, c’mon, man. We have to go see.” I gulped, a foreign response. He didn’t take notice, and merely propelled me forwards. “C’mon. I gotta see him again.” His eyes shone with tears. So, I wasn’t the only one.

He led me to a room. A woman wept silently in the corner; I recognized her as Jacob’s aunt, a stout lady with a bright red lip and the stereotypical hairy mole just above the right corner of tight mouth, fingers of wrinkles erupting from corners of eyes. She hadn’t aged as well as Tara, who I had managed to capture a glimpse of stumbling through the main room of the funeral home; she looked like stone, her face frozen into an apprehensive mask of pain. Her only son. Gone, taken. Dead.

Brandon waited patiently for Aunt Whatserface to leave, patting us both good-naturedly on the shoulders as she dabbed her eyes with a crumpled handkerchief. The casket sat in front of us, perhaps the only solid thing in this haze of a dream; it was nice, made of finished oak wood that shone from hours of careful polishing. The death-box was lined with silver trimming, and Brandon pressed his fingers against the hinged door, cautiously sliding it to an open.

What met us was not Jacob, merely a cheap imitation. His eyes were snapped shut, and he did not hold the peaceful look everyone says the dead carry. His lips, pale and cold with an odd blue tint, settled on his face at a strange angle, still forming the last cold scream that had ripped from his throat as he made contact. Terrible bruises and lacerations made their mark, marring a once handsome face mottled with youth and the promise of slow aging. We could see where shards of glass were carelessly torn out of nasty cuts. The whole left side of his face looked as if it had caved in. My hand clamped to my face, covering the shock that gaped open my mouth; I tore myself from the scene, scrambling to the corner of the room to lean against the cool of the wall. Brandon stared at the corpse of our friend for what seemed like hours, astonished just as I was, but not half afraid of the dead thing sleeping in his homey coffin. It was a while before I noticed the sobs that fuelled him.

“Oh, Jacob.” Brandon choked out, his good-bye as he shut the casket with a thud that rung of finality and brought forth the end. He left me crying in the corner.

I was tethered to the wall for some time, cheek pressed awkwardly against it, before I scuttled towards the casket once more, leaning over it for support. “God damn it all.” My fingers thrummed against the wood, a heartbeat of suffering, and fingertips lingered against the coolness before I pulled myself away from Jacob’s new residence, crawling back into the crowd of mourners with the weariness of an old man riding my shoulders. This was killing me.

Melinda slid through the crowd, and eventually found me slumped in one of the stiff couches available for use. She took a seat besides me, and without saying a word, threw gentle arms around my neck. “Thank you,” she breathed into my ear. “It means so much to me.” I nodded.

“Where’s Tara?” The thought had donned on me that this had to have ruined her, rotted her from the inside out. This death would really kill her. How was her heart still beating? Melinda pointed to Jacob’s mother, the very woman who had taught me to tap my sodas before opening them to prevent foam from rising and had acted like my own mother without a single complaint. If I loved Jacob, then I loved Tara. I rose from my seat, my hand hovering on Melinda’s shoulder for quite some time before moving, and ambled towards Tara.

“Oh, Elijah.” Tara cried, an aged soul with the weight of the world hanging on her shoulders and clouding once bright eyes. Her words were minced with angst as she pressed herself close to me. My arms were not foreign around her, and I tried to keep her together, to keep her from falling apart even more. The bits of her that were missing dwarfed mine. I thought that perhaps we could form a whole person if we collected each of our parts and paired them together, a confused puzzle painting the perfect picture of hurt. “Jacob told me before, before the accident, that he wished you would find someone. I know it’s not my place to tell you what to do, but Elijah, don’t you linger over Hannah anymore. And don’t you linger over Jacob, either. He wouldn‘t want that.” She sniffed, pulling back to try and catch my eyes. Her curly brown hair frames her face and she looks like some troubled angel, a martyr for the entire population of the world. “He cared about you all so much. He thought of you as a brother, you know; he worried about you.”

“I know he did, Tara. He worried about you, too.”

Another sniffle, and the dramatic tragedy continued. This had turned into such a sappy movie so quickly. “Probably a little more than he should have.” I nodded, kissed her cheek, and then darted out of her grip. The bile that had boiled within my stomach at the sight of Jacob’s face returned, and I knew it was time for me to make my departure.

“I’ve got to go.” It was the second time today I’d said it, and it felt so right on my tongue. An immediate dismissal, final enough that its motives didn’t require an explanation. Tara nodded, some half-formed understanding forming on her face, and her lips rested on my forehead before she released me, a wordless good-bye that caused my vision to glisten.

I searched the room for Sam, and eventually found him leaning in a corner. Our eyes locked, and some telepathic communication was initiated, because he lurched to a proper stand and smoothly walked to the car.

The ride home was awful, the atmosphere so full of static. Concern rode on Sam’s eyebrows, knit together in a harsh line of worry. He cared. It was strange, and a little unsettling considered the wants and needs that chased his blood. “You’ll be okay, Elijah. Things will get better.”

I didn’t say anything, and tried to ignore it for the most part. But the words echoed in my mind, a clustered space of mush-words that meant very little, soft ghosts that bounced around aimlessly. All was a blur in my head, merging together to form a mosaic of the day - hell was a mere caricature compared to the travesty ringing deep within the lines of my thoughts. “Do you need to go home and get some clothes or anything real quick?” It was a subconscious invite for him to stay another couple of nights at my apartment; I hadn’t even realized I’d said it until he answered.

“Yeah, I guess. You need me to stay.” It wasn’t a question, it didn’t have to be. We both knew the answer. I didn’t even know this guy, this little twerp whose last name eluded me, and I needed him. He was foreign and fresh, and wouldn’t tell me stories about Jacob, wouldn’t tell me how Jacob would have wanted things to go.

I felt so distant from myself, so very alone and disconnected. He had dashed into his crummy apartment and fetched a suitcase full of clothes before I realized the car had stopped moving. Streetlights and signs turned to blurs of useless colors as he snail-trailed the few blocks to my home. I climbed the stairs and burst through the door without a word to him, collapsing onto my bed.

Sleep found me quickly, saved me.

--

The next morning was hell. The searing hot shower water that threw itself across my bare back in massaging beads didn’t dare prod away the stench of my stupefied state. I stood, rocking slightly, in the torrent of water for some time before I realized I had less than an hour to gather the bits and pieces of myself to form a creature resembling a human. I didn’t want to look in the mirror as I climbed out the shower, afraid of what would stare back. But, I did. And I was frightened.

I stared at my reflection, unable to believe that what met my eyes was really me- its skin was too pale, the purple stains inking underneath its haunted eyes too dark. Even my hair looks wrong. Turning to the side, my fingertips trailed along the line of my body - pausing at my ribs, waist, hips. I assured myself I’m still tangible, still completely there. I was making sure the whispers of me hadn’t completely faded away - that I was still left with something, no matter how faint it might be.

Alcoholism is a disease, I don’t see why grief isn’t.

The cold truth of Jacob’s death had sunk in, but I still grappled with the remorse that tugged at my flesh and flipped my hair in the wrong direction, that had buried itself within the depths of my eyes. I searched for my suit, the one suit that I owned, and threw it on. I didn’t bother with underwear.

“Do you think I should go?” Sam asked, his brows knit together. “I feel kind of rude going. I didn’t even know Jacob.” He stood in my doorway, already dressed and showered, looking about ten times healthier than I did.

“It doesn’t matter.” The words escaped me, streams of air passing from heavy slabs of lips. “He wouldn’t care either way.”

He nodded, and then jangled the keys, my keys. “Well, we’d better go or we’ll be late.” I mirrored the nodding motion and followed suit as he walked out the door.

--

The preacher gabbed on and on about how good Jacob was in life. I knew better, and wished that I’d been selected to do the epitaph. I would have spoken only the truth. Jacob was your typical ass wipe with an overly caring demeanor that oftentimes stifled his friends and girlfriend; he wore lip rings and earrings at times, and had once joked that when the time was right, he’d get his cock pierced. He had a tattoo that went down his spinal cord, and while it held no meaning to him, had absolutely adored it and showing it off; he enjoyed watching medical dramas and getting shitfaced with his friends. When times were rough, he’d watch Pee-Wee Herman and joke about jacking off in public; every time a friend sniffled, he was there with a goddamn tissue, shoving it your face like your goddamn mother did when you were five.

He was a Baptist, but not a practicing one and loved to mock the Bible every chance he got. There is the chance that his little angel ass will float right on up to Heaven, but there’s a bigger one that his fresh ass will be boned for eternity by the Devil. And he’ll like it. He always joked that his soul was damned from the day he burst through the womb. Maybe it was. But that wasn’t something I was willing to dwindle on.

The sky was thick with clouds that remained stationary over the cemetery, and I roasted while the preacher came to the ultimate conclusion of his long speech. Heaving the casket to the burial site had not been a difficult task; thinking about Jacob hidden deep within the earth had been. We had each been armed with a rose, and as his casket was lowered into the hole, the air smelling of freshly turned earth, we each threw ours on top of the oak. They would rot with him.

The crowd from the wake had thinned, and only close friends, and Sam, had showed for the funeral. We each bowed our heads, and even while I didn’t believe in God or an afterlife, just the black void of death, I prayed. It was strange, begging with myself to bring Jacob back, or at least allow him entrance into some eternal kingdom with roads paved of gold and all the goddamn pizza he could shovel into his never closed mouth. He loved pizza, extra pepperoni, cheese, and anything else that could be stacked on top.

Tara sobbed, loud and unforgiving, not the quiet little heaves you see on television shows. This was real pain, not something viewed on a TV screen, plotted and expected.

I found myself crying again, and as shovelfuls of dirt thudded loudly against the casket, it began to choke me.

With each shovelful, a bit of us all were being buried with Jacob. I couldn’t help but to feel that this was the last piece of me I had to be stolen. This was it. My future wife was gone, the hope that she would return had been taken by Kenneth, and now my brother, more or less, had fallen victim to death, overtaken by a speeding truck and scattered across the highway. My whole microcosm had been ruined, shattered mercilessly by the hand of some furious god.

This was it; this was it.

The sound of echoing thuds softened, and then ceased to exist.

All I can say for myself is finally! Finally, I have gotten back on track and am able to continue this. Leave a review NOW.