The pastor raised his arms in mourning before speaking towards the crowd of black in front of him. “He was a good man,” he had said, making a single, swift gesture towards the coffin that sat behind him, covered in dozens of black roses and orange lilies. “Gone too soon from this world, though I must remind all of us that God has greater plans…”
As the pastor went on, describing the highlights of his life to a sombre soundtrack provided by the chapel pianist, the individuals in the front row wept, passing tissues between one another. All of them were dressed in the same colour, and all of them had close ties to the deceased: the front row contained the deceased’s parents, united in their grief, and a single sibling, stoic and with a clenched jaw, sitting near the end of the pew like some sort of sentry. Few people talked to them after the reception, sensing that they needed some alone time: indeed, once the catered food had rolled out in the chapel as part of the sympathy meal, onlookers had noticed that the sibling sat in the corner of the room, nibbling ever so slightly on a cheese plate with a dead look in their eyes.
Thoughts didn’t linger on the sibling for long, though: the main event was the celebration of a life so brutally taken away. Photographs and candles hung in the reception area depicting the achievements of a man whom had been in the hearts of so many: weekends out at the lake, buying coffee at the local coffee shop, and an invitation for something that was never to come to pass. Guests found solace in these memories, which soothed the pain of the present knowledge that the laughing man in all these pictures had been brutally stabbed to death and left to die on a roadside.
… At least, that’s how you think the funeral went.
You weren’t invited, after all.
“… I should have been there.”
“Fuck off. Do you think I want to see your face?”
“What did you just say to me?”
“Get out. Go. Fuck you and what you did.”
“What? I didn’t do anything.”
“That’s the problem. You didn’t do anything. And now someone’s dead, and it’s your fucking fault.”
The community turned courtroom passes its judgment quickly, and the accused is singled out. Rumours travel fast in a small community such as this, and it was common knowledge that the accused had connections to several deceased individuals, some more complicated than others. Complication, of course, was simplifying it: it was no small secret that the accused had an ongoing feud with the sibling of one of the deceased, which often spilled out in messy ways behind closed doors.
Despite it being equally as well known that the accused was due to be married to one of the victims before his life was taken from him, the courtroom took discord in the community as evidence of murder. The accused was trying to pit us against each other, people cry as the crowd rages like an endless storm. Making enemies of each other would have hampered the town’s efforts to find the killers, one particularly bold person shouts out.
Even though it would be easy for the accused to rebuke the crowd, they do not. Instead, the crowd is met with an ear-splitting silence, one that they easily interpret as a free pass to enact punishment. Silence, of course, makes it easier for the crowd to justify their actions if anything goes wrong.
As the mob rains down on the accused, the accused takes it all in stride, never once objecting or fighting back. In truth, the accused had yearned for death the moment that they had witnessed their partner’s grave, the shock of the death shattering their heart in an impossibly painful manner. Wedding invitations morphed horribly into funeral invitations, funeral invitations to a funeral that they were never really part of. All of this only drove the dagger deeper into their heart: what was the point of living when someone you loved so much had been taken away from you? What was the point of living when someone was actively trying to blot out any part you had in their life?
Yet as the days dragged on and more bodies turned up, the accused had come up with another reason to wish for death. Their reasoning had evolved past simply being reunited with their star-crossed lover in another world, all the while escaping their pain in the current one. Such evolution was driven by days of senseless murder; in the face of so much death...
They wanted the opportunity to apologize to someone who was long gone, the one person who understood their pain. And if death was the great messenger, so be it. Life was cruel like that. Perhaps not to everyone, as a member of the crowd gifted a second chance slips away into the darkness. But to the accused, life was savage and harsh and there were no concessions.
For never was a story of more woe –
That they knew.
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