As the elevator descended to the basement of the church to the graveyard below, I contemplated the metaphorical descend as similar to my relationship with my daughter. On a way down to hell. I shared this thought with Joan, to which she said I'm being melodramatic and Leila's just going through a phase.
Professor Leah Leslie Hullway had joined us shortly after my daughter's outburst. “She's right. You're just over-thinking it,” she agreed to Joan. Her blonde hair had lost some of its shine in the past seven years and she had chosen to forgo the lab coat ensemble in favour of a yellow sleeved dress and a thin white cotton jacket, colouring in a shade of perkiness to the otherwise moody atmosphere. “Give her some time.”
With a sigh, I could only reply, “Yeah.” I thought of how Leila had requested to return home first without even saying goodbye. After some discussion, some gritted words, and more crying, Joan relented and had G escort Leila home.
A ding signalled that the elevator had reached its floor. Though we called it a graveyard, the place was more of a crematorium. The expanding Mist meant less places to build and bury bodies, forcing the five cities to expand downwards to sustain the slowly increasing population.
Stepping out into the graveyard which stretched for almost two hundred meters in all directions, we were greeted by rows and columns of urns placed squarely on marble-white pedestals, each unique in their own designs. Some were vase-like, with intricate patterns etched into the ceramic, while a few styled themselves as busts of the deceased's heads. Long fluorescent tubes lined the ceilings, bathing the room in bright white light. The floors were covered by stone slab tiling.
“Who are we visiting?” I asked as we walked down the aisle of the dead, even though I already knew the answer somewhere within me. “Is it my parents?”
The ensuing silence from the two ladies confirmed my suspicion and I knew immediately which were the two urns the moment they entered my sight. Settled in the middle of a field of painted ceramics ceramics and carved stone urns, were two plain ones placed side-by-side. No special designs or elaborate details. Just one brown and one grey, plain, round urns.
I stopped right between the urns, the women not questioning how I knew. I just knew. I guess it's like those people who were blinded when young and their hearing improved as compensation. When your entire body loses the ability to physically feel anything, emotionally, the mind tries to balance things out. Maybe. I'm completely grasping at straws here.
Looking down on the golden name plate with 'James Jones' etched into one and 'Stella Jones' into the other, I found my legs wobbling and placed two hands on the pedestal of my mother to steady myself, Joan supporting me with a helping hand on my elbow.
“When was this?” I asked.
Joan answered, “About a year after you went under,” she paused, sensing I needed the short time to centre myself after the news. “In their sleep. Same day. Peaceful.”
“I should have been there,” I said to no one in particular. Well, that was a lie I guess. I was trying to talk to my parents, knowing full well that such a thing was not possible. “I am a selfish asshole. Leila's right. I didn't think anyone would miss me. Not her. Not you. Not even my parents.”
I recalled how as a child, my father would come back late from work and, despite his fatigue, would tutor or play with me. My mother would wake up early in the morning, earlier than I did, just to get me up and ready for school, never once a peep of objection on her part.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“What kind of son am I? Can't even take care of his parents in their golden years.” To me, it felt like my illness, this Mist Poisoning, was just an excuse to be lazy, even though the logical part of me was yelling that it would not have made any difference. “I should have just died seven years ago.”
“Okay,” Joan cut in, a tone of mixed annoyance and concern in her voice. She dragged me by my arm and turned me to face her. “Listen to me Milton Jones, you are my husband, and I love you. To the death. But this is not your fault!”
“But-”
“No buts!” she raised her voice just slightly, loud enough to shut my advances. “Not your parents, not Leila, not even Matthews. None of them is your fault!”
Leah cut in, “She's right you know. You were going to die in two weeks anyway. You wouldn't be here to know about all these things if that was where you ended.”
Still rejecting the reasons of logic, I fought my case, “But if I died then, at least it would have been the end of a chapter for everyone. You will mourn me, you will miss me for awhile, but at least everyone will know that I'm dead!”
“Milton...” Joan tried to put a reassuring hand on my shoulder but I took a step away in hesitation.
I looked at my wife beseechingly. Pleading for what though, I do not know. “I'd rather die and be a memory, than live and be someone's false hope.”
Leah cut in, “They were proud of you,” I turned to face the professor. Her looks conveyed both pity and regret, and a certain understanding that I wasn't sure where from. “Your parents were so proud of you. Their son, about to save the world.”
Again, Joan, turned me to her and I starred into her strong gaze, sharpening my own strength in the process. “It's not your fault. Things change, people die. But we keep walking.”
No longer able to hold her stare, I turned to my parents' urns and placed a hand on each of them, “I love you both. So much.” Had I kept my ability to cry, tears would likely poured out of my eyes with enough of it to fill a bucket. The lack of physical pain also meant that heartache was not possible.
After catching my breath and composing myself, I turned back to my wife and was surprised again by how well she knew me, ever after all these years. “You're going back aren't you?”
“Yeah...” I replied warily.
She took my hands in hers and leaned in for a deep kiss. “You don't want me to come with you, am I right?”
Initially, I could only smile in acknowledgement. Somehow though, I managed to find the strength to speak. “You should go take care of Leila. She needs you more than I do now.”
She smiled back reassuringly, the ones you get when others are trying to tell you everything will be okay. “I love you.”
We kissed again. “I love you too.”
And with no more from either of us, I turned away from my wife of six years for me, and thirteen years for her. I could hear Leah discussing with Joan about my transportation, guaranteeing the latter that she would bring me back to E.F.A Headquarters safely.
The professor caught up with me as we neared the elevator, leaving my wife to pay her respects to her parents-in-law while I reminiscence about my childhood with them. The scrapped knee that my father tried to disinfect with his whiskey before my mother took over for a gentler approach. The phone they had refused to get for me unless I scored A's for my exams, but ended up buying it for me anyway.
“The thing about elevators,” Leah said in her musical foreign accent as we stepped into said contraption, snapping me out of my trance. “Is that they go up as well.” She pressed the button for the ground floor and the door closed behind.
I replied, “That's one way to look at things.”
“I know how you feel; you know,” she said with her eyes to the floor, scanning her snow-white shoes, perhaps for stains or blemishes to rid, given her immaculate look. “The insecurities, the fear. The confusion of seeing the world passing by you in leaps and bounds with a single blink.”
Without meaning to, I let out a derisive snort. “And how could you possibly understand that?”
Calmly, not sounding the least bit insulted, she replied, “Because I'm twenty years older than my body.”
Confused at her proclamation, I turned to look at her and our eyes met. I still exclaimed, “What?”
Holding onto my gaze, she explained, “I was the initial test subject for the Cryo-Tube prototype,” The elevator doors slid open noiselessly. The light from beyond the stained glass Jesus crystallized her face in a disco of colours which made her blissful smile all the more strange. “I'm like the monkeys that went to space.”