There in the velvet insulated coffin lay my dead brother.

            Nineteen years of living and to have died of something so heinous, something so...bizarre, made me sick to my stomach.

     They found his body on April 3rd, which was a month ago, give or take a few weeks. His body had be discovered in a dumpster next to a Family owned Kentucky Fried Chicken that sat on border of our town. Some women had gone dumpster diving and found his body face down in the trash. The women then turned him around and said she then jumped back in surprise and ran out of the dumpster. She then proceeded to call the police and twelve minutes later they came and identified the body as missing teenager Tomas Yeshua. The rest of the information passed right by me just like things usually do in my life.

     I shake myself out of my thoughts,I take the chance to  take in the surroundings of the the graveyard that would be the burial location of my brother. Surrounding, around me stood various trees, ranginging from dark and traditional pine trees to eerie and ominous weeping willows that looked like they would grab you and strangle you with its prickly branches. All the trees that lettered the landscape appeared to be dying, the branches among the many variant trees had blackish color to them from what I could see.The branches of some of the more bare trees were The pine trees that went farther out into the property had yellow quills littered among the swamp colored quills of a normal pine tree.This was precarious sense it was the middle of spring in which things were supposed to  bloom. more unusual was that the grass that covered the whole property and wrapped around the dying trees, it was emerald green. You could tell it was kept clean and cut, it almost looked fake, the only thing me to think otherwise was that the grass gave off the aroma of well...grass.

the many features of the graveyard around me were the tombstones, mausoleums, and headstones that sat above the rotting corpses, or skeletal remains of hundreds of people whose strings had been cut by the hands of fate. Some death more honorable or pleasant than others.

      My thoughts were interrupted as my mother, Mary, put her arm around my small and frail shoulder and neck. Her hand dangled like a dead person's arm over over the table of .I looked over to my mom's other hand and I see she is holding, no more like strangling a box of tissues. They awkwardly stay gripped in my mother's hand as my she scoots  closer to me her trying to comfort me.

      My eyes scan her over, analyzing her appearance. She is wearing an all black skirt that hugs her curvy frame, a black blouse that falls down her body like a black waterfall. Her shoes are black high heels gave an extra few inches to her 5'4 frame. As I continue my eyes land on her face I felt a little more empty inside. Her face was was pale and deathly looking as if she had seen a ghost. Red streaks lay present on her face from her eyes to her jawline, there were obviously dried tears. Her hair was pinned up in a bun, and a veil covered her face.

"Michael are you okay?" My mother said as she looked at me with her blue eyes that held the presence of sadness and hopelessness.

      I have always hated my name, it generally being a boys name. Apparently my mom named me after the archangel Michael.

    I slowly shook my head in a "yes" gesture. As I continued to stare at her with a emotionless expression.

             "Are you sure?" I dont even bother to answer my mourning mother I dont wanna talk to my mom about feelings, I look straight ahead. During the whole funeral I had been avoiding looking at my brothers corpse due to the fact that i just wasnt ready to face the fact that my brother was truly dead. Even though I tried, I couldn't escape the dark reality. Then I thought I’d I looking at him, maybe I wont be in denial anymore, maybe ill accept and move on to grief with my mother.

     Oh, was I wrong, so wrong...

     I changed my line of sight, just enough to be able to see him laying there six-feet under the earth. All around him dirt lay sprinkled like seasoning on a steak. The coffin was rich, dark brown, a gold trim went around the coffin like an outline. I then focused on his body and it was a sight of horror and disgust.

            .

       He wore a black tuxedo that flowed over his body like a river cascading through a mountain side. The black collar around his frail and skeletal-like neck was ironed and pressed, black buttons arranged in perfect alignment, all these preparations and he would be put in the ground, only to riot and decay. The shoes placed on his feet were black as night, gleaming in the in the suns rays of light, feet in a symmetrical arrangement. His skin once a healthy sun-kissed bronze now was the color of death, purple as if he had been strangled by the arms of a maniac or as though his body had been laid in the snow on a winters night for too long, the cold spreading through his body like a plague on a village. His mouth which used to hold the presence of smiles that could light up even the darkest corners of the earth now took place of a mouth as blue the Pacific Ocean. His hands were wrapped in what seemed to be gauze to hid his self-inflicted injuries. The corners of his mouth in the form of a frown, the place where the morgue operator stuffed the preservatives down his throat is clearly evident by the discoloration of tissue around the mouth. His hair was matted down, slick as though he had tried to clean his hair with gel and grease. The golden locks that once dripped with sweat, hope, and happiness after a hard and trying day of backbreaking work at our fathers carwash now radiated with sadness, despair, and sorrow ready for the earth to eat away at it ‘till there was nothing left,     

I stopped staring at the corpse, I couldn't handle this, everything I ever loved was crumbling before my eyes like the ruins of an ancient temple. Everything was turning to dust before me and it was hard to watch. My family would never be the same, my quiet soft spoken mother who always kept her emotions inside would wallow and cry until her tear ducts dried out. My dad who was always the one to crack jokes, the one always making even the most boring event a fell like a sorority party, would not crack those jokes anymore, nore would he even put time into being the life of the party. He’d just be empty, a hollow soul of what he used to be, it would take years for him to recover, and even when he did eventually get to that point it still wouldn't be the same. And what about me? I was the sister, the girl who grew up with this guy, took his stuff, bothered him when he had friends over, not realizing that he wouldn't be in my life, wouldn't be at my wedding, my graduation, every event that will take place in my life. I felt kinda guilty, i never took the time to hang out with him and get to know him, people are right when they say that you miss people when they're gone.

  I looked up as I heard the voice of an elderly man, it was wise and old. The voice was coming from the pastor who stood on the stage in front of the oak wooden podium that had a microphone perched in the middle ready to be spoken into. The man wore his pastor attire complete with a cross necklace and a bible in his left hand. His face was pale and withered with age. His chrome hair was cut short and combed back in a neat fashion. His back hunched and he gripped the he podium with his hand that was free of holy book war

    "if you would, please take your seats so we can began" the pastor asked in a voice that held sadness and familiarity.

After this comment people who hasn't seated themselves began to dial through the narrow aisles that had formed in between the black foldable chairs set out for family and friends. I looked at the passer Byers and spotted a few of Thomas's friends who he had over our house for dinner and such before he died. They all looked different in terms of emotion, Elijah, what used to be one of Thomas's friends had no emotion on his face. He looked stoic and in a cold mood, his eyes stared straight ahead at the rolling hills not bothering to at all to talk to anyone who l tried to give him their condolences that went right through him like a hot knife through butter. Giovanni, another one of Thomas's friends face looked like a kicked puppy. Clear tears fell down his cheeks to his jawline and then dripped into the green grass. His eyes were puffy and red from tears, I looked like he had pink eye. Snot dripped from his nostrils trailing down to his upper lip, he tried to snort it back up but it kept coming down like a waterfall. His hands gripped one of the many provided tissue boxes. The last familiar face to grab my attention was Tomas's ex-girlfriend, Trenesha, who had been with Thomas since they were twelve. As she walked her long black dress dragged along the grass. Her hands lay limp by her either side, dangling ever so often as she trudged hopelessly along through the isle’s to her seat. Her head was down facing the earth and her brown hair cascaded down her scalp and over her face concealing it like ink over paper. As the people finally found their seats she sat down in a chair still keeping her head down. Upon closer inspection I could see tiny droplets of water falling down the sides of her ebony skin and falling down on her black dress, disappearing like ice on a hot plate. Giovanni and Elijah sat on either side of her. They didn't even speak but I could see that they were trying to support each other.

   As the last people people sat down, the pastor then was handed a stack of white printer paper as thick as a box of crayons. He then sat the stack of paper down on the podium and began to read off of it like a teleprompter.

“I thank you all for making it here to this service to celebrate the life of Thomas Hope who unfortunately passed this past week.” This comment received some loud cries from the audience, some even began to cry even harder, I, the other hand had no emotion on my face, any that showed anyway.

“Thomas was a kind and caring soul who made sure the people around him were cared for. He stood up for the weak and fought the strong even though he, himself was considered someone this society would consider a weak being due to his illness. He never let this label stop him from achieving goals that he had in life,” Many people in the crowd shook there head in agreement.

“Thomas always made God his number one priority in life, he always had faith that God would be there for him”

  Over the past few days my faith in God has pretty much turned into nothing. Why would this God, this kind and caring, loving of all creatures, kill my only brother. There are so many bad people out there who murder and rape others, people who don't value life and would be happy for god to take them to “Heaven”. But no, this (what i know think is a fictional being) person decides to go for the guy who has epilepsy and who praises you like the “god” he is

Preview End