Page 3 of Riot Reunion
Sheila Richards,
Director of Academic Programming
Pacific Northwest Institute of Music
1
WREN
SEPTEMBER
I wonderif this counts as murder.
“We are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Jason Andrew Stillwater. A highly decorated Colonel in the United States Army, Jason signed up to serve his country at the tender age of just seventeen—”
Elodie’s father aspirated on his own vomit. That’s theofficialcause of death. For a while after his 'accident,' Jason Stillwater sat staring off into eternity in a fugue state, but then the fucker dipped back into a coma and refused to rejoin the land of the living. He threw up because his stomach began producing too much bile about a month ago. The reflux caused GERD, a condition where bile rises up the back of the throat when a person lies down—which, given his catatonic state, Jason Stillwater had been doing a lot of recently. The bile had seeped into his lungs. His gag reflex was non-existent. The nurses were overworked and hadn’t checked on the poor ol’ Colonel in a while. By the time he’d coded, there wasn’t much they could do for him. He was already half-drowned in his own stomach acid. His system was so weak from being on a respirator for so long that he’d slipped away and died without putting up anything that could remotely be classified as a fight.
“Beloved by friends and family alike, Jason was a pillar of his community. When not deployed overseas, fighting for the rights and freedoms of his fellow countrymen, Jason could often be found volunteering—”
Apparently, the stomach acid issue wasn’t related to the shit-kicking that put him in a coma. According to the medical report I ‘procured’ when news reached Elodie that her father had died, her old man had been struggling with reflux and a pretty nasty stomach ulcer for twelve months prior to his run-in with the denizens of Riot House. Yes, it could be argued that Jason’s inability to breathe by himself contributed to the fact that he couldn’t clear his lungs. But fuck it. Semantics. As far as I’m concerned, Jason Stillwater’s life ran its course. The evil motherfucker died of natural causes.
“—a rare breed of man. Fiercely dedicated to his work, Jason always made sure to spend time with his family. A devoted husband and father—”
Seated in the front pew beside me, my sole reason for existing goes rigid, her palm turning clammy in mine. I regard Elodie out of the corner of my eye, and a possessive fire blazes to life behind my ribs. Her hair, once blonde but now a dark, beautiful chocolate brown, falls in lush waves to the small of her back. In profile, her face looks perfect as always—her slightly upturned nose is cute as a fucking button. Her eyes are crystal clear and wide, framed by long, ink-black lashes. Her full mouth, painted a respectful shade of plum this morning, is distracting beyond measure. She’s troubled, though. A tiny wrinkle mars her brow. Her cheeks have lost their color. Her knee bounces up and down as she stares straight ahead. She avoids looking at the priest in full vestments, standing at the head of the packed church, or at the obnoxiously large, framed picture of a grim-looking Jason Stillwater, that has been placed on a stand in front of the elaborate black coffin.
“Wanna leave?” I hiss between my teeth.
Elodie’s eyelids shutter. She blinks rapidly, giving a short shake of her head. Swallowing hard, she doesn’t look at me. I think if she does, she might just break and bolt out of the church—something I’ve been encouraging her to do since we got here—but she’s better than me. Thinks it wouldn’t look good if she didn’t pay her respects.
There are too many eyes on her right now. Sympathetic eyes, full of pity, wondering how poor little Elodie Stillwater is going to cope now that she’s lost her father as well as her mother. She doesn’t want them to know what the monster lying dead in that coffin did to her. The secrets she insists on keeping from the world are a poison, gradually eating away at her. Somehow, my feisty Little E has concluded that her father’s actions reflect poorly onher. As if there are people sick enough in this world to assume or believe that she must have done something to encourage her father to assault her in such a disgusting way. To abuse and degrade her so badly that she still wakes up in a cold sweat some nights, gasping for breath and tearing at her clothes like she’s trying to claw off her own skin.
Such vile and vicious thoughts flood my mind when I think about what that man did to her. I swear to God, if the piece of shit hadn’t just died, I would have murdered him with my bare hands eventually. I was waiting. Elodie might have been dreading the day that her father awoke from his coma, but I’ve been anticipating it with an unhealthy level of excitement.
See, I had big plans. The moment that psycho had opened his eyes, I was going to pay him another little visit. It would have been poison this time. Something undetectable in an autopsy. Something with very few symptoms to give it away. I would have let him watch me slip it into his IV, and then I would have explained in vivid detail what was happening as his body began to shut down.
I would have explained in no uncertain termswhythis was happening to him. And then I’d have taken immense pleasure in standing over his cooling body, as his filthy soul had oozed out of his body and slithered down into the blackest pits of hell.
I’d planned on enjoying the whole process very much indeed.
It feels like Jason’s gotten away with something, dying the way he did. He should have felt his veins on fire. He should have felt his body convulsing, the final death rattle taking hold of him. I would have paid to see it in his eyes: the knowledge that he was dying as a punishment for what he did to his own child, the girl I love. The girl I would raze the entire world to its foundations for, regardless of the cost.
I tighten my hold on Elodie’s hand, exhaling down my nose so long and so hard that it feels like I’m breathing fire. My whole wardrobe consists of black clothing. My shirts, t-shirts, pants, jeans, socks, underwear: all black, or some faded variant of grey, having oncebeenblack. But today I wanted to wear bright fucking pink. Orange. Lime green. Electric blue. I wanted to look so colorful and happy that anyone who saw me would think I was leading a Mardi Gras parade. If it were up to me, the Catholic Church, and every last bigwig from the U.S. Army in attendance here today would know that I amcelebratingthis motherfucker’s death.
Elodie begged me not to, though. And whatever my Little E wants, she gets.
We’re both stiff as boards in our mourning clothes as the priest drones on about what a commendable family man Jason Stillwater was. Elodie’s fingernails drive so deep into the back of my hand that they almost break the skin.
I focus every molecule in my body, drawing strength from myself and channeling it to the point where our hands meet, as if I might be able to transfer it to her, to give her as much of my own strength as possible. If it meant that Elodie would be able to make it through this charade without suffering any ill consequence with a smile on her beautiful face, I’d give her every last scrap of energy in me until I fucking died.
Forty agonizingly slow minutes drag by. The severe-looking man with a pinched face and rigid posture stands by the lectern, waxing lyrical about what an amazing guy Jason Stillwater was, while I seethe inside. I want to put my fist through something. The urge commands every muscle in my body to leap up out of the pew and fucking fight someone. Given that the priest is the closest person to me, I doubt that’d go down very well. Even in most Atheist circles, it’s considered bad form to assault a man of the cloth. And let’s be fair—this guy was probably sent an email by someone who actuallylikedJason Stillwater; they clearly fed him a bunch of horseshit about what a stand-up dude he was. The priest has no idea that he’s saying such amazing things about a man who, according to the Catholic church, is one hundred percent burning in hell at this very moment.
We stand. We recite a bunch of shit the priest says. We sit down. We sing a fucking hymn. The seconds refuse to turn into minutes. An eternity passes before the priest closes his Bible and clutches it to his chest, smiling benevolently down at the surprising amount of people who have turned up to celebrate the life of Elodie’s father.
“As is custom with military members, we shall now relocate the service to the service members’ cemetery, where Jason Andrew Stillwater will be laid to rest with full military honors.” He sniffs, and I catch the glimmer of annoyance in his eyes; he’s irritated that he can’t just cart out back and bury this bastard with the normal members of his parish. Instead, he has to drive twenty minutes out of the city and plug his ears up while the U.S. Army fire their rifles into the air a bunch of times.
And, yeah, of course. There’s the weather. “Just as a reminder, the rain is particularly bad this morning, everyone, so please take care while traveling to our next location.” It’s surreal as fuck when the guy pulls a cell phone out of somewhere inside his white alb and starts tapping on the screen; since when are priests allowed cell phones?
“Jefferson Boulevard is currently flooded, and District Way has also been blocked off. It looks like there has been a major accident, so for those of you who will be joining us at Roosevelt Cemetery, you might be better off taking—”
