[TM] 282 Cremation or burial? Talk about funeral arrangements.

The explosion is a wave of heat more intense than anything he's ever felt, searing skin and muscle. For a moment he fears he can die, after all, but his brain continues through the agony, cataloging it. The blast has immobilized him for those few moments, though, and he feels it when his skin starts to peel. There's a noise over the roar of the flames, the explosion of each barrel, and he realizes it's him, screaming, before he can manage to cut off the sound. Dirt scrapes under his fingers, shredding his skin as he tries to pull himself toward the exit, toward the air, out of the inferno. It seems a century or more before he drags himself out into the cover of darkness, a blackened monster his own mother wouldn't recognize had she not met a similar fate in another fire a half a world away. Rolling in the dirt, he manages to put out the flames that linger, smoke trailing up from him, metal stuck into skin. The anguish is beyond measure, but his throat is too wounded for him to scream anymore. When the healing starts, however, it's worse, and, finally, blessed darkness reaches up to claim him and pull him down into sweet nothingness

* * *

If he thinks about it, he would swear that he can feel the weight of the earth pressing down on him. How the box he lies within doesn't crack with it, he doesn't know, though he almost wishes it would in his madder moments. Dirt and foamy earth would trickle then pour through the fissures, raining on him until they cut off everything left. He screams until his throat his raw and he tastes blood trickling down it, teasing and distracting, letting it heal and then he does it again, but nothing changes. No one comes. His hands beat on the satin lined lid above him, desperate, giving it every bit of strength he has, but all he has within him isn't enough. His hands become bloody pulp, heal and break again to no avail. Nothing budges. Nothing moves. The darkness is absolute, pressing in around him. There isn't enough air, and the ghosts of his life dance before him, in sparkling motes of color in his eyes. He's suffocating. He knows this, even as he struggles to find air, coughing, fighting off the drowsiness that creeps up with malicious insidiousness to claim him. His cheeks are wet, and he tastes salt on his lips. It can't end like this, not this way, he thinks, and then the darkness is absolute and there is no thought at all.

* * *

I think I'll skip the funeral if it's all the same to you. As they say--been there, done that. Neither option is all that appealing.

[JMM] 18.10.4 - Hallelujah

Baby I've been here before
I've seen this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

If he closes his eyes, quiets his thoughts, he can hear her voice in the recesses of his mind, warm in the dark with promises he let himself believe in, promises that he wanted to cling to, even when things went wrong and she turned cold. Gold bands on her finger and his, different in style and time, divided them, each driving a deeper wedge, but there was something still that lingered that he couldn't bring himself to release her from. It was supposed to be different; life was supposed to finally shape itself into something that made sense instead of a sequence of vignettes connected only by a sense of failure and betrayal, where each wound struck a bit deeper, carved away another vital piece. But here he lies, trying to pull her to mind and when it brushes over him, wringing a reaction he thought long gone, it hurts, like a razor blade slicing deep into his skin. He pinned it all on a girl, gambled it all on a smile, trusted himself to a pair of brown eyes and believed that the world could be reborn, and that he'd found the one to bring it forth. Every hurt, every disappointment, every betrayal was a necessary step on the path to her.

Well there was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

He was wrong. He was so very wrong, he tells himself, over and over, hardening his heart to the feel of the bed beneath him, chilling it to drop below the temperature of the walls they've encased him in. Once again, he's alone, and worse than alone, he's left with her voice, with the memory of his belief, his foolishness, taunting him in the dark, the recriminations he wants to spew out, but there's no one to hear. The heat of anger freezes over, encasing him slowly behind a new barrier, frigid and unyielding. The fire of passion chills to the iciness of retribution. There's a hollowness he feels carving out inside of him, where it aches when he remembers in his dreams, everything that was and could have been. Days of warmth and nights of fire, when everything seemed possible and life was his for the taking and he truly knew what it meant to be invincible. It hurts to be separated from that, hurts to remember, and so he buries it deeper until he can no longer bring it to mind, until the smell of her skin, and the feel of her hair no longer haunts him. And when the opportunity comes, it is easy to give the order. He barely recalls her face.

Well, maybe there's a god above
But all I've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

The boy has her eyes. It's a little thing that worms its way under his skin and into the recesses of his mind, sparking up first in his dreams in a dark motel room, jerking him awake. Not his father's eyes, but hers. He watches him through the next day, suspicious and withdrawn, sniping remarks more quick to fall from his lips, watching the confusion, the flare of hurt in the boy's eyes with something like satisfaction. It doesn't matter he doesn't know the reason for it. The sins of the fathers, or mothers, as it were. He hurts, and he oughtn't. Nothing should hurt anymore, not after so long. His skin shouldn't hum when the boy touches him in concern, either. That's a path he's not treading again, not with those treacherous eyes. He refuses to melt the ice again. Surely he's learned the lesson by now? Yaeko. Hiro. Helene. Louisa. Theresa. Angela. He's not fool enough to let that crooked smile warm his heart, even as he finds his own lips returning it without a thought. He'll play the game, but on his terms, and this time he won't forget the danger. This time he'll win.