Rest in Pieces.1

 Pt. 1

                Someone cut the lights in your head.
                You start to process each word I say. I can see the synapses sparking off one by one; lamp posts flickering on along a dark stretch of street where the power just went out. I’m calling the electric company. Moms and dads are calling, too, to ask what in the hell is going on. The whirring of the back-up generator fighting to maintain the electrical energy is almost audible.
                Blink, blink. Blink.
                I wish you could see your face. Watch yourself register the information that was just presented to you. See the way your jaw slackened allowing your lips to part like you’re about to burst out singing. Your eyes are submerging themselves in a glass coating of moisture. They twitch at the corners. Your mouth closes, sealing in those words you never wanted to release in the first place, and a crease carves its way through the middle of your brow.  If you could see this, you might say that your nose was about to split like a taco shell. I wish you could see this. I wish you could record it and then five years from now you could play it like a home movie, laugh, and say “that was the day I lost it all, and just look at me now!”
                Maybe VH1 could do a Behind the Music special on you. That is, if you ever quite make it to stardom. I know I’m always hopeful.
                Blink. Blink. Eyes stay closed.
                Your hand moves over your eyes like you’re shielding the sun; except you’re facing the carpet. And the sun went down six hours ago. I decide to leave you because you are obviously coping with this the exact way that I was trying to avoid. I stand out on the porch as still as the icicles, poised above my head to drip into my hair. I pull out a cigarette. Besides, there’s only about eight more hours until sunrise.

                Everyone from school showed up to the wake; even the kids who didn’t even know him and the teachers, too. Everyone started crying and hugging each other. My English teacher came up to me, sobbing on my shoulder and just held me like I was planning on defying gravity.
                “It’s ok. We’re ok. It’s ok,” she just kept saying over and over and over. I patted her back and breathed heavily in her ear to let her know that I was feeling something from what she was saying. I wondered if she was really trying to comfort me or if she had just needed someone to hug. She pulled away from me after about a solid minute and rubbed her ruby nose with a grey handkerchief. My six-foot-five physics teacher clamped an enormous paw on my shoulder several times. Kids I had never talked to or that I had never even seen before were squeezing my hands, nodding acknowledgement with sullen lips pursed, and rubbing any of my available limbs.
                I felt like a widow.
                Eli was certainly holding up like a trooper. As much as I felt like a widow, he was certainly acting the part on my behalf. He was grasping those strange hands and squeezing right back. Nods were returned with determined, solemn smiles. He thanked every person for their condolences; he even told them he appreciated their attendance, like he was presenting at an art gallery. Eli always played his role to a T. I wanted to yell “cut” and let him sit in his little canvas chair sipping imported bottles of tonic water as I massaged his shoulders.
                “Drop this film, Big E. You don’t need this and I got another one lined up. Big bucks, yeah, big bucks at the box office, they say, Big E, I know it! Just drop this clusterfuck, cheese flick!”
                No use. He was deep in his character and no hook I could throw would fish him out of this one. I would have to wait until after the wake before I could talk to the real Eli. It was showtime and, as usual, I was being upstaged.  As I sat in the second row pew, my hand resting on my thigh, found my index finger pointing at the easel propping up an oversized picture of the deceased. I looked into his eyes. I looked into the green grains of ink on that slick photo paper.
                Then I found my legs lifting my torso toward the open casket. I was tunnel-visioned on the mahogany box. There was a line of grievers waiting to cry over his dead face. Half of these people probably didn’t even know him as anything but a name. They didn’t see his face when he smiled or sneezed or blushed. They didn’t see him trying to impress a girl or cracking obscene jokes in the dim lights of a movie theatre. Half of these people had never even seen him breathe. And here I had been setting my eyes on him in any state besides alive. My arms were up, subconsciously removing all objects out of my set path. In the moment, I didn’t realize how much my chest cavity was heaving. I stood with my sweaty hands clutching the edge of that oversized shoebox, warring with the vertebrae in my neck. What did I hope to gain from seeing him? But loss and gain did not matter right now. I had to look.
                My spine surrendered.
                He was much too still. Usually, his eyes were always moving and a grin was always just resting on the corners of his mouth which made his lips and laugh lines twitch. I wanted to rip his eyelids open. I wanted him to look back at me. His facial muscles weren’t moving at all. He had already been pale to begin with, but now his skin looked fake and waxy. Maybe he was all papier-mâché and someone was going to come out and yell “APRIL FOOL!” I would laugh along while still being angry that they would pull such a morbid wool over my eyes. I would play the perfect prank victim in the masquerade. I held on to this shadow of a realistic scenario, despite the fact that it was the end of December. And like most things here in December, I froze.

...part two out soon.