AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THIRTEEN
‘CASTLE’ XHOANA X
Luce
The sky shines brightly, the rays of the sun blaring mockingly over the somber crowd below. How dare the world continue to beam with brilliance when my heart is so heavy with grief. It’s poison to my soul, salt to my wounded mind.
No matter what I do, my heart is held hostage by this unending torment, holding out hope for an ending, but I see none in sight…
Her name upon the grave marker is all I see, and all I can think of is that this is all that’s fucking left of us when we die. A rock with our name and the hope that someone cares enough to visit. It's fucking bullshit, Maxine deserves better than this, better than me carrying the legacy of our name. The good sibling should have lived while the defective one was left to rot in the grave.
I’m in a world without color, dull and bland, just as life continuing around me is as jaw grinding as nails upon a chalkboard.
Fuck this world!
Fuck this beating organ in my chest. What use is it when it can’t give its rhythm to her, can’t pump life back into her.
I watch as they lower the white casket into the ground, and it feels as though I’m falling into the grave with her, resting my bones beside her as the earth wraps us both in its cold embrace.
If only that were possible.
Alas, it is not. Here I stand with my head bowed as the Father drones on about life and death…ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
I want to see the world bleed, hold it in my arms as it gives up its last breath, setting us all free.
I’ve been kicked down, left to rot in a puddle of my own blood and tears. Fuck, I just want to feel something, anything aside from this gut-wrenching brokenness. I want to ground myself with the tip of a blade. Each inch she drops into the six-foot-deep-hole, I want to carve into my own skin a little more.
But it’s impossible to do that when I know that’s not something she would want. She’d want me to continue living, to continue pushing forward and build a life without her.
Eventually, I will leave here, leave this cemetery and spend many nights drowning myself in bitter drink, trying to fight the urge to come back and crawl into the ground beside her. She already feels so far away.
Death is simple, a bullet to the brain, a little snap of the neck, a blade to a vein…it’s living that feels entirely impossible.
“Her life was lived to the fullest…” The Father says, as if he knew her personally, as if her life wasn’t brutally ripped from her at the young age of twenty-three.
I scoff to myself. No one here knew her like we did. No one who politely attended this depressing funeral knew her well enough to know that rosé was her favorite drink, that she memorized every line from the movieDog Day Afternoon, that she wanted to be Elvira for Halloween this year, or that she was hilariously afraid of rollie pollies.
No one knew her like I did…like we did.
Now she’s gone. Her laughter will never be heard, the twinkle in her eyes will never be seen…her hugs will never be felt again.
As sob burns its way up my throat, so I look up at the sky, my eyes closing behind my dark tinted shades. I may not ever be able to see her sweet face again, but one thing is written on the stone of my heart…
Alan Vaccari’s death will be upon my hands.
“Luce,” my mother’s hoarse voice pulls my attention away from the annoyingly happy birds flying overhead, “do you think you could say something?”
She gestures to the now quiet Father, who waits for someone to step up and speak over my sister’s grave.
Fuck, I really don’t want to. I don’t want to get up there and say something that I know I shouldn’t, like telling these nameless people they never knew nor gave a shit about my sister. They’re only here because of the Hooligan name, because of the whispers on the street about my connections to the Renzetti famiglia.
“I don’t know, Ma. What the fuck would I even say to these people.” I scrub a hand across my jaw, wishing I had a drink in my hand instead of this rose.
Hell, Maxine didn’t even like roses.They’re so boring and cliche, she would gripe whenever some guy she was dating at the time would buy them for her.
“Not to them, son, to your sister. Per favore, Luce.”
Lexi’s hand slips in mine, “Talk to me, Luce. Tune them all out and just look at me, okay?”
