• "Ignorant slivers of the congregation, gathered round spewing sympathies... Spare me.”

    Shiny shoes and even shinier faces. Every single weeping eye was fixed on the shiny dark coffin as it slid past a little curtain, into the now sweltering furnace. I nearly jumped out of my seat. This was so unfair! How could they just let her be fed to the belly of the monster like that!? Could they not see the fire lick at the edges of the wood, burn into her body and devour it like Sunday lunch?! Surely it would have been better to give her a proper funeral, like the one's you see on TV. Where everyone is silent as the coffin is put into the ground.

    My rounded and water-glazed eyes looked to my left, where my small and pale hand was being vice-griped by the more work-hardened, but equally pale hand of my father. My gaze followed along his pristine and new suit jacket, once flashing back down to the hand when it squeezed a bit, as if to reassure me. I looked back up, into my Father's face, and tugged once at his hand. He looked down, and smiled, but in his face I saw... 

    If you look up there, you'll see that I typed nothing. No, not some attempt to be cool or edgy, that's actually what I saw. Nothing. Well, I saw my Father all right, he was there, as person, as a body, as a being. But there was nothing written on his face, nothing that showed me he was even there. Not even his trademark eye-spark was there. But you don't know about his spark, do you? Let me explain then.

    My father smiled a lot. Sometimes, when he smiled, the muscles in his face would contract in all the right ways, his teeth would show, and you'd smile along with him. But that smile was unveiled when someone he didn't really like, for example; my Mother's new boyfriend had shown up for dinner un-announced. Or if my Mother was bringing me around to his house for the weekend, where I would be free to play with Chester, Father's dog in the unlimited territory of his back garden. But sometimes...sometimes, and this had gotten rarer as I grew older, my Father would really smile. And when he really smiled, the muscles in his face would contract in all the right ways, his teeth would show, but his eyes would really give it away. When my Father really smiled, his eyes would light up like the Sun had exploded. They would twinkle and dance and then, and only then, would you know that for one-hundred percent sure that my Father was happy.

    But there was no magical spark now. Not even a small flash cursed through his lobes. I looked back towards the crematory, all hopes of a last minute heroic rescue by my parent burned to cinders, quite like the remains of my Mother. Slowly, the flames began to dim, and eventually go out. I found it fascinating that the small purple curtain stopped moving. Surely fire couldn't create wind, too? Whatever. If I wanted to learn, I would have went into school. But I was never going back to school, at least, not my old school. No, my Father had promised me that we'd move away from the city, were everything was dull and boring, and move out to the countryside, were everything, he said, would be better. He'd make everything all better. But, as I stood there, while everyone else was solemnly exiting from the building, I felt not the sadness or woe that I had expected to feel, I felt slightly hollow, as if, in some way, the fire had cleansed her, and she was in a better place now, the flames just transporting her there?

    But surely that was contradictory, fire was bad, and therefore, this was wrong. It was all wrong.
    I wanted to go home and play with my Teddy-bear.