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In Death's Company
By AlanGrant5
IN DEATH’S COMPANY
A Novel by Devin Da Graca
~ CHAPTER ONE ~
Fall had come, bringing with it a blanket of clouds consuming the afternoon sun in its entirety. Leaves, golden and crisp, detached themselves from their branches casually showering the town of Bakersfield, Virginia in an arrayment of Autumn colors. The day was cold, with a chilly breeze rummaging through the towering oaks that stood perfectly aligned with the newly paved side walks.
All this was observed from an open window by fifteen year old, Brian Emmerson, bored as ever with the days algebra lesson. Miss Rafferty, the human calculator and origin of the afternoon boredom, continued to solve an equation on the white board, her movements similar to that of a rusted typewriter as she moved her way up and down the boards side.
Brian, pretending to take notes, began to sketch the environment he viewed from within his educational prison, the words of Miss Rafferty being nothing more than a background annoyance. It was a Friday, three minutes of class remained, and his interest in linear equations had begun to die down. Naturally, Brian separated himself from reality and as many of us do when found extremely unentertained with our surroundings, entered his own little world.
Awakening him from his mental drift was the sound of the days bell. Miss Rafferty had mentioned something about a quiz on Monday, but as always, the students were much too concerned with the long awaited weekend to trouble themselves with the worry of an algebra quiz. Brian lifted himself from his seat, as if he had just been given the electric chair, but somehow miraculously survived, and headed out the door, backpack lazily thrown across his left shoulder.
“Does that bitch ever shut up?” Daniel Shore asked, sounding more exhausted than bothered. Daniel, his age surpassing Brian’s by a mere three months, was your typical white boy, as they call ‘em, complete with Linkin Park and Papa Roach stickers placed on random areas of his backpack. With blonde spiked hair, blue eyes, and handsome facial features, the only thing keeping him from getting the ladies was his predestined reputation as being a computer nerd. Spending the majority of his weekends with his ass plastered in front of a computer monitor, it was easy to see why he didn’t have a girlfriend... he simply didn’t have the time.
“Only if you remove the batteries from her ass,” Brian replied, both him and Daniel walking beside each other in a hallway bombarded with student traffic.
Brian, almost a complete opposite when compared to Daniel, was a handsome young man, sporting brown hair, matching eyes, and shared nothing but contempt for the computer games Daniel played. Brian’s idea of time well spent consisted of reading Stephen King novels and of course, the occasional viewing of pornographic materials. At the age of fifteen, living in the world we live in today, viewing pornography wasn’t out of the ordinary, in fact, some might say it normal to view such things. With that in mind, if you hadn’t seen how sexual intercourse was performed by the time you hit sweet sixteen, you were either severely sheltered as a child or Amish.
“You going to the party tonight?” Daniel asked.
“Party? Who’s party?” Brian responded unknowingly.
Daniel stared at him as if shocked by the answer. “You mean... you weren’t invited?”
The answer to Brian was clear. The party had to have been thrown by someone of a higher class, or else Daniel wouldn’t have boasted his reply the way he did. “No, I guess I wasn’t. Who’s throwing the party?”
“Kate Sumner ,” Daniel said in the accent of a well established Englishman from the 1800’s.
Kate Sumner was every mans crush. A cheerleader, Kate was a veteran of Woodcrest, having attended the school since pre-k. She was well known and a class several stories above either Brian or Daniel. The thought of her personally inviting Daniel to her party seemed a bit too... fictitious.
“What? She invited you? No way did she invite you... I mean, of all people,” Brian responded in disbelief.
Daniel gave Brian that “what-is-that-supposed-to-mean” look and said, “What is that supposed to mean?” Funny how we are able to predict one’s words with a simple study of their facial expressions. “Just for your information, she did invite me,” Daniel continued, his tone of voice similar to how one would say “As a matter of fact.”
Brian returned to meet Daniel’s gaze. They had been friends since first grade,
giving them both ample amount of time to be able to tell when one’s bluffing. “No she didn’t,” Brian said.
Daniel, who couldn’t withhold a smile for the life of him, chuckled. “Okay, so maybe she didn’t, but one of her friends did,” he said, waving a piece of stationary around like a pendulum of an aging grandfather clock. Brian snatched the paper from his hands, glanced at it, then at Daniel.
“Bullshit. You found this invitation by chance. Where’d you find it? In B–Hall? Out on the shield?”
Daniel smirked at him. “Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that everyone’s going to be there. This might be our night to shine!” the rejected Backstreet Boy replied.
“Shine? What is this? Dork by day, Fabio by night? Do you realize what else will be there? A bunch of dumbass jocks who’s peanut sized brains have been laced with pig skin, that’s what.”
“Okay... so what? Jim and Eric are goin’ and there are gonna be tons of hot chicks. How can you say no to that?”
“Easy... NO. Unlike you, I know my place and it’s not meant to be spent in the same vicinity as those asswipes.”
Brian, for a single moment, had grown serious. There were other reasons for this serious persona emerging and Daniel knew it. He just thought it was time for Brian to get over it.
“Whatever, suit yourself. But Brian, who ever said it was against the rules to branch off from the norm? It’s not like I’m gonna come back wearing a football jersey or anything,” Daniel said, headed out the hall. “I’ll call you later.”
Brian opened his locker, tossing his algebra book into the bottomless pit. Slamming the door shut, Brian began shaking his head in distaste. He was angered not only at Daniel, but also at his words of wisdom. He was angered because what he had said actually made sense.
~ CHAPTER TWO ~
The following Tuesday had come swiftly, almost unnoticeably, as did the event that unfolded. St. Pauls Cathedral, found on the outskirts of Bakersfield, surrounded by forestry, was a full house. People, cloaked in black, exited their vehicles with the help of loved ones, as if they were too weak to move without the assistance of another. That was understandable given the circumstances.
Brian, dressed in a nicely tailored suit, moved through the cathedral in a dream-like state as if in a trance. He saw the Shore family huddled in a corner, embracing each other, helping each other deal with the loss of their loved one. The scene had reminded Brian of his mothers funeral. Several years previous, his mother had died of breast cancer. This was a loss Brian himself was able to live with, but not truly live with. But that’s the way life is isn’t it? We live, we die, and those left behind move on not because they have to, but because they choose to. Life is composed of choices and it’s in those choices, the selection of choices, that we begin to build the life we crave.
Walking down an isle formed by two sections of wooden benches, Brian searched for a familiar face. Coming to a stop, Brian had found the familiar face, but not the one he had wanted to find. Mounted on wooden stilts was a large picture of the late Daniel Shore. Brian choked, as if he wasn’t sure if saying something to a lifeless picture was appropriate. Just as he was about to turn, a hand caressed his shoulder.
“You okay son?” Brian’s father, Curt Emmerson, asked. He was forty-one years old, strongly build, yet emotionally corrupted since the death of his wife. Brian seemed a bit confused by the question.
“Yeah,” Brian replied. That was a lie and the way Brian had answered him had made that register easily.
“I’ll be in the back if you need me,” his father offered. He had known Daniel well and being at the young mans funeral had left him too in a state of hypnosis. It puzzled the single father as to why God would allow death to snatch the worlds youth, not to say he hadn’t questioned the death of those well advanced in years, but to take the life away from a person who hadn’t been able to experience the very few, yet worthy pleasures of adulthood seemed cold and heartless. With death having consistently and successfully removed loved ones from his life, Curt had begun to loose what little belief he had in a superior being, supposedly responsible for the creation of mankind.
Brian watched his father walk down the isle then glanced back at the picture.
“Why did you have to go? Why the fuck did you go to that fucking party,” Brian whispered. When noticing he was the only one standing, Brian turned red scouting for a place to sit.
Waving for him to come sit was Eric Chambers, sitting beside Jim Mathers. Both had accompanied Daniel to the party last Friday, both had witnessed what Brian did not. The three had went to Kate Sumner’s party, with only two coming back home. “Daniel’s gone man,” Eric had told him via phone at around eleven o’clock that evening. A brain aneurysm had claimed the life of Daniel Shore, but not before a fight had broke out between him and Woodcrest quarterback Darrel North. How the fight had started, Brian was unsure, but whatever happened it had triggered the bomb planted in Daniel’s cerebral cortex, drowning his control-centers in blood, killing him almost instantly.
“Hey man,” Eric greeted, sliding down the bench.
“None of this seems–” Brian started.
“Real? I know what you mean,” Eric finished.
Brian seated himself beside Eric, looking around as he did. When gazing at the attendants, Brian noticed Darrel North lurking in the shadows. What in the hell was he doing here? He had no business being here, after all, he was the one responsible for this funeral.
Brian had been friends with Darrel North back in elementary. A summer is all it took to transform Darrel into what he was today. Once he put on that helmet it’s as if the thing had consumed what little brain cells he had left in that brain of his. The change was drastic and in some ways shocking, for he had once mocked the very people he had become. Brian loathed him for it.
As the funeral ceremony (if you could call it that) ensued, Brian began to drift away into his own little world again. He began to reflect upon the memories made with long time friend, Daniel Shore. They were like brothers, the two of them, causing the typical mischief children do when they were young and innocent. “I dare you,” Daniel would coax when Brian was on the verge of doing something regretful. Brian, not one to resist a good dare, went along and did whatever it was he did, getting yelled at for it later on. And then, in the distance, came the argument they had just before he’d left for Kate Sumner’s party. Brian had been angered by Daniel’s decision and felt bad for feeling the way he did. “I’ll call you
later,” Daniel’s last words had been. He never did.
“At this time we’d like to ask if any family or friends would like to speak on behalf of Daniel,” the priest said, awakening Brian from his trance. Brian wasn’t entirely sure how long he’d been in that world of his, but he suspected he’d been gone for longer than he should of. The priest stepped down from the podium, leaving the audience in an eerie silence, with the occasional cough sounding in the distance.
Just when it appeared as if no one would attempt the difficult task, Eric rose from his seat and walked up to the podium. He cleared his throat, his first attempts at speaking a failure.
“My name is Eric Chambers,” he began. “I’ve known Daniel for a couple of years now. His death... seeing him lie there on the ground, it really opened up my eyes. Life is so fragile... so uncertain and for us to think we’ll live tomorrow just as we did today shows just how naive we are.” Eric shifted his posture, feeling the eyes of the crowd watch him intently.
“All the quarreling, the hate... it needs to stop now. We don’t know when death will swoop us away, but one thing I do know is that death strikes when we least expect it to and knowing that... knowing that, life has become all the more important. Important in the terms of making things right where things are wrong because we aren’t guaranteed tomorrow... maybe if we started realizing that, life would actually... for once, conquer over death.”
Silence still dominating the cathedral, the words spoken by sixteen year old Eric Chambers whispered sense into the senseless. It was hard to see Eric up there in the state he was in. Brian, Jim, or anyone for that matter had never seen this side of him before. To be honest, the Eric Chambers standing before the large crowd, seemed alien in character. That’s what death has tendency to do... change us.
“He was a good friend. Instead of mourning the loss of Daniel Shore, we should be celebrating the life, although cut short, he was able to live with us,” he said, pausing as if in search for Darrel North. He had wanted to stare at him coldly, but the jock was nowhere to be found. “Thank you,” he finished.
11/7/2002 7:58:09 PM
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