Chapter: Four


Seconds later his alarm clock screamed in his ear, startling him, his heart pounded in his chest, bulging and threatening to jump out. He reached from the couch to the coffee table and slammed down on the off button. As he showered his mind obsessed over that nights dream. As he slipped the tight thermal shirt over his body he wondered what the voice meant when it said that it could help him. He stepped out from the private drive of his house onto the cement sidewalk. The light rain fell to the ground and hit anything that stood in its way. He walked until he reached a small building that stood on the same lot as the Mortuary that stood off to the left of the graveyard. A bell on the door jingled as the light wooden and glass door was opened outward. The jingle was accompanied by the usual formal greeting that the old lady always let out through her sweet decaying vocal cords.
“I’m pretty good, and how about yourself?” He lied answering her polite, “how are you,” greeting.
“I’m doing well,” she answered. The old woman was a widow, her husband died sixteen years ago, buried in the cemetery next to her flower shop.
“Can I get my usual?” he asked.
“Three white roses and one black?” The lady asked while she was turning to retrieve the roses that he asked for.
“Yes please,” he answered and pulled his wallet out from his back pocket.
“I still don’t understand why it’s always three white ones and a single black,” she said as she wrapped the green stems in plastic.
“I knew her for three years…And on the fourth she left this world,” he explained as simply as possible.
“Well I’m sure she’s looking down from Heaven smiling for you,” the lady tried to comfort him.
“I like to think that,” he said and pulled out a twenty dollar bill from his wallet. She punched a few buttons into her cash register.
“That’s five dollars,” she read off.
“You have a good day, okay Mrs. Helena?” he said.
“Same to you,” she said as he opened the door to the rainy and foggy outside world.
The bell jingled one last time then the door closed. Walking through the large black gates he stepped onto the stone path that led across the entire cemetery. The light water drops grew heavier as each step he took brought him closer to Ash’s grave. An old dead oak tree marked the spot where he turned to get to her grave. Slowly he stepped in front of a statue of an angel hunched over its knees, holding the skeletal structure of a girl. He knelt down and placed the roses in front of the angel on the ground.

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