Nine.

"What were the last words you spoke to your father?"

The sight of the casket in front of me had done nothing, but this question put to me by one of the many people garbed in black shocked me out of my trance.

I didn't want to remember, but I felt like I owed the man this at the very least.

He'd come to the door to see me off, like always. He knew I hated it, but that didn't stop him.

It never did.

"Careful, son."
"You don't have to tell me, dad."
"I know, but I just want you to be safe."
"I know, dad."
"The roads can be real treacherous at ti-..."
"Dad, I think I'd prefer a car accident if it meant not having you drone on and treat me like a five year old."


Witnesses say that the car had been just exiting a tunnel when a drunk driver, who'd been snaking in and out of traffic for about a quarter mile, cut the wrong way onto the intersection and T-boned it.

Witnesses say that both cars were launched into the air, tumbling several times before landing on the sidewalk with a sense of perverse finality.

Witnesses say that the body - this body, the one that now lay in this closed casket in front of me- was flung out mid-flip, and dragged across the freeway before it came to a standstill.


And the last words my father would ever hear from me had been how a car accident would have been more preferable to his nagging.

Death was not without a sense of irony.

Perhaps my face had betrayed some emotions that I didn't dare share with my words, but he gave my shoulder a slight squeeze, as if to let me know it was all right, that it wasn't my fault, that everything was going to be okay.

He was wrong, of course.

Another of the men in black stepped towards me.

"They're taking the body away now. I think you should leave."

I wanted to take one last look into the casket, at those brown eyes, that sandy brown hair, all those little things I'd been glad to have inherited from my father, but I knew the time for that had long gone on.

Instead, I turned around and began walking.

And stopped.

The scene ahead reminded me too much of the tunnel that had brought me here: the pitch black darkness with the distant light reminded me too much of that tunnel on the freeway.

But there was that hand on my shoulder again.

"There is no pain there, no suffering. Trust me."

And so I walked, hesitant, wavering in my resolve.

But as I reached the light, all my fears vanished.

And as I floated upwards into nothingness, I couldn't help but take one last at the casket that held my mangled remains, and the father that cried over it.

4 comments:

  1. well...very different from your last post...this ones actually a trauma!

    Fadhil...your writing style is changing dramatically...:D
    should i say iam worried? ;p

    lol anyways, great post.




    -Zameel Haneefa
    http://lifeturnstoday.blogspot.com/

    ReplyDelete
  2. and iam waiting for new posts...:D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dude... This is just there.. You know.. With the top.. Finally you're cracking. Maybe its time you started changing levels. Wow. Just wow.

    ReplyDelete