Out Of The Jaws Of Death

Come on, Angela, pull it together. She shakes her head, as if to knock her brain around to get some sense into it. She rolls her eyes at how deeply ingrained Tyler is in her memory, to the point she refers to herself as Angela in her own head. She wasn’t Angela until she met Tyler. She was Angeline, or Angie, or sometimes even Ang to her friends and family, and Angel to her grandmother, but Angela came from Tyler’s first attempt to flirt while simultaneously gain the upper hand, she just hadn’t realized it at the time, thought the nickname was endearing, so Angela became her name, along with some choice words she’d never repeat aloud, to the recently departed Tyler, never Ty unless someone was looking for trouble, knowingly or not. Standing in front of the crowd, her mind seemed to be on a loop, hyper focusing on the fact that she’d never have to hear him say that name again, or any of his nicknames he swore were only meant to get her attention. Her eyes scanned over the sentences in front of her, every single word a lie, ones she’s written only because she knew it was expected of her. “He’s in a better place”, she softly mutters, mocking the phrase in her head. “I am,” she chuckles to herself, hiding her laugh beneath the handkerchief that had been lended to her by the gentleman next to her empty seat, Tyler’s uncle if she remembered properly, but there’s no doubt in her mind that his body may only be six feet under, his soul, if he had one, was much farther down.

Her eyes drift down at the closed casket beyond the podium, the wood a rich brown, not that unlike his hair, brown with just enough caramel to glimmer in the sun. Her eyes drift back up, pausing at the navy paper stuck under the bottle of water for her. At the very bottom of the back of the pamphlet, gold letters contrasting the dark paper, His legacy will be carried on by his wife, Angela Havers, and both parents, Robert and Lilian Havers. They can have his legacy for all she cares, she tells herself as she internally scoffs at the name on the page, turning it over to glare at the picture of him, one from years ago that’d she seen once, framed on his parents’ fireplace mantel, his college diploma sitting next to it. The picture is large enough to cover the entire front page, In Loving Memory, in gold cursive below it. For the first time today, she’s thankful his parents had insisted on an outdoor memorial, able to wear her oversized sunglasses, her pair that she usually wears to cover bruises and dark half circles under her eyes, now covering her lack of tears. She’s already shed her tears, that night after the police left, after she’d promised them she was fine alone, just needed time to process, and thanked them. As she’d watched the lights pull away from her house, she’d sunk to the ground, overwhelmed with the singular feeling of freedom, one she hadn’t experienced before, God helping would never again, and doesn’t think she’d be able to verbally express if she tried.

Someone in the crowd coughs, a deep raspy cough that reminds her of her grandfather before he passed, smoking cigars up until the day they found him dead in his bed, a slight smile on his lips as if in the middle of a good dream. Her head snaps up, remembering she’s supposed to be speaking, quietly wondering how long she’s been silent. Plastering on a smile, one she hopes is believable enough, she readjusts her sunglasses. “I don’t even know what to say, I don’t think most people in my position would, I mean I wrote down some things, but nothing that hasn’t been already said, guess I should’ve gone first,” she muses. She sets the crumpled note card down on the laminate of the podium, meant to look like wood, but damaged by years of tears, the contact paper popping up as it does when it gets wet. “Tyler always got on me about that, not taking initiative, whether it was about a missing condiment at a restaurant, or why he’d never let me take my car to the shop, insisting they’d rob us blind because I’d go along with whatever the mechanic said,” she says, tilting her head at the memory of the feeling of her keys being ripped out of her hand, a jagged scar still visible across the center of her right palm if inspected close enough. She closes her fist, digging her nails into the faint, but there nonetheless scar. “He will be missed by many,” she says, deciding to end with a statement of truth, because he will be missed she knows, by his parents who only saw their perfect boy, by his best friend who only saw the guy he threw back beers with every Saturday, and by those who didn’t know him like she did, it probably wouldn’t be farfetched to assume he’d be missed by everyone, but her. She smiles politely, grabs the crumbled note card, then steps off the platform. 

Moving past the crowd, she keeps going until she reaches the concrete on the other side of the cemetery, the stone structure obvious from anywhere in the lot, perfectly centered, surrounded by grass and headstones. Looking up at the wall with so many names carved into the stone, she searches until finding a familiar one. She reaches up, dragging her finger along the letters, trying to commit the feeling to memory. “I wish he hadn’t had your eyes,” she mumbles, her eyes falling shut, tears escaping for the first time today. She lets her hand fall to her side, reaching into her pocket and withdrawing the eulogy, not Tyler’s, but her brother’s, the one she never got to give. She looks down at the words, the ink bleeding as her tears hit the paper. She rolls it up, reaching up and shoving the paper into the thin slot just above her brother’s name, meant for flowers, but she knows he’d appreciate her words more. Her finger traces over the letters of his name once more, savoring the smooth marble underneath her skin. Saying her silent goodbye, she walks around the building, letting her mind try to absorb all the names on the walls, destined to share a space with her brother for eternity. Just around the corner, she swears she sees Tyler, standing tall, and not at all dead. Grappling for her sunglasses, she pulls them off her face, the temples of her glasses stuck in her curls. Shaking her head, the plastic separates from the artificial blonde strands, the sunglasses tumbling to the ground. Looking around, Tyler is nowhere to be found, other than across the cemetery, in the form of the blown up portrait of him placed in front of the carved out hole in the ground. Her shoulders drop with relief, bending down to retrieve her sunglasses, placing them back on her face, perched precariously on the tip of her nose.

“I’m going crazy,” she mutters to herself, the note card with her hastily written eulogy for Tyler on it, crushed even further in her grip, the ink imprinting the lies onto her palm.

“Did you ever listen to me? You’ve always been crazy,” a deep voice mocks. Angeline spins around, coming face to face with Tyler, standing clear as day no more than a foot in front of her.

“You’re not here,” she spits, backing up despite her words.

He steps forward, pushing her farther back. “I am and I’m not,” he chuckles, his eyes roaming her body as they always do, making her feel violated more often than not. She takes another step back, the heel of her shoe, hitting the solid wall, opposite of the one with her brother’s name. “It said this is the most common, choosing to see your funeral,” he says, stepping closer until the tips of his sneakers should be touching the toes of her heels, but she feels no pressure. “Joked that it’s the truest testament to humans, maybe it wasn't a joke, that people really do care what others think about them, even if it’s a complete lie,” he sneers, his words dripping with hatred, “come on, you’re really gonna tell me that was the truth, that as soon as you’re home, behind closed doors, you’re not going to scream in joy that I’m gone.” 

Angeline pushes off the wall, walking right through Tyler, a shiver running down to the base of her spin. Tyler rematerializes in front of her, his stupid cocky smile that she used to love, the second thing, second to his eyes, that drew her into him, now haunting her. “How many wishes did you waste on me?” he questions, mimicking blowing out a candle, something he’d always teased her for, ranting that the tradition was for children, that they’re the only ones that should be allowed to be naive enough to waste time wishing on candles, eyelashes, dandelions, shooting stars, but yet never made any effort to get her to stop, unlike her other flaws that he sought to correct. 

Angeline stands taller, removing her sunglasses, raising her eyebrows in amusement, “All of them since that first night, wouldn’t call it waste, I’m still here and you’re not.”

“Look who’s feeling brave,” he taunts, his fist subconsciously clenching at his side, proving not even dying could strip Tyler of who he is at his core, or his learnt habit of keeping his cool in public, all bets off as soon as the doors closed. “I am here, though,” he reminds her, his facade once again back up and in full force.

“Something tells me as soon as I walk away, you’ll be whooshed back to whatever hell you’re spending the rest of eternity in,” she argues, directed at him, the version of him in front of her and the version of him that she doubts will ever completely leave her, but as she speaks the words, she is also trying to convince herself, but it’s didn’t matter whether he was a ghost or some nightmare from her own imagination, corporeal or not, she was still scared of him.

Tyler stalks forward, his hand reaching out, “You know, it laughed at me when I said your name, said that wasn’t your name,” he mutters as he watches his hand dissipate as he tried to touch her wrist, the olive tone of his skin hovering against the pale pink of her sleeve.

“Angeline,” she states, wondering if he’d actually forgotten that her name wasn’t Angela. She tilts her head, looking at the ghost of the man she’d once loved, “It means messenger of god, guess they were laughing at the irony,” she says, reassuring herself of what her parents had taught her as a child, that God had a sense of humor, sometimes more wicked than most humans.

Tyler shook his head, “Or maybe it was laughing at me for missing the message,” he interjected, cutting off her train of thought. “If I had just killed you-” he mutters, stepping forward. 

Angeline steps forward, meeting him the rest of the way, “You’d still be dead, rotting in hell for the rest of eternity, and I’d be home, with the Father,” she declares.

“You seem awfully sure of that,” he scoffs.

“That’s what happens when you’re a good person,” she counters, turning to walk away, sure of herself for the first time in longer than she’d care to admit.

Tyler storms after her, his footsteps silent. “You’re not a good person, you’re a self absorbed bitch who only cared about yourself, abandoning your duties as a wife,” he argues, his voice lowering in pitch but raising in volume. 

Angeline stops in her tracks, whipping around to stare at the literal ghost of a man she used to know. She smiles sweetly, shaking her head ever so slightly, “I stopped trying because I knew there was nothing I could do to make you love me enough to stop,” she replies, carefully sliding her sunglasses back on. “Goodbye, Tyler, you piece of shit,” she calls out, tossing her crumpled up eulogy backwards, it blowing away in the wind along with Tyler.