Lying in Wait

He wanted nothing more than to take out his pocket knife and cut the tension that had built up in the room. Danny imagined it was something you could see. Tension always felt so palpable, like it could be grabbed and shaken. Or maybe it formed a thick mist, that would explain why the air felt so heavy. He was surprised when his sister first told him it was invisible. From a young age, he relied on her for descriptions, and she was more than up to the task. She never treated him any different because he was blind, unlike his parents. But right now, he couldn't rely on her narration. He didn't even know where she was. When they were younger, she was always so good at telegraphing her movements, emphasizing the sounds each shift made. In their teenage years, she would say the habit ruined her chances of sneaking out. She never grew out of it, so her current stillness was eerie. She could never be in a room and not constantly show Danny where she was. A part of him believed that must mean she wasn’t in the room at all. However, if the coroner is to be believed, she was lying in a box only ten feet away from him.

But Susie had a way of never really settling down. That's where the tension came from. He knew four other people in this room that had the same sneaking suspicion that he did, although it is possible there were many more. The tension was not spread evenly throughout the funeral home, instead it collected in ley lines between him and the other four guests.

Honey Malkovich was one. A skinny twig of a man who was Susie's first boyfriend. He was the first person she faked her death to. It was a simple, beginner's death. They were set to move half a state away from their hometown, and in crippling anxiety Susie had begged Danny to help her break up with Honey. Danny remembered wanting to ask her if that was his real name or just a habitual pet name. He supposes he could ask now, although he also doubts Honey would want to talk to him at all. They were never close before the breakup, and all Danny knew about him was what Susie said. Except the skinniness. When Danny gripped Honey’s wrist as hard as he could, trying to sell the grieving brother shtick, he was surprised by how thin he was. For a moment, it made Danny feel bad for the lie, after all, Honey felt so fragile already. In his mind, even today, Honey was still that fragile kid crying over his sister’s false death. It’s been over twenty years since then, but it’s not like Danny could see him. Despite this moment of moral awareness, it wouldn't stop him. Susie didn't specifically say for Danny to fake her death, but in the moment he panicked. He came up with everything on the spot and if they were both a little older, Honey would have seen right through it. For Danny, lying wasn't any different from playing pretend at recess. His parents always said he had such a creative imagination. He wasn't sure if it was true, but he thought it was likely intertwined with the blindness. He'd go crazy if he lived his life in the dark and didn't even have an imagination to keep him company. Lying came naturally, and he easily made it all up on the fly. Biking accident. Fell in a creek. Cremated. “I’m sorry for your loss, but she was my sister, and I just can’t bear to talk about it any longer.” In middle school no one knew how long these things should take, so it all sounded completely reasonable to Honey. For Danny it was all over and done in a quick ten-minute conversation. He had a reality check when, a month later, Honey’s mom had called with her condolences. The stern talking to that Susie got for the situation took far longer than ten minutes. It clearly wasn't long enough for her to learn a lesson.

Randy Miller was Susie's high school sweetheart, at least that's what she said. Danny wasn't sure he believed it, with how often she came home crying about him. Whatever it was that those two had, it wasn't love. They were set to head to the same college, a good one for Randy's law aspirations. But Susie got accepted into a private school for her dancing. While he never saw her dancing, Danny knew it was gentle and practiced from the sound of her footfalls. She felt at peace when dancing, and that was something he was willing to bend his morals for. This time Susie gave him a thorough briefing on the story they needed to tell. She knew Randy wouldn’t contact their parents, or even try to come to the funeral, because the whole relationship had been secret. Relatively secret at least, because the whole school knew. Perhaps that’s what put a sour taste in Danny’s mouth about the relationship. Susie was a good liar, but their parents said her eyes gave it away. Danny thought he got the opposite end of that. Whenever he lied, it never sounded very convincing, but people believed it because they couldn’t double check his eyes. When Danny sat down with Randy, who was already in a panic over his girl ghosting him, what he was met with was unexpected. There was something soft in the way Randy talked, and something so caring in his questions, that made it hard to believe he was the one making Susie cry. The conversation started at the bleachers, but gravitated to the local Sub sandwich place. Randy just wanted to know more. Danny could say the same, as he found himself intrigued with how different Randy was from his imagination. Despite Susie’s insistence, Danny deviated from the script, saying anything that meant he could keep deciphering Randy. A couple hours later, (after word of the death got to the waitress and she offered them some light beers in condolence, which they both gladly took) Randy finally broke. In teary eyed honesty, which Danny knew his liar self could never replicate, Randy admitted he broke Susie’s heart. When she first asked him out, he said yes but he knew he could never love her. He said it was out of selfishness, but Danny called it self preservation. Susie found out he was gay three months into the relationship, which Danny understood aligned with the bouts of crying. Apparently, Susie and Randy agreed to stay together as a way for Randy to ward off “suspicion.” Danny knew all too well that people weren’t as good at concealing their whispers as they thought. As Randy continued talking, it came crashing down on Danny that Susie wasn’t scared of a violent reaction, instead she was scared of the guilt. Guilt that was now his to carry. He didn’t want to think about that. Something about the buzz of alcohol and Randy’s soft meandering story compelled Danny to just kiss him. Shut up both their thoughts so he wouldn’t have to consider how he just lied to such a kind man. They never talked again after that night, but Danny recognized those tears. The sniffling echoed across the funeral parlour.

Jonathan Lock's impatient yet recognizable foot tapping ran with the same rhythm as Danny’s tense heart rate. Jonathan was a man he didn’t know the name of until years after they met. Their first and only interaction had been very brief, and didn’t involve the exchanging of a lot of words. Not long after settling into his sophomore year of college, he was woken up by the banging of a fist on his dorm room door. He thought it wasn’t real, because the noise didn’t even wake up his roommate, but the man slept through a tornado siren once. Danny himself just rolled over, hoping it would pass. A few moments later, when Danny began to doze off again, the knocking came back impossibly louder. It was followed by the shouting of his name, with more anger than he thought anyone could achieve at 4 in the morning. So, he got up, opened the door, and promptly got punched in the face with a brutal left hook. What followed was the ringing of ears and shouting he was either too tired or too concussed to understand. His roommate must have finally woke up, a miracle he assumed, and yelling got progressively louder, becoming a nail driven into Danny’s head. He caught every few words, each something about his sister. He was primed to hear those words better, because it wasn’t a hard guess that she caused this. He felt someone cradling his head. The lady tried and failed to get his eyes to follow a light, or focus, or whatever impossible task was being asked of him. He still wasn’t sure what the lady was saying, and he definitely wasn’t aware enough to let her know he was blind. Maybe the unresponsiveness would get him to the hospital faster. That hope was bashed when he heard his roommate abrasively informing the helper, with the cadence of a man who didn’t want to be awake. In a moment of clarity he heard the mysterious assaulter, now much further down the hallway, yelling “Sorry, I didn’t know he was blind.” In Danny’s floaty-headedness, that phrase rattled around for a while. Would the man have done something different than punch him in the face? Maybe announced his name first? It made him chuckle in a way that also made him aware of the blood building up in his mouth. He decided to stop thinking until after he’d been fixed up. The next day, no one around him had any answers. It wasn’t until years later, at a family reunion, that somehow it became worth mentioning he had been punched in the face once. A little while after telling the story, his sister brought him aside and said it was her fault. He didn’t tell her he already assumed that. She had made an account under Danny’s name and picture which she used to contact her ex and inform him of her “untimely death.” Jonathan, Danny learnt his name was, must’ve found out that the death was fake, but not the account. and took his anger out on Danny thinking he was the one who lied. Sure, Danny didn’t lie that time, but he started to consider the punch fair retribution for Honey and Randy. Susie attempted to assure him that this time it was necessary. Danny would never tell her he didn’t believe her. Afterall, he couldn’t see her eyes to check. He wasn’t sure if Jonathan ever found out Danny didn’t send those messages. He wondered if the concealed rage behind the foot tapping was directed at him or Susie.

Franklin Bennings was undeniably the man he knew best in the room. He was also likely the one who thought the best of Danny. Unlike the others, Danny was not implicated in Susie’s betrayal. Also, unlike the others, he wasn’t spared the brutal aftermath. With every other lie, Danny didn’t have to sit with its consequences or live with the grief. This time, knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop how bad it hurt. Frank had been married to Susie for 4 years, and in those years Danny got to know him well. He was a painter, and Danny had to trust Susie’s word that he was good. That was until one Christmas when Frank had pulled Danny’s name for a gift exchange. He made him an original artwork of the coast where Danny and Susie grew up. At first, Danny thought it was a joke, that he got a gag gift he couldn’t see, but then Frank told him to touch it. Raised paint sculpted the crests and luls of the waves, flowing smooth yet aggressive like he always remembered. It grew jagged where the waves crashed against the beach, which was formed with raised bumps from the textured paint, akin to sand paper, but softer and more natural. If someone told Danny that after his hands touched the paper he didn’t talk for the next five minutes he would have believed them. All he managed was a choked thank you, before he was enveloped in a hug from Frank, so thankful that his gift was well received. After that, he never questioned whether Frank was a good painter. Danny wasn’t sure when Susie first started to feel that itchy feeling telling her to leave. In the years after he would beg her to explain why. When she was angry, she would say it was boredom, but that was never true. When she was being honest, she would say she was scared. With Frank everything felt perfect, comfortable, they completed each other. If she let herself, she could settle in and spend the rest of her life in his arms. But she was so restless. Being with him, she would say, felt like her life was over in the best and worst ways. So when Danny got that crying call from him, Frank telling him that Susie had gone missing, all Danny felt was rage. He tried to tell Frank that she’d done this before, but he refused to believe it was true. So, Danny stayed with him through his grief, even though he knew it was another lie. He talked him through phone calls on sleepless nights, and Frank even dragged Danny to grief counseling. Danny knew Frank called it “denial” and he almost began to believe it could be. Until, after a year, Danny’s aunt finally admitted that Susie had been staying there, unsurprisingly alive, for the last two months. Danny didn’t have the heart to tell Frank the truth, not after he finally had begun to move on. So once more he found himself lying for his sister.

Sometimes, Danny imagines he has the kind of heightened hearing you see in movies. When he was a kid, he used to try to echolocate, to no avail. If he did have that kind of hearing, he would have heard Frank’s heart stop when he got that letter in the mail. It was an invitation received by many, but Danny knew it meant something different to Frank. Susie’s “Final Funeral” it wrote. Danny’s was in brail, but he rendered it unreadable after he impulsively crumpled it up upon feeling those first two words. With a case of beer as a peace offering, he got a cab to Frank’s house and asked him to read what the invitation said. Danny didn’t know who that request hurt more. For Frank, this was an admittance that he had been lied to for years. For Danny, he couldn’t help but think this was another lie.

Once the main procession ended, and people began to leave, five men stayed behind. Danny’s aunt, who gave a very long speech testifying to the beauty of Susie’s soul and how she was with her parents now, came up to Danny and asked why he didn’t speak. He couldn’t tell her it was because he didn’t think Susie was really dead, he wasn’t interested in sounding deranged. He lied, like he had done so many times before, and said he was too overcome with emotions and grief. He hoped she couldn’t see how practiced that line had become. He was relieved that his acting was at least good enough for her to go away. He supposed it was only half a lie. He was overcome with emotions no doubt, but it definitely wasn't grief, not yet. Him and the four other men begin walking to the coffin. The tension, a string of red yarn which connected them, began to wind tighter. The yarn was so taught, he wanted it to snap, releasing him. It reminded Danny of how Susie would describe a conspiracy board in detective films, each of the men as connected to her as they are each other, drawing them closer to the coffin all at once. Danny wanted to run up there and rip it open, quick like a bandaid, but he was confined to the speed at which Frank guided him. It took a lot of convincing to get Frank to want to peek inside, if anything for just confirmation. He could tell, in Frank’s weary steps, he still felt there was something unsacred about it. A desecration of Susie’s final wishes for a closed casket. It made Danny somewhat sick that he found her final request suspicious, a nausea building up at the thought that he couldn’t even trust her in death. Nonetheless it was clear Honey, Randy, and Jonathan felt the same. It was somewhat of a relief that he couldn’t see any of their faces, and only could guess how they balanced grief and anger. He hears the creak of hinges, as he assumes it was Jonathan who took the first step. The gasps of surprise are unreadable, and Frank drops Danny’s arm leaving him adrift in the darkness. None of them narrate what they see, and none of them speak to each other. Danny isn’t sure what he hoped for. For her to be dead? So that he must finally confront a grief he had been in denial over for so long? Or for her to be alive? And know that she lied once more? Until one of the men gets the courage to speak, for Danny, Susie sits in the torturous inbetween. Perhaps they will never speak about it, and perhaps she will remain there forever, leaving Danny in the dark unknown.