The mourners said,

Soft light filters into the church. Shadows dance along the margins and await the coming night. He stands in the middle of the aisle, his gaze cast up onto the blazing cross. She is a few steps behind, hesitant in the growing dark.

“It’s cold. Let’s go.”

“I want to stay for awhile.’

“Why?”

“Jesus, just go.”

“Fine,” she snaps.

The sound of her clicking, receding heels slowly implodes within the gapping arches of the ceiling, is lost in the empty space.

He sits in one of the pews. He runs his hands along the tarnished wood and urges the remnants of faith, left behind by the pious people who sat before him, to sink in. What did they say?

No words come to him. Eyes closed, head bent. Just curses rise up from the bile. A strained brow, white knuckles clench tight against each-other. Fuck you, big man. I shouldn’t have to be here.

He rises and walks briskly out of his father’s house. This break seems irrevocable. He has tried, for mother’s sake, to pull off the chains of infamy. It’s no good though, and he emerges with a sigh of relief into the open space.

The streets here are the kind of fading ghost you glimpse in a dream, ethereal and weakly alive as the night comes on. He stands on the street corner, where the groomed world of the church ends and the graffiti wasteland of towering weeds begins and dreams about leaving all this: the row houses with peeling lives, the vagrants cold, the life blood heroin flowing like shit out of the hands of lost kids. Tired eyes suck out the protoplasm of need that still keeps the community alive. Fuck living in this shit hole. Not even the rotting earth can keep him here anymore.

A quick stop at 7-Eleven to fill the car with gas and buy some food for the road (he’s broke now) and the decision is made fact.

The car groans as he eases it onto the highway. Its gears burn against each other, tearing at the very fabric of the steel, tiny fires cut into the gasoline. Explosions collide off of each other, rocking his stomach to the core. Vomit splatters off the highway, and the wind cool in his face tastes like iron. The nausea burns back in waves, tired and hateful.

He’s not supposed to leave the hole. The air outside is toxic.

He pulls his head back into the cabin, lets it loll back against the rough cloth cushion. Another car is crawling towards him out of the midnight black. Its headlights carve a weak path into the barren, lunar world. Giants tower near the side of road, threaten to suddenly jump out of their ancient footholds and attack the passing travelers. Granite hills, dark lumps of distant coal, blot out the moon as the car rushes around a bend.

Where am I going?

Dawn, a graying tinge in the distance. The world, for a moment, seems to be aging in reverse. A pleasant parlor trick of God’s the dawn is. He shows off the pretty spectacle to his guests. He tells them with the enthusiasm of a first-time home-owner about how it took ages to paint the walls because the cheap shit Home Depot sold him kept dripping down onto the carpet.

He smiles at the thought. Scolds himself for smiling and puts back on the requisite grimace. How long does a person need to pretend to be sad after a death? A day? A week? Or are you supposed to be eternally depressed after a person you know dies, just hiding the pain beneath the surface? Fuck it . . . I don’t really care.

The subconscious giggles as Massachusetts gives way to New York.

“Don’t care, eh? What’s with the road trip then?”

“I need a change.”

“To what?”

“I don’t know. Why the fuck do you expect me to know?”

“Well, you are driving.”

“Like that means anything. I’m not going anywhere in particular, I’m simply choosing not to be somewhere else.”

“It won’t work. You can’t get away from him by leaving his body.”

“Fuck you.”

“Fine, don’t talk through it with me.”

The car grinds to a halt.

A New England cemetery at dusk. Leaves blow down a dirt path as his shoes toy with a pile of pebbles. He joins a small group clustered around an oak, defiantly opposed to the advancement of the decaying human race into his domain. A man steps forward, hugs him.

"I’m sorry for your loss,” are the hollow words this empty face offers.

She comes up to him and takes hold of his hand. They stay late and watch as the dirt is piled on. Fade into the darkness, dad. Adios, sleep well amid the worms and piss. I’ll try to find some deeper meaning in the clods they stick to your thighs and mat down your hair with, grimy and fraying into lines of dust. That’s how I’ll dream about you: rotting and dead. I’d rather dream of resurrected life, but I can’t do it for you. It’s hard to believe that you’d make the cut. I hope there’s nothing for you down there.

He leans against the car and looks out at the frosted landscape. A forest rises up behind the McDonalds, a lonely stronghold along the serpentine freeway, and rolls ceaselessly into the distance. Snowflakes hover restlessly in the air. They are plotting their first assault of the season in hushed and bated tones.

He turns back.