~denotes prayer~

~Dear Father we have come to you today~

As I listen to the words of my priest, I recall the events leading to my godfather’s death. I think of the past, the present, and more importantly the future for me. Today is the day I bury my last known relative and evaporate back into the masses and away from public view.

~To see Giovanni Lerpai be laid to rest~

Five days ago, I remember watching him die slowly as blood poured from his mouth like a broken cup. I watched as his widened eyes looked up at me like a divine angel come to save him from death. He always had a twisted mind maybe he had always suffered from some mental illness. He looked at me and tried to call me to him, but all he could do was silently chant my name like a mantra. I don’t know what surprised him the most, the fact I wasn’t moving to help him, or the fact I was dead only ten minutes ago.

~In the safety of your arms, surrounded in your present~

It was in his arms that night I had died. We had gotten into a fight about me coming in the house in the middle of the night. He liked yelling at me because it gave him a reason to fuck with me. This time, I had picked up my dinner knife and threw it at him. I believe it would have worked if it wasn’t a butter knife. I turned and ran to my room. Before I reached it, he grabbed me by my hair and pulled me back to him. He yanked me up and dragged me in my room. In the darkness of my own bedroom, I grasped at my last breaths fruitlessly as he raped me and choked me with his belt. I had long since stop fighting this almost nightly ritual, but that night I clawed at my sheets trying to free myself before he killed me. He became excited by my movement and pulled harder, squeezing the last bits of my life out my body, killing me.

~To take him to his final resting place ~

This is where fact and fiction became the difference between logic and reality. I felt my body stop functioning, my heart stop beating, and my eyes shutting never to open again. It had been moments of silence when he finally moved again and removed the belt. It was after I didn’t curl into my usual tight ball that he realized I was dead.

~Lord we ask you to take care of him~

He checked my pulse and found nothing. I think part of his mind was in shock because he began talking to me. He was mumbling how he never meant to hurt me, how he never meant to kill me. He folded my arms across my chest and covered my naked body with a sheet. I waited for my fate, let it be heaven or hell, but it never came to take me. I fell into a world of darkness and then deep sleep.

~For he was not a saint, Lord~

There was pain and then a quick breath of air flew into my body. I popped up into an upright position as if I had just had a nightmare, but no this was real. I don’t know how long I had been dead, but it had to be more than an hour. I guess he didn’t have any bright ideas about getting rid of my body because I was still lying in the place he had left me. I rubbed my hands over my cooling flesh, wondering if I was dead or alive.

~But Lord he lived by your word~

I got up and pain shot through me as I limped to the bathroom. I looked into my full-length mirror. My body was already bruising and there was a purplish-black mark where the belt had been around my neck. My eyes were murky pools of gray surrounded by the dark circles under my eyes. I traced my reflection in the mirror. Why wasn’t I dead? Was this a macabre nightmare? Or had my godfather finally cut the last strings to my sanity? I took several deep breaths to insure I was indeed alive and breathing. However, my lungs were aching at every breath, as if they hadn’t worked in weeks, not hours.

~He believed that one day he would be with you in heaven~

I got dressed in my silk black robe and I sat on my bed trying to figure out what happen to me. I realized I wasn’t safe from him until one of us was dead, and I wasn’t sure I wanted it to be me anymore. I lay there and thought about my best friend, Eric and my job, and I realized some part of me got up in the morning for that. For once, I had at least one good reason for living. I had friends I cared for and people who actually loved me. I finally knew what love felt like, and I didn’t know if death offered me the same comforts.

~So God please take him home to his castle in heaven~

I walked down stairs cautious that he might see me. I went into the kitchen to get something to drink for my dry mouth. When I pulled a glass out the cabinet, I heard him come behind me. I looked over my shoulder and we both paused. I looked in his eyes and a thousand questions rang unanswered in our minds; I doubt either of us had the answers for them. I realized for the first time in my life, I wasn’t afraid of him. There was a part of me that would do anything to stop him from ever touching me again. The worse he could do is try to kill me again, but I had already cheated death. He was scared. I could tell because nothing kept him from touching me every time we were alone. He was standing by the door and he hadn’t spoke or moved since he saw me. I made the first move; I turned around and put the glass on the counters. The bang the cup made when I put it down cut through the deafening silence, like a hot wire to water, we jumped.

~Let him know we love him and miss him dearly~

“I hate you.” I hissed through the shadows between us. I meant down to my soul. I felt free and it was like a weight was lifted from my body, and I didn’t have to creep around him anymore. “I want you dead. I will see you dead.” I told him. I believed it. I could almost feel it flowing through my veins like surreal energy. There were feelings, voices, and an inner glow flowing through my body. It told me I had the power to kill within me. I knew I could kill cold bloodedly with a gun or knife, but this was much deeper than that. I’ve killed people, yet I had never felt this way before. It was raw power, and I didn’t know what to do with it. I made the first move and walked towards him.

~And help those who miss him with their loss~

He stood his ground curious to what I was doing. Honestly, I didn’t know what I was doing, but something was calling me to him. I walked warily around the marble island in the center of the kitchen, now there was only about 7 feet between him and me. His eyes widened. He opened his mouth and I thought for a moment he would speak until I saw blood dripping from his mouth like someone had turned his mouth on like a faucet. He clawed at his chest as he kneeled to the floor. I froze. Of a million different scenarios, this was the last one I would have thought about. It was like watching one of those old black white horror movies and for a moment forgetting that you were only watching it. However, this was really happening. I watched in part shock and part fascination as he writhed on the floor and tried to call me towards him. I walked closer and that is when I felt the buzz in the room. It was more like a tingling energy crawling right under my skin. I felt it more the closer I came to him. By that time, his eyes had almost bulged out his head and his whole body was limp on the floor. A pool of blood had formed around his head, but spread around his body like a black hole eating the floor.

~And let this be a day to rejoice and not one of sorrow~

For at least a full five minutes, it seemed like time had stopped and I was the only person left alive. I looked down at his body unable to touch it, yet unable to look away. I reached down with shaky hands and rolled him onto his back. The movement sounded like peeling a wet mat off the floor. When I touched him, the tingling stopped and I felt drained suddenly. Between the shadows of this unlit room, there were a few rays of moonlight from the above sunlights. His face was shaped like a dead fish mouth dropped open with crimson smeared on the left side of his face, eyes wide in a blank stare to beyond, and the expression of an endless scream. I checked his wrist for a pulse and found nothing but lifeless flab. I waited for a few moments to see if he would breath, but he never did.

~And let us reflect on the good times with him and not the bad~

After thinking long and hard about what I was going to do next with a dead body on my hands. I did what any person with naïve sense would do; I called the police. I knew they couldn’t say I killed him, yet something told me I did it. How and why he died, I couldn’t tell you, but I was sure it wasn’t natural causes. They came, and took the body and told me to go stay with a friend for a night or two. I went and stayed at my friend Stacy’s house because I didn’t want to worry about the cops showing up at Eric’s. Stacy took me in and didn’t ask me one question because she thought I was in upset about the death. I was upset not at his death just at how he died. The hospital contacted me the next day to tell me how he died. They couldn’t explain how it happened, without any evidence that it was a homicide, but his heart was crushed until it burst in his chest. When his heart was blown little pieces of flesh in his body the blood had filled his chest like a water balloon. The moment he stopped breathing, I knew I killed him. There was no other way I could explain it, than that.

~Ashes to ashes~

The next few days passed by like one of those scenes on television, where you are looking at a public place in fast-forward, everything is quick and chaotic. I planned the funeral to be private because I knew his friends and family would feel more at ease than if the media was breathing down their backs. My godfather was a successful businessman and a lot people knew him, both publicly and personally, they just didn’t know his darker sides. I had to talk to several reporters on his timeless death; for some reason I felt at ease lying to them about my loss. Many of the people who knew him tried to comfort me, I reassured them I was fine, but I doubt anyone believed me. A week after the funeral, there was to be a reading of his will. I was invited to go; however, I doubt he left me with the clothes on my body. I would have to just move in with Eric until I found my own place to live.

~Dust to dust~

His lawyer called me and told me I needed to come because he had written me in his will. When, I arrived there was only a handful of people there. His cousin, assistant, and the few close business partners who he called his friends. I knew William Davis a little too personally. I remember him standing over me as he watched my godfather play with his favorite fuck toy. I hated him not because he knew what happened to me, but because I know he enjoyed watching. He smiled at me and offered me the seat next to him. Like the broken toy, I am, I smiled and sat down. As the lawyer read the will, my mind focused on the hand molesting my leg. It seemed like Davis was thinking about adopting me too. The lawyer cleared his throat and I noticed everyone was looking at me.

~In the name of Jesus~

“These papers were given to him by your grandfather,” the lawyer said to me as the other people got up and left the room. There was a woman crying as she left the room. He handed me the papers, but covered my hand when I took them.
“He left you everything, you know. His money, his property, his pain,” I looked up at him and looked down at where he was rubbing the bruise on my wrist, “You was all he had and he wanted you to be everything.” I squeezed my eyes shut as they burned with tears. I didn’t want to hear this. I didn’t want to begin to understand. I remembered the lawyer’s name was Nicolas Goldman. He took the folder from my hand and got up and closed the door. I tensed when I heard the click.

“This is your birth certificates, adoption papers, and social security card. It wasn’t in my client’s best interest to release these papers to you. Angelique, you became my client the moment you were born.” He pulled out the paper out the folder and dropped in on the desk. “Mr. Defire wasn’t your legal guardian,” he said referring to my grandfather who raised me until he died when I was six, “Nor was Mr. Lerpai.” I looked at the birth certificate and noticed where my parents name were supposed to be was blank.

“In fact you don’t have one.”

~Amen~