Saving from Monkeys

by Star, Jessie L.

  He nodded seriously, "OK, I'll get right on that."

  "So..." I once again looked down at my bag. So close and yet...

  "Do you want me to get that?"

  Jonah seemed to have cottoned on to my conundrum and leant across the bed to snatch up the strap. I smiled feebly at him as a surge of wetness once again sprang forth in my eyes.

  "You keep being this nice to me and I'm just going to keep on crying," I warned him, thoroughly disgusted with what a wet blanket I was being.

  He looked a bit freaked out, but as he handed my bag to me he pointed out, "Today I think you crying is the least of my worries."

  He was so right and I suddenly felt insanely guilty for having stood there and talked about him and Abi when Elliot was on his way to Nan's funeral in such a state.

  "We should go," I threw my bag onto my shoulder, hearing a clattering as the stuff inside banged together.

  "Yeah." Jonah headed for the door, but as he stood back to allow me to go first, he pointed awkwardly at my face and said, "You've got a bit of..."

  Ah yes, the weeping Cleopatra disaster. I gave a half-hearted scrub at my face with my rapidly disintegrating tissue and then shrugged, finding that, honestly, I didn't give a monkey's what I looked like.

  "Screw it, goth looks good on me."

  ~*~

  Despite the clearly non-denominational life Nan had lived, Mrs Sinclair had rustled up a funeral in the massive church about a ten minute's drive from the house. This must truly have been a feat of 'money trumps all' as it was quite a popular venue, and Nan had only passed away a few days ago. I couldn't shake the feeling that someone's wedding had probably been bumped for this.

  Standing outside the imposing building, I fervently wished Elliot was with us. I was the most selfish creature alive because, although part of my need for him was to make sure he was OK, a big part was about not being sure I could go in without him. Jonah was awesome, but he didn't make me smirk or cringe and his hair just plain wasn't floppy enough. For this reason, I balked just outside the large wooden doors, my hands grasping at the strap of my bag in an ever tightening grip.

  Streams of complete strangers in highly appropriate grey and black outfits, which contrasted vividly with mine, went past as I stood at the entrance. I ignored their weird glances.

  "I'm freaking out," I admitted to Jonah, who, bless him, hadn't said anything when I'd suddenly frozen up.

  "Yeah, I figured," he said calmly, shuffling out of the way of people trying to get past us into the church.

  "What happens to people when they die?" I asked in a rush, the answer all of a sudden taking on great importance.

  "Shit," Jonah cursed with an awkward laugh, "that's a bit deep, isn't it? Can I have an easier question?"

  "I mean, do you think Nan's in there?" I pressed, jerking my head towards the hall.

  He gave this a moment's thought and then asked, quite perceptively for someone I'd always chalked up as a bit dense, "Do you want her to be?"

  "No!" I said, horrified at the thought. "I want her to be flying over Mt Everest or throwing hairbrushes at right-wing politicians; chatting to Martin Luther King or sitting on a cloud badgering an angel for a go on her harp. I don't want her to still be stuck here."

  I chewed at my lip, wincing as I hit the patch that had barely recovered from the last time I'd worried at it. Jonah stayed quiet beside me, waiting for my next move.

  That next move became very clear to me when I thought about Elliot, alone in the church apart from his emotionally repressed parents. I also remembered the way I'd run out on him on Nan's last night, how I'd hidden outside the door, unable to cope with seeing her actually dying. I wasn't going to do that to him again.

  "We go in," I sighed, and just in time too as it looked like the service was about to start. "And if it looks like I'm going to be such a selfish cow again, please feel free to slap me."

  He looked a bit bewildered by this, but unlike Elliot, Jonah wasn't the sort to follow up on the stuff I said, he just held the door open and gestured for me to lead the way.

  ~*~

  Crammed together on a pew towards the back, I looked down the church aisle and caught sight of Elliot's dark hair and propeller up the very front. He didn't look round, so I tried to send vibes down to him that Jonah and I were both there and, literally, had his back.

  Unease bubbled in the pit of my stomach as the pastor/reverend/priest/whatever he was came to the front and started some banal speech about why we were there. Frankly, if people didn't know why they were there, they shouldn't have been there, I thought crossly. This wasn't some drop-in BBQ, it was a funeral for the coolest person who had ever lived, not that the pastor/reverend/priest/whatever he was seemed to know that. He read from a script clearly written by Mrs Sinclair. A script that talked about Nan being 'spirited' and 'full of life', the kind of euphemisms she would have detested.

  I watched as, down the front, Elliot's shoulders got tighter and tighter until I was sure that his propeller hat was going to come flying off and go whizzing around the room. What had his mum been thinking of, churning this rubbish out? She had to have known what Nan would have thought of it...and how Elliot would react.

  The pew I was on creaked ominously as Jonah shifted uncomfortably, and I knew he was watching Elliot slowly losing his mind too.

  The opening nonsense out of the way, we all shuffled to our feet for the Lord's Prayer; so far, so predictable. I couldn't help a small smirk over the 'lead us not into temptation' bit, as that was pretty much all Nan had ever done for me. She had loved giving me a shove in the wrong direction, wasn't that what the whole thing with her wanting me to be with Elliot was about?

  I pulled a fresh tissue from my bag. It actually hurt to cry now, the skin around my eyes was red, puffy and very sore, but I just couldn't seem to stop. I tried to think about all the names Nan would have called me if she could have seen me, and how much she would have hated me ruining the look of my slutty dress by being such a sook, but it didn't help.

  Matters took a turn for the truly weird when we all sat down and the pastor/reverend/priest/whatever he was resumed his position at the head of the congregation. "And now," he said, in practised tones of solemnity, "John Hargraves will read a eulogy."

  John who? I sat up a little straighter and peered through watery eyes at the middle aged man standing up and going round to stand at the lectern thingy. He was wearing a plain suit, was of medium height and had short brown hair. He was absolutely and completely nondescript, and I had no idea who he was.

  "Esther Davis was born in 1931," he began soberly, "the only child of-"

  He broke off abruptly as Elliot suddenly leapt to his feet. The back of his neck was a brilliant red, suggesting his face was too, and, in that get up, he must have been quite a sight squaring up to John Whatsisname.

  The hall was already hushed, but it seemed to get even quieter as everyone waited to see what would happen next. What this meant, of course, was that Elliot's coarse words reverberated like a shot through the silent space.

  "Who the fuck are you?"

  I flinched and grabbed at Jonah who nodded and murmured, "He's back."

  "Elliot!" Mrs Sinclair leant out from the pew and looked like she was trying to tug him back down beside her. He easily evaded her grasp, his attention still focused on the stranger up the front.

  "No, I'm serious. Who are you? I've never seen you before in my life."

  "You have actually," John said, chuckling awkwardly then clearly remembering he was at a funeral and instantly dropping his smile. "Your mother brought you into the office once, but you were very young so you probably don't remember me."

  "The office?" Elliot repeated, turning to look at his mum with a stare that, even from a distance, made something inside me curl up in horror. "You mean this clown works for you? You delegated your mum's fucking eulogy? Is that who the rest of these jerks are?" He swept his hand out to encompass his audience. "Some bloody rent-a-crowd? What is wron
g with you?"

  I shoved at Jonah's shoulder and he got the message, sliding out from the bench and then hurrying with me down the aisle to flank Elliot as, chest heaving, he glared at his mum. All week I'd longed for this spark in Elliot, this presence, but now it was here, I could see why he'd been holding it back. He was falling apart.

  "Maybe she wasn't the best mum," he continued, his voice strangled. "I get that she wasn't the type to tuck you into bed every night and sing you a song about how you were her perfect f-ing princess. And that sucks, sure. But this," Elliot gestured contemptuously at John, "getting some random to talk about her life like you can't even be bothered? That's sick. You're sick."

  "Mate, come on," Jonah gripped him on the shoulder and gave him a little shake. "Let's go, yeah?"

  Elliot held his mum's gaze for a moment longer, then abruptly started to march back up the aisle towards the exit. With his back turned, he didn't see the way his mum slumped forward or his dad scowled, but even if he had been facing the right way, I doubt he would’ve registered it. His eyes were glazed and it felt like Jonah and I were guiding a blind man as we helped him outside.

  By unspoken agreement, we didn't take him towards Jonah's car. The idea of putting Elliot in a confined space at that point was on par with sticking a firecracker in a little box, not good. Instead, we walked round the back of the church, past the graveyard, and out onto a little dirt track that ran down into a reserve.

  Elliot didn't pull away from us, or object to the way we were pushing him along, which in itself was a worry. As we turned a corner, however, and were hidden by a screen of trees and bushes, he stopped suddenly.

  Jonah and I halted on either side of him, and exchanged concerned looks, wondering what he was going to do next. I know my money was on him bolting, but I was so very, very wrong. Instead of blazing away, Elliot tore the cap from his head, crushing it in his hands and then sinking down to his knees right there on the dusty track.

  Dropping his head forward until his wave of hair was almost touching the ground, he opened his mouth and released a completely silent scream of misery.

  ----------

  It hurt so fucking much.

  He clawed at his chest, trying to rip at it, trying to howl, to let everyone know about the pain, but he was a failure even at that and nothing came out.

  He felt a small hand on the back of his neck, and then Rox was awkwardly dropping down beside him, pulling him up and against her until his strangled pants disappeared against her skin.

  He'd tried so damn hard to keep this from them. He'd tried to make it about Rox because he understood what she was doing. Someone important was dead and she cried, that made sense to him. The way he felt - the emptiness, the 'what do I do now?' stuff - was ugly and uncertain and he didn't want to face it. It looked like that was over now, though, there was no escaping the red hot knife of guilt and fear that twisted at his gut.

  So what do you do when the coping mechanisms you've put in place all come crashing down, and you feel like you're breaking apart? You don't have a choice, he realised. You just hold tight to the nearest person who gives a damn, and let it hit you.

  Chapter 14 – The Best Letter Ever Written and the Final Goodbye

  I would happily have lived with creepy, alternate universe Elliot for the rest of time to save the real Elliot what he was going through then.

  I gripped him as tight as I could, but it still felt like he was disintegrating into little grains of sand and slipping through my fingers.

  I could feel his dry sobs against my neck, uneven and hoarse, and I curled an arm up to shield his face from Jonah. They were incredibly close, sure, but this was the kind of intense, private stuff that no-one should see. To this end, I turned my head away as well, resting my cheek against his hair, giving him the privacy I knew I would have wanted in the same situation.

  We stayed like that for a long time. My knees went numb, and I was pretty sure I was going to have the dents the gravel from the path had put in them for all eternity, but I didn't twitch. Jonah, for his part, stood guard above us; a reassuring presence at my shoulder.

  Eventually, the gasps from Elliot slowed, and then he was pulling away from me until he sat to one side with his head hanging down between his bent knees. A few seconds passed and then I heard voices drifting down from up by the church; the ceremony was presumably over. Elliot stayed hunched away from us, and I lifted worried eyes to meet Jonah's.

  "I'm going to go up and head things off," he said, clearly thinking the same as me, that the last thing Elliot needed was any of the pretenders from the funeral or, heaven forbid, his mum, coming down and seeing him like that. "You two going to be alright here?"

  I nodded, Elliot didn't react.

  I listened to the crunch of Jonah's heavy feet on the rocky path, but soon that faded away to faint background noise and it was just me and Elliot.

  He'd obviously pulled away for a reason, so I didn't try to comfort him again. I did shuffle round to sit next to him, though, now on my bottom and at least able to position the massive upskirt angle away from us both. Abi would have to forgive me for the view of my knickers her boyfriend had presumably copped when I'd dropped down next to Elliot. I don't think he would’ve noticed anyway, all things considered.

  Several more minutes ticked by and then, with a sudden, sharp intake of breath, Elliot came back to himself. It was immediately clear he wasn't happy with what he found.

  "Damn, Rox," he croaked, throwing the propeller cap to one side and scrubbing at his hair. "I'm sorry, I-"

  "No, don't." I cut him off quickly, not sure I could cope with seeing the 'Rox's grief is the only grief that matters' Elliot again, or having him apologise for being that Elliot. Putting on the 'Smelliot is so annoying' voice that used to come so easily to me, but now needed a bit of work to find, I added, "Despite occasional evidence to the contrary, I’m aware that you’re a human being.. It's not coming as some massive surprise to me that you have a heart and that it's a bit broken right now."

  He shifted uncomfortably, and was obviously about to say something when his change in position elicited the crunching sound of paper from his pocket. Ah yes, the mysterious envelope. It hadn't rated a second thought for me considering everything else that had been going on, but the way Elliot's face blanched at the crackling noise brought it quickly to the top of my 'items of interest' list.

  "Either your hip is crunching like you're 100, or..." I trailed off, letting him make the decision whether to acknowledge the envelope's existence or not.

  He hesitated for a moment, but then pulled it out and stared down at it warily. I tipped my head down for a closer look, but there wasn't much to see. It was a nondescript envelope, clearly unopened, with 'Elliot' written across the front in handwriting I didn't recognise.

  "Nan wrote me a letter," Elliot said flatly, in answer to my unspoken query. He started to tap it against his knee, I think to try and disguise the fact that the hand that held the envelope was shaking. "Or, at least, she told Chase what she wanted to say and he wrote it down," he amended. "Chase gave it to me the morning after she-" Like he'd been unable to say 'funeral' earlier, Elliot faltered on the label for Nan having died. Fair enough too, it still seemed completely ridiculous to think that she was gone.

  "So...you haven't read it yet?" I asked, very much redundantly as I could see the envelope was still sealed. I'd just needed something to say when he'd lapsed back into silence, glaring at the letter as if it was Pandora's box.

  "No," he replied, sounding frustrated. "I've tried, but..." he swore and then ground out, "this is it, you know? This is the last of her. I read this, and that's all I'm ever going to get from Nan."

  I nodded as if I understood, even as a tiny bit of me wanted to point out that he seemed to need any bit of Nan he could get just then, no matter if it was the last.

  Elliot seemed to have mastered the skill of reading that tiny bit of me, though, because he asked sharply, "You think I'm being stupid?"
<
br />   "I think you're just being you," I replied carefully, dusting off my disused skills of circumspection, so rarely used around him. Despite my cautious reply, however, he snorted and said,

  "Don't you think that's the same thing?'

  This sudden flash of humour made me smile a little bit, and then he was tearing at the seal of the envelope like it was a bandaid over a healing scab; like the quicker it was over, the less it would hurt.

  The letter clearly wasn't long, it only took up a couple of pages in Chase's loopy scrawl. I expected Elliot to turn away from me and read it privately, but he surprised me by holding the paper between us, so we could both bend our heads and read.

  Hello there grandson-mine,

  The best thing that can be taken from all this is that I get to say 'if you're reading this, I'm already dead'. I've wanted to do that for years, but I suppose it's very much a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity.

  So here it is, my deathbed missive. How very droll. I always hoped I'd be writing this in a cave up some foreign mountain with rebel forces encroaching upon my point of last stand, but safely tucked up in bed with a beautiful gay man tending to my every whim comes a close second.

  So, let's get to it.

  Firstly, your mother has no doubt organised some posh, incredibly dull funeral and invited a whole bunch of boring strangers who never met me, and probably wouldn't have liked me if they had. Who cares? This doesn't concern me, so don't let it twist your knickers into a knot. My family disowned me a few years after I disowned them (they always were a bit slow on the uptake), and all my favourite friends are dead (it's completely untrue that only the good die young) so it's not as if there is a multitude of mourners missing out.

  I didn't give my daughter a lot in life, if she wants some genteel ceremony to celebrate finally seeing the back of me, let her have it. By the time some God-botherer is forcing himself to say nice things about me, I'll hopefully be off haunting a good looking man's shower.