Black

Part 8 His Bride

Sirens...cars
  Ambulance...
Blood...Pale face

Black...
...Coffin

Sean had finally kissed his bride
.
.
.
Death

Black figures sat in a row in silent mourning for him. Teachers and most students of the school, even those whom she didn't know had come to attend his funeral. His friends and basketball team wore uniform shirts and placed his one over his coffin by his coach. Jennifer was devastated and shaken to core by his death. She had been in the hysteria of crying since she heard about his murder.
Haley was next to her, for her support  and Jennifer leaned into her out of her sorrow for him. He looked even more handsome, Amber noticed, at his funeral; radiant and mature like a groom on his wedding day. Jennifer made a funeral speech whose voice was heavy and coarse thick with a lump in the throat. Ironic, the one who had been in the denial delivering speech was nothing but sarcasm of human mind. Broken sentences, with the punctuation of sobs for the pause to recollect courage before continuing drenched their hearts with fresh sting of tears. Marina took him with her, Amber reflected as she looked at the people placing roses over his casket. Amber sighed, inhaling deep and adjusted her skirt of her short black evening dress and walked over to his coffin. The cold wind ruffled through her loose hair with few tendrils falling out of her braid. She stood at his coffin silently and gave him a cold lopsided smirk.

It's his wedding day

He had finally kissed his bride, Death or maybe it's Marina who had taken him away after bittersweet kiss of death. She wanted to kill him for shattering Jennifer who was, somehow, in the trauma and empty shell of a girl she used to know. Amber chuckled at herself and placed a blue rose on his coffin. She couldn't kill a man who was already dead but she felt sick in her stomach over thinking that, at least, Marina had had him. A gust of wind blasted her lean stature, making her to hug herself from the cold air. The skies darkened, she snapped her head up as she heard something whispering in the air. She gasped and shuddered in the horror upon seeing a girl standing on the other side of his coffin. She felt a jolt of shiver, cold sweat trickled down her spine that made her tremble. It was she, in the white bridal gown standing at his side. She had a blood on her mouth trickling down her neck and was chewing on something, a piece of flesh maybe. She had hole in the middle of chest cavity, where's the heart is supposed to be and was bleeding staining her white dress that made Amber trembled in her own sweat of what she could have been eating on. The one in the bridal gown, gave her a lopsided grin and showed her her bloody hands.

She couldn't kill a already dead man or...
...she had already...

"Look what did you do?", she whispered

Amber jerked out of her hallucination when someone touched her shoulder. She instantly jerked towards the source and faced Maria sighing in relief. The hallucination, as if to confirm it, Amber looked back over her shoulder where she had seen herself at his grave.

"Are you alright?" Maria looked over where Amber had been staring for few minutes. Amber rubbed her arms nervously, it's just his sight of dead body taking toll on her and that she's happy...
Amber pushed these thoughts at the back of her unconscious. She can deal with them later, like always and nodded back to Maria telling her that she's alright. They walked to a nearby bench and sat down.

"I'm sorry for your loss", Maria consoled fidgeting with her pendant around her neck. Amber replied with a silent nod, Sean didn't have any rivalry with anyone even with rival basketball teams. When police informed them about his murder and brought them to identify and confirm his dead body, she emptied contents of her stomach after seeing photos taken at the crime scene. Whoever murdered him appeared to be a psychopath who killed him mercilessly and in the brutality of extreme rage.

"Sean was good person", Maria recollected the time she had spent with him as a student.

"Even when he used to hate you?"

"It wasn't his fault that he came to dislike me", Maria replied. Things had taken drastic turn after death of her boyfriend, suicide that she'll still think of it as murder.

"Why?"

"Why? I'm cause of Nathan's death". Maria remembered that day, she remembered his cold body and pooling blood around it on the ground below from where she had been standing.

"You're saying as if you've killed him", Amber met a boke chilling silence of Maria.
"He died next day of your sister death", Maria told her.

"What?" Amber choked out in surprise. The girl never made any straight sense.

"It wasn't the suicide", Maria hesitated looking over the graves in cemetery.

 "They both had been murdered."

Amber stared at Maria in utter shock. She couldn't get what Maria had told her. Maybe she's delusional just like what Haley had said about her.
"Marina had committed a suicide", Amber corrected Maria's notion.
"Are you sure?" The pattern of their death was in synchronization.

-
Amber and Haley decided to spend night at Jennifer's house. They asked in to sleep in her rooms and changed into night clothes. Amber gave sleeping pill with water to Jennifer telling her it's to relive her headache. Within half an hour, Jennifer fell to sleep. Haley retrieved spare blankets and pillows for both of them from adjacent room.
"She needs sleep before she goes insane". Haley commented throwing pillows and blankets over the mattresses on the floor to sleep.
"She's still in denial even after attending his funeral", Amber adjusted her pillow and snuggled underneath her blanket.
"What was Maria doing with you?" Haley questioned raising herself on the elbows.

"She just freaks me out", Amber told her hesitantly.

"Hey what happened?" Haley sat up crossing her legs.
"It's just...she told me that Marina might have been murdered"

"What?" Haley abruptly covered her mouth glancing towards sleeping Jennifer who was still asleep much to her relief and mouthed sorry to annoyed Amber.

"She's a psycho!" She told Amber.

"Why does everyone think she might have killed her own boyfriend?" Amber resolved to ask her worrying her bottom lip. It's all in the school that Maria was a murder who driven her own boyfriend to the brink of insanity to suicide.

"She's an obsessive freak who forced Nathan into dating her"

"What?" Amber yelled in hushed tone and sat up facing Haley.

"Yeah, Nathan never liked her and she pulled on some stunts from cutting her wrists, threatening to jump from school building to even hitting him with her car." Amber gawked at Haley skeptically who raised her brow back at her. Maria had never been the normal one.

"Either he committed suicide to get rid of her or she had pushed him off the building"
"Nathan fell from building?" Marina also jumped from the building. Maybe that's why Maria had told her that their pattern was in synchronization. But apart from suicide, what else they could have common in pattern.

"Yeah"

Haley bid her night and slidded underneath her blanket. Amber lie straight staring at the ceiling above and tried to process what she had just heard.

She didn't know what's going one, and why did she she herself bleeding beside Sean's coffin.

'Look what did you do?'