A Dead Man's Tale

Epilogue

Emily had the folded knife in an iron grip. Her older brother told her their father's last messages. For a moment Emily thought it was strange how her father gave her a knife, not that she was afraid of it, she had grown quite familiar with knives over the past two years and they were her preferred weapon. She wondered how her father could have known that. She tied her hair back into a loose pony-tail, a habit she adopted since she decided to grow her hair out. It also showed how she was thinking about something that troubled her.

"Any other messages?" she said sternly.

"No." James was sitting next to his wife who was still sleeping on their makeshift bed of newspapers and boxes. "When she wakes up I'll tell her."

Emily looked at the table that James placed the journal and letters on. James had taken the watch and now she had the knife but one gift was still unclaimed. The wedding ring meant for their mother.

"What are we going to do with the ring?" she asked.

"Give it to mom, just like dad said."

She slipped the ring into her hand and held tightly. "I'll do it, it's been a while since I've visited mom."

James didn't argue.

Emily felt the cold smoothness of the ring and felt a strange peace from it but in her other hand felt the weight of the wood handled knife. Her father was not here to protect her when she needed him. When she needed help James did come but was too late. At first she blamed both of them but soon the blame went away. Emily flicked out the blade and could barely make out her reflection in the dull rusted blade. If her father gave her this knife as a means of protecting herself it was only right she go back to the time when she need it the most.

James saw the motion. "What do you plan to do with that knife?"

Emily started to sharpen the blade methodically on a stone she carried with her.

"I plan on putting this ring at mom's grave." Her voice was calm and monotone. "Then I'm going to butcher the assholes that hurt us."

She walked out the door of their room, a small dormitory room once meant for police cadets, with a slight and eagerly wicked smirk.

The graves were situated along the bottom of the hill that the Seattle Police Academy was built on. So many graves, she thought, one too many. Emily always knew where her mother's grave was. All the other graves with names scratched into them she would forget or did not care enough to know but no matter where she started when she approached the graveyard she would find her way to her mother.

A crooked wooden cross in the rear of the yard close to the chain link fence was her mother's resting place.

"It's just me mom." Emily felt like talking to her mother's grave eased some kind of tension. She tried doing it for her father but with no grave it just felt awkward.

Emily fiddled with her father's wedding ring, unsure of how to approach the subject.

"James found something on the road," she started to say. "It was a walker, it had something with it. A journal and it was Dad's."

For a moment Emily expected an answer but realized who she was talking to. With a steady hand, Emily placed the ring at the foot of the grave marker and covered it with a thin layer of dirt.

"He said he loves you and wanted us to give you his ring." Emily stood up and took out the knife.

With the ring delivered to her mother there was one last thing that came to Emily's mind. Her father dedicated his wedding ring to his wife after he had died then he'd given her brother a watch to remember how he was raised. He gave her a knife, for protection, she was stronger than her past self but her father didn't know that. To her there was nothing more fitting then going to the first moment she felt true fear, called out to her father, no one came and using that knife to rectify the pain she felt. She'll use her father's 'protection' to do it.

Emily left the grave and made her way back up the hill.Their father's journal gave her no comfort and neither did the wedding ring shejust left at her mother's grave. The only thing that gave her any sensation wasthe knife she clutched. It gave her a burning heat that spread throughout herwhole body. It was the first feeling she'd experience for over a year, and sheenjoyed it.