Morbid Bite

VII :: Healing

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MORBID BITE

Chapter Seven :: Healing

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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The sky was far too blue and the day far too bright. Belle's heart ached. It should have been grey, she thought as she stared up at the mid-afternoon sky. There was a slight chill in the breeze and Belle tugged the corner of her cloak across her chest. A vast row of tombstones lay out in front of her, their icy, stone depths freezing the ground. Belle could just hear the murmuring of the priest as he stood over the flower covered coffin.

Belle's sisters stood in each other's arms weeping and pretending that they cared for him, rather than the money he had lost. Her sisters had made it clear they were ashamed of her, they thought she should have told Nicholas of her engagement. To them, Belle had disgraced the family name by staying with an unmarried man. Belle had been supressed and she was not allowed to say or play anything at the funeral. Belle knew how her sisters saw her; she was an unshakable nuisance that was not getting younger, had no dowry and was the main focus of scandalous gossip.

"Let us commend André Novacek to the mercy of God," the priest spoke with such a soft tone it was almost taken away with the wind.

Alisha wailed like a banshee as she threw her arms around Adele holding her even tighter than before. Belle watched as the priest's lips moved in prayer but all she could hear were the cries of her sisters, their red faces staring down at the coffin from the other side of the pit. Belle's sisters' weeping dulled down for the last few words.

"We therefore commit his body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in the sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life."

The sleek black soulless coffin was lowed into the grave and the priest threw a handful of dust before humming a tune to himself, the whole event just another of his many errands.

"Accedamus ad verbum Dei, in pace vivunt," Belle spoke, her hand letting go of the white rose she had picked from Nicholas's garden; it stood out on the bleak background like a small piece of hope that was soon crushed by the avalanche of mud.

The priest burst into the final hymn pulling everyone but Belle into a chorus of voices. After everything she had witnessed a hymn seemed so...useless. Instead she ran her eyes over the stone wall that surrounded the church yard. Poppies grew around the edge speckling the ground with red.

On the opposite side of the graveyard Belle could see a woman lying on the freshly covered ground, her head pressed against the cold cheap stone. It gave her a strange feeling of peacefulness to see another damaged soul.

The priest's orotund voice stopped, and the murmurs of the small group interrupted the peace the melody had brought. The gathering dispatched quickly; most of the attendees were estranged family members who had barely known their father and thus did not mourn for him like he deserved. They had been unable to take their father back to the family crypt, so he was buried here among the dead of Chartres, the cheapest option.

"My dear child." The priest placed a tender hand on Belle's shoulder, removing her from thought. "I can see the torment you must bear. If you wish to share anything with me, you know where to find me." He smiled, his grey hair short on his wrinkled chin.

"Father, I fear I have lost God's love," Belle could feel her words chocking in her throat, her guilt of denial, her anger towards herself and her father and her lust for something more than just this life.

"My dear child." His body took a genuine upset posture. "God loves all, knowing that you feel this way simply shows him how much you love him."

Belle stared at the old man, her mind going back to her life over the last month. She had left her father's body to rot in a mausoleum, which had led to him having to be dug up from a temporary grave. Her sisters had looked at her with such hate it had made her want to slap them - what kind of person wants to hurt her own sisters? She turned her face away from the priest and looked back again across the graveyard, forcing her mind to the events of now and not the past or the future.