The Crow

II: Remembrance and Resurrection

ONE YEAR LATER

A building gets torched, and all that is left is ashes. I used to think that was true about everything: families, friends, feelings. But now I know, sometimes, if love proves real for two people who are meant to be together, nothing can keep them apart.

Gently, Sarah set the bouquet of flowers down against the headstone of Shelly Webster, having walked to her grave and stopping to take a flower from each grave Sarah had passed to make her makeshift bouquet.
Then she took one more step forward to Eric's, setting down a single white rose on his grave. All the short time she'd known Eric and Shelly, Sarah had noticed that Eric had a morbid fascination with death, seeming to have fun with even the concept of it. Even his band's name, Hangman's Joke, seemed to be laughing in Death's face. Yet, all of those facets of his personality only made Eric seem cooler in Sarah's eyes.

The fact that Eric never seemed afraid of death, even in a city that was so full of it, also gave Sarah a small degree of comfort. And she remembered that Eric said he only wanted one white rose on his grave if he should ever die, no matter how.
Her respects paid, Sarah rose to her feet, taking one last fond look at the graves of the two people who were more family than her mom. "Later", she said as she started walking away.
Just as she reached the cemetery gates, the cloudy overcast opened up to let out a heavy rainfall, but even that didn't bother Sarah. It rained pretty often in Detroit lately.

It didn't seem to bother the bird, either – a large, black crow that flew directly over Sarah's head and caught her attention as it landed on Eric's grave. Yet, the crow seemed fully concentrated on Eric's grave in a very unnatural way. A derisive caw echoed from its beak, unsettling Sarah further.
"What are you, like the night watchman?"
The smart remark earned her a sharper, almost rude caw from the monstrous bird's beak, and Sarah firmly decided that that was enough for one day. Turning away, she kicked against the pavement as she mounted her skateboard, the wheels surfing over the rapidly-flooding streets, a car honking as it drove and turned just behind her.
But if Sarah had been paying attention for just a second longer, she would've seen something very unnatural indeed – the crow, almost knocking on Eric's gravestone with the tip of its beak, as if expecting him to answer.

"You know that Lake Erie caught fire once from all the crap floating around in it?" Smoke billowed from T-Bird's mouth as he lifted the cigarette away from it, letting out a chuckle at how well his story seemed to line up with tonight. "I wish I could've seen that." He let out a loud whistle, after which the real noise began.
With wild whoops and abandon-filled shouts, his gang took bats and fists to the vintage arcade game cabinets that lined almost every wall of the first floor of the building. Yet T-Bird barely paid any attention to the noise as he hunched over a set of C4, setting the connected fuse to detonate in just less than five minutes.

It was a bit of a shame – as a kid, T-Bird used to be all over games like this. But when your first job of murder hits, everything else seems to fly out the window, especially if you were working for someone like the boss. T-Bird had to admire his scheme – with the boss owning every building within the inner city, he didn't take kindly to people complaining about the conditions of housing when they were under his willful insurance. If they didn't clam up, he rescinded on the insurance and it was up to T-Bird to collect the bill with added expenses.
"Yo, T!" A cry from one of T-Bird's pals, the junkie named Funboy, rang out amidst the chaos, and T-Bird could see he'd found an audience member for their show of destruction – a young, pretty-faced dark-skinned woman. Not quite the best body by his standards, but T-Bird could predict they'd have some fun with her.
"What do we do with her?" Funboy asked, an evil smirk on his face.
"Simple, boys – we take her for a little drive", T-Bird answered with a theatrical sweep of his arms. With the bomb set and the last of the games destroyed, the gang took the captured woman outside with them to their escape, the car after which T-Bird got his name.