Romancing the Afterlife

The Body Guard

The summer went on and things began to calm since Lucy Little had tragically fallen do to drunken teenage folly and Cain Lewis had ostracized himself by unburdening his irrational grief at her funeral. The residents of Raccoon Hill finally felt comfortable going about their regular lives without reminding eachother of the state of their fear and concern of teenage angst. Most of the gossip had grown old, and the news was unlikely to mention Lucy's name again until the anniversary of her death, unless there happened to be another unusual reckless teenage death in the vicinity. Mrs. Little had found the strength to begin moving on from the weight of her grief, even managing to achieve employee of the month (mainly due to sympathy). She would never forget her loss, or completely fill the hole left inside her, or lift the restraining order she had against Cain Lewis, but she was starting to forgive herself for having not made the most of her time when Lucy was still around. She accepted that she wasn't to blame for her daughter's death.

Cain was doing better. His grounding was nearly over, which he never minded anyway since he couldn't go anywhere without knowing people were talking crap about him, sometimes even saying it to his face. He saw Dr. Shelley every Tuesday and sometimes she was actually helpful. He begrudgingly took his medication regularly that she prescribed him, and his parents supervised him when taking. He did not feel like the pills were crucial or made much difference, but he wasn't walking around the house in a housecoat and underwear anymore either. Recently with encouragement and a reference from Dr. Shelley he was able to get a job at the local supermarket. He was a night time stock boy. Working at night and mostly in the stockroom gave the store owner the security of knowing Cain would interact with the customers as little as possible. Cain planned to use the money he made to save for college, since his college savings were apparently being used to pay for his appointments with Dr. Shelley. Although he had noticed his parents were also in the habit of collecting brochures for different resort locations. He had told his parents he aimed to study to be a mortician. He was joking, but they took it seriously and he chose not to correct them.

On Sunday night's he arranged to leave his work early so he could sneak off to the cemetery just as dawn arose. The fence in one corner was leaning off the hinge making it easy to climb through then make his way out of the bush on the other side, feeling thankful it wasn't full of thorns. He would sit in front of Lucy's gravestone for about an hour early each Monday morning. Sometimes he would have hypothetical conversations with her, sometimes he would read aloud softly to her, other times he chose to say or do nothing, and simply stare at the writing on her gravestone 'Lucy Little the heart of her hometown 1998 – 2016'. After he would go out the way he came, and head home, no one the wiser.

Everyone thought he had moved on, and in a way he had. There was nothing that held him back from doing anything, except maybe his parents, his financial situation and public scrutiny (but they would come around, in time). Within these limits he continued doing anything he normally would do. He still spent most of his free time in his room reading, which was a common activity for him. He ate at the table with his parents at dinner time. He hung out with Jonas, when Jonas wasn’t busy with Janice, which seemed to be a lot lately. He kissed his mom before he went to work and always told her he appreciated her. He always gave his dad the same ambivalent attitude he had before and assured him he was still on the lookout for a real girlfriend. Being unlucky with women was a pretty consistent factor in his life, so he didn’t have to really put up a lot of effort to keep up appearances. If there was any noticeable difference with Cain, it was that he was a little quieter.

No one knew how apathetic he felt about life. He told no one of the hole he felt inside of him, or the fear that the hole would never go away. He patched it up, with a fake smile and carried on. He didn’t want to draw attention, because there were tells. Occasionally when he was using his phone he would check to see if he had a new message from the mysterious number. He had messaged it a couple more times after the day he had shown Jonas the possible Lucy texts, attempting to call out whoever else it may have been. Eventually he even gained the nerve to actually call the number and discover it was not in service. He didn’t expect to ever see a new message from the number; he just liked to check once in awhile just in case. Another thing that people missed was his aversion to romantic things. He didn’t watch romantic comedies, he didn’t listen to any songs about love, and when he saw public displays of affection he looked away. Jonas and Janice had taken the assumption he was jealous of their new found feelings for eachother. Not taking into consideration the general off putting intensity of their physical displays in public, nor the sickening sappiness of their cutesy behaviour as a couple around anyone. The biggest concern for Cain being unnoticed mainly by his parents was the books he read. Cain was possibly the most loyal and dedicated member of the Raccoon Hill public library, the staff all knew him by name, he never forgot to attend the annual fundraiser and awareness gala, and he received sincere gratitude for his punctual return of books on the regular. For this Cain had been granted some special privileges. There was no limit to the amount of books he could borrow, and they had no problem letting him renew his borrowed items over the phone. His focus had once been fantasy and science fiction, especially if they were ongoing series. This summer though he had a stack of books discussing ancient history, ancient artifacts, theory of magic, legends of the occult and the religious and spiritual belief of reincarnation. The library staff believed he was just maturing and had grown out of fiction.

Dr. Shelley sat in her big black chair with her laptop typing as Cain said anything. He assumed she was always taking notes, but for all he knew she was emailing friends about lunch. Cain sat in a much less comfortable smaller blue chair wishing she had the more cliché couch for him to discuss his inner feelings and desires on. This week was about his friend Jonas and his girlfriend. Cain did not get to pick the subjects. He had explained to her that Janice was a girl at his school, who he has never had feelings for, physically or emotionally. She met or rather connected with Jonas the night of the party where he last saw Lucy, before she drowned. They were together now; Jonas wasn’t around as much but seemed happier. He didn’t know what else Dr. Shelley wanted to hear, she seemed to prod him to continue. They sat and stared at eachother, mentally at an impasse.

“Tell me about Janice, what is she like?” Shelley asked him.

“Okay, well she has brown frizzy hair. She’s short. She is a little fat. She looks at me funny and I don’t know what she wants,” he headed off Dr. Shelley’s next question, “Funny like bothered, like I annoy her for just being around, not like she likes me. She may hate me, I’m not sure. She isn’t very pleasant. She acts like she is smarter than us, but she is just opinionated and doesn’t like people who disagree with her. She never seems happy, at all. She bosses Jonas around though he doesn’t seem to notice. They aren’t even having s*x. It’s none of my business, but he cares about s*x more than me, so it just kind of surprises me he is so cool with her all the time. He might be afraid of her a little, I don’t know. She once said in front of me that she didn’t need more school because she was going to be a stay at home mom. Can she do that? Like is that a real goal anymore? Should I warn Jonas that she might try and trap him with a baby? Is that fair to suggest? What do you think?”

Dr. Shelley stopped typing on her laptop, “I think it’s time for you to go home Mr. Lewis.”

‘Good.’ He thought. He really wasn’t into these sessions with his psychiatrist. He just tried to use up the time and not mention Lucy, until they stopped making him go.