Sarah has to put up with the burial of her mother who had an affair with her own husband and the seizure of her body by the red dragon occultic group...
I saw her standing near my mother’s coffin. She was in her late forties with the face of a twenty year old - a tall, angular woman, with fine blonde hair gathered in a compact bun at the back of her neck. She looked the way I anticipated to look if I ever make it to her birthday. She stood very erect, her spine refusing to hunch over with her ageing process. Her bone structure was flawless and firm. Her skin had stayed smooth. Whatever wrinkles she had didn’t cleave her face. Rather, they lent it character. She was still handsome -in a subdued, patrician way. You could tell that, once upon a recent time, men probably found her beautiful. But it was her eyes that really caught my attention. Milky-brown. Intently focused, taking everything in. Critical, watchful eyes, with just the slightest hint of melancholy. But who isn’t melancholic at a funeral? Who doesn’t stare at a coffin and picture themselves laid out inside of it? They say funerals are for the living. Too damn true . Because we don’t just weep for the departed. We also weep for ourselves.
For the brutal brevity of life. For its ever-accumulating insignificance. For the way we stumble through it, like foreigners without a map, making mistakes at every curve of the road. When I looked at the woman directly, she averted her gaze in embarrassment -as if I had caught her in the act of studying me. Granted, the bereaved child at a funeral is always the subject of everybody’s attention. As the person closest to the departed, they want you to set the emotional tone for the occasion. If you’re hysterical, they won’t be frightened of letting rip. If you’re sobbing, they’ll just sob too. If you’re emotionally buttoned up, they’ll also remain controlled, disciplined, correct. I was being very controlled, very correct -and so too were the twenty or so mourners who had accompanied my mother on ‘her final journey’ -to borrow the words of the mortuary attendant who dropped that phrase into the conversation when he was telling me the price of transporting her from the cemetery to this her ‘eternal resting place’ … right under the Maryland Airport flight path in Flushing Meadow, Queens. After the woman turned away,
I heard the reverse throttle of automobile engines and glanced into the seemingly nothingness before me, but appeared to be the source of the three vehicles that roared into the ceremony as expected earlier. No doubt several members of the assembled graveside congregation thought that I was contemplating the heavens -and wondering about my mother’s place in its celestial vastness. But actually all I was doing was checking out the livery of the red cars with feathers attached at their fenders...it is amazing the trivial junk that floats through your head at the most momentous moments of your life. ‘Mommy, Mommy.’ My seven-year-old son, Noah, was tugging at my coat. His voice cut across that of the Episcopalian minister, who was standing at the back of the coffin, solemnly intoning a passage from Revelations: God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; d there shall be no more death, neither sorrow Nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; For the former things are passed away. I swallowed hard. No sorrow. No crying. No pain. That was not the story of my mother’s life. ‘Mommy, Mommy…’ Noah was still tugging on my sleeve, demanding attention. I put a finger to my lips and simultaneously stroked his forehead the way I did whenever I was being troubled by the unnerving . ‘Not now, darling,’ I whispered. ‘I need to wee.’ I fought a smile. ‘Daddy will take you,’ I said, looking up and catching the eye of my ex-husband, Matt. He was standing on the opposite side of the coffin, keeping to the back of the small crowd. I had been just a tad surprised when he showed up at the funeral chapel this morning. Since he left Noah and me five years ago, our dealings with each other had been, at best, businesslike -whatever words spoken between us having been limited to our son, and the usual dreary financial matters that force even acrimoniously divorced couples to answer each other’s phone calls. Even when he’s attempted to be conciliatory, I’ve cut him off at the pass. For some strange reason, I’ve never really forgiven him for defiling our matrimonial bed with my mother Noah was just twenty-five months old at the time.
Shockingly, they had belonged to the same red dragon occult group. And the silence that ensued till the very moment the three red vehicles from the group, Just fit into the occasion. It was a custom that when their member died, no other religion or group of any sort was to perform the burial rights...and those who had come to mourn... actually mourned the calamity that would befall the minister, who had gone beyond all warnings and limits to conduct the ceremony. After his recitations from the Holy Book, a gunshot from the twelve man gang, fiery red in their robes, brought down the man of God. I was terrified beyond imagination.
They filed on a straight line, and in one swift moment the coffin was airborne and carted away. The mourners who were also members of the group followed after them. I looked to the back of the tent where the coffin once lay. My ex-husband was nowhere to be found. The co – ministers had to flee for their dear lives. It all seemed too real to be true . “what has mother done, that her body wouldn’t be laid to rest?” I had been startled till the police removed the corpse of the defiant minister, helped me and Noah get home.
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I really like your character descriptions, although a bit over-the-top, sometimes. And I like similes like this one… "like foreigners without a map, making mistakes at every curve of [fork in] the road."
However, aside from the description of a strange cult and the murder of an Episcopal minister at the funeral, there is no plot. I downloaded the "full" story and it is the same as what is presented here.
The bulk of the collection is eight short stories that are set in yesteryear. The compilation is filled out with four entertaining fantasy pieces and three poems.
'Coruscated Confabulations' is a collection of stories and experiences, most of which took place in prior decades. They are taken from or based upon real events, with a certain admixture of fictional embellishments.
Helios is an award winning novel about a brilliant inventor of new technology, a fallen CEO seeking redemption, and an idealistic youth who comes of age in corporate America.
