In Another Life

by Carys Jones

  *

  “You don’t have to come you know,” Bill had stated softly that morning as Carol put on her black dress and tied her hair up in to a neat bun.

  “Yes, I do,” she’d replied sternly.

  “It’s going to be hard, honey. You’ve already been through so much. Let me and Sebastian be there.”

  “I’m going,” Carol declared, her mouth held in a tight line.

  She’d hardened over the last two weeks. It was as if all of the joy and merriment had been wrung out of her and all that was left was her steely outer core.

  “I just don’t want you getting any more upset.” Bill admitted, sat on the edge of the bed behind her. Across from their bedroom lay Marie’s pink room, still undisturbed. Neither of them had dared to enter it since her death. Bill feared that if he opened the door and found the room empty it would make her death all the more real. He wasn’t ready to deal with that. Not yet.

  The bathroom was another matter. As soon as they returned from that horrific day at the hospital Carol had been straight up there scrubbing fiercely on her hands and knees. Bill tried to get her to stop but she refused. She scrubbed the floor and bath tubs and continued to clean even after all the blood was gone. She scrubbed until her hands became red and bloodied.

  Watching her from the doorway Bill realised that she was cleaning as she needed something to do, something to focus on other than the pain and so he had left her and at three in the morning Carol had eventually ceased cleaning and joined him in bed.

  *

  “Did the autopsy show anything else?” Sebastian asked tensely as he clenched his jaw and popped his knuckles.

  Dr Simmons looked at him in surprise.

  “Actually, yes.”

  “What was it?”

  Dr Simmons hesitated, his eyes reading over the result which made him uneasy.

  “Come on, tell us,” Bill insisted, wanting the meeting to be concluded as swiftly as possible. They were still in the arduous process of arranging Marie’s funeral, something he’d hoped as a father he’d never have to do. Each day he felt like he woke up and found himself living in his worst nightmare. It was an unbearable cycle of pain that seemed never ending.

  “During the post mortem they discovered a tumour on Marie’s brain.”

  “A tumour?” Sebastian moved his hand to grip the arm of the chair as he leaned forward and scrutinized the doctor.

  “What do you mean they discovered a tumour?”

  “They did routine blood work which suggested she had alleviated white blood cell levels, on further investigation they located a tumour in her temporal lobe.”

  “Is that…is that what killed her?” Carol asked, her voice meek and small as though it should belong to a mouse rather than a full grown woman.

  “No, darling, she killed herself,” Bill corrected gently.

  “Wait,” Sebastian gestured towards the couple but didn’t take his eyes off the doctor. “Could such a tumour cause hallucinations?”

  Grimly Dr Simmons looked over the case file and subsequently nodded.

  “With such tumours, patients have reported having hallucinations, also dramatic alterations to their personality.”

  “What?” Carol gasped in horrified disbelief.

  “This is bullshit,” Sebastian roared as he rose to his feet, standing up so quickly and with such vigour that he sent his chair scattering across the floor towards the back of the room.

  “Marie killed herself because she believed in some other imaginary world. She thought that people were approaching her, telling her to go back there. Are you telling me that this was all the result of some tumour?”

  Dr Simmons squirmed uncomfortably beneath the heat of the young man’s temper.

  “It is possible that the tumour would be responsible for the symptoms you described.”

  “Mother fucker,” Sebastian threw his hands up and began to pace back and forth in front of the Schneiders.

  “Why didn’t you spot it before?” Bill asked, trying to remain calm. “When she came in after the accident, why didn’t you see it then?”

  “Her original scans after the accident showed bleeding on the brain. We alleviated the pressure from the bleed but the tumour was hidden from us in those scans as a result of it.”

  Sebastian ground his teeth together. He wanted to shove his fist directly in to Dr Simmons’ face. Instead he pointed an accusatory finger at the doctor.

  “You let her die.”

  Blood coursed through his veins, pulsating in his ears.

  “You sent her home with that fucking tumour which ate away at her sanity! You let her die!”

  “Mr Fenwick, please, just calm down,” Dr Simmons urged.

  “You killed her!”

  “No, Sebastian she killed herself,” Bill interjected, raising his voice as Carol whimpered beside him.

  “Perhaps the tumour led her to do it but it doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t bring her back.”

  Sebastian balled his hands in to fists and breathed heavily. He’d do anything to bring Marie back. Anything. Yet despite all his money, all his connections, she remained lost to him forever.

  Every second since she’d gone he’d felt a gaping hole growing within his chest, an emptiness clawing its way through his soul, eating him alive. Marie was gone and she’d taken all of his goodness with her.

  “Just calm down, son,” Bill advised.

  “I can’t stay here and listen to this,” Sebastian resumed pacing like a caged beast desperate to be released and devour fresh, helpless prey.

  Suddenly he stopped and looked at Carol and Bill.

  “I’ll see you at the funeral,” he told them. “I can’t stay here.”

  He slammed the door as he left, making it rattle in its hinges.

  “Please know how sorry I am,” Dr Simmons looked apologetically at the couple who remained conjoined to one another through their hands. Each time they left the house, which was rare and only to attend to funeral arrangements, Carol clutched desperately to Bill’s hand. She was afraid that if she let go she might lose him too. Everything seemed so fragile without Marie.

  “I understand your anger, but you should know that it was also deemed that the tumour would have been inoperable.”

  Bill and Carol took little solace from this.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, truly I am.” Dr Simmons reiterated.

  *

  Sebastian stormed out of the hospital not caring who he thrust out of his way. He was moving like a runaway train, fast and hard without a clear destination in sight.

  He got in to his car and punched the steering wheel as hard as he could. When his knuckles connected with the toughened plastic they cracked and Sebastian winced but he held in the pain. He liked holding in pain. He gave him some semblance of a control in a world that was increasingly making no sense to him.

  Flicking on his engine he used his other hand to wake up his satellite navigation system.

  “Where to?” an electronic female voice asked him.

  “Bar,” he stated simply. Then added, “nearest one.”

  The female voice briskly responded with the location of a bar just two miles from the hospital. Sebastian didn’t even look at the address.

  “Go,” he told the navigation system. He just wanted to drink.

  *

  It was the evening before the funeral and Bill found Carol standing outside the door to Marie’s bedroom. She appeared to be frozen, not moving at all, just staring intently at the wooden door.

  “Carol, sweetheart, are you alright?” he asked as he approached her.

  “I keep thinking I should go in there,” Carol admitted. “It will still smell of her. But if I open the door I’ll let that out. I want it to always smell of her. I miss her smell.”

  Bill came and stood by his wife, placing a hefty arm around her slight shoulders. She usually melted in to him, grateful for the comfort but she remained stiff and wooden.

  “If only we
’d let Sebastian go and check on her in the bath,” she said, each word brittle with regret and threatening to break as it was released through tense lips.

  “If he’d found her sooner she might still be here. We could treat the tumour, bring back our little girl.”

  “You can’t think like that,” Bill told her, “it will eat away at you if you think like that. What’s done is done, we can’t change it.”

  Carol moved her hand to the door handle where it loitered in mid-air as she contemplated if she was ready to look at the pink duvet, the poster covered walls, the photographs where Marie was smiling at the camera, care free and very much alive. As her hand wavered Bill used his own to guide it away from the handle.

  “Let’s deal with tomorrow first,” he whispered to her. “One thing at a time.”

  Carol returned her hand to her side and released some of the tension in her body, leaning instinctively in to Bill. He tilted his head and leant down to plant a tender kiss upon his wife’s forehead.

  “You should get to bed, tomorrow will be exhausting.”

  *

  In the dead of night as Carol tried to sleep Bill crept along the landing and gently opened the door to Marie’s room. He flicked on the light and then inhaled deeply on the vanilla scented air. He looked around the small space and felt his body begin to tremble.

  This was a ritual he had conducted secretly every night since Marie’s death.

  He ventured further in and sat down on her bed. He looked around at the photographs of his beautiful daughter, at the bands she had once loved. A part of her remained very much alive in this room and he both loved and hated the preservation of it all.

  Bill let his head fall in to his hands and he wept. He wept as he body shook and quaked beneath him. He released all the tears he’d stored up during the day until his palms were soaked.

  “My little girl,” he sobbed desperately to the emptiness around him. “My little girl.”

  He looked up sharply when he heard a floorboard creak on the landing. Shame turned his cheeks a deep crimson. He did not want Carol to see him cry. He had to be strong for her, to offer her a shoulder to lean upon when she was weak.

  “Bill?” Carol appeared in the doorway bleary eyed from sleep. She didn’t look around the room she looked only at her husband.

  “Come back to bed,” she urged him, extending her hand. And taking it he obliged.

  *

  The sun decided to shine on the day of Marie’s funeral and Sebastian hated it for doing so. It shone down on the small cemetery where a large crowd of mourners were gathered to watch Marie Schneider be committed to the earth.

  Sebastian was still wearing the same grey suit from the day before. He was certain he stank of whiskey and cigarettes but he was passed caring. He lingered at the back of the crowd, only half listening to the vicar who lamented about ashes and dust as though he gave a crap about Marie. The balding man of the church had never even met her.

  Carol and Bill stood by the freshly dug grave, supporting one another as well wishers and family members crowded around them.

  People tried to approach Sebastian but he quickly darted away from them. He didn’t need their pitying glances. He wasn’t truly certain why he’d even attended the funeral. It wasn’t as if being there would somehow bring her back or offer him some closure.

  “And so, we say goodbye to Marie Schneider,” the vicar raised his voice so that it could carry across the array of heads bent in mourning.

  Angrily Sebastian kicked at the dirt. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye, he never would be.

  The sun beat down and Marie’s casket was lowered in to the ground for her mortal remains to be buried in dirt. Sebastian couldn’t bear to watch. He sulked off in to the deeper recesses of the graveyard.

  *

  When he returned a half hour or so later the mourners had all departed. They were due to go to Carol and Bill’s house for refreshments. Sebastian had already told them that he wouldn’t be able to attend and they understood. Civility was hard to maintain to strangers, no matter how good intentioned they were, when you were grieving.

  The sky remained crisp and blue and Sebastian shivered slightly in his suit and wished he’d had the foresight to wear a coat. Even though the day looked bright it was deceptively cold. Frost still clung to some parts of the grass covered cemetery where the sun’s rays had yet to reach.

  Tentatively Sebastian approached the edge of Marie’s grave. He could see her casket at the base, the golden plaque embossed with her name and life span winking up at him. Above the grave stood her tomb stone. Normally it wouldn’t have been erected so quickly but Sebastian had paid for a swift production. He’d wanted it there when they buried her. She deserved to be put to rest in a marked grave.

  The stone was light grey with gold lettering. It was so painfully surreal to read her name and beneath it her date of birth and date of death. It was so final.

  Thrusting his hands in to his pocket Sebastian willed himself not to cry. He looked down at the casket struggling to believe that Marie could be inside it, forever silent.

  He removed one hand to wipe at a stray tear and returned his focus to the tombstone. Beneath Marie’s name and dates it simply read;

  Our Princess

  Carol and Bill had consulted him on the choice of words and they’d all agreed that it succinctly described how they each felt about her. Yes she was a daughter, a fiancée but those labels were too generic. Marie was more than that to them. She was their world.

  “Hey.”

  A male voice close by startled Sebastian and made him physically jump.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  Sebastian turned and saw a man around the same age and height lingering a few feet away from Marie’s grave. Strangely he was wearing a pure white suit. Highly inappropriate attire for a funeral.

  “It’s okay,” Sebastian replied stoically, wanting to appear unphased by this stranger’s sudden appearance.

  “It was a lovely service,” the stranger commented kindly.

  “Did you know Marie?” Sebastian felt his interest piquing as he turned to face the man. It was perhaps a trick of the light but he could have sworn that he saw the stranger’s eyes sparkle as though they were golden. But then as swiftly as the effect had occurred it was gone and Sebastian was left doubting his senses.

  “You shouldn’t let your sadness pull you down too far,” the man in the white advised wisely.

  “Look, mate,” Sebastian raised his hands up, assuming that this guy was from some religious group trying to enlist him whilst he was vulnerable and mourning. The last thing he needed to hear was someone preaching on about how Marie had gone to a better place.

  “Whatever you’re selling, I’m not buying, okay? I just want to be left in peace.”

  Sebastian turned away and looked forlornly at Marie’s grave.

  “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t worry. Marie is fine, she’s with us now. She’s back where she belongs.”

  “What?” Sebastian turned back to the man only to find that he was now gone. The space where he had been standing was empty, filled only with the soft rays of sunlight filtering down from the sky above.

  About the Author

  Carys Jones loves nothing more than to write and create stories which ignite the reader's imagination. Based in Shropshire, England, Carys lives with her husband, two guinea pigs and her adored canine companion Rollo.

  When she's not writing, Carys likes to indulge her inner geek by watching science- fiction films or playing video games.

  She lists John Green, Jodi Picoult and Virginia Andrews as her favorite authors and draws inspiration for her own work from anything and everything.

  To Carys, there is no greater feeling then when you lose yourself in a great story and it is that feeling of ultimate escapism which she tries to bring to her books.

  For more information about Carys please visit www.carys-jones.com or follow her on Twitter; @tiny_d
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