Death, Three Times

Death/ dɛθ/noun.

The ending for a biological organism, which will happen after being announced three times at the funeral.

-Imaginary definition from a non-existent dictionary

“My hand is being silly again,” Joannie said shakily. Her feet, barely weight-bearing, hovered above the floorboards which had begun – in recent years – to resemble cockroaches: brittle, dry, and full of noise when stepped on. Outside: field. A retinal smear of crispy green. Her almost non-existent vision squinted, fixating at the distant dew grass with a certain forced determination.

“Yes, tea,” Harold replied flatly with eyes fixed at his newspaper. He walked to pick up the tea cup for her in measured steps. Each movement was perfectly paced, rhythmic, echoing all the people in his circle of acquittances, to make sure that there was not one move stretching into the zone of his free will.

Joannie sat down at her grandfather’s chair, cup in hand. She was still looking at the distant grass, but this time a strange jazz washed over her mind. She remembered her lovely light rose-coloured summer dress, that she wore during her glowing 20s; where the young man liked to dance with her, mistaken her mysterious daze for an intentionally orchestrated performance of seduction. She wasn’t too eager to correct them, and instead, she let those imaginations drive the men of London into a sleepless frenzy.

“Fun times,” she spoke in a directionless monologue.

“It was,” Harold answered absent-mindedly. That’s how they communicate. Always. Not one more word than necessary. And like that, she slowly drifted into a sound sleep; the type of sleep that one knows they will not wake up from. When Harold finished his newspaper, he looked at Joannie fondly. Then, carefully put her into a coffin that they hide in the storage room, wrapped the wildflowers he picked around it, and came to the front porch to smoke in the quiet rain. The next morning, he notified the funeral manager with the news to commence the preparation and left.

At the day of the funeral, he arrived two hours early because he didn’t know what else to do with that specific morning. The manager met him at the gate. Mid-40s, pressed black suit, a face lined neatly like a perfectly formatted legal document. He extended a hand somewhat performatively as a gesture of politeness.

“This way,” he said. “We are at pre-sorting.”

Harold followed him into a side chamber that smelled like printer toner and old eucalyptus perfumes that aging men use. Inside were two other men, standing beside Joannie’s coffin. The light shot from above was unkind to their faces.

“Gentlemen, here we are at last.” The manager cleared his throat. His tone was perfectly seasoned, rehearsed. “None of us wants to be in this room. We all want to get on with our own business. So I’ll keep this short and sweet. As we know, Joannie will be legally, biologically, theologically dead after three announcements. Now…” he squinted his eyes on a small piece of paper before continues, “according to the constitution law of this country, the three announcements can be made by anyone. So we’d have to be careful that there are no lunatics in this funeral. For that, I have taken the liberty to review all the mental health reports of the attendees today. We have four unstable candidates…” his eyes darted around the room among the men in front of him, “… and three are in this room.”

One man, tall with thinning hair, objected in a wounded baritone. “This is an unfair statement! My depression is not maniacal. I just want to kill myself, not others. Look what my psychiatrist wrote here – “ (he fished out a crumpled paper like a parking ticket) “- ‘minimal impulse to harm others.’ Line twelve. Paragraph three.”

The manager looks corporate, and turned to the other man. “And you? Do you have anything to say before I respond to this gentleman? I like to answer all at the same time.”

“I have no objections. My mental issue was a recent development, and I’ve accepted your invite before my diagnoses. Anyway, I met Joannie through my ex-wife, three wives ago; we once shared a dentist and that’s about it. I won’t stand in the way of your funeral, so I’ll be leaving now. “ He tipped his hat to the manager, and turned to the exit.

“Why did he come?” the manager said sarcastically.

“He lives nearby, probably just come here for the free food.” Harold replied nonchalantly.

“How do you know?”

“His coat pockets were filled with mini muffins. It was obvious.”

“Ah. I didn’t see that. My mind was too occupied with logistics, ” The manager cleared his throat. “Anyway, that wasn’t what I asked. I was asking how did you know that he lives nearby.”

“Joannie mentioned him to me. He’s a wife-beater.”

“Unnecessary details…” the manager scorned at him. He turned to the other man with the diagnosis paper. “I’m sorry, Mr…?”

“Beaton. Clarke Beaton.”

“Yes. Mr. Beaton. The law is the law. Psychology can be a murky subject but legality is sacred. We must protect it with an iron fist. Personally, I also like to keep a clean paperwork for my funerals. I’m afraid I’d have to ask you to step out.”

“But Joannie…Joannie… I have to see her off. This is cruel, inhuman…”

“Would you have wanted to be one of the announcers of her death?”

“No…we are not that close. That’s not what I meant…”

“Good. I will send you the full recording of today’s funeral for you to keep. Does that seem fair?”

“Fine…” the gentleman fumed quietly, “I know I can’t persuade you. But could I have the money from her will wired to me today?”

“It would take 3 – 5 business days for non-attendant of the funeral…”

“But you are expelling me. I’m here on my own volition… this seems unfair. Look! Even my psychologist said I have no danger to harm another…” He again pointed on the line of that piece of paper.

“Your psychiatrist not psychologist. The latter is non-diagnostic,” The manager responded coldly. “Anyway. I want you gone for me to start my funeral with no fuss. So I’ll give you the cash now if you would kindly disappear from this ceremony.” He opened his black-covered ledger, “what is your name?”

“Beaton. Clarke Beaton.”

“Right you told me before…” he flipped the pages, “Ah here. Beaton is entitled to £25,000.” He pointed at his left (five piles of black suitcases). “Take three and leave.”

The man’s face loosened to a smile. He walked there, stacked three on top of each other, and carried them in front of his face. As he was leaving, Harold saw the man fused with the suitcases into a black alder tree.

“Now, there is you,” The manager turned to Harold. “the last of the madmen. The only reason you are staying is because you are the appointed manager of her affairs. So I want you to be on your best behaviour to not defame the reputation of my funeral. Those PR people are such blood-sucking parasites. If they sniffed drama, they will out for your blood. I want you to stay out of the limelight as much as you can. Do you understand? “

Harold remained in silence, and wiped sweat off his forehead.

The manager paused in waiting, bureaucratically. His eyes scanned around the room out of boredom; face impassive. Harold shivered; felt himself an inconvenience in the manager’s orchestrated nonsense.

“I’d take that silence as permission to proceed. Any objections?”

Harold looked around the empty room. “Who is the fourth?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Who is the fourth? The two gentleman and me are three. Who is the fourth lunatic?”

“It is not your concern.” The manager responded coldly, “if you have no objections, I’d suggest we proceed to the funeral and end this day with a pint at the Stag’s Head. They do a grand frothy Belgium this time of the year.” His face gradually relaxed to a natural colloquiality. But the shift felt discontinuous, Harold can almost discern the exact word – ‘grand’ – when his face turned from business to socialisation. There was also an odd lightness to his tone, which reminded him of hospitality brochures and government disclaimers.

Harold coughed – a reflex against nausea, and a sudden surreal lurch of being buried in red tape. He dusted his shirt sleeves. “What am I expecting today?”

“Nothing mandatory,” the manager responded. “You will have an option to give a speech as Joannie’s sole trustee. I’d think that might be in your interest for giving a steer on Joannie’s life narratives. But its merely semantics, not legally binding.”

“Thank you.”

Harold turned around, walked absentmindedly to the room. He checked his watch, half an hour till the funeral. The room now has been occupied by people, more than he expected. I thought I knew Joannie…he murmured to himself, as he looked at the strangers in front of him. He knew roughly the key players in Joannies lives – her mum Susan, her aunt Carol, her uncle Juan, her three friends Lily, Clara, and Gus – but it’s been half a lifetime since he last saw them. And all the faces there looked like they are masked with too many years of socialisation.

“Harry. I haven’t seen you since you graduated…you got old.” An elder woman approached Harry with walker. Her pale face was masked by a thin layer of foundation, that was cakey around her eyes. The colour was two shades darker than her skin tone; making her complexion into a healthy glow. Subtle.

Harry straightened up his posture and feigned a familiarity.

“Susan…” he hugged her with two kisses on the cheeks, “…How have you been?”

“My daughter will be dead after today…But it’s nice to see you. Funny, I saw it coming when she moved to that cottage with you. I always thought you will end up together.”

Harold smiled bitterly, “That was…nice of you…will you be announ-“

“Cecilia! How long has it been?” Susan shouted suddenly. And moved towards the direction of to a woman: mid-50s, short hair elegantly brushed back, big black sunglasses that almost covered the whole of her face. She walked to her slowly with her walker and gave her a big hug, leaving Harold at the spot staring.

Cecilia? This name is new. Harold thought to himself. He walked to the pews and sat down. It’s 25^th May, but Harold can’t stop sweating. He pulled out his napkin again and again to wipe his forehead. Still, the sweat seems stagnant, tattooed tightly on his head. Soon, he realised that his shirt was soaked with sweat, and it became tightly stuck to his chest, his back, his belly… Joannie would have laughed at me. Harold thought to himself. I wish I’d have more faith in myself…I wish I’d been in your life more…I wish I’d reached out. Now, I’m sitting here around the strangers that were in and out of your life. Would I have made nice memories with them? Would I have talked to that woman with the pink hat, that man with the green trousers? What about that old lady with funny hair…Instead, I have to feign a familiarity like I did have something with them. Because they know me. Because you talked to them about me. And they assumed I knew enough about them.

Harold felt an invisible hand wrapped his neck tightly, and he started to gasp for air. It sounded bestial, primitive, which started to gather attention from all around. He walked out of the room into the front garden. There, he saw Clara in her mid-50s, but still, her almost white blonde hair looked healthy and smooth. A light glow in its natural waves matched her pearl necklace, somewhat reminded him the wild years he has spent with her and Joannie on that Californian beach when they were all young, way too young.

He lit a cigarette beside her but she didn’t look over.

“Do you want one?” he spoke slowly; his gaze remained fixated ahead on the quiet alley.

“Sure. I’ll have one if you are offering…”

He took one out of the pack, lit up and handed to her. “How long has it been?”

“Two husbands away?”

“Ha-ha,” Harry laughed. “at least you have longevity… ten for each is pretty good length nowadays.”

“Seventeen for one. Three for another.” Clara responded lightly.

“Ah… it’s that kind of relationships.”

“Yes.”

He didn’t respond. The silence between them dragged on like a rubber overstretched by an unidentifiable weight. But Harold didn’t feel awkward or rushed. Instead, he took his time to finish his cigarette.

 “Right. I’d better head in.” Harold put his cigarette butt into the bin and then started to head inside.

 “Never even fucked once?” Clara suddenly spoke flatly.

“Huh?”

“You and Joannie.”

“Oh…” Harold let out a bitterly tasted chuckle, “It wasn’t meant for that kind of relationship…Maybe once? When we were kids? Frankly, it’s been too long…I’m too old to remember things like that.”

“They all think you did,” Clara responded. “Those bitter old women inside. They’ve been gossiping about it.”

Harold shrugged his shoulders and smiled dryly.

“I had one of those myself…”

“Oh the 17 years one?”

“No the three.”

“I see...” Harold fumbled for words, but he was at a loss. “Right. I’d better head in. It’s about to start.”

Inside, the funeral was starting, with hushed voices floating in the air. Harold could feel grief slithering quietly beneath everyone’s skin, masked by canapes and the sound of folding chairs being discreetly adjusted. Behind the lectern, the manager adjusted his tie with clinical finality.

“Let’s begin the funeral. As you know, Joannie Keller will be biologically, existentially, and legally dead after three announcements. All of you here have been granted with the rights to be the announcer. Now, we are moving to the first announcement of the day. Please, may whoever wants to do the first honour step forward to the lectern…”

A silence fell on the room; anticipation built up into a thick, dense cloud in the collective consciousness. Harold sat still on the pew, soaked shirt clinging to his back. From somewhere behind the velvet curtain, a loudspeaker crackled. It was uncertain whether it was trying to broadcast anything or a mere coincident that give a sense of urgency. The manager shifted his weight from leg to leg, while fiddling his tie with absent-mindedness. Then came a woman. Short, unremarkable. She wore a mint-green cardigan and smelled of artificial roses and mothballs. No one had noticed her in the room till this very point.

“Excuse me,” she said in a hushed voice that felt conditioned by a lifetime of speaking in quiet environment. “I would like to speak.”

The manager nodded, “name?”

“Agnes. Agnes Brynne. I’m the registrar of Joannie’s optometry records. 1981 through 1987. She had a mild astigmatism in her left eye…”

A chain of murmuring spread in the room, as guests looked at each other in a jumbo of expressions.

“I don’t believe I knew her well,” she continued. “But once, during a routine appointment, she mentioned that she liked her astigmatism. In fact, her favourite thing has always been looking at things just far enough away that she could not be certain they existed. She thought it was her daze. But now she knew she has a condition, that’s perfect for her sentiment.”

A cough, “I’ve never seen another one who appreciates, perhaps slightly obsessed with, astigmatism as much as me. People like that deserves a swift death, which is also beautiful in itself. Perhaps only second to astigmatism…”

Another wave of murmuring.

“So hereby, I’m here today to announce that Joannie Keller is dead.”

CHIME. A robotic voice broadcasted :”First announcement recorded.”

Harold looked down at his hands. They were trembling. He wasn’t sure whether he was cold or he was nervous. From the far corner of the room, Clara caught his eye. She sat eerily still, like a sculpture place there for contrast. When he turned to his right, he realised that Agnes has decided to sit next to him.

“That was brave of you to do that…consider you don’t really know her that well.”

“Yeah but we had a kindered moment. Plus it gives me no trouble to announce that… I assume it’s difficult for you to do that since you are close to her…”

“How do you know?”

“You are sweating profusely.”

“That I am.”

Suddenly, Harold heard a commotion spreading from the adjacent pews. Joannie’s mum Susan and aunt Carol were screaming at each other: “Let me!” “No let me!””I can’t be the last one, c’mon I’m her mum for godsake!” “I’m not gonna be the last either!” “I promised her that I will do it for her, I just can’t do it last! I can’t in my conscience to know that my announcement caused my own daughter’s death.” “What about me? You’d rather me taking that burden?””Well…Maybe Harry will say the last.””Good grief it’s not the time for joking. That coward? C’mon he didn’t even have the gut to give her a life, let alone giving her death.”

The guest turned to Harold. He felt stared at intensely, from all around; his nausea has returned to his stomach like a cold hand wrapped in the sweat of Jesus. He doesn’t believe in Jesus, which is why that feeling made him feel karmically and hauntingly ill. Still, the fight continues…“But why? Why should you give her death.” “Because I am her mum. I gave her birth and now I’m going to give her death. She is dead! I announce that she is dead! There I did it.”

CHIME. A robotic voice broadcasted :”Second announcement recorded.”

“You selfish bitch.” “Wow!” The manager intervened at this second by standing in between them, “There there. Ms. Susan Keller has said that. We just had our second announcement. Could I please ask you both to go back to your seat so we can continue to the last announcement before we close for the pub?”

The two old ladies obeyed.

Two announcements. Two. One more and she’d be gone. Harold suddenly contracted his right hand in front of his face, as if to clawing the second announcement back out of the air. He turned to his left, impatiently; there, the wallpaper started to melt with a viscous curling at the edges. Dark green turned into skin beige turned into the faded hue of Joannie’s teenage notebooks. Her handwriting began to scroll across the walls like vines:

Harold feigned an interest in me. But I know he doesn’t care. He never does. He uses clever excuses to get me off his back. Things like I have too much on my plate, there are more vulnerable people that needed my help, I have other priorities, blah blah blah…Truth is, I do too much. And now I’m a cheap labour that he exploits out of habituation. Still, I want to wait for him. He looks like someone who is kind at heart…

Harold pressed his knuckles to his eyes.

He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t really eaten. He had been living, for months now, inside Joannie’s scheduled death. Managing the estate. Handling the paperwork. Making sure the floral arrangements matched her specification (“Irises, not lilies, they smell like indigestion”). He made list after list of meaningless realities.

And now all of it felt paper-thin. Her perfume lingered in his nostrils again. He walked toward a casket that appeared at the corner of the room, which escaped his attention before. Someone handed him a glass of water. It tasted limpid; for some reason, he expected the water to taste like something more. He knelt beside it.

“Joannie…”

He knew people, Joannie’s close circle of people, are expecting something from him. Some think he’s gonna do it. Some think he will never. Either way, his every movement was being closely scrutinised by the room. For him, he felt obligated to do it. The woman of his soul was hovering on the brink of death, but not yet dead. He should do it, right? But then the altruistic motive of doing it out of love was quickly overshadowed by his selfish need to get the guilt out of his system. And suddenly, it’s less about Joannie, more about how he doesn’t want her death to be an inconvenient nag in his mind for the rest of his however long life. He felt the nausea intensified by this sudden moral conflict.

There, he saw the field again. Cheltenham. Her hair in the wind. She had laughed that one morning when the roof leaked, and they had used cereal bowls to catch the water. She said: “you know, in an alternate life, we’d have made a fine mess together.” And then she touched his face with her cold fingertips and didn’t speak again for three hours. Harold chuckled to this sudden memory of hers. Yeah, she was that kind of woman. 

He walked to the microphone in a trance; his fingers tapped it and felt its cold hard metal cover was somehow hot as lava; disorientation. When he lifted his head, the chairs were all empty. No man in sight. He thought of what Joannie said – that unlived reality - the selves that splintered off every time they didn’t kiss; thin as typewriter ribbon. I can never give you life, Harold thought to himself, I was too death-driven. And when someone is filled with thoughts of death, destroying their own life became an intoxicating satisfaction. But in destroying mine, I have destroyed yours. But what I have never thought to give you, and should have thought, was to give you death. To kill you. Kill you when you were in-love with me, in your rosy dresses of our youthful years. Kill you when you had those love-sick eyes for me. Kill you when you forgave me again and again till I felt too disgusted for myself to take your mercy. No. I shouldn’t have left the town. I should have killed you and killed myself. And we will be together forevermore. So this is my second chance…

Harold felt a smile crept upon his face.

“I announce that Joannie Keller has died.” He said one brief sentence, and then walked out of the room. As he walked out, he heard the room filled with such a mixture of noises that people’s voices sounded like an animal farm.

With determination, he walked towards the graveyard that he had arranged for Joannie to be buried. He passed through the guard, who was napping soundly in his little glass booth, and walked directly to Joannie’s spot. He dug into the mud next to her’s with his hands in an almost inhuman fixation. He dug again and again that he didn’t stop even when his nails were filled with mud, his fingers pricked by the debris of stones. When a shallow human-lengthed hole appeared, he lied down there, arms crossed on his chest, and closed his eyes.

Hours past.

As the moon pushed the sun back into the darkness, he opened his eyes and stood up. Dusting the mud off his sleeves, while using his feet to fill the hole with mud again. This time the guard was awake when he passed at the exit, and he nodded to him with a charming smile you’d expect from an intellectual, soft-mannered old man. He walked to the nearest bench, sitting there with eyes staring at the luminous moon.

His eyes suddenly filled with tears, and his lips quivering:

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

He repeated the same sentence again and again:

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

“Thank you…thank you….I feel alive! Now I feel alive! For death has left me tonight… left me tonight…”

Around him was the dead of the night in the suburb of London; where no sound seems to be able to penetrate through the cold, uncaring air. And no light can be seen except the moon. Except his lone voice, piercing through the cold; razor-sharp. It became more and more cracked with repetition, yet he continues with the same inhuman fixation as when he dug into the mud. Again and again, till his saliva cannot catch up with his repetition that his voice died in the dryness of his throat. The only thing left was his mouth, repeating the sentence in silence till the break of the dawn. When his murky eyes registered the first ray of the rising sun, he smiled, with his cracked lips, so wholeheartedly and purely. There, he saw the shadow of Clara approaching him, extending her hand for him to hold. He took it and disappeared with her into the misty fog of the morning.