By Jennifer Williams
Domino sat her head against the brick wall, a cigarette in hand. She sucked in the thick, sweet smoke, and felt it absorb into her lungs like nymphs on parade. She blew out again. Fuck life, she thought, fuck it all. She felt the word “Fuck” protrude from her body filled with hate, and pass her quivering cold lips in a smoky whisper. She imagined her family inside the funeral home all talking pointlessly, some crying, but one member did neither. Her mother lay in an open coffin, pale and silent, with her thin bony hands setting upon her silky blue dress. Domino flicked the butt away and stood up. It was time.
In the room she stood. Her heart was calm, her eyes bland and shallow. Domino began her planned speech, “My mother really didn’t give a shit about you or anything else. In some ways she was a bitch, in other ways an angel. She’d hate the fact that all of you are sitting here wasting sentimentalities on her cold bony ass. So get up! Be gone! Move on with your lives, whatever that may include. Go make a million dollars. Have children. Get laid. Go kill yourself for that matter, mom did and she was right to do so. But you come in here with no propriety. If you knew her you’d respect her by not showing up! So get out of here.” No one moved.
They watched her with ghastly pale faces and gaping mouths. They sat there thinking in passionate frenzies. Domino stared at the living corpses waiting edgily in their seats with growing disgust, some of their eyes equally cast upon her. With tears on her red blotchy face she stepped down from the podium and strode to the door. They watched her quietly. Reaching for the handle and gripping it tightly, she pried the door open. The cold wind made her wet face tingle. The slam behind her seemed to echo through the room of momentarily lifeless drones, then a soft voice asked in puzzlement, “I thought her mother died from lung cancer?”
A fat lady leaned over and replied, “She did.”