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Victor would've loathed us for holding his funeral under that same, smiling sun. Above stretched a sky so mockingly clear, and its heat bore on us down like a thick shroud.
Bronwyn asked for a Christian service, and so we held one outside. We stood in two black-clad semicircles around the picnic table where Victor's body laid, people more well acquainted with him standing closer.
Bronwyn screamed a lot. They came in explosive bursts, guttural then piercing, more like yells of excruciating pain than grief. Even from the backmost row I saw her tremor as she kneeled by Victor's side, soil caking her dress like bloodstains. No matter how fond the others might be of Bronwyn, no one dared to come close throughout the funeral.
Enoch was our makeshift minister. He'd seen plenty of funerals long ago, being the son of two undertakers. In between Bronwyn's outbursts, he recited the canticles and prayers like a second language.
"Lord, we beseech You. As we lament the departure of our brother and your servant Victor Benedict Bruntley, we remember that we are most prepared to soon follow him."
A gust of wind blew past us like a sigh, and down came a rain of beech blossoms. Thousands of stellate, coppery buds whirled and married with the trimmed grass. Several speckled the linen sheet over Victor's body, caught the brilliant sunlight like many little bronze brooches.
I could barely make out the features of his face under the cover, but the tumors were distinct. Dark, bulbous growths pock-marked his skin. His burial suit bulged where a particularly fat tumor had manifested just over the liver.
Cancers. Of course you'd get cancers when you aged forty years in a minute.
Forty years' worth of chromosomal mutations, of every single mistranscription in every single peptide chain, compressed into one minute. A biomedical nuclear missile. You'd have to be the luckiest person alive to not develop at least a dozen stochastic diseases.
Emma told me he was still breathing when they found him by the loop entrance. His nailbeds bled. He had crawled his way back, most likely. I couldn't think of a worse way to die.
And one horrible thing echoed in my mind like the grim toll of a churchbell -- what have you done to him what have you done to him what have you done to him.
"I am the Resurrection and the life; he who believeth in Me, even if he dies, shall live and--"
Enoch's throat caught. Bronwyn screamed again.
"'-- and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
