Short Story Fall is Here! A Funeral of Lies

A Funeral of Lies by Jona Nightingale

My brother wasn’t the religious sort, much like Mr. Jacobs down the street wasn’t religious. They both went to church with their wives, prayed over Sunday dinner, but beyond that, they were as dirty as the filth in Mrs. Hendrix’s house, like black mold, they were rotten to their foundation. 

  It wasn’t the things they did, that made them worst than all the clogged drains in Mrs. Hendrix’s house. No, it was the look of void in their eyes and the deeds they ordered others to do. 

 They were the monsters of our neighborhood, always trying to outdo each other in cruelty. Fabian was found in the chain linked fence, cut to pieces with only his head, and fingers left intact for identification. That was my brother’s doing, the scene reeked of his malice. 

 Mr. Jacobs didn’t take too kindly to the edge of his property being desecrated, so he took his time to hang three crosses in the front of my brother house with his precious dogs on them. All three had their throats cut and entrails hanging for all to see. 

 My brother had those dogs from when he was a teenager, just before we landed on the streets and had to work our way back into polite society. Frank, Dixie, and Pebbles, not a kinder set of dogs ever existed in that our neighborhood. 

 It was a cold war after that, each act crueler than the other and more grotesque. Our neighborhood became a battleground of human horrors. But it wasn’t on the news, the most anyone outside of our neighborhood did was remove the bodies, clean up the blood, and make way for the next siege. 

 Perhaps it was the middle of winter when the silence started, no new bodies or blood splattered in the streets. But the tension grew like vines in a summer heat, even as the snow melted and the flowers began to bloom, the tension remained. 

 The irony of existing in a neighborhood of church on Sunday, blood in the streets by Monday night, was the heaviness that sat in our hearts. We weren’t really protected, not in our homes, not in the streets, no place would be safe for the residents on Harris Street. 

 My brother was the first to break, he was never the patient type, with a bag of blood, he drenched Mr. Jacobs house in the remains of animals and humans alike. The house looked cursed, like a nightmare from a haunting. Mrs. Jacobs had a fit then, she wasn’t willing to clean up the pieces any longer. 

 It was the straw that broke the camel’s back, if Mrs. Jacobs was unhappy, then Mr. Jacobs was unhappy. And that meant the entire neighborhood would hold its breath in the wake of terror. 

 Like landmines set in waiting, a battle both cruel and necessary washed the streets in crimson. The air filled with cooper and the smell of rancid decay. 

 And just like that, in the height of summer, when we should have been celebrating the sun and longer days, but were cowering in our homes. Three gunshots rang out. 

 Later the coroner would tell us it was two to the head and one to the heart, executioner style, that killed my brother. 

 No one complained when the funeral happened, there were no whispers of who did it. It didn’t matter if it meant we could feel the tension sink back into the earth. 

 And the funerals, they were nice, filled with people who hated all the people who died, and loved all the people who died earlier that year. 

 Since my brother wasn’t the religious type, I’m sure wherever his soul ended up, Mr. Jacobs would be sure to follow. 

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