literature

a photograph is all i have to remember her eyes by

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Literature Text

The funeral had been closed casket. It had to have been, since a rifle round's entry and exit wound through a woman's head has never been a tasteful thing to show  the family and friends of the recently deceased. The procedure was standard fare for a funeral, even for the Witches, who had a habit of doing everything extravagantly and brilliantly. I remember thinking I was glad she had never seen the bullet coming, that she had never heard the round fired -- the smile on her face, the feeling she had just saved everyone's lives, those were the things she died with. Not with fear or grief. With a simple beauty written on her face and emblazoned in her chartreuse eyes.

Medals were pinned to the flag draped over the casket and it was lowered into the ground without much incident. There were tears, I remember, and choked-back sobs, and whispers and pleas to a higher power for some manner of answer for the atrocity that had been committed. And somewhere in the world, there was a group, larger or smaller or exactly the same size as the one gathered that day that were doing the same thing we were, likely gathered around a closed casket with a different flag and different medals draped over it. It would be lowered into the ground in much the same manner Lucile's had been. A chaplain, or maybe a monk or whatever manner of holy person they would have believed in would commit their souls to whatever particular flavor of afterlife they had believed in, and those at that funeral would weep and choke back sobs and plea to their God and curse us who had fired back after they took her life.

Hours passed, and we eventually all left the grounds after giving each others shoulders to sob on and remembering her life, remembering the smile she showed us each and every day, almost certain we could hear her laughter. Eventually her memory started to make its way to the back of our hearts and minds, and soon in our memories her voice would become filled with the static of uncertainty. Lucile's smile would get harder and harder to remember with each and every day, and there was nothing we could do about it. Eventually we would forget, as time is greedy and devours beloved details like the glutton it is.

But eventually it would happen again. Maybe not with me particularly, but somebody somewhere would see a round pass through a beautiful girl's head and there would be screaming and shouting and rifle fire, and some weeks later there would be tears and then some weeks after that there would be a nebulous mass of what that person once was.

And perhaps, one day, I would be the beautiful girl with with green eyes whose smile would be forgotten in one-hundred-and-two days.
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