The Funeral (CH05E03)

January second Merry’s uncle Ray came to his house to pick up her personal belongings. He recognized the man from one of the photo’s Merry and Jerome had framed just a few weeks before the accident. Uncle Ray told him that Merry would visit him later that week and she wanted him to attend the funeral, which was the next day. He told uncle Ray to tell Merry that he would be there and that he was looking forward to her visit. Two hours later uncle Ray had loaded all belongings in the truck, he left a picture of Jerome and Merry for him to keep.

The next day he went to the pawnshop a few hours before the funeral. He asked the owner of the shop if he was going to the funeral, but the clerk told him that he was a businessman who didn’t have time to go to funerals when there were customers. In fact, the clerk had just the thing he was looking for, a brand new Sony stereo with 5 CD changer and digital tuner. He followed the man to the back of the store. Behind a few crates he saw the HiFi equipment. And while the clerk turned on the digital tuner, he dug his middle and ring finger into the man’s kidneys. He felt how blood ran over his hands while he took his fingers out of the twitching body. Pieces of the man’s kidneys clung to his fingernails. The clerk turned around, not feeling the pain and saw his bloody fingers. Realizing that he was going to die he folded his hands and started praying.  

He watched how the man asked God for forgiveness, and when the praying stopped, he pushed the man to the ground and pressed his fingers against the clerk’s ribs. Slowly he felt his fingers descent; the man’s flesh and bones seemed to melt at his touch. He stood up and walked away, while at the door he turned around to see the man begging. He looked around and took some tissues from the counter. He folded them and pushed them into the bleeding holes in the clerk’s body. The tissues turned red, but the bleeding seemed to stop. Then he left.             

The funeral was his first, and he swore never to attend one again. Too much sadness, too much death was what he felt.

When he returned at the pawnshop, the clerk was lying on the floor the way he had left him there. The man was still breathing, exhausted by the pain he was unable to speak. He pored some water on the man’s lips and left. Three days later the police found the clerk, still breathing. When they moved him, one of the tissues fell out of his body and he died.

The incident was on the 6 o’clock news. The police hadn’t found any evidence. The only fingerprints found on the scene of the crime were the clerks. And although the police didn’t find any evidence of a struggle or a crime in general, the death of the clerk was clearly a case of cold-blooded murder. 3 months later the investigation was stopped, as the police had found no clue regarding the identity of the murder.