The Center of Everything

Author's Notes: Well, I decided that, since I'm getting kind of into it, I'm going to post the prologue of a new story I'm working on, called 'The Center of Everything'. Completely fictional. All names, etc., come from the deep and often frightening crevaces of my imagination.

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Prologue

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess. She had everything she ever wanted, but she was still unhappy. Her parents gave her more and more, hoping that it would satisfy her, but nothing ever did. One day it dawned on the little girl that the source of her sorrow was her loneliness…

***

The day of my mother’s funeral is the most beautiful day the town has ever seen. A ribbon of endless blue swells from a single cloud and stretches above the trees, dripping down behind the mountains to splash into the ocean. The grass, heavy with green, sings quietly with the soft breeze that sweeps across the treetops. Bright and fearless sunflowers bask in the plentiful sun.
My dress is black but my mood is darker, fists clenched at my sides. Little half-moons spring up around my nails, imprinted on my palms. My father is dry-eyed beside me, his weeping done only in the cover of midnight. He thinks that no one knows, but I’ve seen him sitting at the kitchen counter with no lights on, crying into the crook of his arm.
He asks me, quietly, if I’d like to be the one who throws down the first handful of dirt into the grave. We stare down into the seemingly endless whole and the gloomy casket at the bottom; the dirt is thick and heavy in my hands and I hate the feel of it as it crumbles from my fingers and stumbles downwards onto the wood.
I think that maybe if I concentrate hard enough, the ground will open up and swallow me as it has swallowed her – down, down passed the dirt and the lava and the heavy pressure and I could lie beneath the grass, watching the world walk above me. I think of how peaceful it would be, no one but me and the worms and the dead.
The first clumps of earth explode upon impact with her casket and the sound is both too loud and too soft. It doesn’t seem right, I can’t help but think, that she should be stuck in that tiny coffin for the rest of eternity. I want to turn to the men with the shovels and shout for them for stop, to stop piling all that dirt on top of her because she’s just frail little woman and surely she can’t hold the whole weight of the world. I want to tell them to let her out, because she was claustrophobic.
My father’s hand on my shoulder. He walks with measured steps and a fixed expression; I follow him, turning my back on the person who always needed me most.

***

I was born in my living room, on the old red couch that was in the middle of the whole house. I’ve always liked that – my brothers were all born in the hospital, but not me. I was born here, in the center of everything.