Of Nice Afternoons And Sad Places, TAG: jp

Dahlia laid a bouquet of flowers on one of the hundreds of graves around. She wasn’t crying, sobbing or anything like that, though she was more silent than her usual self. It wasn’t too fitting to go around giggling among the graves now was it? She wasn’t dressed in black, though people tend to think it appropriate to be so. The woman didn’t give a damn about tendencies that other people considered to be fitting; there were few people whose opinion mattered to her. She could count them on the fingers of one hand. Her phone was off though. She hated mobiles at cemeteries, it just made her cringe that someone could pass her with his or her ear plastered to that thing and chat away as if he were in a café. Maybe she was just being weird.

There was little sentiment left in the woman where her family was concerned. It was really only Derek that she cared for. Her mother was as good as dead to her and her father was dead too, though he in the most literal sense possible. The brunette furrowed her eyebrows as she let her gaze move over the name of her father carved in the stone. Shouldn’t she feel sadder or something? She wasn’t even angry. She wasn’t actually anything and Lia wasn’t sure she liked the prospect. Because anger or sadness was still better than no emotion at all wasn’t it? A fleeting thought of Derek came to her mind – maybe she was becoming more like him with every passing day. Well better him than mother, but still, Lia would prefer being her own person.

She suddenly felt uncomfortable here. God knew why she bothered year by year, promising herself that this year was the last one she’d come. Habits were a cranky bitch. She was dressed in the usual things – jeans and top with a coat thrown over herself with good boots on her feet. Well put together as always. She sighed in exasperation and rearranged her scarf as she just stood there, staring at the cold stone. What a way to ruin a rather nice sunny spring afternoon, coming to the cemetery to visit the grave for someone you didn’t care for. She turned rather abruptly and ended up hitting someone unexpectedly, struggling to keep her balance.

Near Dahlia a funeral was in progress, an unsurprising sight considering this was a cemetery. A group of people all stood their eyes either locked onto a casket being lowered or locked onto the ground, too tear filled to raise for the world to see. There were sobs here and there, the sounds of the crying drowned out slightly by the voice of the priest as he read from his bible, the typical funeral procedure. Standing in the center of the crowd was an older man, balding slightly, as he watched the casket fully enter the ground. The husband of the women now in the earth sobbed softly as his mother in law clinged to his arm, sobbing even louder. And while he seemed absorbed in crying over his dead wife, the newly made widow seemed to be ripped from the situation as his eyes rose up to see a young man watching him from under a tree a few yards away.

Jack himself stood there, his arms crossed as he stood with his back against the firm trunk of the tree. A white button down shirt lay on his chest, the sleeves of it rolled up. His eyes stood shielded by the pair of wire rimmed sunglasses perched on his face. Yet his face hardly lacked expression as a smirk appeared on his face. As for the widow Jack watched, he looked onto the young man, his eyes wide with shock and a slight tinge of fear. Jack simply stood there amused... the truth had a habit of doing that.

Since Jack of course knew the truth. He knew that while the man seemed somber, it had been his will that had led to the death of his wife, his apparently unfaithful wife. It had been his suspicions that had lead to him realizing that his lovely young wife was a pretty big whore, fucking even the random muscular bouncer. And it had been that realization that had led to Jack being hired to put a bullet in the young woman's head. So to see this man sobbing over the wife he had ordered dead... well it was pretty fucking funny to Jack!... but apparently not so much to Jack's client.

After the ceremony actually ended, the older man wasted no time walking straight towards Jack, obviously both angry and scared. "Listen to me, I don't know what the fuck you're doing here, but if you wa-" the man began before Jack raised his hands to stop the threat. "Woah woah woah bru, chill the fuck out, eh? Just in the neighborhood, as far as I'm concerned we're done with the business. Just admiring your acting skills, you're talented eh bru?" Jack said, his Krio accent thick. The man however simply huffed, obviously agitated as he walked away. Jack however simply laughed, quickly adding in, "Oi, feel free to find me for your next wife, eh?"

Jack's eyes slowly followed the man as he walked away, yet quickly Jack's eyes darted off of the man and onto the figure in his peripheral view. Pulling off his shades, Jack took a moment to look at Dahlia, a small smile appearing on his face.

Lia staggered and almost ended sprawled on her butt as she collided with some obviously not too happy man. She could understand that people got upset at cemeteries, it wasn’t a happy place now was it, but to let out a string of curses at her was a bit too much. On top of that, Dahlia was hardly a person that let things like insults slide, much less from people she didn’t even know and they felt like taking their sadness or anger on her was fine. She had apologized, since well like it or not, the collision had been her fault and she could admit that without any hassle. But for her that meant finished business. Say ‘sorry’ and ‘are you alright’ and go her own way.

Obviously the man in question didn’t quite believe in the same method she did. He was hurling mean words at her. Well Lia wasn’t one to cry, but the rouge rose in her cheeks as she was getting increasingly annoyed with the man and for some reason just walking away wasn’t possible at this point. “You’re acting as if it was my hobby to run into people. Get over yourself you idiot,” she said. It was nothing particularly witty, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was meant to shove him into his place and gawk at her in surprise, which she had managed. The brunette simply passed the man and left him there, turned and staring at her retreating form.

She scoffed as she moved carefully among the graves. She unconsciously noted that the number of graves had increased considerably in the last few years. Things simply went from bad to worse in Brisbane in certain ways. She couldn’t complain – she could drive her car like a maniac, go to any illegal party without any possible repercussions on the side of police and things like that. She didn’t feel more in danger than she had before. Then the other part of her missed the thrill that the possibility of being caught brought about. Besides she frankly didn’t like her friends dying as it had happened in more than one case.

She noticed a man watching her when her eyes wandered about her immediate surroundings, figuring the fastest way out of the place. He was handsome she noted. While Miss Bliss wasn’t really shallow, she did take appearance into consideration. Besides you only knew how one looked before you got to know him, so first impression was important. And anyone who said otherwise was weird in her eyes. She hardly gave much thoughts to other people’s opinion on her, but she wasn’t fond of people badmouthing her. She got absorbed in her thoughts again, not paying too much attention to where she was going or who might be in the way.

She caught herself just in time before running into a second person in past five minutes. God knew that’d be a new record for her. She stopped abruptly, taking that one unfinished step back before she’d collide with the man she had noticed earlier. She huffed slightly, irritated by the lack of focus that seemed to be accompanying her today. “Sorry,” she said with a sigh. “Seems that today is my ‘let’s run into random people day’,” she added with a slight pout. This was really getting a bit annoying.