Francis Carmichael

Flowers were too commemorative, too conventional, but a card failed to convey the depth of the moment. Like a puddle impersonating an ocean.

Officer Carmichael lingered by the store entrance. He shoved his gloved hands into his pockets. He balled his hands into fists.

“Can I help you—sir?” The clerk’s eyes flashed to the badge.

Carmichael shook his head. For all the clerk knew, the badge could’ve been fake and the adherence undue. Not that it was. But lately, ever since the previous Monday, the badge weighed heavier, less like honor and more like condemnation.

“Just grabbing a card.”

“Oh, well, let me know if you need anything, sir.” [A pause] “And thank you for your service.”

Carmichael brusquely turned to browse the aisles without reading anything at all.

What do you bring to the funeral of a kid you shot?

Carmichael snapped to from a haze of an undetermined length, and without looking at his watch, he knew that he was already late.

He had either been pacing the aisles of the store or stuck paralyzed, staring at a book he had no intention of picking up—let alone reading—for the last 27 minutes.

A card? What was he thinking? He would never be able to pen anything remotely worthy in time.

Again, Carmichael turned on a dime and flurried out of the store without a word or a glance in the clerk’s direction.

He decided on the florist down the road. After all, a life deserved commemoration.

If he could just keep moving forward, he might avoid the searing heat that rushed up his neck every time he stopped, and make it to the service in time to leave the flowers.

“Francis.”

“Shannon—”

“What do you want?”

If this had been a couple years ago, perhaps Shannon would have helped him. But they would also have had 2.5 kids, and the florist shop wouldn’t exist, and Carmichael would be safe behind a desk.

“Flowers. For a funeral. You know.”

Shannon eyed him from across the counter. If this had been before, when they were teenagers, Carmichael would’ve fumbled over his words even more than now.

“No, I don’t know.”

“I—well—”

“A bad call. A kid in a crack house. It was dark. A kid and his older brother, who was dealing, who all had been dealt a shitty hand.”

“I shot somebody—no, not somebody, a kid. An accident. His brother was shooting and, well.”

Shannon wiped a nonexistent spot on the wooden counter.

“And then what?”

“The brother pulled the kid in front of him as I shot. I’m going to the funeral.”

Shannon blinked furiously.

“We’re friends, right, Shannon? I know things ended but, well—”

Now that Carmichael started talking, he found that he couldn’t stop.

“Or we don’t have to be friends. But I’m already late to this damn funeral. I didn’t mean to shoot him.”

Shannon wiped the nonexistent spot on the counter with Shakespearean fervour as Carmichael continued to spew his story, unable to stop.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up!”

But he couldn’t stop. He watched from outside of his body as all the guilt and shame and fear and agony poured out of his mouth, and to Shannon, for God’s sake.

No, no we most certainly are not friends, Shannon thought to herself. We are nothing resembling anything close to friends.

“Francis, stop. Take a breath.”

Carmichael was jolted out of his diatribe.

Hearing her say his name was like a lightning bolt. No one had called him Francis in years. He was Carmichael to everyone on the force, and his friends… he didn’t have any friends.

The lightning bolt delivered a familiar searing heat, but this heat was different from the one that had been following him up the back of his neck since last Monday. The bolt ran through him in a confusing energetic mix.

Sadness reliving the end of Francis and Shannon Carmichael, mixed with a warmth of remembering what it felt like to wake up beside her in their bed.

“Sorry. I’m sorry. I should go.”