Ex Nihilo

Wanda Ridley was a small, meek woman who was in charge of the Tear Funeral Service, and she required Farai’s help only for the things she was too old to do herself. Still, she paid the younger woman her due and the two have gotten along really well from the start.

“I’m sorry to drag you out in such a weather!” She explains, talking a lot louder than she ought her, although this was purely due to her age – she was probably becoming hard of hearing anyway, and she could not really tell how at what volume the others heard her. “And you, Zielinski! No need to dwindle about like that! Come on in inside. You’ll get yourself all wet.”

Oakley nods then follows Farai into the small building that houses four rooms in total and is connected to the chapel, almost reluctant in her step.

“I’ll gonna be here for two moments and then I’m gonna need a smoke.” She normally smokes inside of the house, though she’s mindful enough to open the window when the weather permits it. Here, Wanda doesn’t allow smoking near the dead bodies – and because Oakley’s not the neatest person in the world when she doesn’t care about the people she’s interacting with. So far, she hasn’t really shown any empathy towards Wanda.

“You’re not of much use to our current predicament anyway.” Wanda shrugs, her voice ever-loud, and then Farai’s lead to a well-known room – but not the one she expected to be lead to.

Farai was an elementary school teacher by profession, but ever since her husband’s death, she had to take care of three children – and she had to get another job. She doesn’t have any of the needed course finished, no formal knowledge that would allow her to work in funeral service at all, but Wanda’s business was small and the pay she offered humble, so she needed all the staff she could get.

If the things weren’t as same on the paper as they were in reality, Farai thought them to be white lies. She swallowed the slight bitterness. After all, she did seek protection from somebody who is shady at best.

The room is cosy, a thing that can very easily be considered strange, given that they’re right by the graveyard and there there’s at least one dead body waiting to be put in display. Farai easily slips into the soft chair she normally uses, dull colours fitting the mood in which people normally come here.

“I already finished the body. It was an emergency, they told me—it was a really bad shape.” Wanda starts explaining, now a little bit quieter, but she’s standing right by Farai’s face. The woman is so short; even when standing next to Farai, she cannot manage to look intimidating because of her size. “I just need you to talk to them when they arrive tomorrow. Be a counsellor, of sorts. They’re not holding up very well.”

This, however – this she was qualified to do. People, alive people, they were her business. That’s probably why she liked Oakley too. Because the other woman was a person full of life, ripping at her own edges with some kind of a barely-there control, ready to lose it all just so that she wouldn’t be stitched back together. Farai was a people person. That’s why Wanda called for her help very often anyway.

“I’ll read up on details.” She promises. She has time until tomorrow. “Who do we have?”

“A daughter and a son, both in their forties. They claim the victim was their mother.” There’s doubt in Wanda’s voice, a scoff even, but Farai doesn’t question because it’s not her place. She tries not to have her nose where it has no place. She tries not to interfere, to just mind her own business. “Had to cover the face, either way. It was ruined beyond recognition.”

“I didn’t want to see it anyway.”

Farai finds it hard to swallow, then, something invisible and big stuck at the base of her tongue. She’s known death – she’s been there to see death take hold. She’s never... it’s never been like this. There was never something this big, this serious, something that Wanda was hiding from her. The only reason Farai could come up with was her own well-being, her own fragile nature, the same nature that said: This is what you have Oakley for.

Wanda hands her the papers – they’re nearly yellow, but Farai doesn’t question and instead takes them, hands shaky. Hands shaky, and nothing happened, not that she knows. No person that she knows has even been endangered and yet she’s reacting—

She doesn’t have much time to dwell on it, anyway. She barely has her fingers partially firm around the stack of files when Oakley barges in, cigarette in her hand and too close to her face to comfort, because that very same hand is covering her nose and part of her lips.

“Child!” Wanda shrieks. Child, she scolds the tall, scrawny woman. “Are you going to maim your poor face again?” Farai gasps, then lowers her gaze, unable to look at either Oakley or Wanda for the moment. She’s known Oakley for a while; she’s no stranger to scars that the woman doesn’t bother hiding.

Her daughters, they were never afraid of her. Not for the tattoos and not for the scars and not even for the toothy grin. But Farai couldn’t stop looking at her, as if though captivated by the scars littering her face – two incisions, almost in precise X-shape, and burn marks. On her eyelid, on her forehead and temple and the tip of her ear.

When she stared at Oakley for too long, the woman stared back, and told Farai that her hair was fairytale-made and that her skin reminded her of warmth. She couldn’t – or wouldn’t – say what kind of warmth, just that Farai was a rare positive in this life, trust me.

“Look, I’m going to be fine.” Oakley grits behind her hand. “But there’s an awful stench of rotten blood around here and there’s somebody trying to steal the goddamn body.”

And well, there goes Farai’s sleep for tonight.