The Eulogy

Frank sat on the front row as the people filed into the little church. The tears ran nakedly down his face as the cheap organ played baptist hymns off-key in the background. Somehow this infuriated him. He had paid a lot of money for his wife's funeral, and the least they could have done was tune the organ before the service. It wasn't even that it was severely out of tune, only slightly out of true, but it was just enough to make the discords jangle against his frayed nerves. Derrik, his son, didn't even seem to notice. He just sat beside him, dutiful as ever, and held his father's hand as the sea of mourners wafted past.

Ah, the mourners.

They were the other discord that was jangling against his nerves.

Ellen had been a school teacher, an English teacher for thirty years, and the crowd was mostly made up of old students. Unknown faces, unasked for condolences, and they always went on and on about how good a teacher she'd been or how great it had been to be in her class. Frank couldn't help but notice that for every woman who came to pay there respects, there were two or three young men who were tear-stricken at the passing of their beloved teacher. He never said a word, only nodded as Derrick thanked them, but deep down, he couldn't keep the questions from rearing up.

How many of these young men had she "touched" in a more intimate fashion than through education?

He tried to push the thoughts away, but they just wouldn't go. Ellen had loved him since they first met when they were seventeen, but after the age of thirty-five, their sex life had begun to wither. She just hadn't been attracted to him the same way, and who could blame her? She had taken the baby weight off after Derrik was born with incredible ease, but Frank only seemed to get heavier. By thirty, his hair had begun to fall out, and the gray that threaded through what was left made him feel old. By thirty-five, Frank looked like a man on the cusp of fifty and was often mistaken for Derrik's grandfather. He laughed these comments off, but it certainly made him feel self-conscious.

On the other hand, Ellen still looked like a girl in her twenties, barely older than her students. People always commented on how vibrant she looked, how full of life, and Ellen drank those compliments in like mana. That was when Frank began to notice some small signs that his wife might not be faithful. She would meet students out in the wild, and he would see her lingering looks, the touches that lasted a little too long, the thinly veiled flirtation. He had brushed it aside as harmless. She was a teacher; there was no way she would be sleeping with her students.

Then, just last week, he had received a call at work that changed his life forever.

The nurse in the ER informed him that Ellen was dead.

One of her students, an eighteen-year-old Adonis who would have put a Kalvin Klien model to shame, had brought her to the Emergency Room after she'd suffered a major heart attack. She was dead before he got her there, but the strange thing was that the boy wouldn't tell them what she had been doing when she had a heart attack. He claimed it had happened at school, but she had been dressed poorly when she arrived. Her wedding band had also been missing. The boy had the temerity to still be there when Frank arrived. His condolences had been met with agitation and confusion. He had accepted Frank's impotent shoves, and when Frank had left much later, he had been gone.

Now here he was in a coal gray suit, a look of most profound sorrow worn across his face.

"Mr. Flozzie, I am deeply sorry for your loss. Mrs. Flozzie was a rare gift", he said, shaking Frank's hand and looking wetly at him.

Frank didn't have the mental energy to rail at him, and Derrick thanked him before the boy went to seat himself.

"Dad," Derrick asked softly, "If you don't think you can give the eulogy, it's okay. I can just give it for you as long as you have your notes."

"I can do it," his father intoned, nodding at a mousy young woman who tried to hug him but seemed unsure.

Ellen had always wanted Frank to give her eulogy if she should die, and Frank felt it was his sacred duty to fulfill her wishes. He would stand on that stage for the woman he loved and tell them of his love. He would stand up there, cuckold's horns and all, and tell these ingrates about his great love for Ellen. It didn't matter that she had been distant. It didn't matter that she hadn't returned his love for the better part of a decade. He would tell them all of his great love, and they would know how tawdry her regard for them had been.

As that damnable organ stopped playing, Frank heard the crowd's low murmur die away to a buzz.

The pastor approached the mic then and thanked them all for coming. He talked about how much of an honor it had been to have Ellen as a member of his congregation. He spoke about her works with the church and how she had never shirked from her duties to God. She had been a Sunday school teacher for two decades, and her middle and high school congregants had always been happy to see Mrs. Ellen's smiling face in class. He talked about her time spent as a teacher, thirty years of teaching High School English, and the multitudes she had touched in her time there. He spoke of those left behind, her husband, Frank, and her son Derrick. He talked about those who had gone before her, her mother and father the previous year in a car crash, and her sister fifteen years ago from a brain aneurysm. He was sure they were having a joyous reunion in Heaven, even as those left behind to mourn the passing of such a wonderful woman wept.

Frank was no longer sure of any such thing. The Bible had very clear ideas about adultery, but he hoped that maybe it was so. The thought of Ellen burning in Hell made him feel the same way he had felt when he realized she was likely sleeping with her students, sick to his stomach and sick to his heart. She had been his love, his only love, and he wanted to see her again when he passed on. He was no longer sure he would be given such an opportunity.

When he realized the pastor was looking at him, had asked if he wanted to say some words for his Ellen, he saw that those around him had begun to look at him as well. Derrick had started to rise, figuring his father was in too great of pain to give the eulogy, but Frank lifted himself and put a hand on his son's shoulder. Even if he had been dying, he would have used his last breath to give this eulogy. He walked up the aisle, a very similar aisle to the one he had looked down as Ellen walked to him in her white dress so many years ago and mounted the stage.

As he looked out over the sea of young faces, he caught sight of something lurking near the back of the hall that made him shiver. The church was a sea of light, the pews sitting like islands in the swelling ocean of brightness. Near the back, though under the second-story balcony, lay four massive pillars. In the shadows surrounding them appeared to be a group of people. There were numerous, maybe thirty or forty deep as they clustered in the shadows, and Frank found himself thinking that they had brought that shadow with them. Weren't there lights back there? He should be able to see them, shouldn't he? Why didn't they come and sit with the others?

As the hush lingered on, and Frank did nothing but stand behind the podium in silence, he became self-conscious and put the crowd out of his mind.

"Ellen was a wonderful woman," he began, his voice cracking a little, "she was a loving wife, a loving mother, and the light of my life."

Frank could hear a quiet riffling of noise from the shadows near the back.

It almost sounded like a low chuckle.

"When we met, we were both in high school, as many of you seated here are. Ellen was so vibrant and full of life that I never thought she would notice someone like me. When she came to sit with me one day, talking to someone like me and hanging on my every word, I felt like God had blessed me with her presence."

The riffling noise was definitely a chuckle now, a low throaty surge of almost canned laughter. Some of those seated had turned to glance at the shadowy mob. The mob stood in tight rows, eyes on Frank as he spoke his heart. Frank felt as if he could feel their smiles as they leered at him. Who were they? Were they from the school? Why were they laughing at such a time as this?

"When we wed, I was only eighteen, and I could barely afford a ring. I scraped enough money together for a shoddy engagement band, wanting to propose before she came to her senses and realized she was too good for me,"

The crowd chuckled a little at this, understanding it was a joke, but the crowd in the back erupted in that tinnie canned laughter that so often accompanies sitcoms.

The sound made Franks' skin crawl.

"She was my only love, and I was hers,"

The canned laughter hit a spike momentarily, and Frank felt his anger rising as the crowd mocked him.

"Hey, all of you in the back, this is a damn funeral! I don't know what you think you're doing, but this isn't the place."

The mourners were turning in their seats to look at the crowd. To Frank's horror, some of them had begun to snicker as well. The row closest to the pillars was now full of smiling individuals, trying to be polite but failing to suppress their grins or giggles. A redhead near the middle, a girl who couldn't have been more than sixteen, was covering her mouth with her hands as her neighbor leaned forward to try to stifle his own rising mirth. The row ahead of them glowered at them, but Frank could see certain individuals having trouble holding it together.

This seemed to spur Frank on, his anger making his face red.

"Shut up, just shut the Hell up! None of you deserve to be here. You were part of the problem! My Ellen loved me, we were soul mates, and,"

The second row from the back had burst into the same mechanical laughter he'd heard at the start. Their individual laughter, hearty guffaws, and embarrassed titters were replaced by that sitcom drones. The sound made Frank feel like he was crazy. The sheer unrealness of the situation made him feel ready for the nuthouse. The laughter was like nails on a chalkboard. It grated against his psyche and made him feel like laughing and crying all at once.

The laughter was the kind you heard in an insane asylum.

The kind you heard in Hell.

"Stop it! Stop laughing at me! My wife is dead, and you people are sitting here laughing at me!"

Frank was crying now, big ugly drops rolling down his doughy face.

Despite her infidelity, he had loved her, and here these people were, on the worst day of his life, mocking him with laughter that wasn't even theirs. The laughter had spread to halfway up the pews. Some of the people in the church, the ones not yet affected, had begun to edge towards the front as though the laughter might be contagious. They moved to the fire exits and windows, frantically looking for an escape, but no escape would come.

And with the crowd of shadows guarding the only real exit, they were trapped.

"It's your fault," Frank railed at them, "It's all your faults. I loved her, I loved her so much, but how was I supposed to compete with an endless supply of high school boys? How was I supposed to compete with your perfect bodies and constant attention? You drove her from me. You ruined our perfect marriage! You...you…"

Frank's tear-streaked eyes searched the crowd, and finally found his son. Derrick's face racked with uncontrolled laughter, his eyes scared and rolling like a frightened horse. As Frank cast about, he could see others in the throes of inescapable laughter. The boy who'd brought his wife to the hospital was now doubled up with his head against his knees and a puddle of vomit on the floor in front of him. His handsome face was red and sweating, his mouth laughing, but his eyes screaming. Others had fallen into the aisle, their bodies wracking as they tried to draw breath amidst the laughter. Even those who tried to escape laughed, their fingers clawing at doors, their hands banging against windows, as their bodies convulsed with alien mirth. On his knees, the pastor doubled up with uncontrollable laughter as he gasped for air and shook violently. Frank heard people retching, people falling, people kicking their legs and thrashing their arms in uncontrolled spasms, and as they laughed their lives away, the darkness spread. From his vantage point, Frank could see the darkness spreading out from the pillars. Some of those laughing were taken by it, their bodies becoming shapeless in the gathering darkness. It negated the light that usually filled the church.

It negated the warmth and sanctity Frank had always felt there.

Frank ducked and put his back to the podium when the darkness came for him. No, they wouldn't have him. This was their fault. It was all their fault. They had tempted his wife, they had ruined her, they had...they had…

Frank felt a snort escape his nose, and he covered his mouth with his hand.

His wife was dead.

His life would never be the same.

As the belly laugh bubbled up inside him, though, Frank realized too late what the rest had discovered as he stood talking.

He spent the last few moments of his life laughing into his palm.