BEING THE MURDERED VICTIM
For Kira
The thing about being the murdered victim is you set the plot in motion.
There will be the phone call from your father to the funeral home, and he will stutter over your name, and he will blink back tears, blink, blink, blink, all except one, slipping free and skittering down the side of his face, dangling from his chin, and he will leave it there, and he will blink again.
There will be the dirty dishes in the sink and the For Sale sign in the yard. There will be the grass growing longer and longer, and the burst of dandelion puff, yellowing your lawn.
There will be the sound of two gunshots, crack and crack, one for you and one for him, and the police knocking at your door, is everything all right in there, and the coroner kneeling beside your body, and your last ride with the man who killed you, together to the morgue.
There will be your mispronounced name on the five o’clock newscasts, there will be the still photos of your front yard and its dandelion bloom, there will be the barebones brief on the newspaper’s website hours after your death, there will be the reaction emojis at the bottom: twelve shock faces, one hundred forty-six crying faces, thirty-one angry faces, and eight heart eyes, eleven laughs.
There will be the plans for your cremation, there will be the obituary your parents write by hand, there will be the phone calls and phone calls and phone calls, and your father with that chin-dangle tear, answering every I’m sorry for your loss with thank you, thank you, thank you.
There will be your death certificate and gunshot wound to the head, there will be the weapon still clutched in his cold, stiff hand, there will be your neighbors peering through parted curtains, startling at every engine backfire.
There will be your arm slipping from underneath the sheet as you are carted away on the gurney, there will be the marks from his large hands, there will be the unanswered texts from your worried friends, are you all right, you’re scaring me.
And in the morning, there will be the sunrise and blueing sky and the birds nestled in their trees, chittering, chittering away, because the birds have never cared for you, never, never at all.
Cathy Ulrich doesn’t understand why anyone would leave laugh emojis on an article about a murder-suicide. Her work has been published in various journals, including Timber, Adroit and Wigleaf.