FREAK SHOW

Chapter 17: The Rest is Rust and Stardust

He walked her back to her caravan. Lowering her hand, Scarlett wrapped her whole hand around his. The simple action somehow managed to melt the background away. It was only him and her.

"It isn't so much that I miss Archer or feel bad that he died," she started, feeling the need to elaborate on her slight relapse back there.

"-You don't need to explain yourself Letty'. You got overwhelmed. There's no shame in it. My job is just to make you feel happy again." Charlie gave her a soft smile. It was probably the most gentlest and pure thing she had ever seen, and she felt overwhelmed...but by love for him.

A smile bloomed on her face, and Scarlett let out a twinkle of a laugh, one that crackled. He hugged her in return. She hugged back tighter. There was millions of ways to say I love you, and she understood that this was one. That and in the way he said her name so differently from everyone else's.

Backing up from him, "Thanks, but let me explain cause you'll never know if I don't do it now." Charlie didn't say anything, only giving her his attention with an encouraging nod.

"I-I just feel bad that someone died. Right in front of me. It doesn't even have to happen right in front of me, but it happened," Scarlett tried to express, "How do people get used to that? Like how do murderers kill, knowing that they took a life? They might have been a bad person but they still were a somebody that died. A person just like them."

Charlie didn't seem to have words. Or an answer. Suddenly quiet, he shrugged.

Scarlett kissed his cheek after that, whispered a small 'goodnight', and went to bed. In the morning, he waited for her outside and walked with her hand in hand to the funeral site. Arriving to the large group making up a circle, right in front of the lots' lake, Scarlett immediately noticed the difference compared to Bonnie's funeral. No one was dressed up, making her the only one dressed in black. There was no hole in the ground for his body either.

"Hi," Scarlett greeted softly as she walked up beside Irene. She looked down at what everyone was gathered around. Archer's tall frame laid there, a blanket wrapped around his limp form, hardly covering his face.

"Wha-, why is there no ditch?" she tugged on Charlie's hand, "What's happening?"

"Axel didn't tell us to make one," he murmured back.

"But-"

Irene cut her off from beside her, under her breath, "He's not going to be buried."

Before Scarlett could ask, baffled, Axel entered the ring of people, taking his place in front. He stood on the cinderblock placed on the floor, to get above everyone's heads. He wasn't dressed formally either, only wearing the black trench coat he always dragged around. Flickering his amber eyes around the group, stopping momentarily on every face, he took a pause to take out a pocket Bible from his coat. Scarlett eyed him as he flipped to a bookmarked page in it. The thought of Axel being religious still remained humorous to her.

"As we all should know, the Bible views suicide equal to murder- it is a self-murder. God is the only one who decides when and how we should die. We steal God's right by killing ones self. It defiles the name of God and it should not be honored. Psalm 31:15, 'My times are in your hands,'" Axel spoke loudly with a certain type of menace in his words, not even bothering to glance down at the book in his hands despite bringing it out, "The taking of one's life is thus ungodly because in itself it means the rejection of God's gift of life."

The man abruptly snapped his eyes in her direction. Scarlett felt all the air in her chest disappear when the orange of his eyes met hers. It was as if he was talking directly to her. Flashbacks of yesterday night, after dinner, when he recited strange verses about lying to her, all came rushing back. They burned under her eyelids. Scarlett couldn't help but feel her eyes get red again with unshed tears.