Control Freak ✔️

34 homecoming king

The country air was much more familiar to Ivy now, as she sat beside Caleb with the window down and her golden hair blowing in the wind. It was the emptiness of the road, the green of the seemingly never-ending forest alongside it, the rigid clouds like mountain peaks crashing down into the horizon, that made her know she was fast approaching the place she considered home.

"We're almost there, Caleb," she said, in an uncharacteristically solemn tone. "Then we'll be able to start our new life together."

* * *

"What is our reward in life for our good deeds in this changing world? What's the prize to be had for our obedience to the scripture?" the pastor began.

It was an outdoor funeral on an early summer morning. There was April, the only one at the station he ever really talked to, along with other comrades who he barely knew. There were his longtime buddies from the police academy, and soldiers in uniform with their rifles poised. His mother was mourning, as her brother wrapped his arm around her as he gently wept. Seguerra, who stood alone in the back, bowed his head in stoic posture.

"It is thought to be a lifelong journey in which one discovers his perfect Creator, the Heavenly Father. But human life is confined in a glass box, navigating this transparent vivarium, poorly equipped with imperfect reasoning and emotion. Our trespasses, our spite and envy, our ill-formed preconceptions, curtains over a glass box in which we explore. We are subjugated by our own audacity to believe we are pulling the curtain on the omnipotent Master plan. We are only pulling it on ourselves, and we find ourselves, and nothing except our own bemused gazes, staring back. Sam Hayakawa lived his life according to the way he always thought intended, and he died believing in it still. We should all be so obedient. To be still, to be unwavering, to be unquestioning in knowing what awaits beyond this glass box; eternal rest beside the Father. Let us pray."

Standing over his casket was a grand bouquet of flowers that framed a handsome picture of Sam in uniform. The bagpipes began to play. The rifles shot into the air in unison as they lowered the casket down into the grave. His mother sobbed, as everyone else remained silent. The proceedings adjourned soon after. The funeral caravan began to depart.

The commissioner approached Seguerra. He offered his hand on her shoulder, and a look of genuine compassion. "It never gets easier, does it?" Seguerra shook his head. He stood with him for a while. He was patient with him, living with the silence in the air as Seguerra wept inside, reading it on his desolate face was enough. "I hope you'll respect my decision in having you go on paid leave for a while. You know why, right?"

"Because you know what I'll do if I find that man," Seguerra murmured.

The commissioner nodded, "yes. That's precisely why. And I can't lose you to this, Mr. Seguerra."

He accepted it silently.

"Maybe I could use some time off. Leave the city. Go back home to the farm."

"Country boy?"

"You don't believe it?" That was the first time Seguerra had shown any semblance of a smile since the incident. They shared that small laugh together.

***

There was a house that stood at the top of a green hill overlooking a humble acre of farmland. The air was hot and wavy, bending the light. It was a peculiar air that hung about a once familiar place, with pollen dancing along to the chorus of a thousand chirping cicadas. There was an old dirt path going up the lonely hill, upon which the dilapidated, old house stood crookedly, facing out over the mangled fingertips of the tree branches, now adorned in lush green plumage.

In the backyard, there was a garden of violets and rhododendrons with their cones in full bloom. The flowers sprawled across the plateau. A lush carpet of grass swam into the mighty oak tree with a tire swing hanging underneath. There was a jubilant sound of children at play in the backyard.

There came a knocking at the door, followed by quickening steps bounding down the hall.

"Hello?" a woman answered. But the shock of what she saw had seized her throat, and she could not speak again.

Clark stood there, leaning against the threshold with his arm over his head, and a deviant smirk painted on his face and a certain twinkle in his eye.

"Daddy's home."