Someone Will Pay for This

On the table, he lay flat, lifeless and pale. Though his lids were frozen shut, the stain of his final tears still marked the corner of his eyes. Candace stood above him, staring down at his lifeless body unable to feel. In the last few hours of 2019, she had gone from celebrating her engagement atop the old post office building on North St. Paul to identifying her father’s corpse. Akhil steadied her with his embrace otherwise she would have crumbled to her knees. She focused on the dark red blood soaking his tattered white dress shirt and noticed how the collar and cuffs still remained starched to perfection. Her eyes wondered to his exposed belly and the pool of blood gathered inside his navel. She thought of the many babies her father had delivered and the many cords that he’d cut.