At around the same time that Emile was helping an old man load what seemed like an inappropriate amount of luggage into the back of his car, Emile's brother Mason who was standing a bit behind him on the curb of the sidewalk was shot three times in the chest. The three shots echoed as if the bullets had been thrown against the rock walls of a canyon, and their dull reverberations were the loudest thing Emile had ever heard. Emile turned just in time to see a look of soft surprise fix itself to his brother's face, the eyes wet as polished marble, the lips a curious mix between bemused certainty and sudden embarrassment. Emile did not see the shooter; he saw with very little clarity(and even less after shock had chipped the edges of his memory) a khaki colored overcoat and the thin trickle of smoke that came from a brutish length of iron - surely the barrel of a gun. In the middle of his focus he saw only the three red roses that blossomed over the flat, canvas-like texture of his brother's trenchcoat. Later, Emile would recall that image as if the scene had been a painting from the Romantic period - every part of the body an icon and bearing as little relation to reality as the geometric boundaries of the human body, with all of the humanity clasped desperately to the face, the upturned face of sinful naivete. Emile would always see the roses blooming and a peculiar scent would tease him from the depths of that moment - a smell like that of rain soaked leather turned old by the color of water and the salt taste of perspiration. Emile's memory felt like a riverbed covered by the kind of pale sun that is almost certainly indistinguishable from the moon. By the time Mason's body had fallen to the ground, rigidly, unlike what one is accustomed to seeing in movies, Emile had noticed nothing and had not moved at all, not even to breathe. When he did breathe it was a sharp exhalation that felt like a soundless shout. Emile had held his breath for the few moments in which the shooting had occurred and only now did the air escape his lungs and only now, by the act of breathing, was that long, terrible moment ended. Emile mechanically placed the large parcel in his hands along with its brothers in the back of the old man's car. The old man was not looking at him, and it was doubtful that he was looking at anything at all - the shock had carried over to him as well. The old man's mouth was partially open and Emile noticed the space where one of the yellowed teeth had given in to time and decay, and had long since fallen out. It sickened him and a wave of yellowed disgust washed over his forearms, leaving him elbow deep in it's rubber texture. Suddenly he regretted having ever helped this old man. Emile blamed him, he blamed this old man's presence for what he had not yet fully comprehended...in assigning the blame to something, to anything, he understood, clearly, that his brother was dead and that he was dead because of this old man, this stupid old man who hadn't asked for help but who had received it and in doing so had taken Emile's brother along with Emile's good natured largesse. Emile looked at the old man only briefly and then stepped woodenly across the few feet of pavement to where his brother lay on the ground, unmoving. Emile noted that his eyes were still open and that the same look was fixed not only in the features of Mason's face, but also in the depths of his eyes. Emile closed his brother's eyes not because it was the right thing to do but because he could not bear to see that good natured surprise frozen deeply within the departed soul of his brother.
-Rich
the ember is full of you
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