The Truth Finally Revealed

Gudersnipe

“Truth is the most powerful weapon known to man. It’s so powerful that it has been outlawed, kept out of the public’s hands. It’s time to take it back.”

Jason strolled casually down the path, whistling a happy tune. The tune was actually to a song about murdering and killing, but it sounded cheery enough.

Certainly too merry for the solemn graveyard.

He sighted Hunter at length, in the middle of the yard standing in front of one of the larger monuments. It was a big hexagon made of obsidian, but the way the sun glinted off the domed roof it looked just like a giant black diamond. As he watched Hunter’s hand came to rest at a specific point on the monument. His knees shook for a moment and he slowly sank to the ground, slumping a little with his hand still on the rock.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you so glum in a while,” Jason said. “Come to think of it ever.”

“Your awfully chipper for someone who’s strolling through a graveyard,” Hunter replied.

“Oh you know me,” Jason waved. “Right at home. Besides, I don’t believe in burying bodies. To me places like this are little more than wastes of land.”

“You say that, but I saw you stepping around that graves.”

“Local custom, don’t want to stand out you know.”

“Is that all?”

“No, I suppose not. All right, I admit it; I do think its wrong to step on graves. Not because the body is more than a used container, but because that container represents something.”

“‘And the dead shall be lain to rest.’”

“‘In fertile pastures where the sun shines and the wind blows through the trees,’” Jason finished the school mantra. “But that’s not how I was raised, just how we’re taught at school.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hunter agreed. “And I really do think the Gudersnipe doctrine is better, but this is how I was raised.”

“Old habits die hard,” Jason shrugged. He leaned over Hunter’s shoulder and glanced at the side of the monument, which up close was covered with inscriptions. Right above Hunter’s fingers was a very tiny inscription, barely big enough to read. The writing on the stone was as fine as newsprint, but carved deep. Whoever built this monument had cared that it withstood time, but had also meant to save space. It was a model of efficiency.

“Sahar Jasmine Caspien…” Jason read. It was a name; the entire stone was covered with names. “Wait… Sahar Jasmine Caspien-Jusenkyou?”

Hunter nodded. “My mother.”

“How did you know this was here?” Jason asked. “Are you sure it’s really her?”

Hunter nodded again. “They moved her body here when the lease on her plot expired; it’s all in the cemetery records. I used to live in this dimension you know.”

He pointed off past the edge of the graveyard into the city. “For a while I lived just a couple blocks that way. I used to come here every single day, until the social workers decided to move me again.”

“Dwelling on death isn’t good for anyone,” Jason replied. “Believe me, I know.”

“Its not the death that drew me here,” Hunter sighed. “It was the circumstances. The day my mother died, my father left me at the social services office with nothing but a note and a letter for me. The hospital told me that he simply walked out when they gave him the news of his wife’s death. Walked and picked me up from daycare, and left me with child services. Then he vanished off the face of the earth.

“Funerals are expensive, but the really pricey part is the plot. The city doesn’t want to pick up the tab just because the deceased has no family, or their family decided they weren’t worth burying. So they lease a plot for a few years, and then move the remains to this thing.

“Bodies are cremated, then treated and broken down with chemicals until the entire whole of someone’s person occupies a space no bigger than one cubic inch. This entire monument is an communal urn. Theirs a metal door up on top; when the human snuff box of remains is ready its dumped inside. No funeral, no priest. Its not like they even hurry either; they save the remains until they’ve got at least a few pounds before someone for the morgue can be bothered to come out here. At least the paper trial is well tracked, theirs more of my mother on paper now than there is left in this world. This one stone monument with thousands of other names is all there is for me to look at. I don’t even have any pictures of her.

“When I was very young I saw her grave before they dug her up. The marker had her name and some common eulogies, and something written in a strange language I couldn’t read at the time. I really wish I’d had the foresight to copy it down.”

“So you don’t come here to think about your dead mother?”

“No; I told you, I don’t even have any pictures. I can think about her anywhere. I come here to think about my father. My father, who let me grow up in that miserable system, who left my mothers body to be defiled this way, who hasn’t even once tried to track me down, or even write to me.”

“You said he gave you that letter, right before he aban—put you in the system.”

“Yeah, he probably wrote that in the car on the way to the office. Do you know, because of the fact that he just dumped me; I had to go into foster care? If he’d just stopped and signed a few damn forms I could have been put up for adoption. There were hundreds of families looking for real young kids, kids to young to remember their real parents. If he’d just signed the damn forms I could have grown up with a real family, I could have lived my entire life never knowing I was adopted, never knowing my mother died in a hospital and was tossed in a huge urn, never knowing my father hated me…”

Jason put a friendly arm on Hunter’s shoulder.

“If it makes you feel any better, my mother died to.”

Hunter turned to Jason and looked him right in the eyes. “Don’t get all mushy on me.”

“I had a feeling you’d say something like that. So, do you blame everything on your father?”

“Well clearly I can’t blame everything on that spineless git, the government deserves some of the credit for having such a lousy system for a kid to grow up in.”

“Which you wouldn’t have been in if not for your father.”

“This is true.”

“Going to swear vengeance now?”

“Maybe later.”

“At least you have a grave to visit your mother at. Where I come from they burn the bodies. Burn mind you, not cremate.”

“Yeah but it’s different. You have no desire to visit your mother’s grave. To you a grave is someplace you put bodies if you don’t have a lighter handy. To me this—monument—is an abomination.”

“I guess I should just stop trying to make you feel better.”

“Yeah, you generally don’t want comfort from someone who calls himself the God of Death.”

“Anubus for short.”

“Exactly. I mean, compared to you, my sorrow looks like a romp through a field of daisies. If anything, I should be trying to cheer you up.”

“Going to?” Jason grinned evilly.

“I don’t really feel like it.”

“Man, that’s a shame. I mean compared to your childhood, mine was like happy good fun time. Except for the whole real-mother-dieing-and-getting-replaced-by-evil-corrupt-stepmother part. It was irritating as hell, but hardly traumatic. And I didn’t get to learn super powers from immortal beings and tigers. Plus, my dad may also have been a gutless fart, but at least your dad was a dragon.”

Hunter turned around very slowly and faced Jason again.

“What—did—you—say?”

“Your dad,” Jason repeated. “Was a dragon; or your mother was, we’re not really sure.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Hunter yelled.

“Did—you—not know?”