W. Keith Everett

Issue 16

Flash Fiction

He listened as the man in the suit started it all. He was thinking of other things, but trying to pay attention. The man in the suit talked about how great she was, how she had so many friends and how much she contributed to her community. One lady stood up and introduced herself as a former student and told how she produced such radiant light in her paintings and brought out the color using shadows to depict reflected light, so much like the way she radiated light into her surroundings when she was present. Another lady stood up and described how she taught her how to bring out certain colors, making a storm look truly threatening or a sunset relaxing, much the way she encouraged her students with a kind word of praise at a time when she saw discouragement on their faces. Yet another lady stood up and talked about how she taught her how to scratch through paint to expose colors underneath at strategic places with just a palette knife. One man stood up and stated, “She taught men too, and we learned to bring out the luminosity in our paintings. She brightened up every class.” A young kid, probably high school, stood up nervously and said she taught him the use of small circles or dots to create an image. Others spoke, but he could only think of how her hair blew in the wind the time they went sailing on the lake and she was so scared but went because he loved sailing, the way she walked, with a little swing almost like a skip, the way she stayed home and took care of her mother while she was dying for three years instead of going to college and starting a life, the way she fought for each of her children during various trying times in their lives. And the thought of their worst kiss ever, when he went off to war—the hard-pressed lips coated with salty tears and ending with a sob as he got on the bus. He thought of their embrace when he returned, the necklace he placed under her pillow and the wonderfully sleepless night together that followed, and her loving presence in the evenings watching movies, laughing, joking, and holding hands on the couch in their living room. It was his turn to speak now, but he could not. He looked down at his notes through watery eyes and could not read them. He blinked several times, looked up at the man in the suit nodding for him to go ahead.  The man in the suit said a prayer. He stared as two men lowered the casket into the gaping black hole of forever.