FINGERPRINTS

by Jason M. Harley

It was sudden. And that’s what had made it so hard. One moment they were driving down a cozy, country highway and enjoying the quiet companionship that only comes with years. And the next, the car was in the ditch and his husband was dead. Just like that.

Later, a doctor told Kyle that he was in shock; as if putting a name to an inexpressible feeling of loss was equivalent to throwing a drowning man a buoy. He turned down the opportunity to receive any further counseling.

***

Days later, all of which had been spent in bed, he felt something brush his foot in a soft caress. He smiled at the familiar gesture. And then frowned. There was, of course, no one in the bed beside him. He got some air after that.

***

A week later he was applying concealer to the dark folds of skin under his eyes that looked more like bruises than what they were. He wanted to look better than he felt for the funeral later that day. It was going to be the last time he’d see Mark — what was left of him — before the burial. He was thinking about the shovel piling dirt over the closed coffin when he felt a pressure around his waist and dropped the stick in the sink. He stared in the mirror for a long time before washing the concealer off his face. Mark had never liked it when he wore make-up.

***

Kyle started to inadvertently revise his eating and television habits after the funeral, vaccinating himself against loneliness with mindless sitcoms and police procedurals that blurred together, and filling his sense of loss with Ben and Jerry’s.

***

A week into his new routine he returned home to find the ice cream melted in the freezer, but nothing else. Later that night the television shut off after one hour and wouldn’t turn back on.