Chapter 2 - The Macabre Rites
Elias rounded the corner into the expansive living room, his momentum abruptly dying as the scene before him registered. The air in the room was thick, nauseatingly sweet with the overwhelming perfume of white roses and lilies that framed a massive, smiling portrait of his deceased wife. But the room did not hold the solemn, quiet reverence of a wake. Instead, it was an arena of frantic, desperate, and entirely inappropriate physical exertion.
In the dead center of the room sat a pristine white casket, its silver handles glinting under the warm, dim interior lights. Surrounding it were the people who were supposed to be drowning in grief: his silver-haired mother-in-law clad in a sharp black dress, a middle-aged woman with her hair pulled into a severe bun, and the family patriarch, an elderly man in a black vest sitting rigidly in his wheelchair. They weren't weeping over the open lid. They weren't whispering final goodbyes. Their faces were twisted into masks of sheer, panicked exertion as they shoved their weight against the heavy white lid, violently attempting to force the casket shut before Elias could cross the room.
