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Max stood at the edge of the grave, swaying slightly.
The empty bottle of whiskey that lay shattered on his hotel room's floor was still on his breath, the bitter burn lingering at the back of his throat, but it wasn’t enough to numb him. Nothing ever would be.
The sky above was a dreary, oppressive gray, the kind of heavy overcast that smothered everything beneath it. A cold drizzle fell, clinging to Max’s rumpled suit, the fabric darkening with wet stains that blended into the other day-old stains, born from countless bottles of alcohol that couldn’t make him forget.
His collar was undone, his shirt rumpled, hanging awkwardly beneath his jacket. You were supposed to wear a tie, to a funeral. He had tried. He had picked up the one Michelle had given him for their first anniversary after Rose was born. It was black, with tiny roses patterned across it.
It had been his favorite tie, but his hands had shaken too much. The red looked like blood, spattered across the walls and the floors and his own skin as he held his wife's cooling body to his chest.
The pastor's voice droned on, words meant to comfort, meant to give peace, but all Max heard was noise, distant and hollow, like the world had faded away and left him behind.
Her family stood close, glaring. They whispered, hushed tones that they thought he couldn’t hear - or maybe they didn’t care if he did.
They judged him.
He could feel it, sharp as a knife in his back. He was drunk. He was a mess. He wasn’t holding it together like they thought he should. He had already failed them, and now he was failing himself.
As if that mattered.
Max didn’t care. Couldn’t. His life had already ended, long before he’d even stepped foot in this graveyard. It ended in that house, in that bedroom, in the moment he saw Rose's limp little body, saw Michelle’s blood painting the sheets, the moment he realized the screaming had stopped, the gunshots were done, and there was nothing left for him but bodies.
Bodies and death and blood, all reminders that he hadn't been enough.
He blinked, staring at the coffins laid out in front of him. Michelle’s was polished, dark wood, covered in flowers. It was beautiful. It didn’t suit her. She’d been alive and vibrant just days ago. Now, she was just a name on a headstone. A corpse that would soon be hidden beneath six feet of dirt.
And Rose’s…
His breath hitched, the whiskey threatening to come back up, the only thing left in his nauseous stomach. The casket was so small. Too small. It barely seemed like a real thing - just a box, a tiny box meant for a child who never had a chance.
She hadn't even been a year old.
The drizzle thickened, cold droplets running down Max’s face, mingling with the sweat on his brow. He could feel his soaked hair clinging to his neck, a bitter contrast to the heat burning inside his skull. The casket glistened in the rain, slick and polished, but all Max could see was Rose.
Max’s eyes blurred, the image of it twisting and warping, the edges of the world losing focus. He hadn’t really let himself think about it, not until now, not until he was standing here, staring at the physical proof of how young she’d been. Rose had been barely six months old, just learning to laugh, just starting to smile in ways that made Michelle’s heart melt, just learning how to babble at Max as he rocked her after getting home from work, her little hand clutching his finger as he smiled down at her - his little flower.
Now she was gone.
Gone before she even had a chance to grow, before she could speak, before she could even understand the world around her. The casket felt like a cruel joke. Like the universe had shrunk everything Rose was - everything she could’ve been - into something so small, so insignificant.
Now she was just a tiny casket, too small for flowers. Too small to have her own grave.
The world tilted, and Max reached out for balance, his fingers curling into empty air before he steadied himself with the bottle in his coat pocket. He clenched it tighter, his nails biting into the glass, grounding himself.
He didn’t cry. He couldn’t.
The tears had dried up somewhere between the moment he held Michelle’s body and the moment the cops pulled him away, familiar faces - friends, colleagues - all twisted into pitying expressions. All that was left inside him now was a hollow ache that pulsed in time with the hangover pounding in his skull.
Now, the Beretta in his other pocket with a full magazine was all that he had left.
The pastor kept speaking, the hollow words losing meaning with every passing second, and Max felt his mind drift.
The dirt was already shoveled and piled next to the graves. Soon they’d fill the hole, cover his family, and he’d be expected to walk away.
Just walk away. Like this was something he could ever recover from.
He swallowed hard, the whiskey burn clawing at his throat again, but it didn’t help. Nothing helped. There was no way to drown out the screaming he still heard when he closed his eyes. No way to silence the gunshots echoing in his skull. He could still hear the sounds of Rose's final cries, the gunshots, Michelle's screams, and then...
Silence.
He wondered if they could all see it - if Michelle’s family could tell just how broken he was, how he wasn’t really here.
He was just a shell. A corpse walking.
If they weren’t whispering about how drunk he was, they were pitying him. He could feel their eyes boring into his back, judging him, condemning him for not holding it together.
But why would he? Why should he?
He dug his fingers into his palms, hard enough to break the skin, but the pain didn’t register. It never did. All of it was distant, foggy, like the world was happening to someone else, some other poor alcoholic bastard.
Michelle was dead. Rose was dead.
He was just… here. Breathing, but barely alive.
Maybe it would have been better for there to have been a third coffin. Three names on the headstone, a family kept together even in death.
His Beretta had a full magazine.
The rain began to fall harder, a steady, rhythmic patter against the wood of the coffins. A gust of wind stirred the flowers on top of Michelle’s casket, scattering a few petals across the fresh earth. Max watched them drift down, weightless, their bright colors stark against the dull brown of the dirt. They didn’t belong there. Just like Michelle. Just like Rose.
He swayed again, his legs weak, the alcohol making it harder to stand. The bottle in his pocket felt heavier by the second, an anchor dragging him down. He wanted to fall with it, down into the grave to let the earth swallow him too, just like it would Rose and Michelle.
There was nothing left for him here.
His family was gone.
Everything he loved, everything he’d fought for, they were rotting in the ground.
He stared at Rose’s casket again, the smallness of it gnawing at him. She should have had a future. She should have had everything. Now, all she had was this. A wooden box too small to contain the weight of her loss.
Max’s hand shook as he pulled the whiskey bottle from his pocket. His other hand in his other pocket rested on his Beretta, finger loosely curling around the trigger.
Maybe he should have pulled that hand out of his pocket and raised what it held to his mouth.
He raised the bottle to his lips, the bitter taste burning on the way down. He heard murmurs from behind him, felt the weight of judgmental glares, but it didn't matter. It didn’t matter how much he drank. He couldn’t drown what was already dead inside of him.
He took another swig anyway.