I awoke in the early hours to the screaming of a maid. I pushed myself out of bed, tangled in the sheets, and dressed with haste. I made my way, dazed and confused, through the mass of servants that congregated in my father's study. They shrunk away to make room, and before my eyes, I saw him. I stared down at my father. He seemed to be asleep, his head on his desk, and the bottle I gave him next to him had, thankfully, many other kinds. Frozen, I stayed, my mouth agape, not believing what was true.

That's it then, I thought, my nerves uneasy, but I said nothing. I could feel the staff look up at me for directions, but I could not find a word to say about it. The maid who screamed was still crying in the room somewhere. Was I supposed to say something? Was I supposed to cry? Or yell? I didn't know. I didn't think of it. I did not really expect him to die that day. I had not prepared myself for my reaction. I only stared at him, at his pallid face, and my mind could not believe that in a world of immense possibilities, our fate is determined by only one thing: the power of coincidence.

I began to say something, but my voice wavered. A figure of white linen and silk came in with a cry, "My God! Don't just stand there! Move him to the divan! Call Monsieur Charlett!"

A few servants moved his body, limp and lifeless, to the divan. My mother stood near him, still in her dressing gown and her loose un-powdered hair past her shoulders. She called his name, and nothing he said. What's the point? I thought. I was frozen. I only observed. People rushed around me in an air of thick molasses. The edges of my vision were blurred. I breathed slowly. I saw his mouth had a blue hue, which I found odd, and I realized something horrific - he was still breathing.

I ran out of the room. I shook and ran my hands through my hair as I paced up and down the hall. He wasn't dead. He would live. What then? My skin tensed. What was I to do? He couldn't live. He couldn't. My mother's face came before my own, breathless, telling me something, but what I did not comprehend. She hugged me, and for a time, which could have just as well been eternity, unaware of myself, I sobbed hot tears into her shoulder. It would take at least an hour for his physician to arrive; would he be dead by then? What if he wasn't? How long would it take? I did not know, but the questions repeated in my mind. It was this uncertainty that made me faint. I only wished for him to die quickly and with ease, but it was much, much more sickening than I saw in my mind's eye. I would have to suffer along with him until the end.

After I calmed, I trailed behind my mother back to my father's study. My father lied there on the divan in his great purple chamber robes, the ruffles of his shirt puffed out, his skin more pallid and gray than only moments before. With the room quiet, I could hear the slow, labored breathing he made. Servants dashed around doing God knows what until the physician arrived.

Do they know? I gazed around the room. No one looked at me strangely and seemed to ignore my existence. Everyone was too busy to have any suspicions, and, after all, what did it look like? It looked like my father, known for his excessive drinking, drank far more than he thought he could handle. In the worst-case scenario, if his physician discovered he took laudanum, there was no way to know it was malicious. Who would even have the will to kill him? Me? No, not sweet and harmless Charles. No one would suspect a thing. But, unknown to anyone else, spiteful and resentful Charles could do anything he wanted.

My mother knelled next to the divan and held his hand. His mouth seemed to move, trying to say something, but nothing came out. I became nauseous. It was not what I intended. I did not want him suffering for hours; though he may have deserved that, I did not want to wait and linger for an uncertain future. I only wished him gone. I could not stay in that room for long, watching him grate for air, so I left down the stairs and went outside to the courtyard. I got sick on the stones, and as I looked up, I saw a carriage in the distance move down the avenue. I cursed under my breath and went back inside. 

The geriatric man examined my father, still alive but unresponsive, where he still lied. The room smelled of vomit from the purgatives and the vinegar used to clear the air. I never knew why my father trusted a man like Monsieur Charlett, an insipid, decrepit man with more matter than brain, to be his physician. He said something in his common pedantic, drawn-out tone, shaking hands to my mother to say things we already knew. It always seemed to me that Monsieur Charlett always told my father what he wanted to hear and was paid well for it. I hoped he would tell me what I wished to hear as well.

I went back out and paced the halls yet again to get myself out of the way. Waiting, wondering, and watching. Servants rushed to and from the large, dark doors. Was I supposed to be doing something? I didn't know. What was I supposed to say? It seemed well handled. My mother slipped from the doors a half hour later.

"What is it?"

"Oh, it's horrible," she said, shaking her head as she clutched a handkerchief. "He won't be able to take confession."

"What did he say?"

"He says he did everything he could, but he is scarcely breathing now." She said, "Come, the priest will be here soon."

"In thee, O Lord, have I put my trust; let me never be put to confusion; but rid me, and deliver me in thy righteousness; incline thine ear unto me, and save me-"

The air became hot and stagnate from all the people. My mother and I knelt in the room as the priest rehearsed his prayers. I muttered the words, but I did not think of prayers but only myself. I prayed for the suffering to end. I prayed that my fate did not end in the gallows. In an odd way, I felt myself in a sort of odd peace for the first time that day. Time stood still, and there came over me a solemn knowledge that everything happened for a reason. I had nothing to worry about. This was always meant to be. God himself had willed it.

"Deliver me, O my God, out of the hand of the ungodly, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man-"

I opened my eyes and stared at him yet again. It's not meant to be this way. In my mind's eye, I always had more time. I wished to have time with him alone, but his blue-gray face made it seem he would pass before I got the chance.

"For thou, O Lord God, art the thing that I long for; thou are my hope, even from my youth-"

I had to speak with him. I had to. I had to say something. I had only one chance to do so freely, but there were so many people in the room. In my mind, there were far fewer people, far less fuss, and it was all much simpler.

"as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: a world without end. Amen."

"Amen," said my mother and I as we crossed ourselves. I rose to be at my father's side. I knelled next to him and felt his hand in mine, ice-cold and limp, and his eyes stared off, unseeing somewhere before him. His lips no longer quivered, but his breathing remained shallow. There were many times I thought about what I would say to him on his deathbed. There were many times in my youth that I imagined him awake; he would hear me as I screamed at him and ranted on all the reasons I hated and despised him. I would scream at him that it was me, his own son, his blood, who killed him, and he would look at me with horror, and for once in my life, I would be in control. But he wasn't looking at me. He was looking nowhere. Even if I said anything, he would not hear me. He never did. He would never know how much he hurt me. He never cared. He only laid there, a ton of flesh slowly withering into the corpse he would become. It was so intensely sickening and so horrifically unsatisfying that I almost wished he would recover just so I could kill him again and make it worth it.

I rubbed his hand with my thumb as a tear rolled down my cheek. I opened my mouth to say something-what I do not know now-and from his mouth came a faint croaking groan.

"Father?"

His chest stopped moving. The room no longer hung to the sounds of his breaths. He was gone, and left was the silence.

"Father?"

My heart twisted and deflated. When he died, I thought I would be able to feel the ground sigh under my feet. A great peace would come over me. The clouds would blow away and expose the warm sun. But there he was, dead and dying, and I felt nothing at all. There was no change. The ground remained just as fragile as before.

"And teach us who survive, in this and other like daily spectacles of mortality, to see how frail and uncertain our own creation is; and so to number our days, that we may seriously apply our hearts to that holy and heavenly wisdom."

"Monseigneur?"

I did not realize the servant was speaking to me.

"Monseignuer?"

"Yes?" I said, and the servant continued on. Something about the constable had arrived. I wiped my tears with the back of my hand. My mother cried in the distance.

"Yes, of course."