Chapter 26: The Funeral Procession
The gray Milanese suit felt like a costume. Julian stood at his bedroom window, watching the black cars assemble on the gravel drive below. Each vehicle disgorged somber, familiar figures—aunts and uncles he barely knew, business associates with practiced frowns, distant cousins who always looked at him with vague pity. He adjusted his tie, his fingers remembering the feel of her skin, the scandalous heat of her just hours before. The phantom scent of jasmine and sex seemed woven into the wool.
The car ride to St. Michael’s was silent. Izzy sat beside him, a vision of elegant bereavement in a tailored black dress and veil. She stared out the window, one gloved hand resting on the seat between them. Her composure was absolute, a marble effigy of grief. Julian felt raw, flayed open, every nerve ending exposed. The memory of the word she’d forced from his lips—Mommy—echoed in his skull, a dirty secret tuning fork.
The cathedral’s interior was cool and vast, smelling of stone, wax, and damp hymnals. They were ushered to the front pew. The closed coffin, bedecked with lilies, sat on a bier before the altar. A life-sized photograph of Arthur Moreau, looking stern and vaguely disappointed, presided over the gathering. Julian kept his eyes on the flagstones.
The organ droned. A priest spoke of legacy, of a life well-lived, of a community mourner. The words were empty shapes, bouncing off Julian’s numbness. He was aware of Izzy beside him, her stillness, the delicate sound of her breathing.
Then her hand, still in its black lace glove, settled on his thigh.
It was a casual, comforting gesture, or so it would appear to anyone glancing over. Her fingers rested just above his knee. Then, during a particularly long-winded eulogy from a business partner, her hand began to move. It slid slowly, deliberately, up the inside of his thigh. The fine lace caught on the wool of his trousers.
He froze. He didn’t dare look at her. She faced forward, her profile serene beneath the veil.
Her fingers found the zipper of his trousers. He heard the faint, metallic shhhick as she pulled it down, the sound swallowed by the priest’s sonorous voice. The cool air of the cathedral brushed his skin. Then her bare hand—she must have removed the glove—slid inside, past the band of his boxers. Her fingers were warm, shockingly so in the chill. She closed them around his softness.
He jerked, a tiny, involuntary spasm. Her other hand came to rest on his arm, a mockery of solace. “Be still,” she whispered, her lips barely moving. Her breath was warm against his ear. “Listen to the nice man talk about your father.”
She began to stroke him, a lazy, knowing motion. Her thumb rubbed the sensitive head. Against his will, against every shred of decency screaming in his mind, he felt himself responding, thickening and lengthening in her expert grip. Shame burned his face, hotter than any fever. He stared at his father’s coffin, his cock hardening in his stepmother’s hand as a stranger recited his father’s accomplishments.
“That’s my boy,” she breathed, her voice a silken thread of corruption woven through the holy drone. “Getting hard in church. For me. While daddy watches from his box.” Her pace increased slightly, a firm, rhythmic pull. “He knows. He can smell your sin from there. He knows his little man is all grown up and aching for his wife’s cunt.”
Julian bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted copper. The pressure built, a treacherous tide rising from his groin. The stained-glass saints seemed to leer down at him.
“I’m going to take you behind the old mausoleum,” she whispered, her voice dropping to a predatory purr as the eulogy ended and a hymn began. “The one with the weeping angel. I’m going to lift this black dress and you’re going to fuck me right there. On his day. With the dirt from his grave still fresh on my shoes. You’re going to come inside me while I clench around you, and then you’re going to walk back to the reception with my juice leaking down your prick.”
With that, she gave him one final, ruthless squeeze, then withdrew her hand. She calmly replaced her glove, folded her hands in her lap, and raised her head to sing along with the hymn, her voice clear and sweet.
Julian sat in agonized rigidity, painfully erect, trapped in the confines of his clothes, the hymn a meaningless blur of sound. The rest of the service passed in a haze of suffocating torment. The procession to the graveside. The hollow thud of earth on wood. The final prayer.
As the crowd began to disperse, offering stiff condolences, Izzy gripped Julian’s arm with formidable strength. “Now,” she said, her smile gracious for the benefit of an approaching aunt. She steered him, not toward the waiting cars, but down a winding gravel path deeper into the cemetery, away from the crowd.
The sounds of murmured conversation faded, replaced by the crunch of their footsteps and the distant groan of the cathedral’s ancient organ. She pulled him behind a large, weathered mausoleum, its marble stained with green moss. A stone angel, its face eroded by centuries of rain, wept over the entrance.
Here, the world dropped away. They were hidden from view, enclosed by high walls of stone and overgrown yew trees.
Izzy turned to him, her composure vanishing. Her eyes were bright, fierce, hungry. She didn’t speak. She hiked up the front of her sleek black dress, revealing she wore nothing underneath. The pale skin of her thighs, the dark triangle of curls, were a brutal contrast to the somber fabric. She pushed him back against the cold, rough marble of the mausoleum wall.
“Now,” she commanded, her voice gritty. “Fuck your mommy on your father’s grave.”
Her hands fumbled between them, freeing his aching cock. She was already wet; he felt the slick heat against his fingers as she guided him to her. Then she lifted herself, bracing her hands on his shoulders, and sank down, taking him in one deep, impaling stroke.
A choked gasp was torn from him. She was incredibly tight, her inner muscles clamping around him with velvety, urgent pressure. The setting was grotesque—the smell of damp earth and decay, the cold stone at his back, the distant, fading organ music—but the physical sensation was overwhelming. It stripped everything else away.
She rode him with a savage, silent intensity, her eyes locked on his. Her breath came in sharp, quiet bursts, fogging in the cool air. Each rise and fall of her body was a claim, a conquest. The only sounds were the soft, wet slap of flesh, the rustle of her dress, and his own ragged attempts to breathe.
“This is it,” she hissed, her face inches from his. “This is all you get. This cunt. This is your home, your inheritance, your god. You worship it with this.” She clenched around him, a vicious, milking pulse that made him see stars. “Come on, you pathetic boy. Come inside your daddy’s widow. Mark his grave with your fuck.”
Her words, the filthy, sacrilegious poetry of them, combined with the frantic rhythm of her hips, pushed him to the edge. He tried to stifle it, to hold back, but she was relentless. She covered his mouth with her gloved hand, muffling his cry as the orgasm detonated in his core. It was a seizure of shame and release, pumping into her with helpless, wrenching spasms.
She kept moving, drawing out every last drop, until he was spent and soft inside her. Only then did she still, resting her forehead against his, her own body trembling through a final, clenching peak. She stayed there for a long moment, impaled on him, their frantic breaths mingling.
Finally, she pushed herself off. He slumped against the wall, his legs jelly. She let her dress fall, the fabric now wrinkled and stained with grave dirt at the hem. She produced a small lace handkerchief from her sleeve, wiped between her legs with a chilling practicality, then tucked it away. She reached for him, tucking his limp, wet cock back into his trousers and zipping him up with a brisk efficiency.
She smoothed his hair, adjusted his tie. Her face was flushed, her lips swollen, but her eyes were once again calm, distant. The widow returned.
“Fix your face,” she said, her voice now devoid of all heat. “We have a receiving line to endure.”
She turned and walked back towards the path, not looking back to see if he followed. Julian pushed himself off the wall. A sticky dampness cooled on his thighs. The scent of her, of sex and perfume, clung to him, a secret stain. From the direction of the cathedral, he heard the first distant, polite notes of the reception’s string quartet. He looked at the weeping angel, its sorrow now seeming like mockery.
He walked back toward the world of the living, each step feeling like a betrayal of the dead man whose fresh grave lay only fifty yards away. The man of the house followed his guardian, his keeper, his mommy, back to the wake.