A Red Rite for a Short Life

Red is the color of the rite, and the life being honored is already slipping. What was announced as mourning plays, in the room, like an accusation. Two people are bound by grief or by guilt, and the ceremony will not tell the guests which. The romance, if it is a romance, is cruel enough to need the dark. / Someone at the rite knows why the lost, or the nearly lost, had to be marked in red. Love may be the cover story. The truth underneath is the part the mourners have been paid, or threatened, not to say aloud.