My Servant Is An Elf Knight From Another World

"Okay stop! This is our turn here!"

Graveyards and Tylers, I found, do not really go well together. It's like oil and fire, or a building on fire... or fire with even more fire.

Point being - Tyler was fire. The metaphorical bad kind. Volatile, brash, loud as all hell, and certainly not something you want going active at the wee hours of the morning.

Not unless you want some policemen at your doorstep as I came to find out.

So yeah, picture the most picturesque image of a cemetery, the absolute epitome of solemnity. Now boom - put some fire.

Can you still feel the solemnity? Or has it all burned to cinders by a tumultuous flame humming tiptoe through the tulips across headstone after headstone?

I gotta admit, for the sparse fair few that were here too, it made for some pretty amusing reactions.

"Annnnnd... here we are!"

Tyler stopped, turned, and stretched his hand all the way yonder a row of graves, at the furthest end... a lonely end, a simple little headstone was there, sitting atop a slightly raised bed of grass.

Most people don't point at their deceased parent's resting place like they were showing off a brand new Ferrari.

Suffice it to say, Tyler was not most people - Dude even bolted the rest of the way over after pointing it out to me.

I took considerably longer to reach... expending more energy than you really should can do that to a guy.

By the time I got there, Tyler had his bulging rucksack wide open propped up against the headstone, with his hands delving deep, and his eyes scouring through.

Before upon first encounter, I just assumed he's got a metric ton's worth of recording equipment packed up in that little green turtle lump, but little naive presumptuous me back then couldn't have been farther from the truth.

He pulled out and laid onto the gravel ground all sorts of things, none of which I could see as props to be used in a video.

Rags, bottles of water, dish soap, a small pair of trimmers, a packet of candles... all while a whimsical hum still played through the air.

Upon closer look, hell, even from a significant distance away - it was kinda hard to overlook the fact that this gravestone here had a lot more polish and shine than any of the others.

Once a year every yeah, huh? Guess that streak's been going strong all this time.

"Got a little smudging since I last came over, some weeds have grown too," He said, damp rag in one hand, trimmers in the other. "No problemo for me though."

Was actually kinda impressed by how serious he took this yearly tradition. I know I say a lot of things about him, but bit by bit, he's starting to grow on me here.

I wandered closer to one of the many rags, "Here, let me help a bit. Make the whole thing faster."

Didn't even have a chance to reach out before he swiped them from under me, tutting his lips, and wagging a finger.

"You're a good man, big man," He said, smiling at me. "But I'm good here. She's my mom, and I'm her son... the least I can do for her is make sure she's resting somewhere clean on my own. Y'know, come to think of it, right... this is also the most I can do for her the way things are."

Can understand that well and clear. Nodding once, I backed right away, and simply watched as he did work with that cheery smile on his face.

"You really loved your mom, didn't you?"

"Waddaya mean 'loved'?" He said, chuckling, reaching for a new rag. "Still love her, man. Still do. Best friend in the entire world."

<<Theresa Leaden>> read the name on the tombstone. Not a single letter showed any signs of fading. Tyler's been preserving it pretty well.

"How many times does this make, by the way?" I asked. "You coming here?"

"Since she died, I was ten then... twenty-four now - fuck, I hate maths uhh - so that makes it fourteen years, I guess?"

"By yourself?"

"First few years, my aunt came to watch. Over time though, she sorta just stopped. Mom and her didn't really get along, I hear."

More and more I hear, the more and more I got curious. It's like an itch inside of me that needed scratching.

"It was just you and your mom?"

Tyler reached for the bottle and rinsed the slab, answering as he did. "Since my baby days, yep."

"Couldn't have been easy like that."

"Hell nah it wasn't," He snorted, wringing the cloth. "Dad left, and he left debts. Piled sky high and all in mom's name."

Oh... what? That was not how...

"Surprised?" He raised a brow at me. "Yeah, I get ya. See, Dad's an asshole. That's what my aunt told me. My mom's relatives kept telling her he was no good. But Mom didn't listen, loved him, ran off with him anyway."

"Why?" I asked.

Tyler just shrugged, brushing it off as just, "Eh, love. Makes you a dumbass, and Mom was definitely a dumbass. But make no mistake, she was the best Mom anyone could ever ask for."

He talked about her so offhandedly and full of cheer, it was like sadness was not in his DNA or something. It was a little unsettling.

"Broke her heart when Dad left when he found she was pregnant with me," Tyler continued, this time at ground level, snipping away at the tall grass. "By all rights, she should have hated me, put me up for adoption or something - no, I stayed, she kept me... loved me with everything she's got."

"You shouldn't see it like that," I spoke hastily. "Regardless of the circumstances, she'd have loved you anyway."

"Maybe, maybe..." He shrugged again. "Still, there ain't no denying that I was the reason the only man she's ever loved went away."

"That's got nothing to do with you. Guy's a dick."

"She loved that dick."

"She's -"

"A dumbass."

"Right," I blew a breath. "Anyway, just... hearing you talk, it's kinda like you see yourself as an inconvenience to her."

He snipped a blade of grass. "Pretty sure I was."

"That's not how parents see their kids, Tyler."

Snipped another. "No? Just me?"

"That's just how you see it. Don't know how you got to see it that way though..."

"You sure?" He snipped again. "Cause of me, she had to be selfless... 'cause of me, she always had to stay strong, always had to smile, laugh... pretend like she wasn't hurting inside. Must have gotten pretty tiring after a while..."

"Why...?" The more he talked, the more baffled I got. "Of course she's selfless, she's your mom! She loved you."

"I know," He replied, wiping the sweat from his brow. "So busy loving me so much, she forgot to go ahead and love herself..."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"Ooo, that there's touchy," He brandished the trimmer my way, squinting one eye at me, "Sure you wanna go there? Doesn't make for a good mood on the way back."

"Leave it right there, it'll just bother me anyway."

A snort, a chuckle. "Ah yeah, yeah... true that. Alright then, consider yourself warned."

Tyler placed the trimmers down, wiped away the last of the droplets, and began unboxing the candles.

"Remember you asked before?" He said.  "How my mom died?"

"You don't remember, you said," I said, recalling back to that porch side conversation. "You going to tell me now that you lied?"

"I lied."

Of course...

"It'd be pretty shitty of me to forget. Fourteen years ain't too long when you think about it. Sometimes, I also still dream about it."

"Were you there when it happened?" I asked.

Seriously, it was this type of curiosity that was going to be the death of me. I was just some dude, some stranger, ain't exactly the guy to be asking these questions... but for the sake of scratching that itch, I was for now.

"I was at school, dude," He said, looking at me like a fool. "Ten years old, where would I be?"

And even more bizarre was Tyler's aloofness to it all, cracking jokes, laughing out loud, in front of his mother's grave no less...

Briefly, I wondered if he was just faking that smile of his, hiding the truth of it all behind some mask of overzealousness.

Like a certain other wisecracking loudmouth...

But the more I look, the more I realize that this was it - this was the truth of it all.

There's nothing fake in that smile. This was just how he is.

Why was this just how he is?

"You're probably thinking already, right?" He said, jutting a single candle at me. "Got some ideas as to what happened? Pretty obvious now."

Truth was I did. Didn't take a detective to piece the pieces, the writings were on the wall... I just... "I don't want to say."

"In case you're wrong?" He shook his head, lit the candle. "You ain't wrong."

"So she really - ?"

"One day she decided to be selfish, one day she decided to think about herself, love herself..." The blazing candle, he firmly set on her grave, staring, still smiling. "So she killed herself."