AFTER LIFE
Word Count: 315
She carries him around in her hip pocket, like a wallet or a credit card collection. He doesn’t mind, he’s happy that she cares enough to do it. It makes him feel alive.
Together they still go to movies, though not as often as they did. And too, she still picks out the gushy girlie ones that always bored him silly. He doesn’t really mind it anymore; he watches her instead, delighting in the little bursts of giggles, the way she holds her tears back to the point of breaking into sobs that make everyone turn their head around. It makes him smile.
He smiles more easily these days. He’s more alert to what goes on around him. He doesn’t have the stress of worrying about his job, the mortgage, the way she never could balance the budget and came up short almost every month. Since he’s been gone, she’s learned to handle money very well. He knew she could and would.
He still hates the smell of liver which even though she’d make it for herself when he was away for a couple days it lived forever in the curtains and his favorite chair. She’d deny it always, but now he knew the truth. It makes him laugh.
He likes the way things are, the way that he’s been feeling. The things he sees he never saw before. The Impatiens in the flower bed that lead up to the house. The gleam of wooden chairs and tables on Saturday afternoons and the scent of lemon oil. The quiet peace of weekday mornings after eight o’clock. The way she watched him drive away each morning, and she still pretends she can.
He’s happy, yes, relaxed and worry-free. But in the nights he hears her softly breathing, feels the wetness of her tears. And what he wouldn’t give, he’d gladly take the burdens back, what he wouldn’t do, to reach out and pull her close.
you brought the dead back to life in this one. it took me a while to realise what was going on. it’s masterful how you give him such a strong voice.
I just gave him what he insisted upon, Marcus! By the second sentence he’d taken over the story, which I think was meant to be hers.
i think that kind of respect of your characters is exemplary….
In a magical world, this works really well; ascribing emotions and memories to the deceased who is nevertheless close by. And in the psychological world, maybe even better, since everything is projection. Of course, the departed one now sees things he never saw before, since he is now seeing through her eyes, and of course, she would give anything to have him back again…
Stop me before I start rambling – what I am saying of course, is that you’ve written another powerful piece, Susan.
Steve, I really enjoy reading your response to these stories, your insight that shows me something I may not have noticed even as author. I think the last few stories have been stronger because, though all fiction is experience-based, these have come from a very personal and real and current event/s in my life.