Patiently Waiting

“I’m dead.”
“No you’re not.”
“Yes I am.”
“No you’re not. I can see you talking to me. Dead people can’t talk.”
The girl pondered this statement, but only for a minute. “Maybe you can talk to the dead.”
“That’s impossible.”
“How do you know? Have you ever tried? You’re talking to me and I’m dead. Clearly it’s possible.”
That shut him up. The boy stood there, the gears in his brain turning, trying to understand this new revelation. He looked around the room, wondering if more ghosts were present, wondering if perhaps his mother were among them. He glanced at the window, at the light shining through it, hitting his toys, his sister’s toys, bouncing off the wall, making his shadow appear on the floor beside him. He stood up and peaked into his dresser drawers, at the disarray of undergarments and shirts and pants all stuffed into one shelf. No ghosts there. He didn’t even bother checking his sister’s drawers; they were too organized, too pristine, too clean for a ghost to hide within. He glanced up at the girl and she smirked back. “Can’t find what you’re looking for?”
“Where are the others?”
“Others?”
“The other ghosts?”
“There are no such thing as ghosts silly.”
“You’re a ghost. If you are dead, as you say you are, you have to be a ghost. How else can I talk to you?”
“Fine, I’m a ghost, if that’s what you want me to be.”
“What else can you be?”
“I don’t know.”
They both stayed silent, each staring down the other. The silence was growing, enveloping them, drowning them, surrounding them from all sides. It was suffocating.
“How did you die?” The boy broke the silence, scaring it away, hoping it would never return.
“I don’t know. I just woke up and I was dead. I didn’t really see it coming or anything. It just happened.”
“Does it hurt...

... middle of paper ...

...d far below the horizon, until the room went pitch black and he couldn’t see a thing.
“Daddy, where are you?” The front door slammed open and he heard his daughter’s footsteps running through the house. He couldn’t break the news to her, not yet. She was too young, too impressionable. He had no idea how she would react to her brother’s passing. He kissed his son’s forehead and pulled the covers over the boy’s head.
“Daddy, I’m home!” she yelled, turning on the lights in the room. She glances at the floor, frowns and asks, “Who played with my doll? She wasn’t wearing that dress before!”
The dad glances at the floor, at the doll with the lavender dress, at the clothes folded neatly beside her. The ghost girl chuckles and grabs the hand of the now ghost boy, who stands beside her, watching the family he was leaving behind. He sighs and the two of them disappear.