Commitment - Flash Fiction Story by Cheryl Snell

 

Commitment

Flash Fiction Story by Cheryl Snell

At first, I just couldn’t. I mean I knew I was dead, technically. It had taken me a long time to get there, and had worn my husband and my sister down to nubs what with all the care-giving. They worked in shifts so they wouldn’t trip over one another. They avoided each other under normal circumstances and my illness had not brought them closer. In fact, they resented the hell out of each other because each thought I loved the other more. I actually loved them equally, and for many of the same reasons. They were very much alike, but neither one could see it.

I left hospice with great fanfare, had the bed alarm going non-stop no matter what the janitors did, and then let the faucets all open while I drew my last breath. My family didn’t understand my farewell, but the nurses did. They’d seen everything. They would probably not have been surprised at how I spent my time after I died, with nights in the land of the living, and days in the land of the dead. I was so worried about my family and how they would get through the mourning period I felt compelled to supervise. It’s not actually haunting someone if you only intend to hover, is it? I needed to be sure they would be ok before I could rest easy. It was for  eternity, after all.

The first night after the first day with the deadheads was difficult. To see my beloveds crying in one another’s arms, the force of their combined grief pushing me into the folds of the billowing curtains, touched the heart I no longer had. I watched over them as they slept their exhausted sleeps, flowing from one room to the other. My husband kept to his side of the bed, clinging to the edge as if he was afraid of my empty spot. Did he think he might die too, if he touched where my body had been? I couldn’t resist disproving that superstition─ I carefully slid into my side and let the covers float over me. He sat bolt upright, eyes still closed. His reaction startled me so much I rushed right into my sister’s room. She lay in the middle of her bed, arms and legs splayed. Her position was a testament to her loneliness. She had never shared a bed with anyone but me, when we were children. There was no room for me now.

I found myself back in the land of the dead just before dawn and decided to look up my old friends and relatives. At least I’d get an idea about how to manage the space while I waited for the night to return me home. I found my mother easily enough. She was serving breakfast to her mother, her mother’s mother, and a string of foremothers as far as the eye could see. My father was hunched over a blank newspaper in the corner. “I’m busy right now,” Mother said. “When you finish with your sister and that man below, I’ll help you settle in.”

That night I found my husband and sister arguing about the five official stages of grief and who was passing through them faster. What, no argument over what to do with my collections, the Swarovski crystal figures, my musical instruments, my ashes? I had to laugh, and the disturbance in the air caused their heads to swivel in my direction. “You promised you wouldn’t scare us,” my sister said. “No haunting! We agreed.”

“It’s not her,” my husband said.  “I’d know if it was.”

“You think you knew her better than me?” He shrugged and nodded.

“I suppose you imagine she had no secrets from you?” With a chill, I could see those secrets were no longer safe with her. My sister cocked her head in the same way I had did whenever we were bullying someone, including my husband. She was doing it now.

“Do you know what worried her most about you?” He recognized our gesture and tried to turn the tables. Was he really willing to betray my confidences about her? I would have held my breath, if I had any.

“What?”

“I’m not telling, just wanted to know if you know.”

My sister reached out to slap my husband; he caught her hand by the wrist. “Your hand is so much like hers,” he murmured. He brought it to his lips, but she was the one who let him kiss it.

I was instantly catapulted back to the land of the dead, into my mother’s kitchen, where I took my place as a newcomer, serving her and the foremothers lunch. “Well, your sister never could stand for you to have something she didn’t,” was all they said.

Cheryl Snell's books include poetry collections from Finishing Line, Pudding House, Moria Books, and others. She is also the author of the Bombay Trilogy novels. Widely published online and in print, her work has been nominated seven times for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and one poem was included in a Best of the Net anthology. She won the Lopside Press Chapbook Competition with Prisoner's Dilemma, illustrated by her late sister Janet Snell. Recent work has appeared in the Ilanot Review, Cafe Irreal, The Drabble, and elsewhere. She lives in Maryland with her husband, a mathematical engineer.