She Sees

Someone, somewhere, is dying.

Maybe it’s your cousin. Maybe it’s the stray cat you always see prowling around behind that old gas station. Maybe it’s a firefighter with a drinking problem. Maybe it’s a little boy. In any case, something is always dying. Constantly, irreplaceably, dying. No one likes to talk about it, so that means everyone loves to think about it. Whenever you’re in a high place and that one percent of you thinks about doing the unthinkable and launching yourself from that high place, it means death is near. Death is a constant. It runs underneath everything everyday. For a lot of people, not all, but a lot, it’s their main motivator for getting out of bed every day.

My sister can see dead people.

I don’t, my mother doesn’t, my father doesn’t, the dog doesn’t. But she does. More often than not, I’ll find her in uncommon places, sitting and staring at nothing. In an empty bathtub. Under a teacher’s desk at school. On top of the roof. Never moving, never blinking, just staring, staring, staring.

In these moments, these guaranteed moments, she tells me that’s when she sees dead people. Spirits. Ghosts. Entities. Beings. Souls. What have you.

The girls at school call her a psychic, squawking over themselves at lunch time. The boys at school call her a witch, groaning under the mufflers in the parking lot.

I’m not sure what I call her. I just tell the boys and girls to fuck off and get a life. Sometimes it works and other times they call me a witch, too, except replace the W with a B and you’re well on your way to understanding the kinds of people who go to our school.

I once read in a book that being able to see dead people is like remembering an old friend. It’s more of a feeling than a physical object. You see the person, spirit, ghost, entity, being, soul, and it’s like recalling a memory, except you’re looking at their future where they’re completely dead.

My sister says that’s bullshit.

Well.

She would know, wouldn’t she?

Probably.

(This short story was written in May 2020).