Getting Too Old For This

No reason to be coy about it.

She rolls her eyes. She’s more-or-less made her peace with her own mortality, but it’s still rude to say it.

“Little late to be worrying about the kind of legacy you’ll leave, isn’t it?”

He speaks in a sullen monotone.

She blinks, baffled by-- everything coming out of her brother’s mouth, really.

His tone’s blank. Dead.

“They don’t remember me at all, do they?”

She looks up from her crossword, eyes narrowed with genuine confusion.

Yes. She is. Scowling, she tries to wrench her arm from his grip.

Forty pounds of bone and gristle and metal were returned to Maine. One femur missing, his spine smashed in four places, his bones bleached and pitted with toothmarks, her brother was laid to rest in the family plot.

Enough of his face survived the wild dogs and the elements. Toby died with a snarl of near-delirium.

Now he’s calm, the old cunning playing around almost-living lips.

She’s still not used to the whole ghost thing. It’s one thing to get brief flickers of premonitions. It’s another to have prepared a closed-casket funeral, grieved as best she could, and then-- surprise! He’s back to needle her like he always did.

cat: *stands tall and proud on my lap*

cat: *stares steadily into middle distance*

me: would you like to sit or you know, lie down

cat: no i’m good

me: may i hug you