From the WOW Writes Writing Group:
From Franny French:
Agony
The ghost of dead Betsy Seppi looked over the shoulder of a stranger in a coffee shop. One of those morbid fellows who reads obits for fun. Betsy cranked her head around to glance at his expressionless, reading face. She did not recognize the guy. She’d wanted to see if possibly it was him—the one, the only one. But, of course, it wasn’t. How disappointing. What a fool she felt, always searching. But even if it had been him … what? She was going to undead herself long enough to say, “I’m sorry”?
Since the stranger wasn’t laughing or even cracking an expression, Betsy knew he hadn’t gotten to her obit. It was a mess, chockful of misinformation. First of all, she had not “drowned in a puddle of her own sick.” At her dining room table, she had choked, vomited, choked again, and then pitched forward into the table. Unfortunately, having landed face first into her regurgitated spaghetti, she had not done half of the thing you’re supposed to do—die young and leave a beautiful corpse.
No one could see her now—no one alive—so they didn’t know how beautiful she was in the afterlife. It was that inner beauty which had finally shown through, that light and darkness swirling together like snow and velvet, like love, like all that she had loved combined: the scent of fresh-cut grass, the distant hinge-creek of a vee of passing geese against a blue October sky, the first sip of morning coffee, reading on a train, and the clicks and rattles of the train and the mournful sound of the horn.
Death was as lovely as a long walk. And yet, and yet, and yet. … She had not managed to leave behind her pettiness, in particular a desire to somehow punish the neighbor, Lauren, who had written the hateful obituary, the second line of which was, “She was not everyone’s cup of tea.” Lauren had also planned Betsy’s service, which (victory!) was well-attended, even if it had been held at the Museum of Vintage Plastic Containers, Cellophane, and Bits of Old String—another bright idea of Lauren’s. Betsy sighed a long sigh. You could still sigh good and hard in the afterlife.
“Let it go, let it go,” she said to herself of the pettiness.
The stranger got up, leaving the paper behind as he crossed the coffee shop to greet what seemed to be his wife and daughter. He hugged the little girl. How strange—her name was Betsy. The little girl smiled big and began chattering on and on.
Ghost Betsy looked outside and saw the rain. How she missed the rain. It always made her think of him. One day he would be dead too. Then maybe she could say it: “I’m sorry. I should have held onto you. I’m only one percent petty and ninety-nine percent love. And I love you like the sound a church bell leaves on the air long after ringing.”
But alive is dead to the dead. And waiting—not knowing, always looking—is an agony.
From Tiffany Dugan:
Jenny thought too much. Let the cold wind knock her about. Knock the words against the insides of her head. Batter the meaning out until they lay formless like deflated balloons at the bottom of her skull, barely breathing. She had tried to make sense of too many things. Why the color of sunsets in fall clashed against the orange and yellow change in trees.
Pam showed up at the neighborhood Halloween party with a bag full of Pop Rocks and began to hand them out to the kids. Greedy hands grabbing. The smell of grape and orange and apple stung the air as the crackling began. Little stained mouths, purple, orange, and green, flew open to compare. Giggles exploded. Pam was a star.
All Jenny could think about was, when at the party to celebrate John’s promotion, Pam hadn’t filled up the ice tray. It’s those petty things that make her crazy.
Pam saw Jenny before she could duck behind the mulberry bush. With arms outstretched a hug, big breasted and full, Pam came closer. Close enough so Jenny could smell the sweetness of fall on her like a butterscotch candle. She leaned in to give her a pat but in that quick moment, before insincerity, Pam held out her hand with an offering of caramels. A candy Jenny could not resist, and she felt the balloons in her brain lift and hover just so slightly. She was coming back to life.