After the Silence

Susan sat at the kitchen counter, her shaking hands anchored to her cup of coffee, which had gone cold between them long ago. She didn’t dare move, didn’t dare look up across the small kitchen table in her tiny, empty apartment.
Since Paul had passed, the house had been too big. Too full of memories and other, inescapable things. Each room, previously quiet and calm, was filled with wailing. Not only her own. After months of trying to ignore it, Susan simply could not take it anymore.

“You know dear, you need to relax. Poor thing, you’ve been through the wringer and this just is not good for you.” The comforting voice across the table was familiar, it was warm and caring and everything Susan should have welcomed. And it was wrong. She squeezed her eyes shut, leaning forward as her shoulders shook. Laughter was her only response to the absolute insanity that surrounded her.

Aunt Mabel, in her flowery apron, was not there. Susan knew, because she had looked once, and had not been alone since. Aunt Mabel had passed over 50 years ago when Susan was just a young girl. Mabel should not be sitting at the table across from her, watching her with hollow spaces where heroes should have been

“You’re not real. You can’t be real. Why are you bothering me?” Susan’s voice was weak.
“Oh, I’m very real dear. We all are. You used to talk to us all the time. Don’t you remember? We’re here for you, because of you.” Mabel’s voice was soft, falling, teasing
Susan fought against the weight of the statement. No, they weren’t real. They had never been real. She had spent years breaking herself of the disillusioned teenaged notion that they were real. People had stopped looking at her with pity when she stopped talking about her friends. They had seemed to forget their worry that something was wrong with her, and she had let the idea fade away. But now, in the overcrowded apartment, with Mabel leading the charge, they had come back.

She had ignored them during College when they chided her for being wild. She had ignored them at her wedding when they had favoured her mother, who had passed later that evening. She had ignored them the morning before her and Paul’s small world had crumbled. Again and again, she could catch them from the corner of her eye, just beyond. When she saw them, they preceded every happy moment, every tragedy, waiting for her to see them. When she managed to ignore them, the world was righted; calm and perfect and serene as it should have been.

Susan had steadfastly ignored them the morning Paul had pulled on his boots, groaning at the pain it caused him before he had kissed her forehead and gone off to work. They had sat by her when he didn’t come home, and when the phone rang. Now each day, they were there, more solid, more real than the days before.

Susan had fought all she could against it, ignored it. Ignoring them seemed to keep them out, but what was the point. Without Paul, she was otherwise alone. What could it hurt to have someone to talk to?
Susan took a deeper breath, feeling it rattle her ribs as she raised her eyes, looking directly into the black voids where Aunt Mabel’s vibrant blue eyes should have been. Now, there was only darkness, pulled taut over boney cheeks.
“What do you want, Aunt Mabel?”

The figure smiled, lips pulling back in a rictus grin, teeth too white and hard, skin too paper thin.
“Oh, nothing dear. Just you. You complete us, don’t you know?”