The Ghost of Living Past

Things had only gotten weirder for him ever since he died. Part of him had assumed that things would get simpler upon leaving trivialities back on the mortal coil, but everything for a very long time seemed to be a morality play, put on for his amusement.

He didn't even know what lessons to take with him, or whether this was afterlife punishment. He didn't even know if he was really dead, or strapped up somewhere to some life support, and all the visions that he'd been suffering were the result of worldly pharmaceuticals.

There were very few key players in this strange world. Sometimes, he would find himself waking up, without having slept, in another part of this world. Wherever it was. He didn't actively pursue eating, or sleeping, and more often than not, he'd "wake up" in one of the many bodies he'd occupied in life.

This time, he found himself coming to in the house of his childhood, wearing his childhood body. Wandering around, he found that the house was completely empty; that it was only a shell or a memory of what used to be. And in the last room, he happened upon a face that he'd not seen since infancy.

Her face was radiant with the light of many missed nights Moonlight flooded the room. She strode towards him on legs made of umbilical cords, and embraced him with arms that smelled like his father. He backed away after the embrace, regarding the visitor.

"I bet you don't even remember me," she said, her voice ringing throughout the empty home.

"I feel like I should," said the man-who-was-a-boy.

"I am the amalgamation of all your first worldly comforts," she said. "I only manifested myself in bits and pieces when you were in the world. That was the only way I could reach you."

The man-who-was-a-boy sat before the glowing apparition as she regaled him with stories of rocking him to sleep, nursing him, feeding him from a warm place. His belly radiated with the memory.

"How long will all this go on?" he asked. He was beginning to feel tired. And sleepy. It was the first time he'd felt as such since his deathbed.

"As long as it has to," she whispered, lifting him up to her. Almost immediately, he could feel himself slipping into slumber. Her voice rose into nursery song, and he floated there, remembering everything that he'd never chosen to forget. Dreaming.

leslie powell

29 october 2005

minnetonka, mn