Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #20 November 2015 | Page 81
I remember my mother saying,
Are you drunk, Corrine? I remember
her saying, How can you have been
so stupid? You shouldn’t have been
drinking with boys in the first place.
Maybe all mothers think their daughters are a little
crazy. Maybe that’s what it is to be a mother. I will
never know, I suppose.
I look through the little house for Polly and
find her sitting on a bed in a room at the top of the
stairs. She has a pair of red headphones on, and her
eyes go very wide when she sees me. She shoves the
headphones off, looping them around the back of her
neck, and looks up at my face for the first time.
“Do you know you have a giant hole in the
back of your head?” She asks. “I’ve seen some
fucked-up looking ghosts in my time, but I’m pretty
sure you’re the worst.” I am too stunned to reply,
so she continues, “Something really bad must have
happened to you. What was it?”
“I shot myself,” I tell her. “I put my father’s
gun in my mouth and I pulled the trigger.”
Polly grimaces. “Ouch.”
I shrug. “It didn’t hurt. One second I was alive
and the next second I wasn’t. I think of it as the day I
was born.”
Polly says, “I wish I had your balls. I tried to
slit my wrists and my little brother found me because I
didn’t die fast enough. Lack of follow-through on my
part, I guess.”
“You’re lucky,” I tell her. “It turns out ghosts
are just regrets. Live people get to be whatever they
want.”
Polly considers this for a moment. “Why did
you follow me home?”
“I just want someone to talk to. I’ve never met
anyone who can see me before.”
Polly leans back on her pile of pink pillows.
“Most of the time, that’s what they want. It must be
lonely, being dead.”
“Not really,” I tell her. “I have ghosts of my
own for company.”
Polly rolls her eyes and reaches for her
headphones. Before she can clap them back over her
ears, I ask, “Why did you try to kill yourself?”
“Because I’m crazy,” she says. “Dead people
follow me everywhere I go. I hear voices.”
“You’re not crazy, Polly. I’m real.”
“That’s exactly what you’d say if you were a
schizoid delusion.” She claps her headphones back on.
Then with a thoughtful look, she lowers them again.
“Even if you weren’t a delusion, ghosts are pretty
horrible to deal with on a regular basis. I still don’t
want to live in a world where things like you are real.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I can’t help
that I still exist. When I put the barrel of my father’s
gun in my mouth, I didn’t think I would be wandering
my high school, trying to convince goths to talk to me.
I wanted peace. I wanted silence. I wanted a respite
from the dreams that haunted me even then. I go back
to school. I will not talk to Polly again.
The janitors are working. They are subdued,
talking in quiet murmurs as they scrub the table tops
in the cafeteria. I am tired, and I am sad. I leave
them alone. I wander up the main hallway, running
my fingers over the lockers. I am tempted to thump
the locks against the metal plates they rest on, but I
don’t. Instead, I let the dreams take me. The sooner
I get through the ending, the sooner I can start at the
beginning again, when everything was beautiful.
My mother told me not to call the police
because they would blame me for
Daniel’s attack. I had been dressed
provocatively, after all, and I had
been drunk. So I told no one but her.
I skipped school for a few days to
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