Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #20 November 2015 | Page 84
time now.
She is gone before I can smile in response.
The paramedics are shoving
the stretcher into the back of the
ambulance. Polly looks at me over her
bare shoulder. The sun shines through her. I wonder if
I am as transparent as she is.
I am outside on Polly’s lawn now. Her
neighbors are standing on their porches, gawking. The
sun is bright, and I wish I had skin to feel it on. Still. I
am dead, but I am not useless. I saved Polly. I am not
only about madness and grief and regret. I can touch
things. I can feel something besides sadness.
“I don’t want to be dead,” she says. “I just
want someone to understand.”
“I understand. You are lonely. I know lonely.”
I pause. “I miss being loved. She might not understand
you, but she sure loves you.”
Polly nods. She watches her mother get into
the back of the ambulance, still sobbing.
“I’m going with them,” she says. “I’m going to
be alive.”
The sun shines through that early fall tree,
golden. I think, I could fit into that light if I tried.
Even as I think it I know what is happening to me.
The light grows, grows, fills me up like water all the
way to the top of a tall glass.
I am warm, and I remember what it feels like
to be loved.
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