Chuck Schading

This piece was written for NYC Midnight’s August 2023 500-word short story contest. The prompts were Ghost Story (Genre) / waking someone up (Action) / gown (object). It received a first round Honorable Mention.

I didn’t expect it to be a choice.

Some of it was just like they said it would be. So much more than simple memories. 

My grandparents sitting in their tiny kitchen, looking up as I enter, the Italian Hour blaring on the radio, meatballs and sauce simmering and crackling on the stove. Garlic and onions and cigarettes flavoring the very air. My grandfather waving me in with those huge Sicilian hands that had driven in railroad spikes and worked the land and held me as a baby and years later my babies too. My mother in her dressing gown, waking me from the deepest sleep and telling me it’s time for school. My son, the one we lost, asleep in his crib with the sweetest of smiles crawling across his face, lost in a dream that we would never know. 

Triumphs and failures. Good memories and bad. 

The final one. Still happening. The deer skittering out of the cattails and onto the frozen roadway. Majestic but frantic. A doe, I think. 

A sound. Not a good one. 

No pain.

I want to go with those who went before. Oh, I do. To take my place at their table and share an endless meal. 

Metal crushing metal. Plastic crumpling. The tinkling of glass. 

Silence and snow. Is that a branch?

So much left undone. Unsaid.

I have other boys left to teach. To lead. To scold. To badger and annoy.

My wife. My thoughts turn to her. But I think not of the laughter or the private times or the struggles we endured.

Instead, in my dying moment, I think of the hair in the sink. The hair in the tub. Oil changes and snow tires. The filter in the furnace. She will not change it. I know she won’t. The dishwasher. Oh God, the dishwasher. The plastics go on top or they will melt. How many times have I said it?

They say these are the things that don’t matter at the end. Yet here I am.

The water system. The pipes. The lawn. Weeds in the garden. Pets gone unfed.

I can’t feel my body. Am I already dead?

It’s morning. I see my wife and boys finishing breakfast, pizza for her and yogurt for them. They are quiet. All of them. Not sad. Just quiet. Time has passed and I know I am gone.

The dishwasher opens with a creak.

I see the spoons. In all wrong, front to back and forever cursed. 

Then the bowls. Nested. 

The plates, one right up against another. And they haven’t been rinsed. Nothing has.

She can load it any way she wants to now, just like she told me she someday would. But as I nudge a plastic cup off the counter, straight into the top rack where it belongs, I see her pause and smile. 

She needs me. 

They need me. 

The dishes need me.

She can’t see me, but I smile too. 

And I choose to stay.