Ficlets

Conversations with dead aunts

I’m in the cemetery where my Aunt Jann is buried. Sitting on her headstone. It’s nighttime, of course. I prefer it for conversations with dead people. It hides the unpleasantries. She lies on the cracked ground above her urn.
When you died it really changed the flow of our lives, I tell her. I didn’t expect that.
She doesn’t respond. She probably doesn’t know.
Did you know Mama had a stroke the day after your funeral?
She scoffs, a throaty smoked tone.
She had to leave her house, her job. She can’t function alone any more. Everything from our past is gone.
Don’t blame that on me, she says. Lynn was always trying to take on everything. Even when we were younger. I never asked her to be my nursemaid.
I swallow my response to that and ask instead, Why was there so much tension between you two? Surely you can tell me now.
She shrugs, drifting. She was always trying so hard. It just made me want to smack her down. Always trying to tell me what to do, how to be.
I stare at the full moon

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Conversations with dead aunts
THX 0477
Posted 5 months ago

Great idea and kind of a neat glimpse into some family dynamics and the indirect effects of death. I think quotation marks would have helped, call me old fashioned.
LoA
Conversations with dead aunts
Melia
Posted 5 months ago

For the story itself, I liked it very much. You can tell there’s some bitterness lingering. Nice job on that. And thank you for entering the challenge too! I do agree with THX on the quotation marks angle though. Without them, it took a couple read-throughs to follow along properly.
LoA
Conversations with dead aunts
Crown Me Tarzan, King of Mars
Posted 5 months ago

I loved it. It felt very poignant and real. And I disagree with THX and Melia (no offense, guys); the lack of quotation marks made it feel more real to me, somehow.
It added ambiguity. Was the conversation with a ghost or spirit, or was it just someone imagining her dead aunt’s responses, as she desperately searched for the answers to questions that can never be answered?
It felt like the imagined conversations that I think we have all had from time to time.
Conversations with dead aunts
Crown Me Tarzan, King of Mars
Posted 5 months ago

Maybe some spaces between paragraphs and some ending punctuation would be nice…
Conversations with dead aunts
Mistress Elsha Hawk
Posted 5 months ago

It feels unresolved, but I guess talking to the dead wouldn’t really solve things. Especially if this conversation is in her head. :)
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