New Home for a Ghost

Published in Twice Not Shy: One Hundred Short Stories 2021      

Clouds of plaster drift onto Otto’s bed. Rubble litters his carpet. Threads of grey curtains, overstretched like spiderwebs. Outside, skeletons of buildings hang dying on the skyline while gunfire gently smokes in the early apricot light. 

Otto brushes dirt from his photo album and turns the ragged pages. He plucks a faded picture of his family, pressing it to his heart. He lifts the gramophone lid. Takes a record, wipes his sleeve over the surface, places the needle onto the vinyl. A melody plays and his memories begin to shuffle.   

He is wearing a marigold shirt, children dancing around him. His wife’s smile, unbroken. Her lips and fingernails cherry red. With warm hands, he twirls her, petticoats spinning under the soft cone of her dress.            

An explosion nearby topples a lamp which thuds at his feet. The stylus scuttles. Otto blows on the record and a tiny powder storm puffs into the air and settles in his silver whiskers. He replaces the needle and tears glisten in his thousand-day beard as the tune restarts.  

His cheek is pressed to his wife’s as they slow dance, as he smells the violets in her hair. As their children chase each other and laugh. As he rolls up the sleeves of his marigold shirt.  

He levers himself up from the bed, creaks across the room in the dusty air. Lifts his arms like gnarly wings, and twirls. One perfect circle. One heel stamping the rubble, in beat. In flawless time. He claps. Claps. Claps. Sound stings his palms as he reaches for his daughter’s hand. The broken mirror to his side throws back his solo reflection. Otto turns away, and sings. One note. One perfect note takes flight as he kisses the sunshine in his daughter’s hair.  

A bomb blast outside. As the building shudders, Otto tumbles to the floor. His bird-light body a bony mound. The ceiling cracks and falls, crushing the gramophone.

One more apartment. Another vacant dwelling perfect for a homeless ghost.