When The Dead Returns

It sounds dramatic in books and movies, but I will tell you first hand, there’s no exaggeration. Time did slow down. The raindrops, so speedy and eager to hit the ground, froze mid-air, curious to see how I would react. The crowded streets, people in such a hurry to get home, suddenly didn’t care so much. They moved lazily as if moving through thick jello.

    My eyes didn’t settle on anything else, however. All my attention was towards that one man, a smile stretched across his cocoa skin. Dark hair, and bushy eyebrows just as I remembered. He was wearing a plain white t-shirt with striped pajama pants, just as I last saw him. The memories I had shoved in the back of my head were rushing back, choking me.

    Maybe a sensible human being would have thought him to be a lookalike. But I was not sensible. Nor was he a lookalike. That smile, I knew it way too well.

    And then things went back to their usual pace. Raindrops hit the ground, and the crowd rushed back to their families. I diverted my gaze and entered a cafe on my right. It wasn’t my intended destination, but I had no intention of fainting in the middle of the streets. Warmth and the smell of coffee greeted me as I entered- two of the things that I needed. The corner was an isolated area so I settled there, running my hands over my hair, trying to make sense of what I saw earlier. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He was dead. The paramedics confirmed it. And so did my fingers, when pressed against his wrists. And so did the rope wrapped around his neck. 

    Yet there he was, giving me his signature smile as if the ground hadn’t swallowed him five years ago.

    “Trying to run away, are we?”

    I jumped out of my skin at the sight of the devil himself, sitting across from me. He had his hands clasped around a strawberry milkshake because he hates- hated coffee. I looked around, wondering if I were the only one who could see him. To my surprise, I could see a lot of eyes, mostly women, on him. 

    “You… y-you are dead!” 

    “Me?” he scoffed. “You must have lost it.”

    “Please…” I felt tears form in my eyes. “Don’t do this. Whoever you are.”

    “Do what?”

    I stood up abruptly, speedwalking towards the door. It must have taken five whole years, for me to finally lose my mind. While a part of me, a very evil part of me, tried to give me hope that maybe he hadn’t died, the memories told them off. 

I came home late that day. 2 am. Work had taken a toll, and then I had to console an upset friend. The house smelt empty that day. The owls were quiet, which was very odd. Little did I know that they were keeping a silent vigil for my husband. Since he was a usually quiet person, I guessed he must have stayed up late working on his projects again. I headed to the kitchen and made two mugs of hot cocoa. I carried the two mugs to his office. Maybe a normal reaction would have been to drop them. But I didn’t. I calmly set them aside and looked up. He was hanging by a rope, feet dangling over the pink rug. I remember buying that rope to make bowls that I’d seen on Pinterest. Never would I have imagined that it would be used for that purpose. 

I stood on his black office chair, and tugged at the rope, hoping to remove the rope from around his neck. It took a few attempts, but I succeeded. His body fell from my grasp and landed on the floor. He didn’t twitch. That’s when I knew. He was gone. He wasn’t coming back.

Through heavy breathes I called 911. I didn’t need the professionals to guess that he was already dead.

It took time, to finally let him go from my head, and to finally live happily. Maybe I was happy, but I didn’t know. After his death, everything had become a blur. I wouldn’t let a fraud or a fragment of my imagination or whatever he was, to make me unwell again.

“Can we at least talk”? He was following me.

“Stop following me. I will report you.”

“Listen I’m, just as confused as you are-”

“Confused?!” I turned around to face him, trying not to scream at him. “Why are you confused? Are you the one who had to hold their husband’s cold body, and then find them turning up out of the blue? Tell me, why are you confused?!”

“Cold body?” he furrowed his eyebrows. “Look I don’t know what you are talking about. Can we please just go in, and talk?”

It was his face that got me. I don’t think I would have been human if I said no.

“Fine.” 

We sat in silence and looked anywhere except for each other. The waitress came and asked for our orders. Her eyes were on him, and she didn’t bother looking at me. I got nothing and he asked for his usual sandwich.

“Talk”, I said.

“I need you to tell mew everything since we parted.”

“Parted?” I asked. “You mean ‘died’?”

“Uh sure.”

“I don’t remember. Everything happened too fast. What happened to you since we ‘parted’?

“Parted?” he laughed. “Don’t you mean ‘died’? 

“Wha-?”

“It was 2 am. I returned home late that day. The owls were quiet. Oddly quiet. I went to the kitchen to make two mugs of cocoa. I open the door to your office, and there you are, legs dangling, noose around your neck. Do you understand now?”

“No.” I stood up. “It doesn’t make sense. You, whoever you are, have to stop messing with my head.”

“You don’t believe me”, he sighed. “Tell me, then, why did the waitress not address you? What have you been doing all this time? Do you have contact with anyone that you used to know- your mother, your sister?”

I sat down, feeling the world crumble on the shoulders.

“Do you need me to say it?” he asked, voice as soft as rose petals. “You are dead.”