By Dustin Grinnell

I directed Mrs. Powell to sit and make herself comfortable. She lowered herself into the chair at the round table in the lobby of my office slowly, her frail, ninety-year-old frame eventually settling into it.

“How’s your health, Mrs. Powell?” I asked. This is how I approached most conversations in which a client asked if they could meet suddenly. Usually, it meant they had gotten some bad news from their doctor, and I suspected as much with Mrs. Powell.

And, indeed, she had. It was rare, and doctors didn’t know what to call it, but it would take her life, and soon—within weeks. We hadn’t been close, but I was sorry to hear it. I never liked getting this kind of news.

“I trust you will ensure everything is in order when I pass?” she asked.

“Yes, of course.” I explained that I would take care of everything for her, according to the end-of-life plans we’d created together, from where she’d like her ashes spread to who would sell her stuff and where the proceeds would go. She didn’t have much to her name, but her condo would sell for at least half a million dollars, and that money would be distributed to her son and granddaughter.

“I’ll make calls, write letters, and make visits as needed,” I continued. “I’ll start by having all of your mail forwarded to my office, so I can get a sense of what will need to be closed down—utilities, credit cards, accounts, and so on.”

Mrs. Powell nodded, thanked me and said she had a large binder at home that included all of her records and important information. It would be nice to have, but usually I didn’t need a roadmap. I already had her wishes in my files, and for everything else, I could find it out through my own investigative work. I’d been in this business for twenty years and was skilled in the art of closing down someone’s life.

I looked at Mrs. Powell, who seemed tired, and placed my hand softly on hers. “You have nothing to worry about. You can take comfort in knowing you’ve chosen me and that everything will be taken care of when the time comes.”

“Thank you, Michael.” 

I helped her out of the chair, letting her use my arm for balance, then led her to the front door, where I thanked her for stopping by. 

“Take care of yourself, Mrs. Powell.”

A month later, faster than anyone had expected, she was gone. 

As her fiduciary, I began the activities associated with my duties. I had her mail forwarded to my office in Santa Barbara and started calling to shut down internet and cable, and other utilities. I dug into her accounts, bringing the money from her checking into a new account where I would pool all of her funds and then distribute them to the designated family members. 

I called her son in Boston, and granddaughter, Ella, in Los Angeles, to inform them of her passing. Her son said he wouldn’t be able to fly to the west coast—though I got the sense, he just didn’t want to—but his daughter, Ella, said she would be happy to go through her grandmother’s possessions. I then called my realtor and began the process of listing and selling the condo.

My work as a “death cleaner,” as some had called me, was efficient and clinical. I seldom felt much for my clients, except for some natural sympathy that anyone’s passing brought. My relations were always professional, even transactional. It had been my sense that one couldn’t run a business if they got attached to every client, so I kept them at arm’s length. Generally speaking, I was satisfied with my place in the world; I had found a niche, something my old law school friends envied. Lately, I had been wondering if it was time for something new. The job felt stale, like I was just going through the motions.

A couple days later, I was on the phone with Mrs. Powell’s gas company when I got a call from an unknown number. After finishing my call, I listened to the message the caller had left. It was from Mrs. Powell’s granddaughter, Ella, who said that she’d be in Santa Barbara tomorrow and was wondering if I’d be able to meet her at her grandmother’s condo in Goleta and let her in, so she could go through her belongings and decide what to send home in boxes. I called her back and said I’d be happy to meet her.

The next day, I drove over to Mrs. Powell’s senior living facility, which wasn’t far from my office. I parked my car and walked the narrow brick pathway that wound through the few dozen condos.

When I got to Mrs. Powell’s condo, I saw a woman in her late thirties with her head tilted toward the sky, seemingly admiring the clouds, or perhaps just enjoying the warm June sun on her face. I recognized her as Mrs. Powell’s granddaughter.

As I got closer, her hazel-colored eyes met mine. “Mr. Hall?” She brushed her brunette hair away from her ear.

“Call me Michael, please,” I said, extending my hand. “When did you get in?”

“A few hours ago.” She rubbed her forehead. “I’m still quite jet-lagged, so please forgive me—my head’s in a fog.”

“No worries. Will your father be joining us?” 

She shook her head. “Just me.” 

Mrs. Powell’s son—Ella’s father—was a surgeon at a Boston hospital, and a busy one, according to his mother. 

I gestured toward the condo. “Ready?”

Ella nodded solemnly and we went into the condo. Inside, it smelled sharp and sterile, like the kind of antiseptic they use in hospital exam rooms.

Ella walked around the living room, into the kitchen, with her hands clasped behind her back. She had an easy-going, even delicate way about her. 

Her eyes eventually landed on old childhood pictures of her with her dad and grandmother on a beach in Martha’s Vineyard, where, Mrs. Powell had previously told me, her son had taken Ella, an only child, every summer while she was growing up. “I’d like to pack up these photos.”

“I can have the movers pack them carefully in boxes and we can ship them to your place in LA. We can send anything to your dad, too.”

I then informed her that the condo had already been sold, and I gave her an extra key and told her she could come and go as she pleased over the next few days until the condo had to be vacated and cleaned.

She thanked me, and I said that I had to leave for another appointment. A client of mine, a gentleman in his sixties, had died of a heart attack and I needed to meet the director of a funeral home to pay for cremation and the funeral services that the family would reimburse me for when they could.

As I was leaving, Ella caught my attention. “I was wondering if you’d like to get coffee, perhaps tomorrow, to talk more about this process.”

I said that’d be fine and suggested we meet at a coffee shop I liked on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara. 

We met the next morning at the busy coffee shop. When we both had our drinks—she had an iced coffee, I had a double espresso—I asked what she did for work, intending to make small talk, and she said she was a writer for television.

“Any shows I might know?” I asked, curious about the life of a screenwriter. 

She listed a couple of shows on a popular streaming platform that I had seen. I enjoyed one more than the other, but I was impressed nonetheless. “Very cool.”

“And what about you? You’re a ‘death’ cleaner, the internet says?”

I chuckled. “I prefer fiduciary, but yes, I help people and their families with all the things that need to be done when folks pass away.”

“Doesn’t it get sad? People dying and grieving. Seems grim.”

I shrugged. “It’s a way to make a living. Plus, I don’t get too close to my clients.”

“Keep your distance, huh? Doesn’t hurt as much when they die. Smart.”

She nailed it, I said, nodding, but I wanted to get off the subject given my growing ambivalence about my chosen career.

“Were you close to your grandmother?”

She sipped from her coffee. “As close as you can get to someone who lives a hundred miles away.” She smirked. “Our family likes to keep their distance, too.”

I had noticed that it was difficult getting Mrs. Powell to talk about personal matters other than in a detached, high-level way. At the time of our planning, I’d preferred it, but sitting across from her granddaughter, I wondered how it might’ve impacted Ella. I also thought about her dad, clearly not coming to California, and I had no clue where her mom even was. Anyway, time to get to business, I thought. 

“So, why’d you want to get coffee? I have everything pretty much handled with your grandmother.”

She nodded, then bit her lip. “Um, I might need to keep you on for a bit longer.”

“Your mom or dad need a fiduciary?”

“No, I need to hire you.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

Ella went quiet for a second, then dropped news I definitely wasn’t ready for.

“A few months ago, I found out I have a brain tumor, inoperable.”

I stuttered. “How… long?”

“I probably won’t see the end of the year.”

I couldn’t believe it, and for a few seconds, I did nothing but stare at the vibrant woman across from me. So young, seemingly so full of life. I didn’t know what to say. 

“You don’t have to say you’re sorry, or anything like that—I’ve gotten enough of that already. I could have stayed in bed until the end with everyone taking care of me, but I want to live as much as I can until the lights go out.”

I exhaled, open to helping her in any way that she needed. “What can I do?”

“It wasn’t until I worked with my grandmother on all of this end-of-life stuff that I realized dying was complicated. Life’s difficult enough, but dying is its own level of hard.”

I’d heard this sentiment plenty of times. When someone dies, it’s not just grief you inherit; it’s a tangle of paperwork, passwords, and red tape that turns mourning into a second job.

“I can help get all your wishes in writing, draw up medical instructions, take care of your finances, and so on.”

“I imagine I will need help with those things, but right now, I was thinking of working on something else.”

“What’s that?”

“I want you to help me do some ‘cleaning’ while I’m still alive.”

“I don’t follow.”

Ella explained that she feels like her life has been a slow, steady accumulation of things that she never truly chose—jobs, obligations, even relationships. And now, facing the end of her life, she didn’t know which parts of her life were genuinely hers.

This was most unusual. I thought about flatly rejecting her proposal, but I could tell she was desperate. Ella seemed so thoughtful and kind, and I found myself wanting to help her, if not spend a little bit more time with her.

And so, we sat there for hours as her wild idea sparked a fire between us. I agreed to embark on a series of excursions with her. Ella called them mini-cleans in which we’d examine something in her life to see if it was no longer useful, weighing her down, cluttering her life—and if so, she’d find a way to let it go. We started with an old friend of hers from college, who she used to play soccer with. 

When we showed up for drinks at a trendy brewery not far from the coffee shop, her friend Jenna was late. She spent the first ten minutes obsessing over what to order, and then the next half-hour mostly talking about herself and unloading all the problems she’d been having with her husband, who she found lazy and vain. When Jenna finally asked something, it was about Ella and me. 

“So, are you guys like dating?”

“Oh no,” Ella replied. “He’s—”

She didn’t seem to know what to say, so I jumped in and said the first thing that came into my mind. “I’m a digital marketing consultant, helping her with her website and social media presence.”

Jenna beamed. “I’ve been telling her for years, her Insta needs serious help. Her job’s insanely cool! She could be posting behind-the-scenes stuff from the writers’ room, or a movie set.” She sipped from her drink. “I’m not a big fan of social media, but you have to post consistently, right? It’s like having a second job. Do you know I can’t for the life of me get my husband to post a picture of us together? Refuses to do it!” She threw up her arms, almost knocking her drink over. “It’s like I don’t exist!”

In the hour we spent together, Jenna let Ella say maybe twenty words and I didn’t dare try to say much; I just watched as this “friend” of Ella’s steamrolled her in conversation. Unfortunately, tragically, this didn’t leave room for Ella to share the terrible news. There was no mention of cancer, no mention of having months to live. Jenna had all the problems, all of which seemed rather trivial compared to Ella’s.

When we left the brewery, I could see on Ella’s face that she hadn’t enjoyed herself, and might’ve thought it a mistake to invite Jenna out. Either way, it was obvious to us both that she would have to let Jenna go.

We wandered down State Street for hours, the sun sliding low over the storefronts while Ella pointed out weird little things in shop windows that made her laugh. We ducked into gift shops and record stores just to keep talking; I don’t even remember half of what we said, just that it felt easy. 

At a taco stand on the corner, we shared chips and guac, our hands brushing a couple times, both of us pretending it didn’t happen. I caught myself leaning in when she talked, like I didn’t want to miss a word, and once or twice I saw her watching me when she thought I wasn’t looking. By the time the sky went soft and pink, something between us had shifted—nothing big, just enough to notice.

On the way back to her car, we chatted about what the next clean might be. She said Jenna was right that social media was a waste, and that she could probably spend some time scrubbing her digital life. I thought it was a good idea. 

She pulled out her phone and, without a second thought, deleted her Instagram and Facebook. When I Googled her name, I found an old blog titled Texts and the City.

While she was scrolling on her phone, I clicked on a post titled, When His Apartment Says ‘Nope’. I read a line aloud: “Jared’s apartment had the ambiance of a gym bag and more pizza boxes than seating options.”

She burst out laughing. “Oh my God, that blog’s still up?” She found the website on her phone and deleted it without hesitating. “Bye!”

“Bummer,” I said, “I was kind of looking forward to reading it.”

She punched me in the arm playfully.

When we got back to Ella’s car it was dark, and she said the only thing that made the night tolerable was having me there.

“Just doing my job,” I said with a grin.

As Ella was getting in her car, I had a thought—a homework assignment for her. “When you get back to LA tomorrow, go through your stuff. Make piles for things to keep, give away, or throw away. I can visit in a couple days and we can go through it and I can make arrangements to see that it gets to where it should go.”

“Love it.”

When I got home, I had another idea for Ella. I decided to have her create a “reverse will.” Instead of deciding who gets what after she died, Ella would choose to give things away to friends, family, and even strangers who needed them before she passed.

When I arrived at her place in Silver Lake few days later, I told her about the reverse will and she said she’d get started tomorrow. She walked over to a few waist-high stacks of books. Everything was sorted into neat little piles—books, some clothes, household stuff. “These can go to the library or the shelter,” she said.

I examined the books, admiring her collection. I pulled out Aristotle’s Poetics, Kafka’s Metamorphosis, plays by Arthur Miller. “Sure you want to give these away?”

“I can’t read books when I’m dead.”

She walked over to a road bike propped against the wall near her kitchen. “I’ve ridden this three times. Time to pass it on to someone else to ignore it.”

She then went to a box on the kitchen counter, and lifted the lid, showing me a box of envelopes, letters, and old print photos, some of which showed her with various people who looked to be friends and photos with men, who looked to be boyfriends.

“What’s all this?” I asked.

“Pics from high school, college, and running around LA with friends after college. There are a few things in here I’d like to keep; everything else we can throw away.”

She picked up a picture showing her, maybe eighteen or nineteen, with a young man of similar age. He had his arm around her and they were both smiling brightly. So young, so much life to live, and it was all getting cut short. It made me sad for her.

She ran into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and grabbed a lighter. She then snagged a small trash can and brought it out onto her condo’s balcony. I knew what she was doing. She wanted to ceremoniously burn old photos and letters she didn’t want to keep.

Dusk had fallen and the sky had just started to darken when we’d gotten on her balcony. She set the trash can on the floor, threw paper and photos into it, struck a match, and tossed it in. We watched the flames dance in the can as the light faded around us. After the material had mostly burned down, Ella poured water into the can to extinguish the fire. She then turned to me. “I found something while I was going through a junk drawer and I was trying to decide whether I should keep it.” She pulled a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it and handed it to me.

At the top of the paper was written, “The Someday List.” I scanned the list of fifteen things she wanted to do someday, presumably before she died. “See a sunset on the beach,” “ride a motorcycle,” “scuba dive.”

“What’s on your list?” she asked.

I shrugged.

“C’mon, there’s got to be something!”

I thought back to college, when I almost studied abroad in Switzerland, but bailed at the last second. “There’s a place called Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland. It looks gorgeous—alpine peaks, chalet-style homes, big cliffs with water falling off the side and disappearing into the air above the valley.”

“I love that for you.”

I smiled weakly, not knowing when or if I’d ever visit. I couldn’t remember the last time I had taken a vacation. 

She grabbed the list from my hand. “Honestly, I don’t really want to scuba dive, or do most of the things on that list, but check out number eleven.”

My eyes landed on that number. “Sing karaoke?” I glanced at her to see that she was smirking. She looked off the balcony. “There’s a little pub right around the corner from here. And, guess what? They have karaoke.”

I cracked a smile. “Absolutely not.”

She nodded playfully, squinting her eyes.

“No,” I repeated, with a laugh. 

She grabbed the keys to her apartment off the kitchen counter. I came into the kitchen, scratching the back of my head.

“If you need to do any vocal warm-ups, you should start now,” she said. “I want you to really bring it. I already have the song picked out.”

None of my pleading got through to her. We were going to the pub and we were singing karaoke. She wouldn’t tell me the song, so I was left in suspense.

Forty-five minutes later, we were at the front of the bar, standing in front of a large screen and two huge speakers, holding microphones. I still didn’t know what song we were singing until the melody kicked in, and I recognized it right away.

“Northern Attitude” by Noah Kahan. Damn, I loved that song. And I knew why she’d chosen it. It captured how I used emotional distance as a kind of armor, even as I longed for the very connection I kept at bay beneath a façade of aloofness, even coldness.

The lyrics rolled across the screen and Ella kicked us off.

Breathin’ in, breathin’ out

How you been? Settled down?

Feelin’ right? Feelin’ proud?

How’re your kids? Where are they now?

As I watched Ella sing, I found that the world sort of fell away. She looked so graceful, so dignified, so lovely. Just then she nodded in my direction to take the next verse. I did the best I could, trying to match Kahan’s soulful vibe. 

You build a boat, you build a life

You lose your friends, you lose your wife

You settle in, to routine

Where are you? What does it mean?

As the song hit its peak, I glanced over and saw Ella smiling at me, soft and affectionate. She pointed at me, then at herself, like she was saying the chorus is ours.

If I get too close

And I’m not how you hoped

Forgive my northern attitude

Oh, I was raised out in the cold

We sang together, leaning into each other, holding the mics close to our faces, pretending we were singers in front of adoring fans. As the chorus continued, I put my arm around her and we lifted our heads to the ceiling and belted out the powerful lyrics.

If the sun don’t rise

‘Til the summertime

Forgive my northern attitude

Oh, I was raised on little light

When we stumbled out of the bar, we walked home not talking much, just letting the buzz of the moment stay with us with big stupid smiles on our faces. 

Ella’s shoulder rubbed against me, then her hand brushed against mine, and then she interlocked our fingers, sending a quiet warmth through my chest. When we reached the doorstep of her apartment complex, she said, “Tomorrow’s a big day.”

“What’s tomorrow?”

“For our next clean, I arranged a meeting with my mom. She lives out in Corona and agreed to drive into the city to talk with me.”

I’d learned enough in my interactions with Ella that she hadn’t stayed in touch with her mother, Linda, on account of the fact that when she was young, she abandoned the family—a victim, her father claimed, of alcohol and various other substances.

Knowing how personal the meeting seemed, I said, “I can sit this one out. I’m sure you’d like some private time with her.”

Ella looked at the ground for a few seconds, biting her lip. “No,” she said, “I’d like you to come too, if you’re available… and up for it.”

“Okay,” I replied, genuinely happy to go.

She then leaned in close to me and pressed her lips softly against mine. Then she pulled back, opened her eyes, and said, “See you in the morning.”

“See you then.”

When the front door to her apartment complex closed, I skipped into a jog, feeling a burst of energy that I hadn’t felt in years. As I drove home, I was reminded of my usual professional dynamic, how I stay detached, a little aloof, keep clients at arm’s length. 

Ella had pushed past every line I’d carefully drawn.

For a second, I considered calling her, saying this was crossing a line, that I could lose my license, that this just wasn’t how I operated. But I let the thought go almost as fast as it came. Maybe meeting Ella was my way out of all this. And honestly, I realized I’d rather risk everything than stop seeing her.

The next morning, I met Ella outside a sandwich shop in Highland Park. She looked paler than usual, had bags under her eyes, and seemed to move with less vigor.

“How are you?” I asked, careful with the words, wondering if things had taken a turn. Was it getting worse? How much time was left? I was reminded of the line I used with clients when things were slipping: ‘How’s your health?’ 

“Didn’t sleep well. Anxious, I guess.”

We walked inside and took our place in line, and I asked, “How long has it been since you’ve seen your mom?”

She thought for a moment. “Fifteen years, maybe.”

We were sitting at a table enjoying ourselves and talking about karaoke—I was sarcastically suggesting that I had perfect pitch—when a heavyset woman with gray hair appeared in the doorway. She approached our table with a slight limp.

Ella’s back straightened, and she smiled awkwardly in the woman’s direction. She stood to greet her, seeming not to know where to put her hands, then nodded to our table. They both sat on the bench and Ella introduced me as a friend. 

I smiled, thinking it was nice to graduate from consultant to friend, though we both knew I was way more than that at this point.

“How are you?” Linda said. “I was glad to hear from you.”

Over the course of several minutes, Ella brought her mother up to speed on the last decade and a half. She talked about going to college at UCLA, studying filmmaking and concentrating in screenwriting, getting a prestigious internship at Disney, then finally, after an incredible amount of effort, landing a job in a writer’s room, where she and other creatives shaped stories for television.

Her mother smiled proudly. “I always knew you’d do great things.” She looked down and scratched at an imperfection in the table. “Guess I can’t take too much credit.”

Ella was generous and told her not to worry about it too much, that she would be perfectly fine if she just dropped the overstuff bag of guilt she was clearly carrying around. She said she’d seen friends struggle with addiction, substance abuse, and knew how hard it was to get clear of whatever chemical had its hooks in you.

Her mother looked relieved by that answer. “And you two?” she said, glancing at me and then back at her. “I don’t look at my friends the way you two look at each other.”

I chuckled nervously, not expecting her to be so blunt, but made an attempt at humor. “She’s paying me to be here.” I winked at Ella.

The irony that she had actually hired me wasn’t lost on me.

“He’s a lawyer,” Ella said, rolling her eyes. “He helped with Grammy’s end-of-life stuff after she passed—getting her cremated, selling her condo, closing her accounts.” She bumped her shoulder against mine. “He’s very good at his job.”

“I was sorry to hear about your dad’s mom,” Linda replied. “She was a nice lady.” There was a brief silence before she continued. “So, I hope we can meet more.”

“I’d like that,” Ella said.

“I have work at a dispensary in Bakersfield starting next week, so I’ll be gone for a couple of months, but maybe we can grab dinner when I get back?”

Ella seemed to suppress a wince. 

A lump rose up in my throat. How far advanced would her illness be in two months? Would she even be around then?  

As we finished up, it became clear that Ella wasn’t going to talk about being sick. I didn’t blame her. I got the sense that her mother would have trouble with the reality, anyway. Sure, she’d be sympathetic, but I doubted she’d cancel her work plans, and why make her feel guiltier than she already was?

As we rode an Uber across town back to her apartment, I wanted to talk about her cancer, ask her what she might need from me, express that I was stricken with sadness, and was never quite sure where to put it.

I was looking out the window when she put a hand on mine, comforting me. Then she thanked me for meeting her mom and said she couldn’t have done it without me. 

“I think I’ll keep her,” she said. 

I smiled, still feeling a little raw.

“Dinner at my place tonight?” she asked.

No words were needed. She knew I was in.

Ella cooked us a delicious meal. That night, we talked and talked about anything and everything—our families, our careers, and how strongly we felt toward each other. We both admitted to it being crazy to start something given “the circumstances,” she said in air quotes, but we were hardly in control of what was happening between us anymore. An affection had drawn us together, despite the futility of it all. We went to bed that night and afterward held each other in each other’s arms until we both fell asleep.

In those last few months, we soaked up every moment together. Whenever we had the chance, we’d get away—exploring Yosemite Valley, cruising down Route 1, sipping wine and relaxing on California beaches. With every trip, our love grew stronger.

It was the most unusual experience falling deeper and deeper in love with each other, while hoping, wishing, praying we had more time, but despite our wishes, her doctors said nothing was working and we had weeks, maybe days.

Eventually, Ella had to take medical leave from work because treatment had made her too weak to work, even though it’s what she loved to do the most. I stayed at her place while she got care at a hospital in the city. I brought her to every appointment, held her hand when bad news was delivered, and hugged her as tight as I could when panic and fear took hold in the middle of the night.

One night around five o’clock, she said she wanted to make a few amendments to her will. She didn’t have much money, but said had “a little gold” from her shows, and she wanted some of it to go to her mom and dad—and some of it to me. 

“Me? What? No, Ella.”

But she insisted, saying that she was going to cover a trip to Switzerland.

“Ella…” I replied, shaking my head.

“Take some of my ashes with you to Lauterbrunnen.”

“Please, don’t talk about—” I burst into tears, I couldn’t help it. It was a big, uncontrollable cry, and in a turning of the tables, she was holding and consoling me as I wept. I realized that I’d been holding back these emotions for months, my love for her keeping me buoyed through all the dark moments.

She rolled over and cupped my face with her hands. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.” I blinked away the tears. “I wish we had more time. I wish I could do something to take away this wicked disease. I wish you’d never gotten sick.”

“But if I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have ever met each other.”

“Yeah, but you’d be okay, and, who knows, maybe we would have still found each other.”

“Honey?” she whispered.

I turned my head up to meet her eyes.

“Can you help me onto the balcony?”

I looked into her eyes. She looked so weak, so fragile. I would do anything for her, but I didn’t want her to overexert herself. “Let’s just stay in bed.”

“I thought of something from my someday list.”

I helped her out of bed with both hands and let her put most of her weight on me as we passed through the sliding door and onto the balcony. Steadying herself by holding the railing, she gazed out across the horizon as the sun was setting. Then, I knew why she’d asked me to help her out onto the deck. “See a sunset on a beach,” I whispered.

She rested her head on my shoulder. “Close enough.”

Two weeks later, she was gone.

I spent several weeks in a state of shock and deep sadness that spilled out of me in unexpected places. It didn’t matter whether I was at a grocery store, making a coffee run, or out for a walk around the neighborhood. Even if my mind was blank and I wasn’t thinking of losing Ella, I would break into tears and sob.

Even now, a year later, my eyes still get misty whenever I think about the seven months I spent with Ella, a beautiful soul, “cleaning” her life before death, building an unusual love story before the end.

I did make it to Switzerland, finally, to that picturesque town in the Swiss Alps. At the summit of a little peak with breathtaking views of snow-capped mountains, I opened a palm-sized container that held Ella’s ashes and scattered them into the chilly alpine air. The sun was just setting, too, and I smiled thinking of her, knowing she’d love the view.

The time off had done me good. I’d thought about quitting, switching things up, maybe even changing careers. But in the end, I realized that cleaning up after people died—handling the mess, the paperwork, the details—had been its own kind of service to the community. It brought real relief to my clients, especially to grieving families who had no idea what needed to be done, while I did.

So, I went back to work. This time with more purpose. And maybe now, I allowed myself to get a little closer to the people I helped. Not just ticking boxes or asking about bank accounts and utility bills, but really sitting with them. Asking how they felt about their life. Whether they thought they’d left anything unfinished. Whether there was someone they should call, just to say hi, before they couldn’t anymore.

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Dustin Grinnell is a Boston-based writer whose novel The Empathy Academy (Atmosphere Press) was named a distinguished favorite in the 2023 NYC Big Book Awards, and his short story collection The Healing Book (Finishing Line Press) won a 2024 Best Indie Book Award. He holds an MFA from Lasell’s Solstice Program and a master’s in physiology from Penn State.

By MN Wiggins

Margo died today. And with her, hope passes, too. Once, the world feared rising carbon dioxide via fossil fuels and deforestation. No one dreamed the last of our species would be wiped out by its absence. Of the few things that remain, only irony is plentiful as I tend to humankind’s last and dying garden. It was vital to survival yesterday, but the garden served no purpose once Margo’s heart gave its last beat. As I record this, time is slipping away—also ironic. I’ve lived for centuries, and time has never been on my side.

I was a strapping young man in the Byzantine Empire in A.D. 763, thirty-some-odd years before a Benedictine monk decided we should call it A.D. I was set on a life of adventure and determined to see the world. My family begged me not to leave our village just east of Beth-Horon, but I was young and stupid. The sea was the life for me, and I whistled as I walked the two days to the coast, not knowing I would never see them again.

Romans had taken scores of seafaring men as rowers, and I quickly found work. Life at sea was arduous, but at my young age, labor felt like play. I visited exotic ports, met people from distant lands, and learned new languages. The life of a sailor was intoxicating, and I had the adventures I’d dreamed of as a child.

Time was a whirlwind. I changed crews as often as it suited me, never owning more than the clothes on my back and the contents of my pockets. I worked hard, played hard, and made friends wherever I went. Then, one day, I realized I’d sailed the Mediterranean twice over and visited every known port. My heart longed for my family, and I joined a crew sailing back to my homeland. When we reached shore, I said farewell to my shipmates and started the two-day walk back to my village. 

My footsteps were light. I carried a bag of trinkets from my last port for my brothers, sisters, and cousins. I envisioned their wide eyes around the fire as I enthralled them with wild tales of my adventures. And later that evening, when the elders had retired to bed, I would tell my brothers of the beautiful women at port and how I had become a man many times over. I laughed out loud as I walked. They would gnash at their fists in envy and surely beg to accompany me when I returned to the sea. 

But when I reached home, my family had long since died. I met strangers with my family name who took me to their elder, a man of ninety-five years, his eyes white with cataracts. He claimed to be the youngest son of my parents, born after I’d left. None of it made sense. I told him who I was, and the old man felt the smooth skin of my young face. He slapped me, called me a liar, and cast me out of my family home.

I left in bewilderment. Could it be? Had time slipped away, and the sea preserved my youth? My mind raced. As a dedicated sailor, I’d gotten drunk several times in questionable establishments. Had some fair maiden slipped me an elixir for eternal youth? Who knew?

With nowhere else to go, I returned to the sea and lived the life of a fool, jumping from ship to ship and behaving recklessly. After all, I was invulnerable—except that I wasn’t. Thrice, my ship went down with only a handful of survivors, and I took no heed. But the sea was a demanding teacher and not done with her lesson.

We were fishing well off the shores of Sardinia when a storm pushed us farther out to sea. The ship was lost, and I alone survived, clinging to a large wicker basket. The storm passed, and the winds grew still. I floated for days, baking in the sun with no shore in sight. I felt the life leaving my body and knew my end was at hand. There was a comfort in it, knowing I would reunite with my family after a century. But on the seventh day, a vessel found me. The sea had taught me I could die. I simply hadn’t yet. 

I left the sea, journeyed inland, and explored the Roman empire for years. I learned the art of persuasion and trade and became a wealthy young merchant and the oldest person on Earth. And in all my time at sea and on land, the wisdom of the ages had taught me a fundamental truth of the universe, a singular, profound guiding mantra that I took to heart: Why work when you can land a sugar momma?

I married rich and traded up as often as future generations traded cars. I drank the finest wines, attended decadent parties, and became a dedicated student of the Kama Sutra—if not its lessons, then at least the positions. It’s important to have goals.

Around 1347, the party ended. Word spread of a great plague over on the Italian peninsula. Watching people suffer and die of disease, or worse, my catching it, wasn’t my bag. I pushed north into harsher climates where I shivered and longed for the lazy days of being fed grapes by future wives. I needed somewhere warmer, somewhere new and disease-free. 

A Norse woman told me tales of long-ago voyages to unknown lands across the sea to the west, and I decided to see if they were true. Besides, the plague was headed this way, and her husband would soon return from military training. Leaving on an adventure of exploration just felt right. 

With my considerable wealth, I convinced a ship in Bergen to undertake the voyage. Upon reaching the shores of the east coast of the future United States, the salty crew summarily dumped my behind, took all my worldly possessions, and left. 

Fortunately, my years on the planet had given me an ear for languages and a delightful personality. I easily made friends with the people I encountered and roamed the American continents from top to bottom and coast to coast—centuries before Lewis and Clark or Forrest Gump. I learned new customs and met the most beautiful women. I fell in love often, married frequently, and moved on before my current wife learned of the next. What can I say? I’m a sucker for weddings.

But while the years had not touched my body, they took their toll on my soul. One day, I sat on a fallen tree trunk and tossed a rock into what would one day be called the Rio Grande. I had no idea how much time had passed in these lands. All I knew was that I was exhausted. I was alone. For all the times I’d married, no one had filled the hole in my heart left from losing my family as a boy. What was the point of it? I would never find true happiness. Other people only suffered a single lifetime. I’d had more than my share, and I was done.

I considered ways of ending my immortal curse, as no one had the decency to end it for me over the centuries. I wasn’t a religious man, which may have been for the best. No respectable religion would’ve claimed me after the life I’d led. But as I gripped my dagger and raised my arms, I stopped. My faith was still there after all those years, buried deep, suppressed by wine, lust, and betrayal. It stayed my hand, and I couldn’t go through with it. Well, shit.

I wandered north and took refuge in a Diné village in the future Southwest of the United States. There, I met Aiyana, a beautiful young woman whose name meant forever flowering, and she had clearly blossomed. I mean that spiritually. Get your mind out of the gutter. 

Aiyana was the most intelligent, intuitive, and kindest person I’d ever met. Given my age, that’s saying something. I fell hard, heart and soul. I knew I wanted to spend the rest of her life with her. But the day before we married, I decided to reveal my curse. I had told no one since that day in my village and expected the worst. After centuries of conning women for personal gain, I’d found my soul mate, and here I was, blowing it by telling the stupid truth.

Aiyana took it in with a stone-cold blank expression. I could tell she was debating whether I was an evil spirit who needed killing or a crazed lunatic who needed killing. Either way, I sensed a theme. Or maybe she was pissed I waited until the day before our wedding to fess up. Honestly, hundred years of experience, and I still couldn’t tell what women were thinking when they got mad.

She took my hand without a word and led me to the elders. There was a long silence until I realized I was there to tell them what I’d told Aiyana. I relayed the whole story, minus the part about all the prior women. I wasn’t stupid.

To my amazement, they accepted me for whoever or whatever I was—delusional, immortal, it didn’t matter to them. Over time, they taught me to see my long life as a gift I should use in the service of others and that I was an idiot for squandering it for multiple lifetimes. The Diné didn’t pull punches. I promised to do better, and Aiyana and I shared a lifetime together. Her people became my people.

Those were the happiest 168 years of my life, and in the blink of an eye, I found myself holding my great-granddaughter’s hand as her ninety-six-year-old body took its last breath. She was the last of my line. I had cared for her in her last years as I had cared for her as a child after her parents died of pneumonia. With my family gone, I set out to keep my promise and walked the 2,400 miles to the East Coast. In Boston, I learned the year had become 1720, and I hopped a ship back to Europe with a new purpose.

I enrolled in college in Edinburg in 1721 and studied Physics. When I’d completed my degree, I worked odd jobs until I’d earned enough to enroll in another university in another city. I continued this pattern over the next two hundred years, learning all I could. I studied Chemistry in Amsterdam, Medicine in Paris, Architecture in Madrid, and Psychology in Hamburg. I learned cooking in Reykjavik, music in Sydney, and tap dancing from a bar owner in São Paulo. I used my cumulative knowledge to help those I could but was always forced to move along before anyone noticed my eternal youth. 

When Watson and Crick unveiled DNA and gene mapping followed, I resumed my study of genetics that I’d abandoned since my days with Dr. Mendel in Vienna. I was good friends with his daughter. No, not like that. Give me some credit. I had grown emotionally. The whole thing was platonic—mostly. 

My research revealed the truth of my identity. I existed and differed from the rest of humanity by chance alone, a rare genetic combination producing incredibly long telomeres and a robust immune system. In lay terms, my engine parts would eventually degrade, but not today, and not for a long time. It explained why I’d never experienced disease. And there were others like me, albeit to a lesser degree. You’ve met them, people in their sixties you’d swear could pass for forty, and those who beat the odds and live beyond the century mark. 

But progress is a double-edged sword. The technological age that answered my age-old question also threatened to end it. I’d been careful to fly under the radar for centuries. I’d never allowed my portrait to be sketched or painted. The risk was too great. Being recognized as older than dirt got you either burned at the stake or dissected for science, depending on the century. Then, Eastman ushered in the Age of the Tripod Camera, and the game changed. His three-legged monsters were around every corner, and the demonic infestation only worsened over time. Before you knew it, flashbulbs were popping at weddings, holidays, and the mandatory faculty group photo I always ducked. I did my best to avoid these beasts, but it wasn’t enough.  

My number was up when the Age of the Camera Phone arrived. Everyone and their dog were armed with the evil great-grandchild of Eastman’s three-legged beast. Ultimately, it was a group of meddling kids that did me in. They’d started a “Find Your Ancestors” business by adapting a facial recognition program to scour billions of old photographs online for facial characteristics similar to their clients. Then, one night, they put down their energy drinks, popped a few beers, and altered the parameters to search for any recurring face over time, hoping to spot a real Wolverine or Wonder Woman or whatever. And they did.

They caught me standing on a sidewalk in Atlanta just before the crash in 1929 and again in Chicago hailing a cab in 1948. Who knew anyone was taking photos? And then there was New York on March 14, 1972. I’d turned the corner right into a crowd at Loews’s State Theater during the premiere of The Godfather. Camera flashes exploded from all angles, and I took several hits, center mass.

The Pizza Roll Gang had me. Cross-referencing with cellphone photos I hadn’t been able to avoid, they tracked me down. With a few keystrokes, these pimple-faced entrepreneurs announced the world’s first superhero, The Immortal Man. I still hate that name. 

Fortunately, most saw it as a hoax, and I was no hero. But it raised enough eyebrows for a pharmaceutical company to take a look in my direction. The more they unearthed, the more I became priority number one. One vial of my blood might unlock new treatments. A bone marrow biopsy might reveal new anti-aging treatments. My genetic material could be the key to billions in revenue. From my research, I knew none of this was true, but I had become the golden goose, and they would never stop coming for me. And I knew what would happen if I were caught. 

They almost had me in a diner in Midland, Texas. I was forced to hide in a wall for three days in my hotel in Kuala Lumpur while they searched. Madrid was the final straw. I escaped via forgotten underground tunnels five hundred years older than the touristy ones built in the 1600s. I knew because I’d paid to have them dug back in the day when the King’s daughter and I—story for another day. I made it out of Spain and headed for the one place on Earth where I would never be found.

Back in 1923, I’d learned spelunking from my eight hundred and forty-second wife. Or was she eight hundred and forty-third? In any case, we’d traveled to the planet’s most remote places and discovered the perfect cave. High up a mountainside and deep down a hole obscured by dense foliage was a complex system suitable for only the most experienced cavers. One of the branches led to a steep, seemingly endless drop-off into a dark zone where even algae feared to tread. Making our way to the bottom of this underground canyon, we discovered a blind horizontal shaft ending in a large chamber with an underground freshwater stream. It was magical.

When the cellphone camera apocalypse hit, I dusted off my 1968 degree in Nutrition and proactively stocked my mountain cave getaway with provisions calculated to last a century. I also lowered in an exercise bike and hooked it to a generator. That took a while. In hindsight, I should have disassembled it first. Lastly, I stocked my pimped-out lair with an ample supply of books and, if you must know, toiletries. I’m not a barbarian. Well, at least not anymore.

After Madrid, I descended into my honeycomb hideout and lived the life of a hermit, reading my entire library five times over and watching my overhead LED lights flicker before finally dying. It did not escape me that one degree I didn’t hold was in Electrical Engineering. Dammit.

Engulfed in total darkness, I stretched my provisions as long as possible as I debated a climb back to civilization. Would they still be hunting me after all this time? How much time had passed? Without clues whether it was day or night and no communication with the world above, I had no idea. But as my supplies dwindled, I felt my body wither. My ribs stood out, and I knew I’d missed my window. Even if I’d wanted to return to the world, I’d never make it up the canyon walls. I shivered as death placed a hand on my shoulder as surely as it had centuries earlier when I’d clutched a wicker basket in the Mediterranean. Do you know how much that basket would be worth now if I’d held on to it? Dang it. 

I closed my eyes and lay on the cool stone floor for hours, waiting for the inevitable when a trickle of water brushed my face. I licked it and spat out the salty taste of the sea. My mind raced. The mountain was over eighty miles from the ocean—and a mountain. Another trickle wetted my hair. What the hell? 

I managed to walk outside the shaft’s entrance at the bottom of the canyon. I peered up into the darkness as a gush of saltwater hit my face and knocked me down. I made it back inside my chamber, but the water level had risen to my ankles. Another gush entered, and I was waist-deep in seawater. Passing away in quiet slumber was one thing, but drowning in the dark was not on my bucket list. I sloshed my way outside the shaft once more as another volley of water completely entombed my home, ruining my copies of Tom Sawyer and Letters of the Arkansas Traveler, one of which is an all-time literary classic—I’ll let you be the judge.

Taking deep breaths, I submerged for protection as successive waves rained down and floated up the canyon as the cave system filled. Once at the top, the water pushed me through smaller tunnels, colliding with incoming waves and tossing me like a rag doll. I held my breath and protected my head until the massive force finally thrust me into the open sky like a giant squid spitting for distance.

I plunged into the sea and surfaced, squinting in sunlight I’d almost forgotten. I managed to reach the mountainside and find protection from the crashing waves. Slowly and painfully, I climbed until I reached a patch of dry soil, where I sat and examined my world as my eyes adjusted to a hazy brown sky. The air carried a putrid smell, and my mountain had been reduced to an island. I saw no other land—or birds. I ran my hand through the soil. There were no insects. I looked at my emaciated body, now vampire alabaster, the latest color at your local paint store. One thing was clear: once I reached civilization, I was getting a refund on that nutrition degree.

After a good rest, I slowly ascended to the mountaintop, a trek made easier as the mountain’s foliage had disappeared. At the top, I found no land mass in any direction. I sat on the rocks of my island prison and laughed. With nothing to eat or drink, at least my sentence would be short.

I laid back and closed my eyes again to ease into the Hereafter. But again, I couldn’t catch a break. A loud rumble in the sky preceded four fires descending on my position. Is this what happens when you die these days? I’d heard of fiery chariots coming for you, but this was a bit much. Maybe they’d upgraded.

A ship landed near my position. People in environmental suits strapped a mask over my face, shot something into my arm, and carried me aboard by stretcher. I awoke feeling as spry as the day I turned six hundred. A scarred man covered in skin tumors sat at my bedside, smiling as much as his face would allow. 

“My name is Taz. And you are the mythical Immortal Man, unseen for a century and a half.”

I couldn’t believe it. My provisions had lasted fifty years longer than I’d calculated. There goes my nutrition refund. Shoot.

Taz wore an oxygen mask and removed it only when speaking or moistening his cracked and disfigured lips. He explained that rising ocean levels had been only a portion of the burden the past few generations had inherited. Famine and viral disease had culled most of our species. Fewer people meant that nuclear plants around the world had gone unstaffed and overheated, gifting humanity just what it never wanted—a nuclear winter. Taz marveled at me and gently caressed my unblemished skin that the cave had protected from radiation. Yeah, dude’s touch was creepy as all get out, but he’d saved me. I let him have his moment.

I told Taz my story, minus the bit about wife shopping, sleeping around, and that I’d broken fourteen of the Fifteen Commandments. What? You thought there were only ten? Editors—what can you do? I offered Taz any help my years of knowledge could provide. He took me to a lounge area where people sat and socialized, all with O₂ masks and as scarred and disfigured as Taz. But I paid little attention. I was staring out the window at the stars trailing behind us.

Taz explained we were aboard the Hope, and I’d been in a medically induced coma for the last two months as they’d treated my malnutrition. Hope’s mission was to carry the brightest and healthiest of our dying planet out into the stars in a last-ditch effort to discover a habitable world—any decent rock would do. Once found, the crew would set up a colony and send the ship back on autopilot for those left behind. Everyone knew it would take more than one lifetime, and no one would be left on Earth to rescue.

Days before launch, they’d been shocked to detect life signs on an island in the Dead Zone, and Earth’s remaining physicians had debated whether I would survive. Still, as the most untarnished of our species, I was loaded aboard the Hope in the hopes of recovery.

It was presumed we would have enough time en route to solve the reproductive issues plaguing their generation. We did not. We mourned the passing of each crew member in the years that followed until it was down to Margo and me. At 78, she had a stroke that left her brain dead. Like those before her, I hooked her up to life support, not in the hopes of recovery, but out of the need for carbon dioxide. As people died, our decreased numbers failed to generate enough to keep our plants from dying, our only food source. Turning off the CO₂ scrubbers wasn’t enough. But even on life support, the crew’s bodies eventually gave out. Margo was the last. It’s been eighty years since I hooked her up—eighty years of solitude, nothing new for me. With her death today, I’ve become the sole source of carbon dioxide, and I am woefully inadequate.

The Hope has found no habitable planets in the 130 years since our launch. But even if it does, what’s the point? Still, I will maintain her systems and keep Hope afloat as long as I can. I’ve quarantined the last plants in an incubator and wear a mask to collect CO₂ for my infant garden. I calculate it will grow just enough to keep me alive. Of course, my Horticultural degree is over three hundred years old. So, who knows? 

I think of Aiyana and our children the same way I’ve thought of them every day for the last 753 years. No other filled my heart as they did. I carry on knowing that one day, we will all flower together forever. But until then, this is my life. I am the last of our kind. I am not immortal, but I have not died. The same could once be said for everyone. We are all immortal until the day we are cured.

---

MN Wiggins is an internationally published author, surgeon, voice actor, and humorist from the American South whose short stories have been published in The Horror Zine, Symphonies of Imagination, AcademFic, and more, including stories performed on The No Sleep Podcast, Creepy, Frightening Tales, and Kaidankai. Dr. Wiggins’s complete works may be found at MNWiggins.com.

By Aditi Pant

‘The way you wrote about her

With hostility, hurt, derision

And just a hint of wistfulness’

There are two facets to this story. One is simple and the other not so. When you are caught in a current that is stronger than you, you swim with it and give yourself a chance at survival.  This is simple. Or you struggle against it and either drown or create a story. This is not so simple. It seems all my life I’ve been working against the will of fate. Yet, destiny, fate, call it what you will has its tentacles all around me and I am winded. I’ll leave it to you to decide if I am drowning or if I have created a story.

I could start at the beginning; however, I’m not sure where it all began. So, I’ll start somewhere in between. There was a time when I couldn’t sleep unless I wrote something. So, stalked I was by reality that if the words were wistful and surreal I slept sooner and better. These days however, my dreams are becoming more and more real and reality is slipping into a dream. At times, I’m not sure if I’m awake or asleep or if it really matters. The doctor that comes to see me once a week says I’m prone to rambling (among other things), but then what is a good story without the subconscious surfacing occasionally? 

Is love really blind or does it give us an alibi to be blind to the society, to own up to our fragilities, our vulnerability that make us truly human? Is everything just perception? It could be my medication but what seems real right now are phantom shapes, muffled sounds and the arbitrary traces of memory which blends the septic with the sterile. The storyteller, they called me, even though they knew the stories I told were not my own. The irony is, today when I have my own story I can’t tell it right. My senses are fuddled. I feel drugged. My weakness is exposed. All the learning I audaciously shared with others was just chaff in the wind. I fell – and how!

Even my present seems like a flashback. All I have is a flashback and a story I can’t tell. So, I’ll just show it to you in glimpses that are more lucid than the big picture. What I’m concerned about is the fact that if my present is a flashback, how will my past be presented? Do I even have a future? This is where your genius will help me out. Connect the dots for me, connect this haiku like life and see if the story reveals itself. 

Right now, I’m waiting. You’ll know for whom soon enough. Nainital is beautiful after a storm. The rain wipes out all the grit and there is a poignant clarity in the air that moves the soul. Once this picturesque beauty would have calmed me, even inspired me, however, right now, like reality, it eludes me. As I stare at the lake from the balcony I know the olive placid waters are deceptive. There are undercurrents and hidden depths that fascinate and scare me at the same time. My meditative mood is broken as former events abruptly surface like ripples in the lake and assail with a kaleidoscope of emotions. I’m torn. The tea grows cold in my cup. I go inside for a refill from the warm kettle she has left me. The quiet waters of my being are disturbed and underneath I’m unpredictable, just like the lake. However, don’t see me as an unreliable narrator yet. They called me the storyteller, right? That should count for something.

Am I rambling again? Yet what can I do? I’m only a puppet; puppet in the hands of my own obsession, love, and an angst that keeps one awake at night. Love is the reason for all unreasonable actions and hence the sharp bends in my feelings for Basu – from jealously to hate to doubt to infatuation to love and to jealously again are justified…I think. Who is Basu you might ask? I didn’t promise a linear story, did I?

To a waif, rebel and a person with few means it meant a lot to be adopted by Pritam. Adopted seems like a strange term to use (I was a 23-year-old then), and I would have said befriended but then I owe everything I have to Pritam hence ‘adopted’ should suffice. We first met at the Boat House Club that organises poetry reading sessions. Our conversations were often engaging and sometimes argumentative. How could they not be when our worlds were so diverse. Pritam was aristocratic, affluent and influential. His beautiful colonial bungalow, overlooking the emerald lake was the talk of the town. But what really attracted people to him like moths to a flame was his large warm heart. He loomed larger than life.  I had nothing except a brooding silence that only underscored my poverty and loneliness. Despite being only a decade older than me, Pritam soon became my mentor, benefactor, guide, and a father figure.  He opened his heart and home to me and all because he thought I had ‘potential’.  What he saw in me, a twisted mind with a sour disposition (the metaphor of a moth describes me quite well) I never knew. Yet, I knew for a fact that his friendship changed my life as I knew it.  He gave me a place to stay (his own bungalow), and everything else including the clothes on my back till I could afford them on my own. Even my earning a living and some fame at my vocation came from the few discreet calls he made to his ‘friends’. (If you haven’t guessed it already I’m a writer and a very mercurial one at that). He gave me a chance at living and I looked up to him with reverence. I missed him on his frequent visits abroad and looked forward to his company when he returned. We would sit under the mango tree in the courtyard where he would talk of his journeys as I listened with rapt attention. Or we would just stare at the chestnut trees illuminated by the lamp post near the gate and share a communicative silence. So, deprived was I of any humane feeling before I met Pritam that if my love for him turned obsessive, or if Pritam’s regard for me was a mere guise to use me as an emotional punching bag- I wouldn’t know. 

Coming back to the heart of the story. My being jealous of Basu made extreme sense as I saw her poised to take away the only certainty I knew – Pritam. When his letters from London started mentioning Basu I didn’t pay much attention and brushed her aside as his latest infatuation. But as Pritam’s helplessness became evident I knew this was more than just mere craze. “She is a dream …elusive and encompassing all at once” he once wrote. At first his letters were full of love; eulogizing the beauty of Basu. Then they reeked of doubt and rancour that I didn’t know Pritam was capable of. “She was gone as soon as it was midnight and she is no Cinderella” he wailed in one letter and in another he pondered, “is she trying to kill me…or is it my imagination?”

Pritam’s letters fuelled my growing hatred of Basu, as not only did she take away from me the only solace I’d known but also it seemed that she had a sinister side that had completely changed Pritam. Or was it Pritam who had the ominous side? He seemed crazed and bitter. His letters were now getting more and more ambiguous and I couldn’t fathom if he thought Basu was deliberately harming him or he felt gall; poison develop inside him as he suspected her of loving someone else. My hatred was solidified when I received a letter from Pritam saying, “We are married now…nothing and no one can take her away from me. “ Such an extreme step? Why? How could he marry someone who he suspected was destroying him in bits and pieces. 

I decided to visit them and made all the necessary arrangements when I got a message informing me of Pritam’s death and of Basu’s impending visit to his estate. My head reeled. To say that I was shocked would be an understatement. Not only had I inexplicably lost the only human I cared about but my sanctuary, my home, would now be violated.  I vowed retribution. 

When my nemesis, Basu arrived at the estate, the juxtaposition in my attitude towards her was so acute that I wouldn’t have believed it had my being a writer not made me more astute towards the human condition in general and my own in particular. Was it her innate beauty? Her seemingly innocent eyes? Her careless laugh?  My heart it seemed had completely manipulated my mind and all my worlds came crashing in as I could not prevent myself from being besotted by her. Basu was exactly the kind of woman who would inspire such passion in a man. I was the third man (if Pritam’s letters were to be believed) that thought himself in love with her. She would flick her hair from her forehead and look at me straight in the eye; “You are exactly how Pritam described you- I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed”.  I wouldn’t know what she meant when she said that, and yet everything she said or did seemed so fascinating that I was consumed by the stardust. I knew then what it meant to bring the murderer home and in this case to bring the murderer to the heart. I was cognizant of wanting her to be completely innocent. It seemed my own mind was tearing those damning letters from Pritam into small bits and was letting them flow wherever the wind blew. Was I being disloyal to the one person who had been magnanimous and true to me in this entire world? And more importantly did I even care? 

Are you connecting the dots yet? Can you see my boat buffeted by the winds of fate and waves of destiny? 

Love can make a fool out of you. One clings on to hope that isn’t there. One imagines scenarios that never happened and one denies what is actually taking place under one’s nose. I was no exception and putty in the hands of the very woman I promised myself to redress. Reality, began to bite, and I winced in pain when I finally received a letter from Pritam that was lost in transit. It seemed that Pritam had lost his mind. He hallucinated and further questioned Basu’s character and morality to the extent that he wrote “she might have married me for my wealth… I found sleeping pills at the bottom of my coffee mug.”  Despite these suspicious if not damning developments I remained blinded by my infatuation. Like the placid waters of the lake everything looked tranquil at the surface but the undercurrents were winding me. Denial created its masterpiece when I not only ignored the evidences that were piling up, but also decided to turn over Pritam’s estate to Basu. I don’t know why I decided to do that. What was I trying to prove and to whom? Was it loving that made me so weak? Was I defying fate? This duplicity with a father figure especially after his death made me question my ethicality. I just wanted someone to shake me out of my trance like state. It was almost as if Basu had cast a spell and I was trapped without redemption. 

To give credit where its due, Basu never really showed any affection towards me. She was almost always polite except when she would sometimes smirk and say, “That is the writer in you speaking.” She would look at me sometimes and not see me at all. I desperately wanted her to see me. She would be singing and would stop abruptly. I needed to know why. She would stare out of the balcony for what seemed like hours and I wanted to be her thoughts. The only time I actually got her attention was when I told her of my decision to give the estate to her. Even then I saw no triumph in her eyes – only something akin to pity. Or was it amusement?  What did she want? Was she the grieving widow who sighed into her tea cup or the girl next door who petted the pathetic street dog that sometimes strayed into our courtyard or was she the temptress that shook the very foundations of my being by her unexpected laughter. 

Now you see me as not only an unreliable but also possibly an unscrupulous narrator. Ambiguity is key here. Was Basu really a murderess? Did I really want to know? Like in life at the end of it all, we are just left with questions and no definitive answers. We are mere puppets in the hand of The Almighty and the wilful author changes our mind about characters with gay abandon. Is this why I wanted to be a writer? 

Enough of my musings, the storm had passed. As the darkness approached I knew it was getting late enough to be worried. I once again stepped into the balcony and looked down. Except for a drenched street dog that was lying down miserably near the gate, there was not a soul to be seen anywhere. Rain water had puddled under the lamp post. A breeze ruffled the mango tree in the courtyard and a few twigs fell down and broke. Thunder rumbled in the distance. Did I hear a soft knock at the door? I turned back: no one. It was possibly just the wind or probably my imagination. I know there is no one at the door, and yet at the slightest sound I always turn to look.  It has become a habit. This anticipation will be my undoing. 

Turning over the estate to her was a tedious process. The dashing lawyer visited us several times. I saw how he looked at her, with contempt and doubt. He also asked me to reconsider my decision. “It’s only a stroke of fate that Pritam bequeathed the estate to me in the first place. It should rightfully go to Basu; she is his widow,” I replied. It was uncanny to see my initial feelings for Basu reflected in the young lawyer’s eyes. He hated her. He pitied me. 

But if you are connecting the dots you would know that I also saw how Basu looked at him, and intuitively knew that the young lawyer’s hatred wouldn’t last for long. 

Once I turned over the estate to her, the changes became apparent. Had the sparkle in her eyes dimmed? Was she less or more mysterious? Or had my perception changed? Was I fixated and hence bitter? Did I feel insecure? Was there a reason why I felt unhinged most of the time? Was this an emotional ramification of a physical state or a physical manifestation of an emotional one? I stopped writing-my only tool against destiny. Was Basu trying to kill me? Why? Did I wish to possess her? Could one really possess the wind? With horror, I realised I had become another Pritam.

Call it epiphany. Call it state of mind. The present, the flashback, return all at once. The thunder rumbles. The lightning once again illuminates the beauty of the hills and valley. The lake is silent, dark, and waiting. At some point Basu will return. “I needed a long walk,” she will say. 

“Where were you during the storm?” I’ll ask. Her reply will shock me. Later, while taking the kettle to the kitchen sink I’ll see this strange residue in the lees. Pills?

As I fall into a fitful sleep I’ll hear our voices ricochet in my dream.

“Where were you during the storm?” I whisper.

 “I am the storm, you fool!” she laughs.  

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Aditi Pant is an award-winning educator, columnist, author and poet. A postgraduate in Education from the University of Delaware, she enjoys teaching English to high school students in India and USA.

Aditi writes for the column ‘Oasis’ for the Deccan Herald newspaper and spiritual stories for Masala Radio, Sugarland, Texas. Writing is both her passion and sanctuary. Her debut, Zen on the go, a collection of uplifting stories garnered much acclaim. Her novels, The Turning of Seasons, where she blends prose and poetry in a poignant tale of love and loss and Maya, an epistolary novel with a psychological twist have won her many salutes. When she’s not writing, Aditi can be found reading, teaching, cooking, going for long walks and what can only be described as multitasking while drinking copious amounts of tea.