The Dead Only Stay Dead If You Let Them

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Francine Witte

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      “So, what if I’m a ghost,” Alan says to me as he sits down to join me for dinner. “I’m still your husband.” I instinctively put out a plate for him. Even though I always thought ghosts don’t eat.

      He is as heartbreak handsome as I remember. Pool of blue eyes, cliff-sculpted jaw. “You could have told me about your girlfriend,” I say. “I mean, I’m not sorry she stabbed you.”

      He ignores the plate I put in front of him and instead starts eating from mine. I never ordered Grubhub when he was still alive. Wives cook, Alan always insisted. Once he was gone, I never cooked again. One of the many things I never had to do again. Like listen to his stupid rules and girlfriend lies.  Now, he is sticking his ghostfingers into my fries.

      “I figured you knew about Ramona,” he says just like that. “Come on, you had to know I would look elsewhere when you started to, y’ know, puff out.”

      Yes, I puffed out. I had always believed that love would keep me eating right. That love itself would be enough to feed me, but I was wrong. It started way before Ramona, it was all that damn cooking. The only time Alan really paid attention.

      “There’s a reason I’m here,” Alan says. “I need a thousand bucks, and there’s no other way for me to get it.” I think about how if Alan wasn’t already dead, I would be tempted to kill him.

      He gives me that look he always used to give me, that one where his eyes go soft and real and the reason I mostly stayed with him. “I thought ghosts didn’t use money,”

      “We don’t” he says, swiping another fry. “But Pete doesn’t care. Says it’s the principle of the thing.”

      I ask him if he means Pete from the body shop, the one who got killed in a car crash last August.

      Alan says, “Yeah, I borrowed some money.  Ramona didn’t come cheap.” 

      I start to hate Ramona all over again, because I’m sure she didn’t wife-cook for him. He probably took her out for lobster and Dom and who knows what.  Then I remember what a favor she did me with the stabbing.

      “What happens,” I ask “if you don’t give Pete the money? I mean, it’s not like he can kill you again.”

      Alan shakes his head. “No, but he can make my death pretty miserable,” he says. “You gonna give me the money or what?”

      I tell him yeah, I’ll give it to him. “Come back tomorrow, I’ll have it for you.”  Since Alan’s death, I’ve been able to save up a bit. I almost have enough to take that cruise I always wanted. And then, I say “after that, you’re gonna stay dead, right?”

      I can always take another cruise. If Alan stays dead, if Alan stays dead.

      He pops the last of my fries into his mouth. Doesn’t even ask if I wanted it.

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Francine Witte is a flash fiction writer and poet, and the author of the flash collection RADIO WATER. Her newest poetry book, Some Distant Pin of Light, has just been published by Cervena Barva Press. Her work has been widely published, and she is a recent recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She lives in New York City. Please visit her website francinewitte.com. She can be found on social media @francinewitte.  

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Bernice Holtzman’s paintings and collages have appeared in shows at various venues in Manhattan, including the Back Fence in Greenwich Village, the Producer’s Club, the Black Door Gallery on W. 26th St., and one other place she can’t remember, but it was in a basement, and she was well received. She is the Assistant Art Director for Yellow Mama.