STORY: The Lives of the Dead (500 word Challange)

The 500 word challange is just that: create a complete short story in 500 words; this is not exactly my specialty, but I've given it a shot. How well or poorly I've done the reader can decide.


The Lives of the Dead

I go down to the place where I know she’ll be waiting, on the street where Turtle Park used to stand before they tore it up. I find her pacing the small edge of sidewalk as if the trees and the grass and the swings have remained intact all these years.

“Have you seen my babies?” she asks.
“Not yet,” I tell her.
“They were supposed to be home two hours ago.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” I lie. “Anyway, the police are looking for them now.”
She nods and begins pacing the sidewalk again. After a while she turns back to me and speaks.

“Have you seen my babies?”

The first time this conversation occurred I was a boy and had no idea what to make of it. I told only my grandfather, Vincenzo Tresca; he told me I had a gift he called “the sight”. Now many years have passed and I return to this place over and over and the words are always the same:

“Have you seen my babies?”
“Not yet.”

This is what it means to be dead:

Imagine your life as a giant reel of film unspooling for many thousands of feet. Now imagine a three minute segment clipped from somewhere in the middle of that reel and looped so that it plays over and over again long after the rest of the film has disintegrated. This is all that was left of a young mother: the dread and anxiety of hopeless waiting.

As a teenager, I read the particulars: her two little girls never made it home from the park alive. After the funerals, the young mother, broken by her grief, swallowed a nearly full bottle of Seconal. In all these years, my only wish is to see her at peace.

“Have you seen my babies?”
“Listen,” I tell her. “I don’t have much time. Your daughters are gone. They are at peace. There is nothing more you can do for them now.”
“They were supposed to be home two hours ago.”
“They aren’t coming home. Their home is no longer in this world. Neither is yours. You must let go.”
“Have you seen my babies?” she asks.
I keep at it, knowing it will never do any good. She hears me, she must understand, but nothing will ever change.
“They were supposed to be home two hours ago.”
It’s almost light now, I give it my last try:
“I never married,” I tell her. “I have no children. I have left no one behind.”
“Have you seen my babies?”
“For over eighty years, since I was a boy, I have loved no one but you. Now it’s my time to rest as well. Only you bind me here. I want to rest only with you.”
“They were supposed to be home two hours ago.”
“Please”---
This is what it means to be dead. This is all I have left.

I go down to the place where I know she’ll be waiting…