I shove open the front door, push past my dick-head brother-in-law. “I want my sister.”
He slams it shut before the neighbors can hear, then tells me—a grieving, determined woman—to calm the fuck down. Water onto a grease fire.
He follows me into the dark living room wearing a faded T-shirt, sagging sweatpants, cigarette dangling from his stubbled mouth. The blinds are down. Empty beer bottles and cereal boxes on every surface. The air reeks of body odor and ashtrays. My sister’s stone urn sits on the mantel, gathering dust.
I lunge for it.
He catches my ponytail and yanks me so hard it makes me and my scalp scream.
“Don’t you dare touch her.”
His wife. My sister. Dead six months.
He won’t bury her, even though it’s what she wanted. I’ve tried to reason, nudge, even threaten him. He keeps saying he’s not ready to let her go. He’ll never be ready.
I stomp the heel of my ankle boot onto his bare foot. He shrieks and releases me. I grab the urn, spin around to face him, heart pounding as I hold her ashes for the first time—my sister reduced to the cold weight of a bowling ball. My eyes well up, but I won’t let him see me cry.
“We’re burying her,” I say. “It’s time.”
“Bitch, I’ll call the cops. She’s mine.”
“Not anymore.”
I bolt for the hallway bathroom, lock the door. Set the urn down gently on the tile floor. Then flush the toilet. Let him hear the swirl and gurgle. Let him think that I’m really doing it, that he’s losing her a second time. “Say goodbye.”
He bangs on the door, screaming. Sick bitch. Demented cunt.
I flush again.
Then I hear it—a howl so raw and animalistic it’s a dagger to my heart. “Please stop,” he whimpers through the door.
I unlock it.
He’s collapsed on the hallway floor against the wall, sobbing like a child. I shake the urn. He looks up at the bony rattle. Starts laughing, hysterical. Then crying again.
I get it. But, still.
“Just take her,” he mumbles, sniffling, wiping away tears
He struggles to his feet, follows me to the front door. Out of nowhere, he pulls me into a hug so tight it makes me grunt. I might’ve even hugged him back.
About the Author
Scott Bolendz is a writer and award-winning fine art photographer. His stories have been published or will soon appear in Fictive Dream, Gone Lawn, Emerge Literary Journal, The Bookends Review, Blue Lake Review, and Flash Fiction Magazine.
