'Hauntings' by Madeline Anthes

Something had happened to Mother. She had started staring past me, looking at something I couldn’t see.

I first dropped a finger, hoping Mother would notice and wake up. Look at it and look at me.

She had stopped cleaning herself. She ate slivers of carrot and sips of milk. She was feather thin and only stayed in a room for several minutes before floating to the next.

She didn’t notice the finger. I left it on her nightstand. She just picked up her glasses and ignored the pinkie lying next to them.

So I dropped an ear – something larger, something soft – on the coffee table. But she didn’t see it either.

When I left my leg near the bottom of the stairs, I thought she’d stop, finally, and look. I thought she’d pick it up, jiggle the calf, and look for its owner. But she just stretched a step over it and glided away.

She didn’t see any of the pieces I left around for her. By the time I was nothing but neck and tendrils of hair, I was getting desperate.

But when she overlooked my head, I had nothing left to leave her. Her eyes just grazed the room, over the top of my scalp, and drifted away.

Now we haunt this home together. She is a ghost of the woman she was, and I am all around her, my voice an empty echo asking her to come back.

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Madeline Anthes is the Assistant Editor of Lost Balloon. Her chapbook Beautiful, Violent Things is now available from Word West Press. You can find her on Twitter at @maddieanthes, and find more of her work at madelineanthes.com.

'Hauntings' was first published in Third Point Press in 2017.