Death Shroud

What we don’t like to talk about is how death makes things easier.

There’s less to do, less to look after. Life can go on.

I hear the click of the Zippo, turn my head and speak over my shoulder, without really turning around.

“Was it you?” I ask.

Nikki exhales. I can’t see the smoke, but I can smell it. “It’s what you made me for, isn’t it”

I nod. It’s true. It was.

“And if it weren’t, would that have been better?” she asked.

“No,” I reply quickly. “No, that would have been worse.”

“I waited for a good moment,” she said. “Like I know you would have wanted.”

I turn around then and ask, “You couldn’t have waited till after Saturday?”

Her eyes look just like mine. They don’t reveal much and I try to see into them through the dancing smoke and thick black eyeliner.

A moment passes, and after she doesn’t speak, I say, “It had to be then, didn’t it?”

Nikki ashes but those ashes don’t reach the floor before they are gone entirely. “It always has to be then,” she says. “You know that, Dad. That’s why then is then and not some other time.”

“I wish you had gotten to know him. He’s kind of like your grandfather,” I say.

Nikki smiles and puts the cig out on her tongue. “Well, we’ll have a lot of time to get to know each other now.”

“What does that mean?” I ask.

“He moved to Bruno,” she says with a shrug. “You know that.”

I had forgotten. “Oh. Right. I had forgotten,” I say.

“Must be nice,” Nikki says, then she immediately adds, “No wait, I remember what it’s like to forget now. That sucks. Never mind. And please don’t ever listen to me again if I’m babbling on about how I just want to be human, okay?”

I smile a little. “Okay, Nik. Sure thing.”

“It sucks to be me sometimes but being like you guys is a major fucking drag,” she says, then comes toward me.

I reflexively tense, and she sees that. “I’m not coming for you, Dad. I just was going to give you a hug.”

“Really?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I remember how to do that and I remember really liking it when I was a normal sack of ape.”

I let her hug me.

It is comforting and reminds me of where I started this moment: Death is useful. Death makes things easier.

As I begin to feel sleepy and let go of this life—maybe all lives—Nikki ends the hug and steadies me.

“Not yet, Dad,” she says. “You’ve still got shit to do.”

I look at my creation with tired eyes. “Does it matter?”

She smiles the half-smile of my dead father and dead grandmother. “Of course not,” she says. “Nothing does.”

“Then why do it?” I ask.

“Because you must. It’s what you’ve written for yourself.”

“Why the hell would I do that?”

Nikki turns around and walks toward the door. “I dunno, Dad. Even after being human for awhile, I still don't understand why you apes do the things you do. But it’s who and what you are.”

With that, she passes through the threshold and is gone.

I don’t feel alone, though. Part of her is still with me, in how I can remember the feeling of her hug. And from there my mind remembers how it felt when my dad would hug me.

Death makes things easier. But life is the thing.