(2,298 Words)

this is a brief excerpt:

I wasn’t there very long. What’s funny is, now? I’ve been here, a place I didn’t even want to go to at all, for longer than I was there. My last year there was tough and I hated to say goodbye to everyone but it wasn’t up to me. It was just time to go. It was hardest to say goodbye to my family, that’s never easy, especially when you have such a great family like mine. But life is funny that way, you can’t stay in one place forever, can you?

They all don’t really know I’m still right there with them, my family, I mean. Well, except for my little sister, Jenny. She gets it. She’s tuned in sometimes to more intangible things when her antennae are up, Yeah, she gets the messages loud and clear most of the time. Like when I send a black crow, our family namesake, her way, it’s me. I’m the one perching on the branch in front of her bedroom window making all the fuss. She knows.

I’m just happy I got her that apartment she loves so much right near downtown with the big oak tree. A couple of years ago, the listing came up and I made sure she saw it and that the landlord chose her and it all worked out, even if she didn’t know it was me working it all out behind the scenes.

. . . 

© 2020, Mary Corbin.

The Visitor is from the Ephemerata Collection. This story was first published in an abbreviated form, as a Flash Fiction submission, titled “Visitor,” in (mac)ro(mic) on April 7, 2021. Featured artwork: “Always With Me” – painting by Mary Corbin. No reprints without permission.

This story is dedicated to my sister Colleen. I wrote this on Halloween night 2020, the night of the first Blue Moon in 76 years. On this night, it is said that the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, opening the gates for ancestors and departed loved ones to visit.

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