kamiem123

→“—and Bernie asked me what was wrong, but since Bernie had just done a hit of acid himself, I didn’t take him seriously.”

→I used every ounce of strength I had to keep the horror I felt from manifesting in my expression.

→“I’m just not sure,” she said, shaking her head. “I remember we were sitting around a campfire, singing songs and dropping acid—”

→How she could afford to do all that traveling when she was alive. I knew she’d been married for a while, but my family didn’t know much about her husband. My uncle thought he might’ve been an oil tycoon from Texas, but the family had lost contact, and nobody knew for certain.

→Passport no longer needed. But no one could really tell me how she died exactly. Or what she did for a living.

→According to my family, she’d died in a hippie commune in Madrid at the height of the flower power revolution. Before that, she really had been a world traveler, spending her summers in South America and Europe and her winters in Africa and Australia. And she’d continued that tradition even after her death, traveling far and wide.

→I was curious enough about her death to ask, “Do you know how you died? What happened?”

→But maybe now that she knew, I could explain the whole coffee thing.

→A world traveler, that one. And she rarely stayed in one place very long. Which was good. Otherwise, I’d never get real coffee in the mornings. Or the twelve other times during the day I needed a java fix. If she were around more often, I’d go through caffeine withdrawal on a regular basis. And get really bad headaches.

→Aunt Lillian died long before I was born, but I had no idea if she knew that or not. Many departed didn’t. Because of this doubt, I’d never mentioned it. For years, I’d let her make me invisible coffee in the mornings or cook me invisible eggs; then she’d go off on another adventure. Aunt Lil was still sowing her wild oats.

→“I know.” She sniffled into the massive sleeve of her muumuu, and the love beads shifted soundlessly with the movement. Inanimate objects in death carried an eerie silence. Like mimes. Or that scream Al Pacino did in The Godfather: Part III when his daughter died on those steps. “I know, I know.” She patted my shoulder in consolation. “It’s a lot to absorb.”

→I blinked. Stared at her a moment. Then blinked again.

→She tucked her chin in sadness. “I—I think I’m dead.”

→I straightened in alarm despite the energy it took. “Aunt Lil?”

→“I’m not sure how to tell you this.” Her breath hitched, and she bowed her blue head.

→She had a point. “So what’s up?” I propped my bunny-slippered feet on the coffee table and crossed my legs at the ankles.

→“You don’t cook.”

→Then I remembered that the cookware I’d been waiting for all morning was up next. Surely Aunt Lil would understand. Before she could say anything, I raised a finger to put her in pause mode. “But can our talk wait until the stone-coated cookware is over? I’ve been eyeing this cookware for a while now. And it’s coated. With stone.”

→“You can absolutely talk to me, Aunt Lil.” I tried to straighten but couldn’t get past the realization that movement of any kind would take effort. I’d been sitting on one sofa or another for two months, recovering from the torture thing.

→She also had a loving smile that tilted a bit south of kilter. But that only made me adore her all the more. I had a soft spot for crazy people. I wasn’t sure how the muumuu came into play, with her being so tiny and all—she looked like a pole with a collapsed tent gathered about her fragile hips—but who was I to judge?