By Don Hall

HE COULD HARDLY MAKE HIMSELF SAY IT. He sat on the couch—she was just sitting there laughing about a dumb YouTube video and the sound of her hoarse giggle was like music—lit up a cigarette—she hated these things but he needed them right now—and stared hard at her shoes on the floor.

No, shoes. I'm sorry but her feet won't be filling you again. I don't know what happens to women's shoes when they are cast off but that's your future because…

"She's dead."

The statement was sadly mundane. It didn't feel like the words hung there in the air like in a story. He said them. No one was here to hear them. The truth was as simple and as obvious as stating "The sun shines." or "I need a haircut."

Her death was like something from an Edward Gorey cartoon or a John Irving novel. She loved her candles. She liked how they made the apartment smell nice, the small glows when she turned out the lights and sat quietly with her nightly glass of Merlot. He had half-heartedly warned her that having almost a dozen candles lit in a one-bedroom apartment might be excessive, but she loved them and he loved her, so it was an indulgence he accepted.

He should've seen it coming.

What made her death so odd—because dying in a fire is fairly common and a fire starting when too many candles burn as the lighter of said candles falls drunkenly asleep—was that nothing else in the place caught fire. There was a scorch mark on the green La-Z-Boy chair where she caught fire. There was the smell, a mixture of charcoaled flesh and Vanilla Sandalwood. The only thing in the apartment that had burned was her. When he came home, he didn't even notice her body until after he'd headed from the door to the bedroom and pulled off his shoes. He came back and exclaimed "Holy shit! What's that smell?" and then saw what looked like a melted mannequin.

The coroner offered the only explanation she could muster: his wife had perhaps grabbed the candle jar thinking it was her wine and accidentally doused her face and chest with melted wax.

"And that caught her on fire?"

"I don't know but that's the only guesstimate I have."

Guesstimate? he thought. Who actually uses that word?

The police detectives had investigated the possibility that he had killed his own wife. He was cleared. There was no indication that her death was intentional or self-inflicted. No one surrounding her case had really any idea how it happened just that it had and they were very sorry for his loss.

The funeral was populated by the same confusion. Her parents didn't understand. His parents showed up smelling of Jim Beam and disillusionment. Her brother didn't speak a single word. As her spouse, he was asked to say a few words but all he could whisper was he was sorry.

This all occurred in the span of five days and now all the voicemails and texts to check in on him had dried up and he was alone in the apartment staring at the scorched chair, the caricatures of the two of them drawn by her brother on the wall, and her shoes.

"She's dead."

And then he passed out.

"Wake up, goofy."

Huh? Am I dreaming? That sounds like

There she was. Standing there. She was alive. She wasn't melted. She was holding onto her shoes, her bare feet sliding across the Persian rug her grandfather used to own.

"You're ... you're dead?"

"What? I sure don't feel dead. Anyway, I'm taking these. Is that OK? You don't need these shoes, right? Want some coffee?"

Like the shot of Martin Balsam falling down the stairs backwards from Psycho, the room had a sudden queasy feel about it. He couldn't quite stand up because his legs had become inert stumps that he could see but not operate.

She looked like her. She moved like her. She laughed like her. She smelled like her. His wife was somehow standing in the kitchen pouring non-dairy creamer in his Las Vegas mug (the one she'd bought him when they first arrived to live here).

"Are you my wife?" he asked in an almost inaudible croak.

She giggled. "No, silly. I'm just here to grab a few things and get out of your hair. Is it OK with you if I take this saucepan? I really love this saucepan."

What the fuck is happening?

He forced himself to stand. He slapped himself twice hard. He stumbled into the kitchen and leaned himself up against the fridge. 

"You're not my wife?"

"Of course not. She's dead. You said so so it has to be true. Like I say, just here to gather up some things and I'll leave you alone. I think grieving is best done alone, don't you?"

She wandered past him and he could smell his wife's shampoo in her hair. His knees buckled and he deflated like a Tijuana breast implant.

From the floor, he could hear her humming just like his wife used to. From the bedroom she called out "Can I take the quilt her mother made for you guys or do you want it?"

"I want the quilt..."

Her head popped around the door frame. "What did you say?"

"I want the quilt."

"Aw. Really? Alright. I guess I can't have everything I want."

For the following two hours he watched this creature who was and was not his deceased wife pack things up in boxes, making the same sort of terrible dad jokes his wife loved, and commenting on items she either wanted or thought should stay with him.

She washed her hands at the kitchen sink.

"Welp, buddy boy, I think I have everything I can carry. I will now," and she performed a little curtsey, "bid you farewell."

As the door shut behind he began sobbing with such violence that it felt like he dislocated one of his ribs. She’d left the shoes.