Long Night

The light above the chipped dining room table flickers. The chair beneath her groans, and its old wood digs into her ankles. The pillow on the seat shifts every so often, the loose nail of her pinky toe catching on something sticky. She shifts, sitting back on her heels, knees pushed up to her chin. Nail beds bitten to blood press onto the hardwood tabletop.  

A click, shuffle, roll.  

The small bronze contraption her brother had whipped out from deep within his temporary room in the house was fascinating. Pull the rod down, create a divot, fill it, and roll. The small tube would pop out of the bottom. Perfectly slim, long, and added to the small pile.  

The smell of herbs, kept in a small bowl to the man’s left, burns her nose. She scrunches her face, thick eyebrows– too thick for a girl so young– pulled to the center of her face. The scent mingles with the old, dusty smell of the house, and what remains of the pasta they had for dinner. Somewhere in her mind, she thinks she’s still hungry.  

“Can I try?” She asks, after a moment of hesitation.  

“Nah,” It’s mechanical at this point. He only fumbles a bit when he overfills the trough, crumpled leaves spilling onto the surface of the table.  

She wondered what it was like for his body to go up in flames. It was better than rotting, she thought at that moment. Along the length of the urn were two hands clasped in prayer, the same as the large tattoo on his chest. A reminder of something so cripplingly fleeting as tattoos on a dead man. She ached to roll his ashes in that same mechanism, to pack them into that bronze prison was near unbearable. To light it and watch the smoke rise to the ceiling. 

The ghost in the room downstairs snores, and she’s reminded he’s still there.  

Click, shuffle, roll. 

Her eyes trail down to his heavily tattooed arm, strained from the effort of moving all too much. The lengthy scar that tore tattoos in half up the length of his forearm. Something in the kitchen clicks. Outside, a neighbor’s dog howls, and crickets sing their final song of the summer. “Why do you do it?” She asks, quietly.  

No answer.  

The night hums a mournful song, and another day has passed.

About the Author

Olive Hannigan is a senior Arts and Global Change major at Arcadia University. She enjoys writing speculative fiction and has recently delved into poetry, and hopes to bring her long-abandoned Tumblr blog back to life. When she's not writing, she's drawing fanart of her favorite games/shows, playing dress-up, or wrangling her niece and many nephews.