Sunday Whatever: A Ghostly Couple by Dwyer Alys Tarantino

This is one of those pieces that we wanted to publish but were not sure where it would fit and so it is a Sunday Special and lovely Dwyer was kind enough to write an introductory piece as an enhancement to the story. Enjoy:

A Ghostly Couple by Dwyer Alys Tarantino

This flash fiction is a response, or companion piece, if you will, to Virginia Woolf’s “A Haunted House,” originally published in 1921, which remains one of the most famous works of early flash fiction. I wrote it from my personal point of view, in an attempt to make sense of a deeply labyrinthine and profound narrative by deconstructing it. The opening sentence is based on Woolf’s own words she used to describe female authors in the 19th century: “It is hardly writing, it is more like screaming.”

***

Waking, I cry, “It is more like screaming than it is writing!” They do not regard me, they carry on. A finger to one’s lips. “Quiet, or you’ll stir them.” “We wouldn’t want them to be in distress,” he hisses, her mouth pursed. “You MUST heed me!” I beg. “I am as dead as you, but you must listen or it will persist! I need to tell a story. I will tell yours.”

“She sees that which one cannot.” It was humorous. But, oh no: “She is also writing! Miracle of miracles!” A pencil scratch in Fitzgerald. An annotation in the margain. Rainbows of notes. Their life in fragmentary ink.

Death came for them hundreds of years before me. “Careful, you’ll blow that light in.” She stammered then smirked, smoothed her hands as if sanding them. “Let her rest, she’s not accustomed yet.”

Time spins in a circle that the house eats. An endless snake. “Here,” a gracious feminine hand, the palm as soft as butter. “Come with me to see the rooms, the loft, the garden,” where I find scattered pages of my insanity. Threats to my life. Do not write their story. Tell your own.

“You must help me,” I plead with them. “I am dead as well as you! You are a ghostly couple and you will never die.”

“Hush, girl. We see nothing. We need hear nothing but the pulse of this house. A heart about to burst. Continue with your drivel.”

I was a ghost with a pen. They were ghosts still in love with love itself–finding themselves in this house, the beating of its heart, its treasure locked away in a recess of one of their minds. “I see,” I said. “You have found each other here, once again.” Roses adorn the bedrooms where yellow stems bleach the water gray. Testaments to their bond. Sunlight falls in increments and by degrees; here, it will light his face, there, it casts a shadow of a spell across hers. I seek the sun, each beam a fire in my bosom of false breathing, careless to the living. I need to be beneath the grass, close to the wood chips, underneath the thick air. But I have to write. Still, I have to write.

“I shall tell the story of both of you,” I tell them once more. Words fall on deaf ears and occupied minds. Late sun has entered the house. It clicks, reverberates. The house is the only thing living. Unless I can beat time, providing I can pick up the pen.

  She decompresses and knits. A knotted scarf. Socks for him. He meanders upon the grass, placing wooden birds that catch and hold the wind. Love found them, brought them to life while alive. Was it my love for life that brought me to them when dead? Death found me in a foreign atmosphere, readying my gall to speak in pages. No living being in the home was visible to my eye; they lived solitary, decades passing, never accustomed or wise to the empty walls, unaware they were alone but among others that merely sensed what was out of place. Doors lead to rooms that lead to doors, floors flat and smooth, discarded, as dead as us. Walls shade only yellow. The stink of decay lies dormant, minacious.

“I beg of you; several words to fill short pages. Then I shall be gone.”

  “Hush!” “You aim to wake them!”

“We live moment to moment, there is nothing to tell. No words to discuss.”

“Finish your own tale, girl.”

“Of my own tale I have none.”

Pleased, she smiles. Agitated, he growls and she puts a hand to his that soothes them both. Apples, so many amber, beneath them, around them, behind and over here. It is fall. His crows are hungry but not ready to eat.

I open my mouth, but–”Hush–do not wake them! They sleep so peacefully among us.”

“There is no one here,” I declare.

Watching over those only they see, their candle extinguishes. It turns drastically into evening so fast. She watches him rise, he watches her watch; I have seen love, at last. Presently, they pause. There is no epilogue for what they will forever search. They have found each other here again. Long years past, forever ahead. No end in sight to their search. Reasoning, impossible.

“Ssh, girl. Keep quiet your month and you are safe here. Here is your treasure, this house, as is ours. Not your words.” She pounds her chest with a clenched fist. “We will never end. Stay with us and neither will you.” The cry of things dim and too early to be known.

Dwyer Alys Tarantino