[Pride 2023 Short Story] Deadnames

“Dorothy Wilson, 83 passed away in her sleep on Sunday evening surrounded by loved ones after a long fought battle with Alzheimer’s.

She is survived by her Daughter and Granddaughter.
A cremation and memorial service will be held at Schemers Final Rest Crematorium on December 24th.
All welcome.”

Excerpt from the Saskatoon Chronicler obituaries.
December 20th 1994.

Skara Wilson sat in her Grandmother's kitchen which, she supposed, was now her mother's kitchen. She put the obituary section down on the doily-strewn surface of the coffee table and craned her neck upwards; Red eyes meeting with a collection of ornamental trolls which stood in some semblance of rank along the top of the old china cupboard.

Her Mother -  Jennifer Wilson stood in silent vigil over the kettle, waiting for a whistle as she gazed into the ostensibly white cups. 

Their yellowed innards reminded her of her mother's eyes.

“Obituary’s nice. Simple and heartfelt and to the point. Thanks for saving it for me. Thanks for mentioning me too, I guess.”

“Yeah, I didn’t write it. They have a guy, he just asked some simple questions. Bart Mc-something. Went to your school, apparently. He sounded a little confused when I mentioned you, but I guess he isn’t in the habit of asking too many questions of those in mourning. If he was, I figure he would be likely to raise some ire and find himself writing new job applications…”

“Yeah, I remember Bart. He was a nerd, but nice. Nicer than most.”

Jennifer sighed, the kettle screamed for her.

She turned off the stove and carefully poured boiling water into her dead mother's eyes one at a time.

The bags within wept until both mugs were filled with strong tea.

Jennifer found herself tutting and asking herself what the teabags had to weep about.

Grabbing the handles of both mugs so as to not burn her fingers on the ceramic, she made her way across the small kitchen and sat at the table across from her daughter.

“So I figure you’ll be headin’ out, right? It’s a long way back to Alberta.”

Skara hesitated for a moment.

“Yeah, it’s a little late though, I figured I would stay on the couch down here if it's all the same to you.
I’d feel a little strange sleeping in Mee-Maws bed.”

“Do as you like, it’s as much my house as it is yours.”

“You know I could help with the packing and stuff tomorrow if you wanted?”

“No, no. I got the removal guys coming first thing to take a bunch of stuff to the Goodwill. Couches, maybe this old table too. I’ll hang on to the china cupboard and the trolls. Besides… that moving and lifting is a man’s work”

Skara slouched, eyeballing the teacup.

“Well that’s pretty sexist Mom, but OK.”

“Don’t give me that sexist BS, Chr-” she stifled herself, looking at the crucifix on the wall above the stove; The Bronze messiah adorning it’s veneer somehow looking more tired and bereft than usual.

She took another deep breath.

It felt more exaggerated this time. Less genuine and more for the benefit of her daughter.

“I’m not sexist Skara, I just want you out of here so I can get back to some sense of normality.”

“Sure thing. I’ll be gone first thing in the morning.”

Skara wasn’t going to let her mother push her buttons.

Not today.

Not when she had promised herself and her dead grandmother that she would stay calm and in control.

Above all else, it was Christmas eve, which still meant something to her grandmother (or at very least it had when she was able to convey such sentiments), even if it meant very little to her.

Desperate to move the conversation in a direction, any direction, that could de-escalate the mounting tension which filled the room, Skara drudged up something that she was surprised to  find she had retained given how little mind she paid upon its first utterance.

“You know, I heard one of the guys at Schemer’s complain to the boss man about how the new cremulator was acting up. What do you suppose that means?”

“Well there certainly wasn’t a problem with the cremation itself. There’s a trail of black smoke emanatin’ from Schemer’s chimney can attest to that.”

The coldness in Jennifer’s tone wasn’t new to Skara, but she was a little taken aback to hear it in reference to her grandmother.

Jennifer Wilson stood up. She straightened her legs and the cold linoleum shrieked in agony as the chair scraped backwards across its cold flesh. She hadn’t touched her tea.

“When are they bringing over the remains?”

“Tomorrow evening they say. I’ll put her up next to her trolls like she asked, at least until I sell the place. Then I’ll need to figure out how to get that china cupboard across town.

I think I’ll sleep now. Get a jump start in the morning.”

Jennifer poured the contents of her cup down the sink, and found herself hypnotized for a half second by the swirling. Skara’s question broke the trance.

“Hey Mom...Do you think it was right to lie to Mee-Maw when she got confused? Like, do you think it was actually easier for her when we would tell her Paw-Paw would be home soon and the like? I’ve been feeling like it was maybe kind of, sort of…for us... Like last year when - ”

“You didn’t live with her. She would forget anything you did tell her after five minutes on a good day. I couldn’t break her heart every five minutes. Not my Mother. I know how that feels.”

It was around 4am and still dark when Skara heard the crunching from her makeshift sofa-cum-bed in the lounge.

She had been drifting in and out of consciousness for the last few hours; Each attempt to cast off into the darkness stolen by the tugging of flesh against the transparent plastic covering which sought to keep the vessel she rode pristine.

The noise had been a deal breaker.

Throwing her weight sideways on the old, plastic covered floral couch, Skara sat upright found the sense of bemusement she had felt upon first hearing the sound had begun to give way to a slightly more gnawing sense of fear.

Crack, Crunch, Crack, Crunch.

Extremities creaked and little pockets of air popped in Skara’s joints as she raised herself to her feet, following the source of the sound on aching legs to the front door.

Crack, Crunch, Crack, Crunch, Crack, Crunch, Cough?

“What the fu-”

Her eyes widened a little as she gazed at the old oak door.

It looked as it always had.

Old, familiar and strong despite the constant strain of holding in a thousand memories.

The door looked the same. There was no disputing that, but Skara had spotted something which caused her pupils to open a little further in sheer disbelief.

Skara Wilson noticed that through the gaps where the old wooden sentinel met with the frame, there was an odd greenish light; An unnatural, somewhat neon hew that slipped through the slivers and pooled around the dusty welcome mat.

There was a low hum too, like the sound of a generator in the distance.

Then she heard the noises again, only louder now.

Crack, Crunch, Crack, Crunch, Crack, Crunch, Cough Cough Cough.

The light shone brighter, pouring in thick like kryptonite cream and casting the room with its luminescence.

It even appeared to shine through the heavy old door itself. Skara was bathed in it now, and the fuzz of the once low hum clung to her ears.

She should have been scared, as she had been only a minute ago.

Hell, she knew in her heart that she should have been downright terrified, especially as the handle began to turn, but Skara was sedate.

Rather than panicking, Skara’s internal monologue asked itself if she was dreaming.

Slowly the door swung open, further drenching Skara and the foyer in the viscous light which seemed to coat to everything it touched, sapping any natural coloration and transforming the contents of the room to a uniform glow-stick green.

Skara blinked to check her eyes were working as a silhouette entered the doorframe.

It didn’t take up all that much space, nor did it block all that much light.

In fact, it seemed that just like the door, the ominous emerald shine was able to push itself through the boundaries of that which blocked it.

The light shone through some parts with greater intensity than it did through others.

Once her eyes adjusted, Skara was able to discern the shape: Shambling through the portal and into the home was a blackened and broken skeleton.

Perhaps not an whole skeleton, but the remains of one that had clearly been through the ringer.

It’s ribs were caved-in all along the right side, and a good two thirds of the left femur had been turned to dust. The entire left portion of the jawbone was nowhere in sight.

Each element floated in place to retain a semblance of humanoid shape.

It was as if the whole shambling thing was suspended on some invisible wire like a museum piece, although its macabre form was perhaps more suited to a roadside carnival. 

The skeleton limped closer as its silhouette waxed and waned in the pervasive supernatural glow.

If she hadn’t already (she had), Skara knew then that by all rights she should be terrified beyond comprehension at this point, but she wasn’t.

Not even a little.

She knew somehow, deep down in her gut, that she was in no danger.
She knew somehow, deep down in her gut that this thing, this abominable shuffling mass of black bones and ash was her Mee-Maw.

What remained of the ghoul’s jaw creaked like an old cellar as words pushed out from lungs which were no longer there.

“What the hell are you doing in myyyyy kiiiitchen? Where is Roy?”

The voice was gravel and dirt, but it was unmistakably Mee-Maw’s.

“Mee-Maw! It’s Me, Mee-Maw! It’s Skara!”

“Skar-a? I don’t know a Skar-AGH!”

Mee-Maw’s skeleton coughed like it had so many times on it’s way to the house, but this time a chunk of knucklebone came shooting out of where once there was a mouth.

It flew towards Skara, before being sucked back by an invisible force and nestling itself in a gap between Mee-Maw’s left index finger and rest of the bones which comprised her hand.

“There…That’s much better.” Croaked the skeleton. “Now…Where are Jennifer and my little Christopher?
And where *COUGH* is R...Rrrr...Roy?”

Skara didn’t know how to answer any of it.
She knew the facts, but there was a difference between knowing the fate of your grandfather, and relaying said fate to the phantasmic apparition of his wife.

The calm she had felt as the glow had enveloped her was washed away in an instant upon hearing the question; Crushed under a shattering wave of empathy and a deep sadness.

“Mee-Maw...Paw-Paw is dead…And....”

Feeling the familiar knife-twinge of guilt that she had felt every time she had lied to her ailing grandmother, Skara opted for absolute candor.

“Uh...So are you.”

The skeleton’s hollow sockets studied the young woman.
It’s not a thing she could ever explain (they were unmoving hollows of bone, after all), but to Skara they conveyed an inquisitiveness.

“Me-e-Maaaaaw? I ain’t your Mee-Maw, my daughter only ha-*COUGH*-d one son. Chr-is is 10.”

“I’m sorry Mee-Maw, but it’s true. You kind of had like, dementia and stuff. Paw-Paw died when I was 14”

Skara’s eyes welled up.
Her tears seemed luminous in the fortean glow.

“Dementia? Tha- Excuse me…”

Once more, and in defiance of the whole having no lungs or esophagus or tongue thing, Mee-Maw raised bony fingers to bare teeth and spluttered out a booming cough which filled the room with a dusting of femur.
The particles danced in the air for a moment before flocking to just beneath her left hip.

“Sorry...Dementia?”

“Alzheimer’s actually, I think, if that’s even different…”

“I...I think I remember that. Roy had a heart attack and...Wait, no! I don’t have a granddaughter and I won’t accept these falsehoods! This is a house of faith!”

Mee-Maw’s skeleton furrowed brows it didn’t have.

The green glow turned a shade darker as she descended into a confusion and rage that had become all too frequent as her illness had worsened.
The hum became more grating, the shrill scrape of steel on steel.

“WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER?! WHERE IS MY GRANDSON!”

“Well your daughter is upstairs Mee-Maw, and your Grandson...Well your Grandson wasn’t really ever your Grandson...they were...I mean I was...I don’t know if maybe when I was-”

All at once, the rage subsided, and the green glow began to lighten.
The hum calmed itself too.

“Stop. I remember. You are my Granddaughter. Little Christopher became Skara didn’t they?”

“They...I mean I don’t know if I was ever…but yeah…I did.”

“You were always Skara really, weren’t you?”

“Not if you ask my mother.”

“Ach she was always dumb. I love her but she had more of Roy’s old world stubbornness in her than any part of me, but you Skara…You have my eyes and my heart.”

Skara’s face was now sodden. Tears twinkled like gemstones as they ran down her visage in a torrent.

“Alzheimer’s eh? I know that’s supposed to be a real pain in the butt, right?”

“Mom took good care of you, and she never complained.”

“See? Dumb!”

The two chuckled.

“I suppose I forgot I was dead then, huh?”

“Either that or Schemer’s faulty cremulator was faulty in a way that nobody could have predicted.”

The two chuckled again, this time a little more somber.

“I am proud of you, Skara. And you will always be my Granddaughter. Please tell your mother I love her too, but she needs to love her daughter…”

Skara rushed forward into the skeletal arms of the only person in her family who truly accepted and loved her. 

The real her.

Dorothy Wilson wrapped her dusty old bones around her granddaughter as tightly as she could, until she didn’t.

She was gone, along with the green light, and as the sun began to crest over the pine trees out front, Skara Wilson found herself smiling and hugging air, too enraptured to realize that another figure had approached the house.

“Uh ma’am. I know it’s a little early, but we are here for the removal. Are...are you OK?”