The Afterlife of Mal Caldera by Nadi Reed Perez EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: Nadi Reed Perez
- Language: English
- Genre: LGBTQ
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 4.6 MB
- Price: Free
It didn’t bother me much, being dead. I hadn’t really been living anyway. At
least now I’d never have to do the dishes in the sink, or worry about the
bills piled on the table, or nurse any guilt about staying in every night.
Nothing urged me to get out of bed anymore. It felt like I’d been rehearsing
for this a long time—how to be a ghost.
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But I couldn’t haunt my apartment forever. No doubt it would be back
on the market soon, despite being cramped and badly lit, the walls always
thumping with aggressive bass, often accompanied by the banshee wail of
sirens. My presence would be easy to clear out: just secondhand furniture,
piles of laundry both dirty and clean, empty bottles of whiskey and packs of
cigs. No decorations, like I’d barely moved in. I hadn’t gotten around to
buying plants, or finding art that spoke to me, or making enough friends to
showcase on the fridge.
I could linger for however long the place remained unoccupied. But
after that, I didn’t really want company. If the next tenant walked around
naked, or hosted lots of overnight guests, or brought a bedmate along with
them, I didn’t want to see it—well, unless they were hot. I had to wonder
how many ghosts had once ogled me in the shower, or on the toilet, or
getting busy. I liked to think they’d paid me the same respect I’d give
anybody now, not looking.
If I’d been successful enough to afford a house in life, I could’ve stayed
longer. Maybe forever, if I didn’t mind someone moving in eventually.There
would’ve been way more room, enough for me and them. I could’ve kept to
an attic or basement if I wanted privacy, coming out to wander the halls at
night.Then again, if I’d been better off,I might not have died so young.
It might’ve been days since it happened. I had no way to keep track, and
nothing to do to pass the time, since I couldn’t touch anything. I failed to
make the curtains float, or knock the unopened mail off the coffee table, or
force the lights to flicker. It felt like weeks already, but it couldn’t have been
that long, because someone ought to have shown up for my things by now.
The cops had probably found my purse on the scene, used my driver’s
license to identify the body. From there, they could look up my birth
certificate to find my next of kin. They’d have no way of knowing my
mother and I hadn’t spoken in years, that she shouldn’t have been the first to
find out.
I wondered how it went down. If they’d woken her in the middle of the
night and, once again inconvenienced by my existence, she’d asked what I’d
gone and done this time. It didn’t hurt much. Just a quick sting, like a
muscle twinge, an accidental regression to my young and tender self, before
I remembered and calloused up again.I’d been dead to her for years, anyway.
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