Our SG Fiction newsletter features an original short story from a different author around the world. It’s part of our set of expanded offerings. At least once a month, you’ll receive an original short story from a different part of the world, today’s selection is by CC Molaison from our New Orleans guide.
SG Fiction is for paid subscribers—thank you for your support! If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, what are you waiting for? Join today:
How to Haunt
By CC Molaison
STOP #8237
HARRAH’S CASINO
The sky’s behaving badly, threatening and gray. The rusted streetcar looms on the tracks at my stop on the next block a moment longer, then flies on without me. I lean against a knobbed and coarse palm tree. A proud young man strides across the tracks, shirtless and cradling a large, booming speaker in the nook of his arm. I’ve been too old and too large to chase buses and streetcars for half my life now. I walk with slow, heavy steps.
I spend every day at my bar, from open to close. Today, though, Mary ushered me out of my own bar, telling me I was too emotional. She said, in her youthful language, that I was “bringing the vibe down.” That’s what dive bars are for, I said: unhappiness. Not this one, she replied. Her clothing hugged the creases of her heavy body, soaking wet from the morning rain. The glitter under her eyes glistened with water and light. She smiled and told me I was acting like her family on the holidays. Always crying, she said in her thick Filipino accent.
In 10 minutes the sky will open again, and I will be surrounded by a muddy basin of my own reflection. Natural to fall into a meditative state when God rains mirrors. I put my hands on my knees, roll up my pants and take my seat in the glass bus stop. I place a personal wager on if the rain or the streetcar will come first. Rain, I’ll finally pay my respects to Hallie’s grave. Streetcar, I’ll lay my body out in my back yard and let the storm crash over me.
Streetcar’s here. I emerge from under the bus stop’s roof, and soft raindrops fall on my shoulder. Mary knows today is the anniversary of Hallie’s death; five years now, I believe. I’ve never been one to hide my feelings, from myself least of all.
“How you doing,” the driver says to me. He has deep set wrinkles along his forehead.
“How you doing,” I say, dropping my fare into the collection machine.
The car is empty aside from an old white man sleeping in the handicapped row. The man uses his backpack as a pillow and drapes his arm across his face when my footsteps cross him. I take my seat past the second set of doors. A moment passes, and the car rumbles forward.
