“You know what I’ve been thinking about lately?” she asked. “Picturing?”

Taylor leaned over, put elbows on the bed. “Tell me,” he said.

“I keep seeing this thing.” She took a breath. “You know how in cartoons, or like in a movie sometimes, you know how they fade out? Like everything goes dark, in a circle? Like, that’s how a scene ends, or that’s how there’s this big change and it ends like that. You know what I mean? You’ve seen it, right?”

He wasn’t sure. What was he supposed to picture?

“You know, like in cartoons. When they end. It’s almost like when water is going down the drain. Swirling. Like that’s all folks.”

He got it. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah, I remember. I get it.”

She paused and stretched, used her hands to push herself up and now she was sitting up in bed for the first time since her brother arrived. “I see it and …” Another pause. “That’s what I see when I think about, you know, how it ends. That’s how it could be.”

Taylor’s face went slack. “Vanessa …”

“Okay, wait a minute,” she said. She was composed. Right then, sitting up, she was composed and confident and her brother saw for the first time since arriving – maybe for the first time in how long – his little sister was composed. She was in the know. Aware. She got it. His little sister, who had sucked her thumb and stared at him under a card table draped with a bedsheet. It struck him – a bolt out of the blue – that she was way ahead of him. She was ahead of the entire family, and now he felt embarrassed and insufficient and ashamed and guilty, and why hadn’t he known? How could he have not known? It had been three years! Three years! Taylor had been alive and well and the family had been alive and well and his sister, the baby of the family, had been marking time and navigating and encountering and suffering and hadn’t they known? Hadn’t they the decency to know that? He twisted his lips and furrowed his brow and was afraid to make eye contact. How long had she known?

“That’s what I want to talk about,” she said.

Taylor nodded, buying time. He glanced at her to see her pale and resolute. His sister was looking at him, looking right into his eyes, no fear. Poise in her eyes. She talked and he listened, and she said she was fading, she knew it and was vague about all the details because the details were so vague, and somehow, she’d become comfortable and at peace with the vagueness. And there was disintegration to consider. She said disintegration was going to happen. She brought that up. Used that word. Disintegration. Why would she say that?

“You know,” she said, “the body disintegrates. It should.” She waited for her brother to take that in. “Here’s something I haven’t told anyone yet.” She stopped, raised her eyebrows, tilted her head until her brother said “okay.”

“We talk in here, you know,” she said. She raised a hand, like she was pointing out patient after patient. She was not the only patient looking beyond and wondering and talking about the beyond. “We read stuff. Everybody does. We talk. And I’ve been reading – somebody showed me this – I’ve been reading about natural burial. You know what that means?” A quick pause. “No casket. Nothing.” She paused. A shudder ran across her shoulders. “That’s what I want.”

Taylor Hoffman did not know what to say. He was not sure about what not to say.

“You mad?”

Lips clamp down, eyelids droop. He inhaled quickly. “Vanessa,” he said, “come on. I’m not sure about that and …” He wasn’t sure of what words to put together. He was stumped and uncomfortable.

“It’s okay,” she said. “So now you’ve heard about the fading out thing, right? You know, something fades out and something fades in. It’s gotta be like that, right?” She seemed relaxed and her brother was unsure about what he was feeling. What was Vanessa feeling? It didn’t look to be discomfort. It certainly wasn’t a common household emotion. What it was, was far ahead. Far ahead of common emotions. She was living with uncommon emotions. Had these emotions just shown up? That’s what Taylor was wondering. Or had she been dragging them around … for how long? Were they new? This thought frightened him: were they right on time?

“And now you know about natural burial, right? Me in the dirt. And get this. I want to be buried face down, arms out, like I’m flying.”

When Taylor looked at her, he saw someone new. Wasn’t she his little sister? Wasn’t she a Hoffman? Hadn’t they been raised together and grown up together and shared seventeen years together?

“So,” she said, and when he looked at her he felt like he was crumbling, and the look in his sister’s eyes said she saw he was crumbling, so she raised one arm, an invitation, and he hitched one hip up onto the bed and laid down, facing away from her, her arm around him, and he thought God, how is it she comforts me? How can that be right?

“So now,” she said, “we talk about the afterlife. And I’m not excited. That’s the truth. I’m not, like, in a hurry, I swear. But I have some ideas here and I want to run them by you and so, promise me, just listen, okay?” She looked at the back of her brother’s head and she was holding onto one of his arms for dear life. “Nod if you get it,” she said, “and stop me when I’m not making any sense, okay? It’s not like this is completely thought out, but I’ve been thinking about this a lot.” She stopped, she took a breath and exhaled, and he could feel her warm breath on his neck. “You ready?” she asked.

He nodded.

About the Author:

Victor Kreuiter’s stories have appeared in EQMM, Halfway Down The Stairs, Bewildering Stories, Tough, Frontier Tales, Del Sol SFF Review, Literally Stories, and other online and print publications.