Some Stick Around — Part Three

The Conclusion of the Three Part Supernatural Short Story

The dramaticized Radio play.

Their preparation was quick and dirty. In the dimly lit kitchen, shielded from Eugene’s inquisitive gaze, Greg affixed photos and symbols to the reverse side of the worn Ouija board. He pulled out his wallet and slipped a family photo into the last spot, casting a slightly peevish glance at Elena as he did.

Elena simply smiled. “I’ve never criticized you for holding on, Greg. You’ve imposed that on yourself.”

“Yeah…” Greg muttered and glanced away. “That I did.”

Elena shifted topics, tapping the skull on the board. “Are we turning him into a pirate?”

“No,” Greg replied, shaking his head. “It’s a symbol of death Eugene might recognize.”

“It’s a little blunt.”

“Blunt is good. We need to be blunt. Parents often use euphemisms to soften the blow, but they just confuse things.”

“Like crossing a bridge?” Elena asked softly, her eyes fixed on the skull.

Greg grimaced and nodded. “Exactly like that.”

The spoon in Odetta’s sugar caddy rattled as a rumbling vibrated through the walls.

“Shit, they’re here,” Elena exclaimed, darting out of the room. For a brief moment, she caught Eugene excitedly standing on the coffee table, pointing at the flatbed truck carrying a bulldozer. She turned on her ‘calm mom voice’ and said, “Yes, it’s just like your dozer,” before turning to Greg and hissing, “Stall them.”

“With what, El? Free group therapy?” Greg asked, worriedly looking at the demolition crew through the peephole.

Elena handed Greg his wallet and shoved him out the door before he could protest. “You’re a white guy with business cards. Act like it.”

She watched through the window as he approached the crew, shook hands, and presented his business card. He pointed toward the window, and Elena quickly disappeared as workers looked in her direction. Then they all laughed a bawdy boy’s laugh, and Elena could only assume whatever was said started with “Women” and ended with “You know how it is.”

Greg returned, looking bewildered that it worked. “I told them my patient was inside having a mental health crisis,” he explained, running a hand through his hair, “It bought us maybe a couple of hours.”

“Then we need to get started,” Elena said, locking and deadbolting the door.

In the living room, Greg sat in the circle of toys. He nodded to the Tonka Bulldozer moving back and forth. “I had one of those growing up. Is that your favorite?”

The old rabbit slid towards Greg. “Oh? This is your favorite. It looks like it’s been around a while, so it must be your favorite. Can you show me a red toy?” Eugene’s firetruck moved forward. “How about your newest toy?” Mateo’s tablet turned on, and Greg grinned. “His language comprehension is better than I hoped.”

Watching the crew, Elena reminded Greg, “This isn’t playtime.”

“I know,” Greg replied. “I need to assess what Eugene is capable of understanding.”

As Greg spent twenty agonizing minutes interacting with Eugene, Elena watched the men through the blinds as they chatted and smoked cigarettes. Greg’s biggest challenge wasn’t just knowing where Eugene was but also whether he was listening.

Eventually, Greg leaned back and said, “If I had to guess, his brain development is stuck around fifteen months, but he also has a century of living experience, and that seems to count for something.”

“I could have told you that,” Elena said impatiently. “We need to get started; the foreman is here, gesturing with a lot of ‘small guy energy’ — Oh, great. Now he’s heading over.”

A fist pounded on the front door, but Elena ignored it and placed the Ouija board on the floor. Covered mostly in paper to maintain Eugene’s focus, it revealed only three hand-drawn symbols: a sick baby, a skull, and a door. Greg placed the planchette on the board, and it immediately began moving. Elena gently pressed her finger down to keep it in place.

Greg took Eugene’s bunny and glanced at Elena. “This is going to seem cruel, but it’s necessary, okay?” He positioned the bunny upright and began, “Eugene, sometimes people get sick and don’t get better. Sometimes, they’re very young, but often, they’re old. Mr. Bunny here is very old, and he’s very, very sick.”

Turning to the Ouija board, he guided the planchette to the sick baby symbol. “Sick, Eugene. This means sick like Mr. Bunny is sick.” He then moved the planchette away. “What’s Mr. Bunny?”

The planchette returned to the sick child. Elena applauded, “Good job, baby!”

Greg continued, “When sick people don’t get better, they die.” He gently laid the bunny down. “When they die, they go to sleep, and they don’t wake up. It makes a lot of people sad when someone dies. I’m sad that Mr. Bunny here has died.”

Eugene began to tug on Mr. Bunny’s leg. Greg kept it in place. “I’m sorry, Eugene, but you can’t play with Mr. Bunny anymore. He died.”

Moving the planchette from the sick baby to the skull, Greg instructed, “Mr. Bunny was sick, and now Mr. Bunny has died. Now, it’s your turn, Eugene. Mr. Bunny was sick. Can you show me sick?”

The planchette moved to the sick baby. Greg swallowed hard and asked, “Then what happened to Mr. Bunny?”

The room fell silent, the weight of the moment settling on Greg and Elena’s shoulders as the planchette moved to the skull symbol. It seemed Eugene was making the connection.

The foreman banged on the door again, bellowing something about “Trespassing” and “Private property.” When they didn’t respond, he started barking at his workers, who began to unload the bulldozer.

Elena tapped the board and said, “Eugene, just focus on this.”

The power cut out, and then the soft rumbling of the furnace died as they severed the gas. Greg muttered, “We might actually need those séance candles.”

Now came the magic trick they had rehearsed in the kitchen. Elena held a dish towel between Eugene and his bunny as Greg swiftly concealed the stuffed animal in Elena’s purse. He then resumed the lesson, “Now, when people die, Eugene, they’re gone. Gone means they go somewhere and don’t come back. They’re gone.”

Elena lowered the towel. From the corner of her eye, she saw Eugene recoil, his gaze fixed on the spot where his bunny had been. He emitted a silent wail, and Elena murmured, “Oh, he did not like that, Greg.”

“Good. That’s progress,” Greg remarked, guiding the planchette across the symbols. “So, Mr. Bunny was sick, then Mr. Bunny died, which means…” He pushed the planchette to the final symbol, the door. “Mr. Bunny is now — “

Suddenly, the planchette ripped from his fingers and found itself embedded in the drywall, quivering like a dagger. They exchanged fearful glances, feeling a static charge prickling their arm hairs. Greg couldn’t tell if the faint, otherworldly ringing in the silence was real or imagined, but the neighborhood dogs were howling and barking frantically, so maybe they heard it as well.

Elena whispered, “Greg, this is…new.”

Before he could respond, a die-cast red blur hurtled at Greg’s head. He fell backward, blood trickling from a gash on his temple, while a firetruck rolled in the opposite direction.

Elena dodged a flying VHS copy of Bambi and pressed the dish towel to Greg’s wound, her hands shaking. “Eugene, no!” she snapped. “Bad, Eugene!”

The rest of the Disney Vault was chucked in their direction, two at a time. Elena pulled Greg into the entryway, seeking cover behind the wall, her heart racing in her chest.

“He’s never behaved like this before,” Elena remarked, downplaying her growing anxiety as she assessed Greg’s wound.

Greg winced, “You’re telling me a toddler has never thrown a temper tantrum before?”

A shotgun blast of Odetta’s ancient hard candy peppered the stairway, and then the crystal dish they originally sat in smashed through the living room window. Elena flinched at the noise and peeked through the front door’s peephole, her blood running cold. All of the workers were staring dumbfounded at the house. The foreman decided it was best not to bang on the door once again and retreated, quickly saying into his phone, “Yes, I would like to report an emergency.”

Elena cursed under her breath, “Greg, your mentally unstable patient has just become violent, and the police are about to get involved. We need to calm Eugene down.”

Determined to soothe the child, Elena opened her purse and pulled out the rabbit, but Greg stopped her. “He can’t have it back. Trust me.”

Elena shoved the purse into Greg’s chest and rushed into the living room, dropping to one knee. She opened her arms wide. “Oh baby, come here.”

Eugene rushed into her arms, and she embraced the empty air, swaying and comforting him, softly singing, “Skinamarink a-dink a-dink Skinamarink a-dinky-doo,” just as she had done to soothe a sniffling Mateo in the past. Two damp spots appeared on Elena’s T-shirt, baffling Greg as he tried to rationalize how they got there.

Cautiously reentering the living room, Greg pried the planchette out of the wall and seated himself. Making a show of slowly peeling away the paper covering the rest of the Ouija board, he sighed, “Oh man, I could really use some help with this.” Almost immediately, the paper began tearing itself away as Eugene revealed the photos taped around the symbols.

“Eugene, I’m sorry about Mr. Bunny. It’s always tough when the people you love are gone. Can we keep playing our game?” Greg placed the planchette back on the board, keeping his finger on it. He could already sense Eugene tugging at it. “I want you to show me mama. Can you do that?”

Releasing the planchette, Greg watched as it landed on Elena in the family photo. Elena rocked in place, her lips trembling. After all that time basking in the love of a silent child, this was the closest Eugene had come to putting a label on it. She looked off and saw the shape of Eugene stooped over the photo, his tiny finger tracing Mateo. He turned and vanished.

“What are you watching, kiddo?”

Greg and Elena looked down. Their son’s old tablet had sprung to life, playing a video.

Mateo was on the screen, his face gaunt and pale, with dark circles beneath his eyes, and an oxygen tube clinging to his nose. Greg climbed into the hospital bed with him, his eyes red, eyelashes clinging together from the tears he shed. He glanced at the tablet, forcing a smile before crossing his eyes and blowing a raspberry, a desperate attempt to coax some joy from his dying son.

Even after all these years, the sound of Mateo’s laughter pierced Greg’s soul, ripping open a wound that would never fully heal. He reached out to close the video, but Elena’s gentle touch stopped him. With a voice barely above a whisper, she said, “That’s Mateo, honey. He was our son.”

The planchette shifted to the first symbol, and Elena drew a shuddering breath, her throat constricting. “Yes. He was sick. He died, and now he’s gone.”

Greg guided the planchette to the skull and then the doorway, his hand shaking as he reinforced the cruel reality of their loss. “And —” He cleared his throat and tried again, “And who was your mama before? Can you see her on the board?”

The planchette glided toward one of the earliest photos of Odetta, prompting sighs of relief from both Greg and Elena. They exchanged a glance, allowing themselves a brief moment of hope. They were unsure how much of the past Eugene would recall, but it appeared that the woman who had nurtured him for over sixty years still held a place in his memory.

Greg leaned forward and gently asked, “Do you know what happened to Momma?”

The planchette moved to the second photo of Odetta, one of the last taken with Eugene. Greg nodded, a sad smile on his lips. “That’s correct, she grew old. Then what happened?”

Eugene directed the planchette to the doorway. Greg gently guided it back to the symbol they had chosen to represent sickness and death, retracing the sequence. “That’s right. Momma grew old, so she got sick and died. Now Momma is gone.”

Taking a chance, Greg asked, “And who was your Momma before that?”

The planchette shifted toward the photo of Elena. Greg shook his head. “No, that was your Momma afterward.” He tapped Odetta’s photo. “Who came before this Momma?”

Eugene landed on the aged photograph of Abigail. Elena smiled. “That’s right, Eugene.”

Eugene redirected the planchette back to the photo of elderly Odetta. Elena moved to intervene, but Greg signaled her to stop, and she withdrew her hand. The planchette once again moved to the sick baby symbol, then swept over to the doorway. Elena’s fingers pressed against her lips to stifle a sob. She took a stuttered breath and said, “I think… he’s getting it.”

Sirens wailed in the distance. They were running out of time. It was now or never. Greg gazed up at the ceiling as Elena had taught him, catching Eugene staring intently at the photo. He tapped the little boy in Abigail’s arms. “And who’s that, Eugene? Do you recognize him?”

Eugene looked up at Greg, his perpetual smile gone. As tires screeched to a stop outside the house, all Greg could do was hope that the look on Eugene’s face was one of self-awareness. That he was making a connection.

“That’s you, Eugene,” Greg affirmed. “Can you show us what happened to you?”

Somewhere a thousand miles away, the urgent pounding of police at the door went unheard. At that moment, the world had narrowed to Elena, Greg, and Eugene, huddled around the Ouija board as the planchette began to move. It landed on the sick child, then shifted to the skull, eliciting a sob from Elena. “That’s right, baby,” she choked out. “A long time ago, you got sick, and you died, but you’re not gone. You stuck around.”

Eugene absorbed this information, then turned back to the board, reaching out tentatively. Just as the planchette began to shift, a sharp crack broke the spell as the police smashed through the door with a pry bar.

They stormed in, and Greg stood, attempting to intervene. He meant to say, “Everything is under control. I’m a mental health professional,” and brandish his business card for legitimacy. It had worked once before. But all the officers saw was a man with blood on his shirt, near a sobbing woman, turning towards them and reaching for something in his back pocket. In a heartbeat, they were on him, slamming him to the ground with ruthless efficiency.

“No, no, no! We’re so close, please!” Elena pleaded, her gaze shifting to the empty space where Eugene had been. An officer shoved her down, twisting her arms behind her back with brutal force. She cried out to the frightened little boy she could almost see, her voice breaking, “Go, Eugene, go! You can’t stay here anymore!”

Fueled by panic and desperation, she wrenched one arm free and seized the planchette, slamming it onto the symbol of the door. “Go, Eugene. Please, baby. You need to go!”

She repeated the plea over and over as they hauled her to her feet, dragging her from the house, her body writhing against their unforgiving grip.

They forced her into the back of a cruiser, and her pleas and screams only grew more frantic and hysterical. They slammed the door shut, and her panic became muffled and unintelligible. Through the window, her eyes remained locked on the bulldozer as it roared to life, belching the black smoke of a funeral pyre for the only home Eugene had ever known.

Greg managed to maintain his composure and hold his ground as he tried to reason with the police. As they questioned him and rifled through Elena’s purse and his wallet, he stuck with the fabricated story of counseling his mentally unstable patient because it aligned with the narrative the police were already working with. It fits perfectly with the image of the mentally unstable woman in the back of their car, raving that they were going to kill some invisible boy. However, his composure shattered when the bulldozer lurched toward the house. Still handcuffed, the officers held him back as he desperately screamed for the crew to stop. His cries went unheard, drowned out by the diesel roar of progress. There was a house to demolish and a timetable to keep.

It turns out that, in moments of intense stress, Eugene could be seen just fine. It’s why Greg saw the child when he feared he was too late to stop Elena from ending it all, and why Elena saw Eugene now, standing helplessly in the open doorway as the bulldozer bore down on him. Elena let out a piercing shriek and threw herself against the door of the police cruiser, again and again, ignoring the sickening crack and searing pain that exploded through her shoulder.

Greg groaned in horror as he recognized the expression carved into Elena’s face — it was the same gut-wrenching look she wore when their son’s EKG flatlined, and their world collapsed around them. Oh God, no, it’s happening again. He struggled harder to break free from the Officers holding him back.

The bulldozer’s blade smashed through the banister, its treads ripping up the porch planks and crushing them underfoot. The last image that burned into Elena’s mind was of Eugene, looking at her — a frightened, innocent child taking a tentative step out of the front door, reaching out for his Momma to give him a hug and tell him it would be alright. His black eyes were wide with fear and confusion. Then, the machine plowed into Eugene, tearing a gaping hole through the entryway. It pulled back, leaving only the carnage of splintered wood and crumbled drywall in its wake.

Elena let out a drooling, anguished wail as she collapsed against the car door, feeling the heart her little boy put back together shatter into a million pieces.

Eugene was gone.

---

Elena lay in the hospital bed, her arm cradled in a sling, her despair seeping through the haze of Benzodiazepine. Sometimes, Greg sat by her side, offering silent support as he gently held her hand. Other times, he wept alongside her, sharing in the grief of losing a child, but amidst the fog of medication, Elena couldn’t discern which one. The drugs made her feel like she was lost in a memory, and everything was already said and done.

Occasionally, doctors hovered around, probing her with questions about Eugene, attempting to discern the right cocktail of antipsychotics to prescribe. Elena remained silent, losing herself in the labyrinth of her own misery. Then, seventy-two hours later, someone stamped a form, and she was wheeled out of the hospital.

In the car, Greg did his best to fill the heavy silence, mentioning how he had replaced the missing items in her apartment without delving into the painful reasons behind their absence. As he rambled on about the deal he had found for a new TV, Elena stopped him with a soft plea.

“Greg,” she croaked, trembling, “I need to go back.”

Greg swallowed hard and glanced over at Elena. “He’s not there, El. I checked.”

“Just… Please.”

With a solemn nod, Greg turned the car around.

Odetta’s house was a pile of rubble beside an overflowing roll-off dumpster. Greg stared down at the dented firetruck, silently wishing it to move. Elena called out for Eugene, her voice raw and echoing across the emptied lot. A flicker of hope had burned that Eugene might’ve been hiding in the rubble all this time, waiting for a familiar voice to draw him out, but as time passed, the silence grew deafening, and that hope within her died. Her cries grew hoarse as the weight bore down; Eugene was truly gone. Greg tenderly guided her back to the car, holding her close as she wept for the boy who wasn’t there and would forever remain that way.

Greg kept driving, taking the occasional concerned glance in her direction. Eventually, he broke the silence, “We operated under the assumption that Eugene didn’t know he had passed, but the truth is, we never really understood how he worked. Maybe if we had more time, something amazing would’ve happened. The clouds would part, and some holy light would descend from the heavens, complete with a freakin’ angelic choir and everything.”

“Greg, stop,” Elena said distantly.

“Hold on. Just hear me out,” Greg persisted, unsure if he was making a point or digging his own grave. “You know what I think? I think it just happened, and we missed it. He simply realized he was dead and disappeared into the ether. It was never going to be grand. Or maybe it was that house that kept him here. You saw him finally step out the front door — he crossed the threshold. Maybe that was all he needed to do.” He forced a chuckle, “It was probably dumb luck on our part that we chose the door as the symbol.”

Elena just shook her head. “He’s still gone,” She turned her gaze to the uniform rows of boxy houses passing by. More conquered land by those intent on tearing down neighborhoods to build ‘communities’ where no one knows their neighbor’s name. Maybe that was why the dead never stuck around; there was nothing left to stick onto.

Elena’s apartment had never felt like home. Now, it didn’t even feel familiar. Her once vibrant house plants were gone, and she had to remind herself that she had let those die long ago. Greg had just taken it upon himself to remove their desiccated remains. He had also prepared the pull-out bed in a tacit acknowledgment of his intention to remain by her side. Elena folded it back into the couch and gently told Greg she needed to be alone. Despite his protests, she stood firm, her words blunt and unwavering. “I just can’t mourn with you around. It makes me hate you.”

Greg blinked several times, leaving Elena wondering if she had just snapped at him. Then he vigorously nodded, saying, “Yeah. Okay. That’s fair.”

He promised to check up on her in the morning. He gave her a hug, both long and lingering. “You’re not alone, El. I’m here. I’m always here.”

Then she was alone, standing in the kitchenette, contemplating. She thought about drowning her sorrows in box wine, musing that the Merlot would pair well with a particular bottle in the medicine cabinet. Elena then quickly reassured herself that it was a joke.

No one was laughing.

Her gaze fell upon her purse resting on the counter. With shaking hands, she fumbled with the zipper and unzipped it. She retrieved Eugene’s old bunny — the last piece of the child she had loved and lost. Clutching the old stuffed animal, a detached, depressive logic told her she needed to get somewhere comfy or she’d end up as a heap on the floor. She hastily made her way before the grief engulfed her entirely.

In a room steeped in shadows, Elena lay in bed, waiting for tears that would not come. Instead, she found herself enveloped in the limbo of her empty apartment. The soft punctuation of a ticking clock was the only sign of movement. Her environment was as sterile and impersonal as the hospice, and only now did Elena realize that it was by design. She never wanted it to feel like home, just a comfortable enough place to waste away. Eugene had woken her up from that liminal complacency. He gave her someone to care for and love, and now that he was gone, she felt like a specter in her own right.

Elena put words to the thought that had been nagging at her for all seventy-two hours of her involuntary psychiatric stay, the one she couldn’t tell Greg because she had made him a promise. “We could’ve gone together.” She spoke it to the void and waited for the voice in her head to tell her thoughts like that were wrong. Instead, that detached depression logic chipped in, reminding her there was still the Merlot and pills.

This time, she couldn’t tell herself it was a joke.

Elena went into the kitchen and poured a large glass of wine out of a spigot, then went into the bathroom to fetch the thirty pills of Oxycodone, but as she reached for the medicine cabinet, she caught sight of her tattoo in the mirror. A vivid image of that name rotting away in a pitch-black coffin gave her pause. She wouldn’t just be ending her life; she would be destroying all the memories of her son. Mateo had so little time to leave his mark on this world; his living memories were all that were left, and those required the person who carried them to remain alive.

The dark urge receded, and Elena turned away from the mirror, feeling selfish.

She stuck with the wine. She would get drunk, cry, and eventually pass out, holding Eugene’s bunny to her chest.

Except the bunny was gone.

It didn’t make sense. Elena was sure she had left it propped up on the pillow. She looked through the covers and under the bed, then returned to the kitchenette, thinking she might have brought the stuffed animal with her. She tore the apartment apart, first searching for the bunny, then, in a rage at everything that was taken from her, cursing out a world that decided she was not allowed to love.

It was only after she had given up all hope that she noticed the closet door in the bedroom was cracked open. She hadn’t touched the closet. Was it cracked open when she got here?

Elena opened the door and pushed aside her dresses and coats. Hiding in the far corner lay the rabbit, its chest rising and falling as if stroked by a tiny, invisible hand. Elena swallowed, initially unable to bring herself to hope once again. She called out in an unsure whisper, “Eugene?”

She looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes, and prayed to God for this small mercy.

When she opened her eyes again, she kept her gaze locked on the ceiling.

In the corner of her eye, she saw a scared little boy cowering by her shoe rack, clutching the only familiar object in a strange new environment. She dropped to her knees and felt Eugene cling to her, pressing into her chest as she wrapped her arms around empty air.

---

The hard truth that Greg could never tell Elena started and ended with the words, “It’s for the best.” He found solace in his ability to tell himself the bitter pills to swallow were medicine. The loss of their son was tragic, but Mateo’s inevitable death stopped his suffering, and that was “for the best.”

“It’s for the best” is what left the woman he loved thinking he was a monster.

For Greg, walking into Elena’s place the following day, finding the box of Mateo’s old things empty on the kitchenette, and catching a glimpse of Eugene waddling around in his son’s favorite Adventure Time T-shirt was not “for the best.” It was the worst-case scenario.

Elena quickly got to her feet and hugged him. “Can you believe it, Greg? He’s back!”

“I-I can see that,” Greg stammered, “How?”

Elena looked around the mess of toys on the floor and picked up Eugene’s rabbit. “We were wrong. It wasn’t the house that kept him here. It was his rabbit. He’s tied to the rabbit!”

Greg stared down as a kicked Nerf ball shot past his feet. He nodded, hoping Elena would be on the same rational page. “This is good. Now we have all the time in the world to figure out how to help him move on.” But when he turned back, the look on Elena’s face told him that they were most definitely not on the same page. They weren’t even in the same volume.

“What? No,” Elena said, “We were backed into a corner, then. That was our only option.”

“Elena —”

“No, I just got him back!”

The room was silent for a moment, and then Eugene kicked the Nerf ball into the patio door.

Rubbing his scalp, Greg sighed, “El, this isn’t good.”

Elena took a step back. “Are you kidding me? He came back!” She gestured towards the empty space beside her. “This is a miracle.”

“No, this isn’t healthy,” Greg said softly, trying to remain calm. He took a cautious step towards Elena, his hands held out. “Eugene isn’t Mateo.”

Elena flinched. “Do you really think that’s what this is?”

“I think that is a part of it,” Greg replied gently, “You’ve been hurting for years, and Eugene fills that void.”

Elena scoffed, crossing her arms. “You’re saying that like it’s bad, but it’s what I want. If this is about him using Mateo’s old things, it was the only stuff I had around — “

“That isn’t a boy!” Greg interrupted, his voice rising slightly. He took a deep breath.” It’s a curse, El, and it scares me that you can’t see it.”

“Don’t say that.” Elena whispered, wondering when this had turned into an intervention, “He’s innocent.”

“No. Innocent little boys grow up. But Eugene? Eugene will never change. He’ll always be there to be loved. He’ll always want to play, read a book, or be held, and you will always be there to care for him because it feels right. Right in a way, you haven’t felt since we lost our son. But real boys? They turn into angsty teens who don’t want to be mothered and then adults who leave home. But Eugene? He’ll never grow old, but you will, Elena.”

Elena felt a tug on her finger and looked down at the boy who wasn’t there. She saw nothing but the faux-wood linoleum floor, but knew Eugene was looking up at her. One of the earliest tricks she learned about the boy was to lean into the delusion, and the delusion would play along. So Elena leaned into it and pantomimed picking up Eugene, feeling his arms wrap around her neck.

Greg helplessly watched as Elena lit up with a joy he hadn’t seen in her in years. He tried a different tact. “Please, Elena. If you won’t think of yourself, think of Eugene. I don’t know how his brain works — if he even has one — but his development clearly froze the day he died. He’s never learned to talk, and he can’t play with other kids. He can barely interact with the world, but he remembers. He’s a hundred years old and remembers it all. Can you even imagine that kind of Hell?”

Elena shrugged, “You don’t know that. There were a couple of times a toddler walked by the house and stopped to stare at the window. Maybe they can see him. Dogs can.”

Greg shook his head in a shudder as he tried to process her cherry-picked response. “So what are you gonna do? Take him to the park?”

“Yes, actually.” Elena said, her grin widening at the thought, “That sounds pretty great.”

They could’ve fought about it, and Greg tried. He did his best to argue and make her see he was fighting for her against the thing in her arms, but Elena didn’t even try. Her mind was only on Eugene, thinking he would be hungry soon and that she had none of his baby food on hand. Maybe she could scramble him up some eggs. After that, she could show Eugene the world. As long as she brought Mr. Bunny, Eugene could always be by her side. Elena could even take him to the hospice, and Eugene could be the greatest comfort for all her patients waiting on death’s door. He was, after all, proof positive that there was something on the other side.

Elena didn’t blink when Greg doubled down on his stance and turned it into an ultimatum. She wasn’t even really listening, lost in the potential of her happily ever after and the feeling of Eugene’s little fingers idly playing with her hair. “You need to let go, and he needs to move on, or just like Abigail and then Odetta, you will end up alone, haunted by the echo of this child.”

Elena let out a long sigh and said, “I’m okay with being haunted, Greg. It’s all I want.”

As Greg turned and walked out the door for what would be the last time, Elena pecked the general area of Eugene’s forehead and said, “Let’s get you fed, and afterward, how about I take you and Mr. Bunny on your very first car ride? You wanna go to the grocery store?”

She tickled the air and could almost hear Eugene giggle in response.