The Dead Man’s mother thought she saw a ghost on the balcony. Amongst the bed sheets drying on the line. It was either one week, one month or one year after the Dead Man had disappeared. She had a head cold and was inside when she saw it, sweeping up the husk of a large dead moth she had first thought was a pistachio shell.

She called an old friend who knows what to do in these situations. The old friend asked what time she had seen it. Now. Just now. 30 seconds ago. It could still be there.

But it’s daylight, said the old friend, and she passed on the number of another friend who knows better what to do in these situations.

The Dead Man’s mother called the friend of the friend but the line rang through and, anyway, the ghost or spirit or vision was gone.

*

Late one warm afternoon, the Dead Man watched his friends cannonball, one after the other, off the pier. He couldn’t swim, as you will recall, so he had the job of watching everyone else’s things – bags and clothes and bicycles – while he ate an orange. When his friends were done swimming, they all played cards together, there on the pier, as the sun set, the wet of the others pressing against him, dampening his clothes. They almost lost their hands in the evening breeze. The Dead Man would never grow old to think back to remember these days, the best days – and be able to wonder where the time went. 

…

Tristan Foster is a writer from Sydney, Australia. He is the author of three books: the short story collection Letter to the Author of the Letter to the Father, 926 Years with Kyle Coma-Thompson and Midnight Grotesques with Michelle Lynn Dyrness.