Ghosts

Kateri~

A Short Story.

The place had a stale smell, the kind that recalled memories of visiting grandparents’ houses. If you had asked her why she had stepped into the store that day she wouldn’t have been able to give you a straightforward answer. It was as if, in the moment as she was passing the store’s open door, someone had reached out and tugged her inside.

The shelves of the store were covered with dust that she trailed her fingers through leaving imprints as she walked the aisles. The lighting was dim, it always seemed to be in places like this, it forced her to pick up items that stood out and take them over to the window to observe them in light that filtered through the multicolored bottles sitting in front of it. Everything was picked up gingerly, her mother’s words reminding her not to touch things in stores and to keep her hands in her pockets seemed to echo from the distant past. But she couldn’t resist touching—feeling—whatever caught her eye.

Minutes ticked by that felt like a lifetime. She had wandered all over the shop until she came upon a chest, tucked away in the corner. It creaked when open, like any more pressure would break its fragile metal joints, but it opened nonetheless. Inside were photographs, hundreds of them, black and white and old. Her fingers grasped the yellowing edges as she took them out and observed them. Couples, children dressed in their Sunday best, teenagers sitting with their friends. Some of the pictures had names or years written on the back in crisp cursive, most did not.

She sat there amidst a pile of pictures. All of them were frozen glimpses of people’s lives, people that she didn’t know. She wondered if anyone knew who they were. Glancing up at the shelves, she wondered about the people who had owned all of it and their own stories.

Light warmed her skin, glowing in purple, greens, and blues from the bottles. We all die, she thought, that was the inescapable truth. The human struggle to cling to existence is a tale as old as the human race itself. But we forget, in our fear of passing, that pieces of us live on. Whispers of ourselves continue through time. Our ghosts are still very capable of provoking wonder.

Photo Creds: Kateri