The Living Room

I think I see her there, on the couch, the remote control to the television dangling precariously from her hand. I think, as I take one step into the middle of the archway and another into her living room, that she is living. Alive.

Her face is illuminated by the light emanating from the television screen; the flashes of black and white are indecipherable patterns, making her skin pallid and dull. Her eyes, unblinking and unfocused, are drained of colour. I remember them being green, a part of her that she had not passed down to her children, or her children’s children. It is the one thing her white grandfather had left her with. Now they are clouded over with age and death while she is in her spectral form—sitting, waiting.

What is she waiting for?

The living room is small and cosy. A worn rug adorns the floor in front of the couch, weighted down by a dark lacquered table. The walls are white—no, not white exactly. If I stare long enough, I can see a tinge of yellow, like a permanent stain that lingers no matter the effort to scrub it away.

A faint scent permeates the room, and quite like citrus, the scent isn’t unpleasant. Its subtlety is familiar, and I am transported to several moments all at once:

When I am but a schoolchild gripping her hand like a lifeline as we walk across the street after she picks me up from kindergarten.

When I am in my final year of secondary school, and I hold her hand to keep her steady because of her weakened knees.

And when I clasp her frail, calloused palm as she lays on her hospital-issued bed that had been rolled in just for her.

I breathe in the scent again, looking over at her across the room. Goosebumps appear all over my arms as her head swivels to face me, her dead eyes locking onto mine. Held by her chilling gaze, she flickers like the light from the television before slowly fading and disappearing altogether.