The last time I saw him if I hadn’t been so wrapped up in myself maybe I would have noticed that for a bloke of his size he wasn’t supposed to be that size.

“Do you remember that nutty woman who used to stalk you in the cemetery?

I laughed remembering how my pubescence had hidden her black cloak and wild hair, I had seen breasts, a pretty face and my imagination ran wild until the day I had mistakenly tried to engage her in conversation and found myself momentarily locked into her insanity by her wild eyes. “Where is he? They put him here.” She scared the shit out of me and until today I hadn’t set foot in this cemetery again.

“Adam fancied the local crackpot, looking for her dead husband’s grave.” Christy burst into a lung spilling cough that he called laughter. “She said he’d died of influenza.” Christy’s red face could barely spit out the last words. “In 1875!” I should have noticed the way Caroline was looking at him.

Through grey drizzle I found a splash of floral colour, it had to be him: the grave was fresh and no headstone marked his spot. Plastic covered cards bid Christy Whelan farewell and I sank to my knees to do the same. “Sorry I was late,” I mumbled.

Behind me a voice I remembered sang out: “Christy Whelan. He died of influenza.”

Turning to see her face I said: “I thought you were her.”

Labels: flash fiction