Kati Bumbera
Afterlife for Rent
Sometimes, in stiff-necked, midweek snooze-button dreams, it turns out that Dad is still alive. I find him towering in the kitchen, wearing that green cardigan, waiting to catch me out just like when I was young, when I’d come home from school and I’d be forced to walk past him, risking his glare, if I wanted anything, like a snack from the fridge, a Nirvana t-shirt, or a boyfriend, or a lift to the train station where I eventually left him. He waved me off in that same cardigan, the scratchy strands of childhood already fraying in a new light.
And now he’s here. But this time round, almost as old as Dad was on that platform, I am the one who looks askance at promises and late arrivals. His cardigan snags on rusty memories of hospitals and graveyards, threatening to unravel the fragile dream. I don’t believe in robins on windowsills. I know he isn’t bringing wisdom, I know he hasn’t come to seek forgiveness.
And then I think, maybe he’s not here for me at all. I can just leave him, one more time, to have his kitchen to himself and be a little bit alive. Sit by a window, listen to dust carts empty the bins. There’s beer in the fridge, Dad, I say to him, then turn around and tiptoe back into the light.
Kati Bumbera is a video game writer who is happiest in the mountains with a notebook in her backpack. She has short fiction published in The Fabulist, Roi Faineant, The Fantastic Other, The Disappointed Housewife and The Selkie. She lives in France and occasionally posts as @KatiBumbera.
