After/life, by Kevin Kong
Somewhere along the coast, a man buys a house
swollen with light – on the abandoned street, but
it’s all he can afford. His agent mentions the
stunning view, proximity to cliffs. Some maids
have left the home smelling of lavender & bleach.
Here, the ghost obsesses over premature death & new beginnings;
in this house, everything is a silhouette bleeding into dust.
The man moves in. The ghost shuffles along the carpet,
cleaves a magazine in half, spells “SIN” with magnetic
letters onto the fridge. Soon, it advances to stacking
pillows pyramid-shaped then weaves together the tails of
dead rats.
The possession is accidental. The man starts with beers – after a
rough day at work – but moves to jello shots. Stumbling around the
kitchen island, he collides with the ghost. The man feels trapped in
a zoo exhibit. The ghost, a bird’s cadaver: a sun-soaked banana
peel.
Neither accepts this as an accident. A shot glass
shatters. Longing for words, the ghost grows
manic. The man tosses poetry from the fridge. A
delivery boy gets knocked around in the face &
punched in the chest. A deputy sheriff is sent to
investigate, disappears, then reports back from the
edge of a cliff one week later, draped in a bear skin
rug.
The ghost fills a bath, reasons that it will cleanse the man of impurities,
hypocrisies – reunite the washed-out soul. Vapor licks the spout. In the hollow
of its heart, the ghost prays that freeing the man will, perhaps, free itself.
But he drowns. The house: empty again. Days pass
before neighbors find his body, now bloated with
water – the smell of decay. A relative takes over
the home, contacts local realtors, movers, cleaners.
Now, the ghost waits. It dreams of a bearable world, one
that fills with time – something the ghost hopes to catch in
its invisible hand. But time seems distant, unholy. Ruffles of
air fill the home like shadows. The ghost rests, behind toilet
tanks or under floorboards, & feels itself begin to forget.
Kevin Kong is a Chinese American student from the Southeast.