It started when I’d had a few beers. The beers made me snore in my sleep. Sometimes so loud that I would jolt wide awake as if shaken. That’s when I discovered Meeko talking. To begin with, I thought she was perhaps having some seedy affair, and waiting for me to pass out until she could engage in lurid phone-sex with her anonymous lover. Wasn’t the case, though. Turns out instead that she was having these otherworldly conversations with her father. He died before we met. Back when she was a teenager studying at college. As you can imagine, I only get her side of it. The conversations that is. I know it’s him she’s talking to as from time to time she cries out his name. Sometimes she also mentions things about him that she’s told me. Little nuggets of information that have escaped being swirled down the plughole into oblivion. Although I’m not much of a believer, I have to say it comes close to making me question my atheist ways. It’s not just that the conversations are so fluid—so consistent—it’s that when it’s his turn to reply, Meeko opens her mouth, and from inside, I swear I can hear the faint shimmer of wind chimes. If it sounds spooky, it’s because it is. The first time I heard it, I shit myself. Jumping out of bed, I staggered around in a petrified daze until I knocked over the lamp in the corner of the darkened room, causing it to fall to the floor and smash. She woke nonplussed. When I told her what I’d heard, she’d told me it must’ve been a dream. This has been going on for years now. It still weirds me out, but strangely enough, I’ve grown to look forward to it. I know that if I have a glass of water before we go to sleep, I’ll wake around two hours later, and by then, the conversation will be in full flow. I once considered trying to record it but thought it to be a little on the insensitive side. It was rude enough to be eavesdropping, let alone to lie there filming it on my phone. It’s reassuring to know that perhaps if there is something else, the two of them are in contact. And of course, if there really is more to this life that can’t be seen, then the mysteries of love and death are infinite, and we’re not just messy bags of bones wasting time, but something more altogether.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US