I never cleaned all the dirt off. I meant to, but Myrtle would get twitchy when I went near them. They didn’t look that old, but they didn’t have any meat left on them, so they must have been in the ground for a while. Left to rot under the basement's hard-packed dirt floor.
I stared at Myrtle’s bones for a long time. Do I take them? Do I burn them?
Upstairs, the boxes were all packed. Every dish Myrtle hadn’t broken, every bedsheet she didn’t get around to shredding. The movers were coming the next day. I didn’t have much more time to decide.
I left a bottle of lighter fluid from the grill sitting on the basement floor. I had the matchbook in my pocket. What I mostly remember was all the shit she put me through—having to go back to the office, Buddy, and the creepy sex taunting.
I was squeezing the last bit of lighter fluid out of the bottle when a figure appeared across from Myrtle’s bones. It was a nice enough-looking woman wearing an old-fashioned dress. The kind with a really narrow waist and high collar. The dress was dark green and looked like velvet. Only after seeing her did I noticed the scraps of green fabric still mostly buried under Myrtle’s bones.
“So you can show yourself,” I said to the translucent figure.
No reply.
“It’s better for both of us if I do this,” I explained as I took the matches from my pocket.
Still no reply. Only a frozen expression on her face – a furrowed brow and eyes looking at the floor.
I dropped the lit matchbook onto the pile of bones. Only after the flames started to travel up from the figure’s feet did Myrtle look me in the eye.
The harassment was over. I let out a sigh.
Shit, now I’m going to have to wash my own dishes again. Maybe Melissa will move into the new place.