SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 106
stringy hair. She looked like the woman who had died. They could have been sisters. Aren’t
we all the same, just temporary beings, born to die, Angel thought. He opened his mouth
to speak to her, but what could he say? Don’t die? Be careful? Of what? He put a hand to his
temple as a first line erupted from somewhere inside.
Irma Schmetterhorn never could let anything go; she thought she was still alive, and nobody
could tell her otherwise. Her backstory came rushing at him. He fumbled in his shirt pocket
for a pen.
“The fuck!” his partner said as they reached their unmarked car which was double
parked. “They can’t give us a ticket! We’re on the job.”
“A ticket,” Rodriguez said weakly. He wrenched it from under the windshield wiper, put
the pen to it, and the ink spilled across the thin paper as if he’d opened an artery.
The ghosts that haunt us are not the handsome sea captains, the willowy women in white.
They are the nagging souls who aggravated us in life and cling to us in death. They won’t let us go—
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