Sister Phones Home from the Grave!

All the circumstances concerning Elizabeth Rodriguez’s untimely death, from the unforeseen tragic car accident; airlifted unconscious to the nearest hospital; to expiring after cardiac shock during surgery, were excruciating.

   With three days having elapsed since Elizabeth’s funeral proceedings began immediately a woeful period when the deceased is recalled seldom with time becoming a major foe in widening ceaselessly a gap between the two worlds of the dead and the living.

   There was a gentle, hardly audible knock on the front door. However, with a distance of thirty-five yards and constant noise of water gushing out of a golden half-circular faucet working in unison, Luisa Jimenez, a woman with a short stature, plump build, and black curly hair, who was utterly distracted with washing bowls, plates, and silverware in the kitchen stainless steel sink, heard absolutely nothing. A second knock came and also went unnoticed. On turning off a faucet she heard a third knock and left racing out of the kitchen with astonishing, unstoppable speed as if her movements were powered by motorized propulsion! Peeking out between two curtains into a porch she immediately recognized the visitor, hurried with nervous, determined energy unlocking and swinging open the front door. “What a pleasant surprise!” Luisa cried, her white-and-pink chubby face brightening with a radiant smile. Her brightly smiling eyes scanned the guest’s charming red ribbons decorating silver hair; now a simple evening red dress; now a pearl necklace wrapped around the neck; now long thin, white stockings; now pretty dark-red, low-heeled leather pumps.

   Tina Walsh, a stout woman of medium height with wrinkles, was a retired elementary school teacher, a close friend of the family, and the dearest last surviving neighbor from a very long line of the oldest neighbors still alive and living only five houses down in the same street. What was intriguing about her was her knowing the first name of everyone who had lived in this house before the Jimenez moved in.

   “Honey,” Tina began tenderly, her cherry-red lips mirroring Luisa’s mirthful smile, “I’ve been wanting to drop by for a while,” she added, stepping with care into the house.

   Without a moment’s delay Luisa shut and locked the front door urgently!

   Amused at her eccentric behavior, Tito had dubbed her jokingly as the house’s head of security for worrying, checking, and confirming that all doors and windows were locked at night. And, she would grow more frightened and act accordingly with exaggerated urgency after listening to news on robberies occurring close to home.

   “Tina, sit over here beside me,” said Luisa, leaning on a velvet ruby-red pillow with tassels at a short sofa. “Do you want something to drink?”

   “No. Thank you, honey,” Tina answered sweetly, seating herself on the sofa.

   A conversation sprang touching on several random, unrelated subjects.

   “I felt sad about how your poor sister passed on,” Tina broached mournfully. 

   “I know,” Luisa replied soberly.

   “By the way, is Elizabeth’s husband still alive?” Tina asked in a subtly brighter voice, igniting unintentionally a long-drawn smothering firecracker to blow up in Luisa.

   “My God!” Luisa’s suddenly altered expression seemed to be exclaiming at the mention of her half-sister’s husband.

   Luisa’s uncompromising disapproval of Elizabeth’s Americanized Mexican husband, Joe Rodriguez, and the fact she had struggled to conquer insurmountable mental challenges merely to tolerate him in person, and cannot sit in the same room without the grossest sentiments poisoning her mind, as she fought back to repress hatred from dominating her completely, would become increasingly and brilliantly clear.

   Disagreeable and abominable feelings pulling at her roughly with violence at once and as if in different directions overwhelmed her and rendered her unable to respond normally, naturally, and easily.

   “That…that…man…” Luisa stammered in her extremely aroused state, pausing unexpectedly with her words charged heavily with negativity and imparting hostility, contempt, and resentment, as if surfacing from the core of her being.

   Wearing a serious, constrained look, Luisa shook her head as if she were driving away an unpleasant thought from her mind.

   “Was Joe that bad?” inquired Tina, laughing and showing a combination of white and yellow teeth.

   The simple and straightforward question accelerated the development of Luisa’s anger, which swept over her in waves and set her eyes gleaming furiously; all her former feelings returned to her and could not help expressing them potently through the hard look of her eyes.

   “That good for nothing bum,” Luisa continued hotly in a gust of accumulated resentment for all the injustices done to Elizabeth over a course of decades, “never once paid a single dime for rent!” she added rashly, a feeling of flammability was peaking and her forehead, cheeks, and ears were crimsoning on account of raw rage that had mastered her heart and consumed her completely.

   “Not even once?” asked Tina, her blue eyes wide open in astonishment, and which, deepening her wrinkles, gave her face a surprised expression.

   “Never!” Luisa answered with a voice so unlike her own – unfeminine, coarse, and throaty – as if her one-word response were torn with painful violence from out of her own body.

   Tina sat silent, her head bowed a little, and her facial features collectively conveying a look of obvious disappointment as for Joe Rodriguez’s shortcomings.

   “That’s exactly why my poor sister usually worked three different jobs,” Luisa shared with strong emotion, accentuated with anger.

   “It’s really sad,” Tina chimed in sympathetically, her grayish curly head drooping and her blue eyes dimming and losing their former illumination, as though resulting from the massive accumulation of negativity which she had been subjected to and been absorbing continuously for the past ten minutes about Luisa’s unfortunate half-sister.

   “That bum–” Luisa began in a deeper, thicker, and angrier voice, her uncurtailed burning fury fueling her to continue shedding more light on all the wrongs unspoken yet for ages committed by her husband to Elizabeth, but the landline telephone ranging presently cut her off suddenly.

   Luisa, reacting impulsively, flew into the kitchen unchecked with a strange urgency as if the president of the United States were calling!

   “Yes,” she answered the telephone call with a solemn, wondering face, listening so attentively as though her life depended on her catching the caller’s every verbalized syllable!

   “You remembered!” Elizabeth’s shaking, breaking, and tearful voice cried ecstatically before hanging up mysteriously.

   The reply triggered chaotic feelings to arise, unsettling Luisa deeply and hurling her into a state of confusion. In perplexity, Luisa, still clutching the telephone receiver, tightened her grip unconsciously, and as if having momentarily come back to how marvelous life used to be in her imagination, she could not break her powerful emotional connection with her half-sister. The mystifying experience of hearing the sudden and sorely missed voice of her beloved half-sister evoked countless memories to float through her mind: of their fun times shopping around town; of their joint efforts spent in the kitchen inventing new and tasty dishes to surprise the children; of beginning to know her far better as they grew closer; and of getting along wonderfully in the latter ten years prior to her demise.

For additional ghost stories by the same author, click on Untold Creepy Short Stories