The Director's Cut of Us
A response to
and his invitation to Madness & (May)hem: Day 8!Today's prompt asks you to choose the final line from a story or poem. It can be something here on Substack, or the last line of a book you own.
Take that last line as use it as the first line of a new story. Something original and unrelated to the piece you chose. You're only using that one line as inspiration.
My first line came from
and her stellar line I thought I saw your shadow, even in the dark.I thought I saw your shadow, even in the dark.
Which is ridiculous, because you always said I had no presence.
And yet here I am, summoned again. Unpaid, uninvited, and possibly upside-down. It’s hard to tell. The afterlife has no compass and very little dignity.
You were telling someone about me at dinner. Not remembering. No, describing. Loudly. Like you were doing an impression. I heard you say I used to hum while I worked.
I did not.
I clicked pens. I tapped things. I was the reason cafés removed salt shakers from the tables.
But now, in your version, I’m apparently melodic. Gentle. Humble. You called me “kind, but difficult.” Which is like saying a shark is “misunderstood, but toothy.”
So now I’m back. Flickering through your spice rack, trying to decide whether to rearrange the paprika into some code. Not to scare you, just to say hi. Or stop that.
You’ve been doing this for weeks. Misquoting me into existence. Telling your friends half-true things about me with the confidence of a god rewriting scripture. I know I’m not supposed to care. I’m dead, technically, but your version of me wears linen suits. He drinks tea. He does yoga.
I died in cargo shorts.
You live alone now. You narrate things out loud. It’s almost sweet.
But therein lies the problem. You don’t remember fights. You remember metaphors. You remember a poem I read once and claim I wrote it. You said I had “stillness.” I had gastric reflux.
The metaphysical mechanism here is unclear, but I appear when you embellish. Not when you miss me. Not when you cry. When you romanticize.
And the more you do it, the more of me gets... built. The more specific your lies, the more tangible I get. Yesterday I sneezed.
What the hell does a ghost do with allergies?
I think you’re doing it because it works on other people. They sigh and nod when you say I was poetic. They tell you that you must have loved me very much. No one questions your details. No one says, “Are you sure he wasn’t just kind of weird and obsessed with not touching door handles?”
You’ve reimagined me like a Pinterest board. One part tragedy, one part charm, no clutter. Your version of me could be a minor character in a French film.
The real me would have hated him.
I don’t mean to haunt. I mean to correct this.
For a while, I moved your chair slightly left every morning. You blamed it on cheap flooring. You said, “If he were here, he’d say something clever about that.”
No, I wouldn’t have.
I would’ve said, “Why do you own a chair with wheels on carpet?”
Once, someone asked if I still visit you. You said, “He always had a way of showing up.”
That’s not true. I canceled plans. I answered messages three days late and blamed Wi-Fi. You used to say I could vanish in a crowded room.
Now I’m apparently reliable. Present. A regular spectral houseguest who knew how to be there.
You’ve remembered me into a better version of myself. It’s flattering.
It’s incorrect.
You hosted a gathering last Friday. Six people, three bottles of wine, one completely fictional story about how I proposed. Which I did not do, by the way, because we never even discussed that.
In your version, I was trembling and full of Shakespeare. In reality, I once gave you a gas station birthday card and said, “Close enough, right?”
The story earned you a round of sympathetic sighs. Someone cried. Someone said I was a “rare soul.”
Rare? I was lactose intolerant and didn’t read books without pictures.
And yet, I’m growing more solid. I catch glimpses of myself in your hallway mirror now. Not reflections. Just outlines. But still.
You’re remembering me back into flesh.
You’re getting the beard wrong, by the way.
Last night I did find myself humming. Which I’ve never done. Not even in death. I tried to stop. Couldn’t. That part of your memory has stuck.
Do you know what it's like to hum against your will? It’s like becoming the background music in someone else’s life. And the worst part? You chose Norah Jones. Norah fucking Jones.
There’s a rule I’m beginning to understand. You don’t pull me back when you’re lonely. You pull me back when you feel clever about us. When you frame it just right. When you say something like, “He was complicated,” with a little smile that says and I liked him that way.
That’s what keeps me here.
This isn’t mourning. It’s a performance. You’re not grieving, you’re workshopping.
Releasing the director’s cut of our relationship with commentary turned on.
And I don’t mind, not entirely. It’s just... I had flaws. I was real. I had a habit of half-cleaning dishes. I never bought proper socks. I once claimed to be allergic to opera to get out of a third date.
Your friends love the new version. He listens. He gardens. He “saw the beauty in small things.”
He did not. He walked into glass doors. Twice.
If I stay, I’ll become him.
I can feel it happening. I’m almost audible now. The cat looks at me like I owe her money. You’ve started saying “we” again when you describe things I was barely present for.
You’re telling better stories than the truth. I get it. But better isn’t real.
And if I’m going to exist at all, I’d rather it be as the person who once told you that hummus was “just beige regret” than the one who supposedly pressed flowers into books.
So tonight, I’m leaving.
Not in a dramatic sweep. Just in a quiet fade.
I’ll let your version settle. I won’t disrupt it anymore. You can keep the linen and the wine and the haiku I never wrote.
But maybe, once in a while, tell the story where I tripped over your laundry basket and blamed it on ghosts.
That was me.
The real one.
This was such an entertaining read, Joe. Brilliance. Again!
This made me smile, laugh and yet....
Let me say, it touched something.
And, yet again, a great write.