FELICIA HEILGENDORFF

“He said he’d meet me here at the next storm,” he stubbornly insisted, turning back towards the large field. His hair was drenched and stuck to his forehead and the rain kept hammering against his face.

“Please, the storm’s getting worse. Come inside,” she begged him, standing slightly in the shade of the house, though she was already shaking and soaked to the bone. “Nobody will come meet you in a storm like this.”

“He will. He promised me he would.”

“He’s dead. Please,” she tried again with a much softer tone this time. He merely shook his head stubbornly. She had told him this many times before, but he had seen the man, and he had told him they would meet in the large field behind their house during the next storm.

“He’s not dead. And he’ll come.” His gritted teeth barely allowed her to hear his words, but it might have been the battering of the storm that carried away the sound too.

“No! Come back!” she shouted a second too late as he suddenly stepped out further into the field. Lightning struck and he fell to the ground. She shrieked with grief and fell to the ground beside him, not caring about the rain soaking through her clothes even further, and the mud dirtying her pants.

He turned away from her towards a man that only he saw.

“I knew you would meet me here. And I could see no alternative.”

The other man smiled thinly and shook his head sadly as the woman knelt over her dead husband, whose ghost had already left the body to join his brother.

© 2016

Sunday Photo Fiction, March 13th 2016