Nora

The end

Nora arrived at her hotel room shortly after 9. The flight had been uneventful. She reflected on it as she set up her toothbrush and toothpaste on top of the plastic bag they had been sealed in for the trip. There wasn’t really anything all day she could think of that stood out in the slightest. 


She flipped at the light switches and left the one to the lamp pressed up. Sitting down on the bed she pushed her shoes off, sighing from relief.

The trip only feels like it’s really over once the shoes are off, she thought, rolling down the comforter on the bed. They never wash those enough. 


There wasn’t much on the television to watch. Nora flipped through the channels, never really settling on one thing for long, and sighed again. Fine, she thought. The channel with the long ads about hotel amenities would be fine. It was just all noise anyway.

How to die and suddenly matter

Of course Bradley managed to die right before my birthday, the fucking alcoholic. Oh, and of course I was bound by familial contract to be there for the funeral all day long. My brother got a pass somehow and Lilly was practically collapsing in sobs every couple of minutes.


“I just can’t believe it. Despite everything….I really loved him.” Yes, this or some variation upon would be the sort of thing my sister would begin to say before her legs gave out from under her. “It’s all my fault!”


I was mainly glad for the opportunity to wear my black sunglasses I’d bought myself as a treat for the occasion. It was a sunny afternoon when the yellowed man was gently lowered into the dirt.

My sister’s histrionics were getting on my nerves. Maybe her feelings were sincere, but I doubted it. Brad had been an asshole to her for years, leeching her compassion and need to care for someone.

Someone. Anyone.


She finally left him, like, ten years or something into it all. Now here we all were just another year later and he was dead in a box. He drank himself to death, as far as I’d heard.


I wandered off from the main scene of mourning and lit up a cigarette.


I could still hear Lilly’s voice breaking in the distance as she went on and on about how it was all her fault. I choked on smoke. As if he hadn’t been a chronic alcoholic before they broke up. And now all this stress has me smoking again, the asshole!


When I really stood back and looked at the scene it was obvious. He didn’t deserve this. No one had liked him when he was alive. No one would ever tell me the extent of it, but I had seen the scars and the flares of bitterness. I saw the sadness that my sister dragged around as much as she did him. She often had told me she never expected to stay together as long as they did.