Remember The Moon by Abigail; Carter Read Free Book Online

orange when I sat beside her. My own light blended with hers in tiny arcs between us. I realized that everyone in the room had similar rings of colour enveloping their forms, something I vaguely understood to be auras. I realized I could now see the vibrations of atoms, electrons, particles of every object in the universe. Even thoughts had auras.
    Around the room a broad spectrum of electromagnetic radiation – microwaves, infrared light, and UV light flickered and danced like the flames of a candle near an open window in response to the energy emitted through people’s auras. This light energy seemed concentrated around electrical outlets and light fixtures but also around those who seemed to be grieving most – Maya, Calder, and my mother - because their auras appeared to radiate more energy than everyone else’s.
    My mother shivered in response to my presence and turned toward me, as though about to address me, but then she looked through me.
    I love you, Mom. I’m sorry. I know how hard this is, but I will see you again soon. I felt myself fill with love of her, and together we became surrounded by a now familiar white light. She seemed to physically relax, her shoulders slumped slightly, and I noticed a tear rolling down her cheek.
    Damn you! I jumped. I heard her thought as if she had slapped me across the face. First your father and now you. What kind of cruel world is this?
    I’m sorry, Mom. I am so sorry.
    I drifted away from her, shut out by her sorrow.
    Maya and Calder, their coats flung on nearby chairs and cheeks rosy from being outside, stood now in a group with her parents. Maya wore a black turtleneck over a tight-fitting pink dress, something I loved seeing her in but that she rarely wore. I knew she wore it to my funeral especially for me, despite it being socially inappropriate in the way it pulled tight over the roundness of her beautiful ass, creating a sensuality out of place in the roomful of black suits. Her hair pulled back off her pale face, eyes red-rimmed and swollen and her lips lush and pink, beautiful even in grief, she gripped her glass of wine, whose blood-colored surface rippled with each tear that clung to her cheek before launching itself into the abyss.
    Stone-faced, Maya rebuffed her mother, Estelle, when she tried to put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders. I reached out in a habitual way to take Maya into my arms, to comfort her in a way I hadn’t done, I suddenly realized, for too long. I wanted desperately to put my arms around her, to calm her, but without my body I was as successful at hugging her as a double amputee might be. Our auras linked, though she seemed oblivious. I sensed a purpose for my death, in both my life and hers, but it angered me to try to account for something so meaningless, unwilling to forgive my own stupidity.
    Calder was tired and cranky, a seven-year-old teetering on the edge of a meltdown. Without trying to, I surrounded us all, wishing to be a whole family again, which transformed the yellowish ambient light of the dim room to a glowing spotlight. Calder sighed and seemed calmer for the moment.
    And then I saw Marcus Pellegrino. He sat drinking a scotch in a seat in a corner, far away from everyone. His presence at my funeral surprised me. Had Maya invited him? I saw her look at him from across the room and then quickly look away, but couldn’t tell from her expression if she too was surprised by his presence or expecting it. He wore a black wool coat and sat erect at the bar, talking to no one. His greying hair slicked back, he wore a heavy, expensive watch and polished Italian shoes. Marcus looked every bit the rich prick. Despite his obvious effort trying to make eye contact with Maya, she seemed to want nothing to do with him.
    Distracted by feedback from a microphone, a sound that looked to me like transparent ripples fanning away from the mic, I lost interest in Marcus. Funerals were not called funerals anymore. This was a