Bathroom Monologue: On Grace’s Side

This actually mushroomed into a full short story. It's floating around in the submission process now. If it does get published, the first person to recognize that it's connected to this monologue will win some sort of prize.

Prize to be determined later.

I’m on Grace’s side now. I thought she was an idiot to watch the corpses. Even if Dad’s body was one of them to sit up, it wasn’t going to be him anymore. There’s no man left when a wraith comes. I don’t know if it was something he hid deep in his brain, that finally took over when the rest died and couldn’t hold it back anymore, or if it was some monster from a higher plane coming down to wear flesh. It just wasn’t Dad. None of the ones that stood up were men anymore. Grace deserved to get her arm broken when she kept grabbing at his knees. “Oh daddy! Oh daddy!” No, Dad was dead. But I've thought about it, and maybe there is a way we can be with him again. Wraiths are damn near unkillable. They don’t get sick, they don’t show pain. If they eat, it’s rare. They live forever and keep to themselves, so there’s almost no trouble in a wraith’s life unless the living bother them. He broke Grace’s arm just for touching him, and they’ve killed whole armies of men before for intruding. So we can’t follow them to one of their holes and hope they’ll let us join. But if we die, and they take our bodies, we’ll be with them forever. So the next time their hooded harbingers come up the road raising bodies, what if we kill ourselves? If they pick us, we’ll be with Dad forever. We won’t have to worry about war, or losing the house, or Grace getting sick so much. Wraiths don’t get sick and they don’t lose wars. We’ll be safe. Isn’t that what Dad would have wanted?