My Chance

High coffered ceilings, an odd filtered light, mote constellations adrift, rooms enfilade... In the room at the far end — the kitchen, it was — I met my dead grandmother, her crooked corpse bothering a hot stove, boiling up a pot of her awful, brown, sticky soup. She turned to me, as if to ask, “Do you want a bowl?” Startled, I turned to leave (She was a ghost, after all...). Her boney hand, still holding a soup ladle, brushed my right shoulder. I turned. She whispered, “You had your chance.”