I found Sonja pacing in her bedroom, tear stains streaking her cheeks. She sat on her bed for a while, then stood up and sat down at her desk. I suppose she meant to do something as a distraction, but she just sat there, one hand on her mouth, staring into the distance. Every so often, she’d let out a sigh.

I leaned back in the doorway, arms crossed, waiting.

Eventually, she started—maybe she noticed something in the corner of her eye—and whirled around to face me.

“Hello, Sonja.”

“You! B— But you— You’re—”

I waited for her to say it.

“But you’re dead! You can’t be here! How … how are you here?” Her voice trembled. She stood up and walked towards me, silently, as if afraid to disturb whatever situation had been carefully contrived to make this encounter possible. She reached out and poked me, and when all of her senses confirmed my existence, she looked up at me. Funny, I remembered her being taller than me. “How can you be here?”

I stared at her furrowed brows and questioning eyes, trying to formulate an explanation for everything that had happened since I last saw her. “I’m assuming you cremated my body?”

“What? Yes, we did. You … asked us to scatter the ashes, didn’t you?”

I smiled a little at that. “Yes, I did,” I replied, nodding a bit, though to her or to myself, I wasn’t entirely sure. I took in a deep, shaky breath. What was I supposed to say? I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I tried again. “I’m back.”

“Well … yeah. How?”

“It’s … a long story. Do you have time?”

​

I kept the first paragraph because it adds some context to the following sentence, but I ended up changing my mind about how long it's been since she died, so Sonja wouldn't still be grieving the way she's portrayed in the paragraph.