Dark Across the Bay

by Ania Ahlborn

Every family is an isolated incident. Worthy of investigation. No matter how good or bad you have it, there’s darkness and there’s joy. There’s confusion and miscommunication. There’s someone who isn’t speaking their mind and there’s someone who’s speaking theirs too often.

Every family is also a ghost story. Did you know?

Specific moments haunt, and sometimes that haunt is welcome, and sometimes it’s not. In every family, Dad or Mom invariably do something wrong (often, much more than wrong), whether either is a “good” or “bad” person. And the ghosts of those past events stand in the shadows of the basement every time you need to get the laundry from below. History whistles in the middle of the night. It weighs enough to creak the floorboards out in the hall. Who can get any sleep with the noise familial history makes?

He’d scroll through Reddit for hours or glare at stupid inspirational quotes on Facebook. Every day is a new beginning! said one. I am the master of my fate; the captain of my soul! read another. Those stupid quotes aggravated the hell out of him. I’m wasting my life on this, he thought. A voluntary lobotomy…

The thoughts of every chronically online social media user ever

There was a Post-It stuck to the inside of the cabinet door. On it, in black Sharpie, two words: Welcome, Parrishes. And directly beneath it, a crooked smiley face, its skewed features enough to make Poppy’s skin crawl.

Her anxiety had become comfortably familiar over the years. Sometimes it seemed to her that she only felt normal when she was on edge.

Relatable

Because when grief putrefied, all that was left was the black sludge of vengeance.