Casey Hannan
The ghost in my apartment leaves little piles of glitter on the floor. I step in them and think, At least this didn’t come out of a rat.
I’ve started collecting the glitter in old spaghetti sauce jars. I’m giving them to people I don’t know too well. I say to the guy who runs the Indian restaurant, “I made this. It reminded me of you.”
He looks at the jar like it might be a glitzy explosive. He says, “I open this, stars rain out?” He waggles his fingers under the lid.
I say, “Yes, but only if you open it upside down like that.”
He takes the jar in the kitchen and yells at the cook to get my naan. I hear glass break. There’s laughter, yelling, laughter, sweeping. The rest of my order is already sitting on the counter. I decide I don’t need the naan. I’ll make do with old tortillas. I leave.
When I get home, I open the fridge. There’s a pile of glitter on the tortilla bag. This is the first time the ghost has left a pile in my fridge. I do that sort of good-natured sigh people do when a puppy does something so wrong it’s cute. What an adorable ghost.
I take the tortilla bag from the fridge and carefully funnel the glitter into a new jar. I write CABBIE on the lid. I shake the jar so some glitter sticks to the sides.
I used to be a crafty person. These jars are the extent of my craftiness now. My mother quilts. She has the hands for it. My hands are better suited for opening jars. I sometimes imagine a man asking me to open a jar for him. He’s been trying, but the lid won’t budge. I succeed on the first go round. The man says he must have loosened it up for me. I grab his arm, squeeze and say, “Yeah, that must be it.”
Casey Hannan is a real househusband of Kansas City. He writes stories and crochets ghosts. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Necessary Fiction, DOGZPLOT, decomP, and SmokeLong Quarterly. He accounts for his time at www.casey-hannan.com.
