It was exactly as I remembered it, the smoke from flickering candles, the sweet smell of dead leaves; everything was the same, except I could not feel the chill. – – – I joined Paz to light candles for her brother that night, autumn’s bite raising gooseflesh on my skin. The graveyard emptied of families visiting their dead, but still we sat on cold stone and watched wax drip. Long after the last visitor had departed, the gate creaked but remained shut, and through the iron bars the suspended figure of a man in a blue suit glided, back arched, limbs limp, a blank look on his face. I held Paz’s hand, my finger pressed to my lips, though I needn’t have warned her. She bit her knuckles hard to keep from screaming, the candles casting deep shadows on her eyes, as the billowing shape of death appeared behind him. We froze, breath held and chests tight as the hollow eyes passed over the crosses where we sheltered. We waited until the spectre directed the man into a mausoleum, and then we ran. Blocks away, Paz turned to me. “He had your face,” she whispered. I shook my head and shoved my hands into my jeans. “It was the shadows,” I said, though I had recognized his slack features as those I saw in the mirror. Paz gripped my arm, and I shook her off, cajoling her as well as myself. “I’m right here.” – – – And here I was, back in the familiar place I had and would call home, the mausoleum with its stony slab I sunk below, attended by the bony hands that gently guided me to rest. Story by JD Sisko No AI just Daz studio and Photoshop