First published in 200CCs - Year One
Each day had been interminably long, that first year after his death.
No matter. She would seize the opportunity long awaited and prepare to see him again at the hungry ghost festival. A yearly tryst would make bearable the other endless days.
She prepared his favorite dishes and burnt joss sticks from dawn to dusk. Paper replicas of his most precious belongings—car, house, wads of money, went up in smoke. All this she did, to ensure that when the gates of hell opened that year to let out the spirits, him among them, all their desires would be sated.
There were things she ought not to do. Dress in red, sleep facing a mirror, open an umbrella indoors.
These too she did. Repeatedly.
Fourteen days she waited. Nothing materialized. No one came.
As the festival ended, she went through the useless motions of lighting floating lanterns and setting them adrift in the river. She did not turn back to see if they extinguished themselves, signaling the return of the spirits to the netherworld.
She woke up to smoke and flames. As the conflagration consumed everything around her, she finally understood.
It was not him who was meant to come and visit her.