Saturday, November 19, 2011

Air Travel: 11


Chapter 81

In fact, upon returning to hovering

over land, he descended and parked

his boat beside a lamppost on the shore.




Chapter 82

He tossed the rope around the pole

and hopped out. Five minutes later,

he returned with a bouquet of daisies,

it was a present for the ghost.




Chapter 83

His house was fluttering all its big

and little sails on the invisible walls.

He could see his rocking chair going,

though by the time he tied his boat to

the tree and turned to look again,

the chair was still as a painting.




Chapter 84

He never had any trouble with the ghost.

He only noticed it passing a few times

in the day. Sometimes he wondered if

it was giving him dreams, when he saw places

from long ago where he had never been.




Chapter 85

He made sort of a big show as he entered.

“Hello!” he called. He walked slowly like a

deep sea diver. “I brought you a present…

I want to say thank you…”


Chapter 86

Albert stopped in the kitchen and listened.

Nothing. He reached into an invisible cupboard

and took down a vase. He reached for the

invisible faucet on the invisible sink and filled

the vase with water.




Chapter 87

The house was still quiet. He settled

the flowers into the invisible water

and held it up to the air.


Chapter 88

“I just wanted to say thanks for scaring off

that fish…I guess it was getting on everyone’s

nerves…” Nothing happened. “I don’t know if

you like flowers, I don’t know what ghosts like.”




Chapter 89

Nearby, someone laughed and someone else,

closer to Albert said, “We’re not ghosts.”




Chapter 90

Albert stood there and listened to them.

“This used to be our house,” another unseen said.

“We didn’t want to leave,” said a girl’s voice.




Chapter 91

“Ohhh,” Albert said, figuring it out,

“You’re from The Invisible City…”

Someone corrected him,

“It’s only invisible to you.”




Chapter 92

“You’re not ghosts?” Albert stumbled on.

A laugh, “That’s what you people call us.”

From the sounds of their voices, there were

four of them. Albert asked, “You’re a family?”

“That’s right.”




Chapter 93

Albert sat in his rocking chair. On the table

where the fish used to be were the flowers.

Outside, which was all around him, leaves

were blowing, falling and swirling on the

jagged grass, rain was hissing, the yellow trees

were bending and waving.



Chapter 94

“I lost my job,” Norman Withers told him.

“We ran into some hard times. We lost

the house. We had nowhere to go.

What were we supposed to do?

So we stayed with the house.”




Chapter 95

“We didn’t think you would notice us,”

said Doris. “We tried to be quiet.”

Her children were near her, Albert

could hear them too.




Chapter 96

So there was an invisible family

in his invisible house. Now that he knew,

it was better. He let them have their rooms back.

They could live the way they were used to.




Chapter 97

He tried to give them space.

He had a little room in the attic,

a bed and a light, creaking floorboards…

basically Albert Roselli became a ghost.


to be continued...
Next, Part 3: The Bees



Drawings by Rustle
'listen, talk, walk
every tries
out of this world'
Photos of birch trees taken at my job


Annotated Air Travel:
1. If you drive across Lake Washington,
you may notice the floating bridge is
named after governor Albert Rosellini.
2. Here is Rustle's complete
knock-knock joke:




No comments:

Post a Comment