The Plural of Dice is Die
January 2017
“Last one for the night, I swear,” said the skeleton. He grabbed the die and threw them into his metal tumbler. It made a desperate tinkling sound as he shook it with his thin skeletal fingers.
Moira didn’t even bother waiting for the die to drop. She sighed and picked up the red bracelet she put on the table. The skeleton’s hand reached up to her before she could use it to tie back her hair, something she always does before she goes.
“Don’t leave! Please.”
“It’s late. I have things to do in the morning.”
“No, please. You don’t understand. I don’t get to walk out of my grave every night,” the skeleton’s teeth chattered. “I don’t get to do this… I might not be able to do this again.”
“You’ll be fine.” Gently, she pulled the skeleton’s hand away. “Your grave is fine. You won’t notice.”
“But.” His eyesocket drifted left and right. He shook his tumbelr sadly, the die still tinkling inside. “But what if I don’t come back? Please, you don’t know how much I need this. I didn’t have much of a life when I was alive.”
Moira did in fact, know about this. She’d checked the records; the man caught on schizophrenia in his young age, delirium before most people’s life started, and died in his twenties after an accident that for saner man would count as suicide. Dying had freed him of his madness.
She didn’t know how much of his past the dead man still remembered, but whatever it was, she couldn’t afford to make an exception. The anomaly itself had given enough exceptions.
“I’m sorry, but I can’t help you there. It’s time. My die, please.”
“But.” The skeleton stared at his metal tumbler, an object that Moira supposed some kids had thrown into the graveyard as a joke. He was fond of it somehow.
The skeleton took out the die, at last. Resigning to his fate, he returned it to Moira’s waiting hands.
“I’ll see you again,” Moira said.
“Of course,” the skeleton said sadly, not believing a word but powerless to argue against it. “Of course.”
I wrote this on my phone. I used to doodle a lot of stories on my phone, but this one is the only that feels whole. I guess I stopped doing that because I'm more comfortable doodling with pen and pencil. A shame I can't just copy-paste the stories I wrote by hand.
- 2019