An undead grandmother

A Story by Lys

”We have an undead grandmother at our house,” Raina smiled at him and adjusted her hair.
The boy looked at her with disbelief. She tried to tell him all sorts of weird stories, but this one seemed to be the top.
“What?”
“An undead grandmother,” repeated the girl and then looked down pretending that she is doing the exercise that the teacher gave them.
“What?!” asked the boy again.
“Mr. Welling, are you talking again?!” The teachers voice roamed across the class. The boy lowered his head instantly, trying to look preoccupied with work.
“Sorry,” whispered Raina. She didn’t want to cause him any troubles. Instead she liked him so much that she tried to help him even when it wasn’t necessary. It has been a blessing for her that the teacher made him change seats for talking during the class. Who would have known that the silent girl is so fond of the class rascal?
He didn’t. He hadn’t acknowledged her voice before the seat change. She was silent, shy, avoiding troubles so insistently that no one was bullying her. But now the boy started to realise that there is a strange enjoyable weirdness in her which made him to look forward to talking to her.
“You mean smelling like undead?” The boy asked silently.
Raina smiled with pleasure, she tricked him, hooked him into a conversation. “No. Truly undead.”
“Like a ghost?” The boy tried to remember some of the ghost stories he heard in a summer camp.
“No, she’s real. Flesh and bones.”
The boy was lost, he wanted to make sense out of this. Was this some sort of game? “Is she moving? Walking and talking?”
“The dead can’t move, silly,” said Raina. The boy frowned at her. She kindly smiled at him and admitted: “But she can talk, though.”
"Talk? Nonsense." He lost his attention and became fully focused on the exercise.
"It´s not actually a grand mother, but a great-great… Ah, whatever." Raina felt that she lost the conversation, but she didn’t loose her hope. There will be many other opportunities and she knew that she would occasionally win his hearth.

---

- You shouldn’t tell family secrets to a stranger.
"But granny," Raina sighed and stopped waving her legs under a chair and she turned to her grandmother. The old lady’s body was in a glass coffin leaning against the kitchen wall. The grandmother’s dried mummified face looked at Raina with an unreadable expression. Raina was aware that grandmother knew about everything that happened. And sometimes she would know about things of the future.
"He is no stranger, you know that," the girl pretended sighing. "He is my future husband."
- You wish my dear, you wish.
"And you know that too!" Raina jumped to the floor with excitement.
- I know my dear that you wish.
Raina took it as a yes. She danced out of the kitchen and down the stairs, happy imagining the lovely future. The old lady’s ghost watched her and it’s immaterial presence followed her out of the house. It knew what the young girl didn’t want to think of. It knew that her wish won’t come true.
But maybe one revealed secret won’t do any harm. And one disproved illusion either. Maybe.