Story VII: Howl

“Then there aren’t just a couple jellyfish, they’re everywhere. They’re called a “bloom” because one of the lifeguards calls them that later. “Careful! There’s a bloom, there’s a bloom,” he yelled.”

I could go back and forth over the end of the boy’s alive-life forever. I don’t really like to say “I” because it scares me. I like to say “the boy” or “he” did this or that. I know it’s really me, but “the boy” is better. “His mother” is better.

I could look at them from any direction, super up-close or from up high looking down over the seagulls, or from under a wave, or anywhere that’s near them from where they were at the ocean. I could go right before the worst thing happened and then watch what’s after it and then before it. That’s how I learned every detail. It lasted for half an hour. Then everything all started over, and the boy was coming out of the water in his scuba flippers again.

I call it “sweeping around” in my alive-life and howling. I don’t know if anybody else calls things what I do, because I only ever knew one other ghost, but I bet she called it howling, too. I heard her howl one time.

None of it makes any difference now or in a thousand years or a million years o…