What She Needs She Can't Have

28.

Clarissa was in the yard firing her bow. Gilbert watched from the kitchen window as she'd fire a shot, curse and then go push the hay bale further away. Since Gilbert had been watching her, she had the target at least fifty yards from her firing spot. Gilbert drank his coffee and sighed.

"She wants you to come out and say something." Shirley was there, Gilbert knew she wasn't actually there. She was a manifestation of his old age and conscience, but he admitted it made his heart feel better to see her.

"What she wants me to say is that she can come back to work, but she needs time to heal she got hurt bad, and I don't want her to get hurt in the field, bruises heal eventually."


"Gilbert."

"I don't need you to tell me what to do, I was there once, I was her, she just need to be patient."

"You weren't."

"And I have a scar that runs the length of my back as an example of what not being patient gets you, I got work I got to put this shit out of my head." Gilbert put his coffee down and Shirley was gone. He worried for his mental state, he knew age was creeping on him, felt it in his arms and legs, but his mind was now going too and he worried what that would mean for the future. The work needed doing though, he knew that too, and he was behind in his duties. He zipped up his work jumpsuit and grabbed his keys; today he exterminated.

****

"He's not listening to me anymore." Shirley the ghost had come to Clarissa her first official night at Gilberts. She hadn't wanted to scare her, but she had frightened her all the same. Now they were more like friends, just in secret because Gilbert was not ready for any truth of his dead wife.

"He believes you're a figment of his imagination."

"I don't dispel that in him, I know he'd be rid of me if he accepted I was actually there, but he still needs me, you both do." Clarissa smiled at the ghost. Her target was a publicity photo of her father, Gilbert had told her of his demand for her to stop being an exterminator and she was so angry shooting the pictures was all she could do to stop from wanting to harm the real thing.

"Why don't you move on? Are you afraid of the afterlife."

"No, I'm afraid of what Gilbert would do. You didn't see him when I passed, I waited for a few days at first, just to make sure he was all right. He wasn't, he used to come home and cry. Just take off his clothes, cook his food, and sit and wail to the night. It went like that for months. He doesn't have friends, he has work acquaintances, but no one to be there for him. So I waited and helped as I could, just being on the edge of his vision something to help the tears, eventually I talked he mistook me for his sadness, but he talked to me all the same, and now you are here and I see you are lost too in your own way. So I stay for now, I'll go when you both don't need me."

"Fair enough." Clarissa had pushed the target another few yards away, she felt like it was almost a football field now, hitting her father's face from that distance was getting harder.

"You're going to hurt yourself Clarissa."

"I already hurt, I just need to do this, I need to get better." Shirley sighed, she had a lot of work to do with both Gilbert and Clarissa, but in time, in time they wouldn't need her. Eventually.

****

"Didn't you say you don't do jobs by yourself anymore?" Gilbert had come into the office busier than Doris had seen him in a while. Like he was worried there weren't enough hours in the day.

"Clarissa's still hurt and jobs need to get done, what am I looking at?"

"Some kind of Lizards creatures in the mammoth cave..."

"Perfect lizards, got it, easy job I'll be back before sundown." Gilbert grabbed the paper out of her hand and was out of the office before she could even finish.