"TALES OF GHOSTS"
about Love and Death from the Land of Mists
a collection of short stories
in the “Playing Another Reality” series
"LOVE ME NOW!"
2. WHITE CLOTHES
Two ghosts, a man and woman, were sitting in a cafe on the seashore.
“You know,” the ghost of the man said with a sigh, “once upon I met my first love here, on this beach.”
“And when was that?”
“It doesn’t matter, in a past life… I never thought I’d be in these parts again!”
“So how did you two meet?”
“At that time I dreamed of meeting my Only One and wanted her to be cheerful and dressed in light colors. I was annoyed by girls in black, I avoided the mourning color a mile away and longed to throw myself headlong into the pool of intoxicating fun and carefree love.”
“Did your first love, to spite you, of course, appear in black?!”
“On the contrary… I was sunbathing on the warm sand and listening to the sounds of the waves, when I noticed a slender figure in a long translucent white dress, moving along the seashore towards me. When the girl approached, I looked at her pretty face and blond curls, topped with a straw hat, and realized that my dream had come true!”
“Did she say that you were not the hero of her novel?!”
“Why are you so… Everything was very romantic. We started to meet on the beach in the morning, swam and sunbathed, sometimes went to the mountains, and we passed evenings in a cafe. She seemed very cheerful and had an excellent sense of humor. I was fascinated by her.”
“What was her name?”
“She never told me her name. She suggested that I come up with my own.”
“And what name did you choose for her? The girl in white?”
“It doesn’t matter…”
“So why did you two break up?”
“Imagine, in that life I was too young and stupid!”
“Come on! It cannot be like that!”
“One night, when we were catching stars on the pier, she suddenly asked if I believed in life after death. I drove any thought of death away from me, and talking about it was disgusting to me, besides, I believed neither in the posthumous reality, nor in all sorts of … ghosts! I replied something and suggested changing the subject, but my companion became sad. Then I said categorically, ‘Listen! You’ve always been cheerful and funny, and I fell in love with you because you are like that! You wear white clothes! I don’t want to see a mournful lady contemplating death next to me!’ And she confessed, that, in fact, she thought about death almost always, because six months before we met, her parents had died in a plane crash. Since that time she had worn only white dresses, as in the country, where they had been on a business trip, white color meant mourning.”
1997