In my nightmare, I see my grandpa standing there. Never blinking, never smiling, never breathing.

Bumpi died when I was ten. It was the first death of a loved one that I experienced. I was his girl, and then I wasn’t.

In my nightmare, he’s there, watching silently. Something about him is wrong though. This isn’t the gentle, but firm grandfather that I remember. His eyes are sunken, his teeth rotting. No flesh beneath his skin.

Every night he gets a little more hollow, but a little closer.

He’s still watching me grow up, but he’s also waiting for something. 

In my nightmare, we’re at our small cabin in the mountains. Embraced in shadows, the red paint flaking off the log walls. Bumpi’s father, Grandpa Opi, built it, and his mother decorated the walls with her deer trophies. The lights don’t turn on, and the water is contaminated by a rabbit carcass. Every night the cold crawls up the walls and seeps across the floors.

The cabin is my earliest memory of Bumpi. The day was gray and wet, the dirt driveway turned to mud, little streams of water tumbling down the tire tracks, creating pools at the bottom. One slip of my small five-year-old hand and the white rabbit I had named Rose, fell to the dirty water.

The white fur turned brown and clumped together. Bumpi’s eyes watched me, his mouth opening in a burst of frustration that was unfamiliar to me.

“Inside, Rylee!” 

In my nightmare, Bumpi’s empty eyes watch me as I make mistake after mistake, waiting for me to clean the stains of mud off Rose’s fur, to push past the trauma of losing him to his dementia. 

I was his girl, and then I wasn’t. 

So what am I now?