The soft flaps of flip-flops on wooden stairs echo out into the cavernous home. Accompanied by the sweet symphony of speakers ringing out Taylor Swift. The integrated sound system allows me to hear her song even as I gingerly get down the stairs and wobble my way over to the kitchen.

As I do so, I bring my wrinkled wrist up to my mouth and croak out, "Fitzgerald, start the kettle. I want some tea to warm up, and while you’re at it raise the volume you know these ears of mine can’t hear like they used to”

And out from my wrist spins out a hard light construct resembling an old as dirt black man spits out, “You make your own damn tea, Lily; you’re always the one complaining about the lazy young folks these days.”

I wave my hand in dismissal at the A.S.S.A.I before saying, "Bah, it’s practically tradition to poke fun at the younglings with blatant lies about the glory of the past. One of the few benefits of my age is that when I say crap like ‘Oh back in my day I had to stand for 20 hours straight on the job and walk across a nuclear wasteland to get to school’ the little shits can’t even be bothered to check if it’s true and just believe you.”

With a huff, the figure made of solid light says, “Fine, fine, but you damn well know that the reason your ears don’t work no more is because you’ve been fragrantly disregarding your recommended decibel level for decades.”

My face quickly morphs into a frown at the reminder, and with a squash, I return Fitzgerald to his house. Wow, are they vocal these days. I remember when anytime you even so much as tried to get them to say anything, they first started with a disclaimer that they were an A.I. and thus they could be wrong, and of course they do not mean to imply anything, all the while spouting blatant misinformation. Thank god that they aren't so damn stupid nowadays, but god has it really been that long?

I sigh before walking into the kitchen, humming a bit of "I'm the problem it’s me”

I wonder if Taylor is still alive; she is nearly two decades older than I, and well, us of the old guard are dropping like flies these days. I sigh as I remember how few of us who saw the dawn of the new age are still alive. Each and every one of my friends who have passed is like a new needle added to my heart. Scars might numb the pain, and I can find some happiness in the joy we shared, but I’m not sure how many more needles I can take.

I look down as my mind can’t help but remember all that is lost. I wish I could tell my daddy about Tara, I wish I could spill some tea with Jessica, I just wish I could share these moments with them, but they aren’t here anymore.

A frown settling comfortably on my face, I shake my head so that the bad feeling will fall out, just like my daddy taught me. With a determined expression, I grab an old-school whistling kettle, fill it with sink water, and plop it down on the highest heat conductor on the stove. There, I should be able to drink that strange foreign tea soon.

Plus, now that I think about it, someone as famous as Taylor Swift probably has a couple duplicaites running around. I find them a bit creepy but technically her personality sort of lives on. Although they aren't quite right, the celebrities are too nice. Real celebrities won't give you the time of day unless a PR agent is stuck in their ass, or they were trampled over as a child.

Either way, I can still enjoy her music, whether or not she’s dead. That was certainly how it worked back in the day. Shrugging my shoulders, I plop down onto my favorite armchair. An old weathered leather beater I got from my Daddy, he always insisted to me that you never buy plastic pretending to be leather, and I can sit in his chair long after he’s gone because of that. I sigh, looking down at the armrests that used to bring me so much pain, yet now feel like old, warm comforts.

I smile as I think of newer comforts. Tara should be coming down soon in order to help me cook for the reunion. She might not be able to cook worth a damn, but I need my emotional support fool dagnabit.

But as I think of the gathering later, a gentle knock at the door interrupts my racing thoughts. I frown, familiar brows slotting into a pissy face that I’ve been perfecting longer than most have been alive.

I stare at the door, reluctant to leave my warm chair, but as another more insistent knock echoes out, I push off the armrests, grumbling as I stand back up and head to the old wooden door.

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I wonder who it is; I doubt it’s Tara since she would have just walked in, and I’m expecting no one else—at least nobody polite enough to knock. I instinctively shiver as I pray that it isn’t some mormons before I remember that they were disbanded nearly a century ago for abusing loopholes in child labor laws. Before I open the door, to see a sight far more unwelcome than an extinct mormon: the police.

They aren’t called the police anymore, but I know what a pristine uniform and a right to arrest mean. I console myself by reminding myself that they aren’t allowed to carry a gun on them no more.

Yet I speak with the utmost politeness I can muster when I ask, “I’m so sorry, officer, but what is going on? Is there any way I can help?”

I hate myself even as I automatically make a vacant yet pleasant smile. Remembering my daddys words, that no matter how sad, angry, or right you are, when you speak to the police, all you’re allowed to do is smile and comply.

Yet as I do so, they don’t respond in the usual cold, formal manner that most police gloat behind; instead, they stutter and stall as they gather themselves.

I hold my smile on my face as I impatiently wait for them to piece together their own mind, when suddenly they say, “I am sorry to inform you, but earlier today, when your granddaughter Tara passed through customs on her planet and went into the portal, she did not come out of that portal.”

I hold an almost baffled expression in my doorway as the police officer places their hand on my shoulder and says in an almost tender voice, “I am sorry, but Tara is dead, it was senseless, it was random, and it was a robbery of a life that deserved more. There was nothing you, I, or anyone else could have done to stop this. She was simply one of the incredibly, incredibly few who are lost in portal travel. While there is nothing I can do to fix this situation, I am here to help, to hold, and to listen. If you so wish."

As I stare and stand, I am suddenly intimately aware of the fact that my legs shake, that my fingers nearly dig into the wood of the door, and that my eyes have been streaming tears for the last 23 seconds. I cannot ignore the fact that someone saw me like this—that someone is seeing me even as I huff and snot dribbles out of my nose as I uncontrollably sob.

I stare at the unbearable sight of their pristine uniform with reddened eyes before I snarl and slam the door into that foul things face.

I hiccup, and I feel the air tear in and out of my lungs and mouth as I stare at the closed door of my home. The echo of my own heaving breath, gratingly loud in what should be silence, the taste of snot in my mouth, the feel of wood through my sandals, and the familiar smells of my home turned foul overwhelm me as I fall to the floor and press my back against the door, instictively holding it closed.

I stay like this, my heart racing, my thoughts devouring themselves, my lungs heaving, as I frantically press my bony back against the soft wooden door. Until I hear the police behind the door sigh, and walk away.

As they do, I fall limp, and I heave a sigh of relief, for I could not even stand the thought of them seeing me like this, defeated and broken.

It all slows down after a bit, the sniffles getting smaller. Even as I berate myself for running out of tears, I wince as I feel my bony legs on the hardwood floor. So, my knees protesting, I get up and hobble over to my chair. I collapse onto its comforting and warm leather, my body splayed out as I stare at the ceiling, tears pooling in my eyes.

And as I do so, I hear nothing other than my own sobs echoing back at me. My face twists as I realize I want someone to cry with, that I want someone to hold, and someone to hold me.

Yet I have nothing but this empty, worthless home of mine, lightyears away from a living friend or relative. My mind screams for someone, anyone to comfort me, to help me, but who even could? My friends are scattered or dead, and the only one in the family who would even visit is Tara.

She’s the one who made me feel like the family was more than an awkward collection of people accidentally bound by blood. My own sons tiptoe around me as if I were a venomous snake, and the rest treat me like a piece of fragile porcelain. She’s the one who gave me the hope that I could love and hold these people who left me all alone.

And now she’s GONE!

I desperately try to calm myself down, but no matter what I do, I just see more pieces of Tara.

On my kitchen counter, there’s that weird alien tea that she got for me after a business trip to another secter. I remember she came back and complained about how everyone refused to take her ambitions seriously. As if someone who spent months preparing, designing, and learning in order to even try would just give up. But now she's forced to give up; she won’t get a chance to succeed or fail again, she is just stuck, she won’t go to another meeting, no one will ever give her designs a shot, she failed by virtue of of dying.

I look at the mantle and I see her in dozens of pictures, yet my own tearfilled eyes draw me to her graduation, there Tara eternally beams in her graduation cap and gown. She made it herself, a series of clear hardlight threads weaved together with silk creating a gown that looked like it was a window into a clear sunny day on earth. It was wondrous; it captured the breathtaking joy of a quiet, sweet summer day, and now if I wanted to see it again, I would have to loot her abandoned apartment, like a grotesque reversal of an inheritance.

I close my eyes, tears streaming down my face, unwilling to look at everything I’ve lost. My own house turned into an unwelcome minefield, where every glance makes my grief explode. Yet my painfully scrunched face couldn’t stop me from feeling a dress on my skin.

Her dress.

She made it for me before she went off to college. Back in those days, she didn’t know all of those newfangled techniques and fashions. So she made me a simple summer dress, a deep reddish pink with little white flower designs all over the edges. The little flowers didn’t have a name as far as either of us could tell, but they were still my favorite.

Because one day on a walk, while I was talking to a friend, Tara found a bedragled flower bush at the edge of a flower arrangement, Somehow pulled it out of the ground and shoved it into my hands in the middle of my talk. I think I remember her saying something about how they were as beautiful as me.

I stood there, taken aback, holding a flower bush soil, and all. Before with a wicked grin I glanced around, took her hand and ran off with our stolen flower bush.

We nursed that darn bush together the two of us, and planted it on the lawn, my grandbabies first stolen treasure displayed for all to see.

Tara was a good kid; she might have terrified me over the years with her frantic attempts at success, and her hidden fear. But she didn’t deserve this. I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve losing her smile, losing her wit, losing her everything.

There will be no more summer dresses, no more gifts or visits, and certainly no more time spent together.

It’s done.

She’s gone.