Author's Note: Death, cancer, magic, incest, and a touch of Norse traditions.
Ta to ScottishTexan for inspiring a line - from their "That Girl Next Door".
All the stories in my "My Sister's a...!" series are standalone, but have common threads. A suggested reading order is on my profile page, too.
---
There were exactly two things that everyone knew about Grace.
First, that she was a fighter. By which they didn't mean that she was determined and worked hard to achieve their dreams. They meant that they were terrified that she was going to plant her knee-high boots halfway up their ass.
It wasn't that she was a complete psycho, but she did seem to have some sort of divine being hating on her. Grace had always ended up in some truly ridiculous situations.
For instance, one time she had been on her way over to her brother's house for his birthday, with a two tier chocolate cake she'd just baked. However, she was running late and so Grace had decided to duck through the park.
She accidentally ran through the middle of two groups of people that actually were living in a different reality. Fists and knives had come out between them, and they didn't take kindly to the more ordinary citizen daring to witness their violence.
Grace had walked out of the park, calling for an ambulance with the undamaged cake in one hand, and thirteen assholes moaning on the ground behind her.
The second thing that everyone knew about Grace, was that she was a prankster.
For some people it was hilarious, but for most people she just drove them nuts. The kind of things she did weren't the kind of objectively horrible trash that people would film and upload for their fans to laugh at. However, what she did was the kind of thing where you couldn't prove it was her.
One of her favourite tricks was the haunted house. You'd wake up one morning and there'd be one or two things just very slightly out of place to how you remembered it. Weird, but you'd dismiss it.
Then, when you go to sit down for breakfast or whatever, the chair underneath you would suddenly take off flying. Sometimes literally.
Then, whilst you were still rubbing your ass, words would fade in on the wall. Sometimes looking like the wall was bleeding. Sometimes the letters would appear one by one, in exaggerated cursive. Always telling you that you'd been pranked.
Never a signature, but you wouldn't need one.
That being said, once you'd finished freaking out or laughing, and went back to your day, you didn't have to worry about the cleanup. Just as mysteriously as everything appeared, it'd disappear again. Grace always cleaned up after herself.
Used to clean up after herself.
Her brother laid the single rose in front of the urn sitting on his shelf, feeling guilt and anger sloshing around inside his confused head. Even a year on, he felt angry that she hadn't proved as strong a fighter when it came to cancer. He felt guilt and self-hatred at himself for feeling that anger towards her.
Grace had been twenty three when she'd... Lost the fight.
The expected lifespan of women is less than men, in most places in the world. Australia was no exception. Men could expect to live for about five years longer than their female counterparts, at about eight and a half decades.
Six decades more than Grace had managed. She had managed to make it more than a quarter of the way through her life expectancy, but only barely.
Not even halfway through her life, and she was gone.
Grace hadn't told anyone that she was even sick. The first hint that Elliot had picked up on, had been that over a month had passed since his sister had last decided to prank him. He'd asked her if it was because she'd got a boyfriend, and she'd given him the most puzzled look in the world.
He still hadn't worked out what was wrong when he'd got the call from the hospital that she'd passed peacefully in the night, and named him as the family member to deal with everything that entailed.
He'd thought it was a spear-phishing call.
"A year." Elliot whispered, letting go of the rose reluctantly, "It's been a whole year... And I'm still dealing with the crap you left behind. Did you really have to subscribe to every single streaming service? I keep telling them you're... Gone... And they keep apologising, but that doesn't stop them from charging you next month. Doesn't stop them trying to send your debt to collections."
He'd made the decision not to delete her email account, early on. That choice had repeatedly saved his butt. Every time he thought he'd handled everything, a new damn bill would pop up, saying that Grace's card had been declined, and they were unhappy about it.
Which was ridiculous, because he'd actually confirmed with the card companies that if someone tried to charge her card, they would decline it - but they had a protocol or something that gave the reason for declining as the fact that the card owner was dead.
You have to be pretty cold, to charge the dead.
Elliot gave another minute to the silence, and then he walked away from the urn. He headed for the kitchen, flicking on the kettle and pulling a mug down from the cupboard, overhead.
He rubbed his chin tiredly. It might be the anniversary of his sister's death, but the rest of the world didn't really care. His work had given him the day off, but they would just be piling up today's crap for tomorrow. Members of his team were likely to resent that he hadn't been around, as well.
His job wasn't one that was all that difficult, really. He took premade templates, client expectations and write-ups, and put them together to build crap business websites. He was capable of a lot more, but spinning up a template would take a few hours, and bring in a few thousand dollars. More profitable than building something halfway decent, from scratch.
It was boring, but consistent.
Elliot pulled out his phone as he waited for the kettle, and glanced over his emails. As predicted, most of them were work emails and thinly-veiled complaints that he wasn't in the office, helping out.
There was also an unexpected email. One automatically forwarded from his sister's address.
Opening it, he stared in confusion at a postal notification. At first he figured it had to be spam or phishing or something like that. Dead people don't get mail, a year on.
However, it really did link to the actual post office, where it said that they'd received notification from the shipper. Didn't have a prediction for when it would send out, but the address wasn't for his sister's house. It was for his.
No more hints than that, however. No name or address for who was doing the shipping, and no size of the package being sent. It could be anything from an envelope to an elephant.
Had Grace tried to arrange sending him something, after she was gone? He wouldn't put it past her, to try and get one last prank in.
Her ability to time it, was impressive, unless she had someone living who was collaborating. Like a lawyer or friend. Shipping on the day, instead of the arrival, did make him feel like the timing might be a coincidence, though.
Elliot looked up from his phone in annoyance, to glare at the kettle for taking so long. The device however, had apparently already clicked off, and he hadn't noticed it.
"What the...?" Elliot made a frowning face as he poured the hot water into his mug.
His kettle was not quiet. It was a cheap-ass electric kettle, that had cost him less than a ten dollar note. So it was loud, but fast.
The weird bit, was he was still hearing a loud and grumpy whistle from somewhere in the house.
