“Hello?” Oooh, I hope it’s Kirk, ringing to talk dirty to me before bed. I’m horny.

“Baby?” says a voice.

Well, now. If that doesn’t kill my libido. Now, and forever, ever more.

That voice; goosebumps creep over my flesh as memories flood my hippocampus, and emotions surge within me. That voice sounds just like…

“Mum?” I croak out. My libido says goodbye and jumps off a cliff.

“Yes, baby, it’s me,” says the voice of my dead mother.

I pull my mobile away from my face and look at the screen; “1-800-PISS-OFF”, says the caller ID.

Huh. Could be her. Or my father, really.

I put the phone back to my face. What I have to remember here, I tell myself firmly, taking a mature person’s control over the bizarre situation, is that my mum is, in truth and fact, dead. As a dodo. Or, you know, whatever. Dead as something…dead. She’s fricking dead, people. Not down the block at the grocery, calling me for a ride home, or out with her old~lady mates at the male strip club, pinging loonies off the sculpted buttocks of suspiciously~muscled, bronzed old boy toys. Or, indeed, doing any of the other mumsy~type thingummies that mummies do these days. She’s bloody dead, buried in the Queen’s Cemetery, over on 4th street. The big fancy one, thank you very much. You know the one; it has the emergency vet office across the street, where I once took Walker when he ate my favourite panties and I wanted them back. And where that kinda~homeless guy solicits his phenomenal services to innocent people as they try to walk by. You know, that kinda~homeless guy, Leo; the French guy who will redo your hairdo for $10, so you don’t “look like a blind arsehole with no hands that styled his own hair that morning”? I actually let him redo my hair, once, when I was drunk. He did an INCREDIBLE upsweep, with sideswept bangs. Turns out, he used to be a stylist at Chrome, the shit~hot salon downtown, where a cut~and~colour costs more than a purebred Pomeranian puppy. Leo developed a tiny cocaine habit whilst a rising star at Chrome salon and ended up losing his hard~earned chair on the front floor. Oh, and also his flat. And his car. His wife and kid. His boat. His entire life, basically. Anyway, he’s no longer at Chrome, is what I’m trying to tell you. But he does do my foils now, every six weeks, in the single bathroom of the Montgomery Safeway. So things do have a way of working out nicely sometimes.

Back to the present moment, and my mature handling thereof.

“Who is this?” I demand into my phone. It cannot be my mum; not really. I saw the bitch die, for Christ’s sake. And while it may be true that, at the time, in a manner similar to that of my now~backstreet~hair~stylist, I may have been somewhat high, well…I know what I saw.

There is silence at the other end of the line.

“Hello?” I demand again.

“Mitzy,” she says softly, and a shiver runs down my spine. Only my mum calls me that, has ever called me that.

Oh shit fuck, I think, and bile rises in my throat. Is this for real? What do I do? WHAT DO I DO?

For one thing, I guess I should get off her couch, put down her tv remote, and leave her house. Then…then, I’ll think of what I should do.