Gloria Mundi I am in title his executor, de facto the chief mourner. He lived his adult life alone but did die with company- a hired tender and me. A man who admitted to fallibility but rarely to vices or wrongdoing, a man so private that I read his past in his papers. I buried and eulogized him and marshalled all the wealth he’d been reluctant to spend, hard earned but not enjoyed, for distribution to strangers. I was perhaps his closest friend and huckster for the indulgences I wanted him to give himself, but now must strew his measure to the unknowing and the greedy.
About the Author: Ed Ahern resumed writing after forty odd years in foreign intelligence and international sales. He’s had over four hundred fifty stories and poems published so far, and eight books. Ed works the other side of writing at Bewildering Stories, where he sits on the review board and manages a posse of eight review editors.
Image Credit: Charles Aubrey “Flower Still Life” Public domain image courtesy of the Getty Open Content Program.
As It Ought To Be 