The doorbell rang. I let the bottle slip from my grasp and join it's empty brothers on the floor. As I staggered to the door I flicked the light switch. They flickered, struggling, then snapped out. Fucking broken switch. I pressed my eye against the peep hole, hoping a kid had rung it and ran, for no one to be there. No such luck, I pulled open the door. The UPS man tried his best not to let disgust register on his face. Under one arm he held a brown box against his hip and the other held a clipboard. "What?" I demanded opening my hands. Daring him to comment on three weeks of beard unchecked, or the growing mural of stains on my robe or the stench I'd lost the ability smell but still knew lingered. "Uh, you have to sign for this package," he said extending the hand with the board and shirking back. "Fine," I snatched the board. He drew a pen out of his pocket and handed it to me. I scrawled my signature. He traded me the box for the board, I clicked his pen shut and slipped it into my robe pocket. I started to close the door. "Hey, I need that to-" the door shut. I took the box to the kitchen, and shoved the stack of due bills onto the stack of overdue bills. The word electrical, caught caught my eye. So the light switch wasn't broken. I pulled open the curtain over the table and let sunlight spill into the house for the first time in weeks and onto the top of the package, there was no return address. I fumbled through a drawer till I found a knife and slit the tape holding the box together. I pulled out the contents. An envelope with my name, in her penmanship and a box chocolates? I tore franticly at the side of the envelope. How was it her penmanship? I pulled out a card, it was one of her cards, one of the ones she wrote thank you notes on. Cream coloured thick card stock. I held it in my hands staring. Daring it disappear like a dream that didn't make sense, but it wouldn't. It was real. I opened it, it was her penmanship too, I read.

Dear Marcus, I'm sorry. I'm sorry you're getting this package. I know you remember how often we'd argue about whether or not there was something more, something beyond. And I know you never really understood why I believed. But I always loved you that you never asked me to stop believing. Especially in these last months when you knew I needed to cling to that belief ever harder. And you were there for me to cling to as well. I knew it was coming, same as you did even if you didn't want to admit it. So I made these arrangements. That on the event of my death, this package would be sent to you. And if there was a way to reach from the beyond, to reach out from something more, I would stop this package from arriving. So, I'm sorry you got it, just know I tried. But it's not really a loss for you. You're wrong to think you've lost me. You always told me, that human beings were sensory data to each other. That nothing truly objectively existed outside of our minds. That we write the universe into existence every day by perceiving it. But that nothing could really exist that you couldn't perceive. You told me that was part of why you didn't believe in something more. But that what you had was enough. You also told me, that these were your favourite chocolates. You told me you loved coming home to find I'd picked up a box for you. And I knew you'd miss that when I was gone. But I'm not gone. You said we were sensations to each other, so if even now, even after, from the beyond I can still give you a sensation. If I can still pick up a box of chocolates for you, then I'm not gone. As long as I can stir up a memory in you from time to time, then I'm not gone. Maybe I'm gone from everyone else. Maybe I'm gone from myself. But not from you. So eat the chocolates, let me be sensory data to you again. So you can write me back into the universe if only for a minute. And I'll try and stop the box that's coming next month, Sarah

I set down the note, and with a shaking hand took a chocolate from the box. I closed my eyes and bit. And the lights came on.