Benny

A lonely widow devotes herself to the only family she has left, until reality shatters her illusion in an act of unimaginable violence.

A chamber piece on denial as an act of love and an act of ruin, and on what a house will hold before it gives way.

Reimagined from a real account.

The husband is dead. She still sets two places. She still keeps his chair pulled out from the table, and something sits in it. She calls it Benny. It answers.

It stays at the edges of the rooms, where the lamps do not reach. In the hour before dark it gets longer. Up the hallway. Over the ceiling. Across the table she has laid for two. She keeps her eyes on her hands.

Her oldest friend sees it first. She comes by more often now, and watches the widow cook for a guest she will not explain. She starts asking the questions the widow buried with him. Every question makes the house darker.

The friend keeps coming back. The shadow keeps growing. Neither of them stops.