Mildred had always said her Harold was a hard man to live with, but an even harder one to live without. So when she discovered a dusty old necromancy manual wedged behind the casserole dishes at St. Ignatius’s rummage sale, she figured, why not?

She read the Latin aloud over Harold’s urn while sipping her chamomile tea, just as the instructions suggested. There was a puff of sulfur, a loud crack, and a wet slapping noise as Harold’s body reassembled itself like an angry meat puzzle on the floral rug.

“Jesus, Harold,” she muttered, dropping her teacup. “You smell like soup left in the sun.”

He blinked. Or rather, the thing that had once been Harold blinked. His eyes were milky, and one hung lower than it should have.

“Mildred,” he croaked, “where are my slippers?”

“Slippers? You’ve been dead for six years and that’s your first damn question?”

“I think they’re under the Davenport.”

They weren’t. She’d tossed them the week after his funeral, along with his taxidermy ferret collection.

Over the next three hours, Mildred was reminded of every reason she’d once fantasized about accidentally-on-purpose leaving Harold behind at a rest stop. He complained the tea was too weak, the afterlife had no good pudding, and his knees still hurt.

“Didn’t death fix your joints?” she snapped.

“Nope,” he said. “Only made the creaking louder.”

By sunset, he’d rearranged her spice rack by alphabetical order (“That’s how God would do it”), tracked grave dirt through her kitchen, and tried to flirt with The Price Is Right contestant on TV.

“Harold,” she sighed, “I raised you from the dead, not from the deaf. That woman can’t hear you.”

“I could do better than that Plinko hussy,” he muttered, sinking into the recliner with the sound of wet burlap.

That night, Mildred read the last chapter of the necromancy manual, which conveniently included a “re-deactivation spell.” It required a candle, three hairpins, and a whisper of deep regret.

She had plenty of that.

The next morning, the floral rug was empty, save for a pair of crusty old slippers and a faint smell of expired pudding.

She made herself tea and smiled softly.

“Rest in peace, Harold,” she said. “Again. But for real this time.”

Then she tossed the manual in the fireplace and settled in to watch The Price Is Right, slipper-free and unbothered.

The End