Inbox (4783) | Tina S. Zhu

My past online selves keep sending me emails. Every Saturday, goth_sk8er_chick_daphne_13 asks whether I'm one of those chill grown-ups, like, if I still listen to real music and if I've finally earned the privilege to curate my grandfather's playlists. My pet unicorn dragons from when I was ten need to be fed daily, dragon_master_daphne says. (Or at least I think that’s what she says—the font is pink and curly and size eight.) DaphneCTheGreat wants to be my pen pal, wonders how I'm doing after moving out of my parents' house at twenty-six, moving a hundred miles away from Waigong's Anthony Bourdain-famous dishes and eclectic music taste. I filter the emails into a special folder, but they keep coming from new addresses with slight variations like @ for an a and 3 for an e, as if my past selves know that I'm too lazy to update the filter rules again. Who has the time? Between work and driving to my mom's when she got tired of taking care of Waigong and then tired of fighting with her brothers and sisters over the will and who gets their father's prized cooking supplies, my online life has gone unattended. My Instagram—not updated in seventeen months. My Twitter handle—forgotten. 

Inbox (4783) is when I decide the emails need to stop. My online selves' passwords were in a wide-ruled composition notebook somewhere in my mother's attic along with my grandpa's soup ladles and pots and woks a two-hour drive away. So instead of deleting the accounts one by one, I print out pictures of my avatars, in black and white to save ten cents per page at the library. The anime girls and blank faces and high school prom photos fit into the four-by-six-inch picture frames. I burn incense and joss sticks and joss paper dollar bills for my grandfather's twice-postponed funeral at the park, burning enough Ben Franklins to buy all the virtual game credits and albums my past selves could want. The smoke makes me cough, just like I did when Waigong gave me a cigarette to try. His advice: spending too much time on our family Dell desktop was gonna kill me slowly, so I should try nicotine, which did the same thing but with the added benefit of smoke breaks at work. Free vacation time every day, he said. Better than traveling. 

My phone dings. Inbox (4785). The first new email is my mother's draft eulogy for my grandfather's memorial, which she wants me to look over to make sure she doesn't sound too resentful of her siblings. And the second is thanx for the ca$h, from goth_sk8er_chick_daphne_13. Its enough for Panic At The Disco tickets for me and Gramps!!!

I hit reply, inhaling the incense and coughing again. You're welcome, I type. Have fun.

Tina S. Zhu writes in California. Her words have been in Strange Horizons, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Fireside Magazine. She can be found on Twitter @tinaszhu or at tinaszhu.com.