We'll Always Have Paris by Ray Bradbury

manhattans, my good Joseph! And we sit and talk and crochet or cook
    or even take trips to Bermuda or anywhere at all, Rio, Martinique, Paris! And now, tonight, we
    had such a grand party, until you came to haunt us!’
    ‘Haunt you!’ he shrieked, eyes wild.
    ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘It’s almost as if you’re not real at all. As if you’re
    some phantom from another world come to spoil our fun. Oh, Joseph, why don’t you go away.’
    He said slowly, ‘You’re insane. God help you, Annie, but you’re insane.’
    ‘Whether I am or not,’ she said, at last,
    ‘I’ve come to a decision. I’m leaving you, tonight. I’m going home to Mother!’
    He laughed wearily. ‘You haven’t got a mother. She’s dead.’
    ‘I’m going anyway, home to Mother,’ she said endlessly.
    ‘Where’s that radio?’ he said.
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I wouldn’t be able to go home if you took it. You can’t have
    it.’
    ‘Damn it!’
    Someone knocked on the door.
    He went to answer it. The landlord was there. ‘You’ll have to stop shouting,’
    he said. ‘The neighbors are complaining.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said Joe, stepping outside and half shutting the door. ‘We’ll
    try to be quiet—’
    Then he heard the running feet. Before he could turn, the door slammed and
    locked. He heard Annie cry out triumphantly. He hammered at the door. ‘Annie, let me in, you
    fool!’
    ‘Now, take it easy, Mr Tiller,’ cautioned the landlord.
    ‘That little idiot in there, I’ve got to get inside—’
    He heard the voices again, the loud and the high voices, and the shrill wind
    blowing and the dancing music and the glasses tinkling. And a voice saying, ‘Let him in, let
    him do whatever he wants. We’ll fix him. So he’ll never hurt us again.’
    He kicked at the door.
    ‘Stop that,’ said the landlord. ‘I’ll call the police.’
    ‘Call them, then!’
    The landlord ran to find a phone.
    Joe broke the door down.
    Annie was sitting on the far side of the room. The room was dark, only the
    light from a little ten-dollar radio illuminating it. There were a lot of people there, or
    maybe shadows. And in the center of the room, in the rocking chair, was the old woman.
    ‘Why, look who’s here,’ she said, enchanted.
    He walked forward and put his fingers around her neck.
    Ma Perkins tried to get free, screamed, thrashed, but could not.
    He strangled her.
    When he was done with her, he let her drop to the floor, the paring knife,
    the spilled peas flung everywhere. She was cold. Her heart was stopped. She was dead.
    ‘That’s just what we wanted you to do,’ said Annie tonelessly, sitting in the
    dark.
    ‘Turn the lights on,’ he gasped, reeling. He staggered back across the room.
    What was it, anyway? A plot? Were they going to enter other rooms, all around the world? Was Ma
    Perkins dead, or just dead here? Was she alive everywhere else?
    The police were coming in the door, the landlord behind them. They had guns.
    ‘All right, buddy, up with them!’
    They bent over the lifeless body on the
    floor. Annie was smiling. ‘I saw it all,’ she said. ‘He killed her.’ ‘She’s dead all right,’
    said one of the policemen. ‘She’s not real, she’s not real,’ sobbed Joe. ‘She’s not real,
    believe me.’
    ‘She feels real to me,’ said the cop. ‘Dead as hell.’ Annie smiled.
    ‘She’s not real, listen to me, she’s Ma Perkins!’ ‘Yeah, and I’m Charlie’s
    aunt. Come on along, fellow!’ He felt himself turn and then it came to him, in one horrid rush,
    what it would be like from here on. After tonight, him taken away, and Annie returned home, to
    her radio, alone in her room for the next thirty years. And all the little lonely people and
    the other people, the couples, and groups all over the country in the next thirty years,
    listening and listening. And the lights changing to mists and the mists to shadows and the
    shadows to voices and the voices to shapes and the shapes to realities,