The Plumbing in my New Place

It’s an old building and as such it has its share of quirks.

I was told that the day I moved in, and I have no right to complain as each specific quirk, in its turn, reveals itself to me. I’d been warned, after all, and forewarned is, as they say, forearmed. Nevertheless…

There’s some issue with the pipes beneath the floor, you see, and when I shower they spray water up, just a little, gradually soaking through the floorboards and carpet, leaving a wet area and watery footprints leading out of the bathroom when I’m done. No matter what I do, the footprints appear, every time I shower without fail, tracking water across the carpet.

Which ought to be fine, it ought to be something I could easily live with. My building super knows about the issue, after all, and I’ll never be called upon to pay for either repairs to the floor or replacement of the carpet. With that in mind the issue is annoying, but eminently live-with-able, the sort of thing that would elicit mild grumbling but no more thought than that.

Except…

The footsteps don’t lead to my bedroom, you see, where I walk after my shower, the way that they would if they’d been made by my own two feet.

Instead, they turn right, and walk off down the hall toward God only knows where.

I live alone. I’m the only person in the house.

And, until those footprints dry, each day, I find myself afraid to follow, and see where they might lead…

In Which I'm Visited By Three Spirits (dick pics pt. 2)

The first ghost that visited was a disgraced US congressman, humiliated, ruined, laughed out of Washington after a simple misunderstanding of how Twitter worked led to his sharing much more with his constituents than he’d ever intended.

The second, the ghost of Chat Roulette, and with it the potential to bring millions together, to create a community and bring the world to your home, potential swiftly reduced to a simple punch line about sudden, shocking exhibitionism.

The third, the future, was less clear. Was it a genuine watershed of body positivity, mankind coming together to celebrate its form in all its beauty? Or merely the exploitation by a mass media bent only on profiting off humankind’s animal instincts? I couldn’t be sure, but one thing was clear: The future had come, and it was naked.

I awoke from my dream and threw open my window, screaming down into the street, demanding a passing orphan tell me what day it was, if there was still time, if Christmas had yet come.

Upon hearing that it had not, I nearly wept with gratitude. But I did not weep, I maintained my composure, because Christmas was upon me and I still had much to do.

Shopping to get to.

Gift-wrap to buy.

Genitals to photograph.

Text-messages to send.

I had too long taken the holiday season for granted, but no more. Thanks to that late-night visit from the Ghosts of Dick Pics Past, Present and Future, I was in the proper spirit, and I finally understood the true meaning of inappropriate late-night text messages to friends and acquaintances. And, while once I might have scoffed at the notion of sending such photos to people who had not asked for them, nor given any indication such a thing would interest them in the slightest, I wasn’t going to let another moment go by without sharing myself with the people who were nearest me in the most intimate way that I could.

Christmas is, after all, the season of giving.

God bless us, every one…

Homecoming

Whenever I return home, I make a point of visiting the skate park.

Jerry broke his neck there in ’98, trying to jump over a bench. No helmet.

The funny thing is, he wasn’t even on a skateboard, he just tried to jump over the thing and tripped. And to this day you can still see his spectral form, aimlessly wandering the park. I give him a wave as I pass, though I don’t know if he can see me. I like to think he can, though he never acknowledges me.

I also stop in at the Rose & Crown, where Don was hit by a drunk driver, minimum once. He’s there, at his favorite booth, nursing an eternal pint, though nobody who didn’t know him can see. I’ll sit with him for a quick one if time permits. It seems the least I can do to honor his memory, although for obvious reasons we don’t speak. People would think I was a crazy person if we did, from their point of view it’d look like I was talking to myself.

Anne still sits on her bench in the hanging garden. It’s not where the accident took place but it’s a place that she loved in life, so I guess she found her way there afterward. And I can’t blame her, it’s a lovely place to visit, and I’m glad she can make good use of the bench we had dedicated to her. Makes the gesture feel a little more worthwhile.

I don’t sit with her, though. I can’t bring myself to. Even after all these years the memory is too raw. Still, I walk through the garden and venture near enough to at least catch a glimpse of her.

I don’t revisit my hometown as often as I’d like, work and family make that harder and harder as the years go by, and the farther I get from that part of my life, the less reason I have to go back. I suppose that’s true for us all. You can’t go home again, and what not. It’s not the same place, or more often you aren’t the same you. It all just feels too different, alien…

…nevertheless, now and again I do make it back, and whenever I do I make a point of visiting old friends, at all the old haunts.

The Reason for the Season

The first ghost took me to a shopping mall, where harried retail workers worked ten, sometimes twelve hour shifts, six days a week, frequently having to skip breaks to keep up with the volume of shoppers passing through. I watched them, separated from their own families and wishing they could spend their holidays at home, stagger through day after painful, repetitive day, helping strangers they knew would never appreciate their hard work find the perfect gift…

The second ghost was different. He showed me a family dinner, where people who loved one another realized they didn’t like one another nearly as much as they could. They tried their best to keep it civil until the night was over with, but as the drinks flowed tempers flared, as they must, and by the end of what was meant to be a family meal the veneer of civility had given way to open, passive-aggressive hostility.

The final ghost was, perhaps, worst of all. It showed me a wasteland of gifts, bought, opened and forgotten. Perhaps some might be used, or at least re-gifted next holiday season, but the majority would languish in closets and storage rooms until, finally, winding up either at yard sales or in landfills. Money wasted, time and effort unappreciated. Tokens of affection given, received and ignored.

The ghosts had visited to bring me an important lesson on the true meaning of Christmas, and waking up the next morning I realized that yes, the lesson was both true and important to remember at this time of year.

…oh yes, I learned my lesson, and I learned it well.

Christmas is the worst.

Also: Ghosts are kind of dicks.

Meanwhile, at a local haunted house...

I know how you got here.

At least, I can hazard an educated guess, based on my own experiences.

You and your idiot friends learned about this little house, a ways off the beaten path but still easy enough to find if you bother to look for it. You heard that nobody’d lived here for years, and when you dug around for more information you heard about the murders that took place here, too long ago for anyone who might remember firsthand to still be around to ask about.

They dared you to spend the night in the “haunted” house, and you agreed, and now here you are.

I know this, or can guess it, because that’s what happened to me.

I wasn’t murdered here, that wasn’t me. The family that was is still around, somewhere, but I’m just some guy, who’s idiot friends once dared him to spend the night here, who found the ghost and, petrified by its ghastly visage, panicked and ran for the door, only to find it locked upon my arrival.

I pounded on the door, screamed in fear and agony and, after what seemed like a dozen lifetimes spent lost in a terror that I’m sure must’ve at some point driven me insane, sank to the floor, my heart giving out from overwork as the world slowly, finally, went black around me.

I died in front of that door, and when my friends returned for me in the morning, they found my body there, mouth still frozen in silent scream, cold and dead and very, very pale.

Yes, as pale as you’re looking right now.

And in a moment you too will, no doubt, break for the door and find it shut to you, and as you throw yourself, over and over again, against it in a desperate and futile attempt to find your way to freedom, I want you to know, I’ll feel no pleasure at my victory. It will bring me no joy.

No, in fact I’ll feel tremendous guilt at the role I play in scaring you to death, guilt that, were I not already deceased, would no doubt haunt me to the grave.

But there’s nothing I can do about that. I haunt this place, and you entered it, and such is the way of these things. I could no more let you pass the night here unimpeded than the family could let me loose when I came here so long ago.

I wish I could make you understand, this isn’t personal. It’s just what I am now, appalling though it is, and much though I’d like to I’m not capable of going against my fundamental nature.

Of course, are any of us?

No matter. I can explain all of this to you afterward, once your body has ceased and you’ve calmed down a little. We have all the time in the world for conversation, after all, we’re going to be here together a very long time.

Once you’ve passed over, I’ll introduce you to the others, too. They’re anxious to meet you, it’s been so long since anyone’s ventured inside this house, we’d worried that the legends surrounding it had finally warned people off for good.

We’d missed the visitors.

That’s part of why we’re so glad you’re here.

You’re sure to add a little life to the place…

When David Henderson Wakes Up...

...he’ll find both himself and his bed drenched in blood. Were he to have the blood tested, he’d learn it was human.

I somehow doubt he’ll have it tested.

Instead, once he’s done screaming, he’ll probably shower, gather his bedclothes and dispose of them as best he knows how. He likely won’t dispose of them very well.

He didn’t plan to  need to, after all.

He’ll wonder what happened to him, what he did while he slept. He’ll wonder if he killed someone, and who, and if police are moments away from breaking down his apartment door.

He did, it was a homeless person nobody will ever miss, and no, in case you’re wondering.

He doesn’t need to worry. But he will.

He’ll worry more and more as the weeks go by, obsessing over the moments after he awoke, straining himself to remember what happened, what led to that one horrible morning. He’ll never remember a thing.

Maybe he’ll someday put the experience behind him and get on with his life, telling himself it was only a nightmare, a brief nervous breakdown and that it never really happened. Some people do.

Though they’re never the same afterward.

More likely he’ll never get over it. More likely the guilt and shame and sorrow, and the endless unanswerable questions, will haunt him until the end of his life.

Maybe he’ll end his own life. Many do.

Either way, he’ll never know for sure what happened while he slept, because he wasn’t in the driver’s seat.

I took him, you see, while he slept. I borrowed his body, since he wasn’t using it, and I hit the streets. I picked someone at random, I killed him with a butcher knife from David Henderson’s kitchen, and then I threw the knife into a nearby dumpster.

The police will never trace the knife back to David, because I washed the knife and I put gloves on him before picking it back up, but mostly they’ll never trace the knife back to him because they have no reason to suspect, even for a moment, that he might be a killer.

Because he’s not. And if you kill somebody, once, and you choose your victim at random, you can still get away with murder, even in this day and age.

A lesson I wish I’d learned in life, though I’m not sure I could have followed it. I was good at picking my victims at random, but I could never stop at just one.

That’s how they caught me.

David, on the other hand, will never be caught, because he will stop at one. One horrible night, one terrifying morning, and he’ll never have to help me this way again.

I know he’ll never be caught because none of the other people whose bodies I’ve borrowed ever have been. And there’s been a lot of them, I’ve been doing this since they executed me and nobody’s been caught yet. They’ve gone mad, on occasion, and they sometimes kill themselves, but they never, ever get caught. And neither will David.

And next week, when the urge builds within whatever astral thing I have instead of a living body, I’ll possess someone other than David Henderson to fulfill my mission. And while David loses his mind from fear, guilt and paranoia I’ll be merrily going about my business using new hands each time I kill.

I never possess the same person twice for my nightly excursions, you see. But I admit, I do try my best to keep track of what they do after I’m done with them, how they manage their guilt and pain or how they fall apart.

As the years go by, I’ve learned that that’s half the fun.

Crimes of Passion

Waking, drenched in blood, axe laying discarded on the bed, I realized:

Christ, I’ve killed her!

We’d been fighting, lately we were always fighting, and we’d been drinking, but had I drank enough to lose time? And I’m not a man who, black-out-drunk, would think to get the axe…

I’m not a murderer.

Am I?

Okay, okay. What did I do, and how do I deal with it?

I rush to splash water on my face, but my hands pass through the faucet and, when I look up, there’s no reflection in the mirror.

Ah.

I see.

She killed me.

Casper

At work, the claw machine has new, Halloween-themed stuffed toys.

It’s perfect for the season.

And at the back of the machine is Casper, the friendly ghost. For Halloween he’s dressed as an Egyptian mummy.

When I first saw it, I shuddered. Why on earth would Casper have a Halloween costume at all, let alone dress as a mummy?

He’s already a freaking ghost, for crying out loud!

It’s an abomination, a betrayal of a beloved character!

On an unrelated note, my doctor says I need to stop getting worked up over trivialities or I’ll give myself a heart attack…

Little Ghost

It was a very old house, but in a very good neighbourhood, and worth a great deal more than I’d paid for it.

It took less than a week for me to learn why.

My third night in the place, I was awoken by a ghastly moan the likes of which no human voice should ever utter. A human voice could utter it, but it should not.

As I awoke I saw, sitting at the foot of my bed, a vaporous child, pale and drawn, in clothes curiously out of date, staring at me with eyes larger than his head should fit. His head could fit them, indeed it did, but it should not.

He stared at me, curious. I stared back, gulping down a scream. That gulp was a narrow thing indeed.

“What, I mean, who, I mean, what are you doing here?” I sputtered.

“I lived here,” he replied, too solemnly for a child his apparent age, “and then, later, I died here. Father, when the bank threatened to take this house away, killed mother, and me. And then himself. Mother went to heaven, Father to hell, and here I remain. I can’t leave, I wouldn’t know where to go. This house is the only home I’d ever known.”

“I will never leave this house. Never.”

I softened toward him then. I mean, he was just a kid, he didn’t deserve such a horrible fate. Then the implied threat became clearer. This was his home. I had invaded it. And what, pray tell, does an angry ghost do in a situation like this?

“But I live here now too.” I whispered, feeling the blood drain from my face. “What do you intend to… do to me?”

He cocked his head quizzically, then smiled.

“Do to you? Nothing. I just wanted to say hello, and welcome. I’d missed having people around…”

And with that the little ghost faded slowly back into the aether, leaving me shivering in the cold of my darkened room.

I didn’t sleep well that night.

I occasionally catch glimpses of the spirit roaming the halls of my new home, and when he catches my eye he’ll sometimes wave, and it still sends those same chills down my spine.

I have, from time to time, considered selling the place.

But, as I’ve said, it’s a very good neighbourhood. One that should be well outside my price range.

And there are worse roommates in the world.

Identity

There’ve been times where I’ve wondered: What am I?

Does identity require bodily continuity? Without physical form, would I simply cease? Or is there fundamental “self”-ness that exists beyond form, independent of body, that exists past passing.

I never called it soul, or spirit, since I wasn’t even sure it existed. But I did, in odd reflective moments, wonder.

Now, floating high above the accident, staring down at the twisted remains of the car that contains my own twisted remains, I’m no closer to an answer. If I had a voice, I’d laugh.

Because I no longer feel like me…

The Seance

I’d never been to a medium, always believed they were conmen. No one can really speak to the dead, right? But when he came to town, something drew me there.

Perhaps the recentness of my loss, or the things left unsaid. But something, and when the seance began I couldn’t look away.

The set was corny, too Hollywood for what he claimed to do, but something about him stood out, something powerful. Connected.

“There’s a presence in the room,” he said, “from beyond. A spirit needing closure.”

Then he stared up where I hovered above him.

“Spirit, what’s your name?”

Home Invasion

I was awakened by screams, from somewhere inside the house.

Grabbing the nearest thing I could find (table lamp) I leapt from my bed and, silently, crept into the hallway.

Through the dark and down the stairs, I didn’t see him ‘til I’d tripped over him.

Clad in black, hunting knife inches from his outstretched hand, neck twisted at the sort of angle you don’t recover from, look of horror frozen on his face. I don’t know what happened, I hope never to learn.

But from that moment on, I was cool with the fact that the place was haunted.

Talking to the Dead

Before I could talk to the dead, I lived in existential fear. I think we all do. We go through life on some level wondering: is this all that is?

Once I began seeing and speaking to the dead, I finally knew part of us lived past death, but now I feared the dead. They were everywhere, grasping, wanting, hungry. They hounded me, I feared they’d drive me mad.

Now I control my gift, and I’m at peace. I speak to the dead, but when I wish, on my own terms. I’m content, not afraid.

Truly, I’m a happy medium.

Modern People

If you kill me, he told us angrily, I’ll return to seek revenge.

We laughed. We’re a modern people, with no time for such superstitions.

We executed him on schedule, and that was the end of that.

Except…

Seven children have taken ill over the four months since. Our doctors have told us they’ve no idea what’s caused it, no idea if whatever’s wrong can be cured.

The elders are speaking about the old ways again, about what we can do to appease the great spirit.

I don’t know what to believe.

We are a modern people, but our children…

The Empire Hotel

The Empire Hotel was the last place I felt really happy.

We came here to stay when we spent weekends in the city. Before Mommy and Daddy started fighting. Before Daddy started not bringing Mommy and me when he went to the city. Back when we were a family.

So when I fell into the pool while Mommy was asleep, I came back here. I thought I’d be happy.

It’s okay, I guess. Nobody can see me or hear me, but I always got taught to stay out of peoples way anyway.

It’s peaceful here. Quiet.

I guess it’s okay.

Death of a Linguist

English is a confusing language. There are too many similar words that mean totally different things.

Like there, their and they’re. Or desert and dessert.

It’s a tangled mess, developed organically over hundreds of years. Those of us who learned it from birth are used to it, but I pity anyone who learns it in adulthood.

“Hunted” and “Haunted” is another example. On the page they look basically the same, but there’s a world of difference, as you’ve been learning for the past six months.

I was hunted.

You are haunted.

Your shotgun will not help you now.

Nothing will.

My Wife: A Ghost Story

My wife sits in the corner, nagging me to keep my feet off the damn coffee table. She nags me about everything, all the time. I work hard, I pay the bills, but she still takes it upon myself to attack every little thing, no matter how insignificant it seems, that I do.

Have I taken out the garbage, she asks, or why won’t I help with the dishes. Why don’t I help with anything around the house? Like I don’t need a damn moment to myself? Like I’m not even a person, that she can order me around?

Sometimes it makes me so angry I can barely see, my vision goes white with rage and I can no longer even make out her words. At moments like that, I feel I could kill her.

Once, midway through a rant about how I had left the toilet seat up, I did. Snuck up behind her and, before she even knew what I was doing, got her in a choke hold. I could feel her squirming against me, kicking, trying to scream and, finally, stopping, silent against me. Blissfully silent. Gloriously. And for that moment, I knew perfect, blissful peace and quiet.

For that moment.

But nothing lasts forever. Now her ghost sits in the corner, ever watchful, ever nagging. To keep my feet off the coffee table, to clean the dishes when I’m done my dinner, to get the corpse out of the freezer in the basement and bury it in a shallow grave out in the woods before the cops start looking for her. Little things, but accumulating into a maddening torrent of nagging impossible to escape.

Ghosts need no sleep, she can wake me to criticize my snoring. They don’t have jobs so she can give her opinion about how I’m doing mine. And they’re tied to the person who killed them, so she never has to leave my side.

I can’t have peace and quiet, even for a moment. I’d kill her for another taste of that blissful silence, but it’s not the sort of thing a man can do twice. I’d kill myself but, as she so gladly points out, I’m too much of a coward for suicide.

So I sit in my easy chair, trying to read, trying not to scream, trying to ignore her as she nags me.

As she’ll do always, for every day of my life.

I hope it isn’t long.