Still

She couldn't recognise the house. Not anymore. The subtle flower wallpaper she had been so terribly fond of had been torn so carelessly away only to be replaced with some ghastly geometric eye-strain of colours and irrational patterns. The furniture, both those she had found herself or those given to her from her family had been hauled off to some auction or another or donated to wherever it was that people who wanted to act like they were doing good donated things. In their place stood mockeries of what had been there before, cheap and perpetually seconds away from breaking. Even the old family portrait that hung over the mantle had been taken down an sent to an indefinite purgatory of storage. 

But try as Victoria might to protest and complain about the absolute disregard for her possessions, her complaints fell on deaf ears. That was the problem with those who still had pulses and needed to breathe, they never did seem to care to listen to the opinion of those who did not. 

Of course, that said, it was not entirely their fault. It was not as if they were able to see the woman they were unknowingly cohabiting the space with. 

Now, it had been a good hundred years since she died so on a rational level it was perfectly reasonable for someone to want to redecorate so that their house could match the times, and, more important, the inhabitants. Unfortunately, however, ghosts were not known to be the most rational of creatures and she found herself seething with resentment any time the odd little box they carried around started hissing and popping it's strange sounds to sever her serenity. 

It was unfair that the world was moving on around her while she was stuck immobile. 

It was not even that she carried any particular resentments about her death that would be keeping her tethered to the mortal plane. Yes, sure, the man who had killed her had walked free without trial or question, but she reasoned it could have been worse. The money he had been taking when she found him in the house, as far as she had gathered from the restrictive world of the house she was bound to, had been used for the medical costs of his son, who went on to, ironically, study forensic law when he came of age. So no, she wasn't quite as bothered by her murder as she perhaps could have been. 

What did bother her, however, was the sudden onslaught of some cheesy pop song bursting through the radio with, it seemed, the sole intention of drawing her out of her thoughts. Thoughts were the only thing a ghost had left, and an eternity to think them, and yet it seemed she was not even going to be afforded this, the most basic of rights. 

Now, it would not be an entirely accurate description to claim the spectral woman stomped angrily over to the radio, this being the sort of action that requires a greater amount of corporal body than she possessed, but she would like to imagine her behaviour to be something of the ilk. In reality, she just sort of angrily drifted over to the source of the music like a half deflated balloon with a temper. A description that would have had her proving outright the temper portion of the comment to be an understatement if anything. 

Briefly, as her hand passed uselessly through the box, she wished she had not been quite as stubborn as she was when she was still alive. Once, when she was little more than a child, her mother had hosted a seance in that very room. They were all the rage at the time, and anyone who was worth their name would host or attend - or so it had been claimed enough to sound a little believable - so of course her mother had, determined as she had been to secure her place in high society. But unfortunately Victoria had been a staunch sceptic of all things that could not be explained within the pages of the family's encyclopaedias and so had tsked and complained until her mother had allowed her to retreat to the library to wait out the whole ordeal. 

Even if the woman running the seance had been nothing more than a well dressed charlatan, it might have done some good to listen in just in case she offered something true by mistake. 

Perhaps the living had found themselves lucky that she hadn't quite figured out how to do anything majorly ghostly. If she had, she was quite sure she would have been out there poltergeisting as much as she possibly could - she may be a ghost but that did not mean by any rights that she knew the correct terminology, as it would have been more appropriate to claim she would be 'haunting as much as she possibly could' but we can forgive her that, she was already having an unfortunate enough time as it was - so maybe it was fortunate for everyone else that she hadn't worked it out. Either way, the best she could really do was sulk about and not like that she couldn't do much of anything. 

It has been said, and, more importantly, concluded that ghosts were supposed to be capable of interfering with technology but Victoria remained utterly incapable of even making a simple radio fall to static. Perhaps, she - wrongly - assumed, it was because music boxes were quite a bit different in her time so she would not have known how to use the device when she was alive, let alone now that she was dead. Being posthumous certainly did not make for the best time to be trying to develop new skills and the like. It would be nice if it was, after all it did give her a lifetime to learn as many things as she could possibly imagine and not even begin to fathom, and yet she was, instead, just stuck in a state of unchanging stagnantion ever since her final breath slipped through her lips. 

Well, there was little she could do with the radio, and so in a fit of irritability she stalked off as best she could. She did not even give the gaudy coloured abstract painting the time of day to regard it. When she was alive, good paintings had subjects and so meant something - which did not at all take into consideration the subjectivity of art and the fact that what was considered good and bad art was entirely based on the opinions and preconceived notions that the viewer had developed, and indeed did not consider the ever changing taste of art over the years since her passing - rather than just tossing erratic colours into a canvas. 

Okay maybe she acknowledged the artwork a little bit more than she planned to when she went by, because even just briefly catching it out of the corner of her eye annoyed her enough to further sour her mood. 

She could not understand the overwhelming fondness that the living had for changing things. For blotting out all that had managed to stand the test of time in favour of drowning it out in a sea of exuberant colours. 

It made the time that had passed her by feel all the more heavy. A reminder that she was stuck as an observer of a world that she once belonged to but was prematurely thrust into the role of the audience for. It was unfair that she was to spend the remainder of an indefinite eternity within the same walls even as they became less and less recognisable, as the world itself became less and less her own and replaced with something new. She knew, too, that the new would then become old and then replaced. Trends coming in and out of style while she remained always the same. 

By goodness did being dead make a person melancholy! No wonder there were so many weeping spectres and howling ghouls nestled within the pages of books and in the darker corners where the shadows seemed to twitch and stretch too long no matter the light source. 

But no matter the change, there was always one constant. An old apple tree in the back garden, already ancient when her mother came into the house and steady in its unchanging nature. While she longed to climb its branches, to feel the breeze in her hair as she sat among the leaves like a bird, she knew it was but a dream and the boundaries of her existence ended at the threshold of the house. 

But, in those moments where too much seemed unfamiliar, Victoria found the closest to peace a ghost could find, sitting in the windowsill gazing out at the tree. There, she could forget the repetitive song that spoke of all manner of scandals they never would have dreamed of uttering aloud playing from a device she could never have fathomed. There, she could forget the spray of colours that disrupted her sense of harmony as they hid her world away behind paint and paper. There, she could even forget the sound of the key clicking in the lock as the space once more became one for the living. 

Death was terribly stagnant and yet, as life flowed about her like a river to a stone, she could almost recall what it was like to grow and change along with it.