The Ghost in My Bedroom Won’t Stop Farting

Note from the author: This story contains some mature content and explicit language.

The first check arrived in the mail on the same day my roommates tried to boot me out of the apartment for nonpayment of rent. It was worth $3050, made out to cash. The memo said, “Happy Easter!” The senders were a Dr. and Mrs. Horus Wertzberger, whom I had never heard of. I didn’t even know people wrote checks anymore. I looked both ways and then locked my mailbox and shoved the check in my fraying backpack. I ascended the three flights to my apartment, nerves tingling. My calves ached from my recent failed attempt at training for a 5K. The door to the apartment was already open, and the twins were waiting for me on our broken, booger-colored couch. Twin expressions of patronizing concern colored their faces.

“You’re three months behind,” said Kae, her tone that of a stern mother berating a little boy for getting chocolate on the white towels.

“There needs to be some sense of accountability,” said Siobhan. “You’re like a child.”

“You make us feel unsafe in our shared space,” added Kae. “You’re aggressive and rude, and you don’t stay up to date with your responsibilities. If you don’t pay rent by tomorrow, we’re going to have to ask you to leave.”

I pulled out the check and held it up. “I have the money, okay? And please stop filling up my section of the freezer with frozen fruit from Costco!”

I slammed the door to my room.

I later took a trip to a sketchy check-cashing place around the corner and accepted the money in the form of Visa gift cards.

After I had paid my back rent, I spent the rest of the money ordering a princess dress-up kit for my goddaughters. The kit included puffy dresses in six different varieties (baby pink, violet, turquoise, Snow White, Tiana, and Cinderella), as well as heeled plastic shoes with oversized gems at the tips and an assortment of clunky silver tiaras.

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A few days later, I received several videos of the girls giggling in the princess clothes, along with a gushing thank-you message: The girls loveeeee your gift! You’re amazing!!!! When are you coming to visit? We are home this weekend!

I marked the message as ‘unread’ so that I could come back to it later. I knew that I wouldn’t, though. I would be spending my weekend the way I always did: Binge-watching The Office in bed while wearing an adult-sized Cookie Monster onesie with an unfortunate hole in the crotch. If I was hit by a flash of energy (mostly likely from drinking three Dunkin iced lattes), I might take my laundry to the basement and do a load or two. There was only one washer and one dryer for the whole building, so the chances of being able to do laundry on a weekend were slim.

I pushed open all three windows, grunting. Lately, my room had taken on a caged, meaty smell. I had a feeling it had something to do with my lack of initiative in washing the sheets.

I opened my laptop and tried to work on my set for the upcoming open mic night at the local comedy club. I had two more weeks and was working on a bit about my roommate, Kae, whose bedroom shared a wall with mine.

How many of y’all have roommates? I wrote. I pictured a couple of chuckles, maybe some cheers. Well, everyone knows that when you have roommates, it’s polite to put on a loud playlist when you’re having sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend. Now, I tolerate a lot when it comes to people’s sex playlists. It could be Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech for all I care, if that’s what gets your motor running.

I paused. Was that too political? Was that reflecting a lack of seriousness about civil rights issues? I would change it later. Maybe to a speech by Nixon or something.

I recently discoved that there is one thing I cannot tolerate in a sex playlist, I continued. Yesterday, I was minding my own business, playing Minecraft, when my roommate Kae brought her boyfriend into her room and started blasting “Satisfied” from Hamilton!

Would people get the joke? Was it funny at all? Was I funny?

I forged ahead. For those of you who have never seen Hamilton, it’s literally the playbook for cheating on your wife with her sister!

If nobody laughed at that joke, I was screwed. I had booked a couple of small shows in the past, but I was hoping that these open mic nights would help me grow my online following. I no longer had my job as a bartender at the Olive Garden, so I was hoping to finally put all my energy into comedy. No safety net.

“I still think I had the most insane roommates,” said a voice to my right.

I screamed, loud and shrill. A girl roughly in her early twenties was sitting on my beanbag chair. Kae banged on my wall from the other side.

“Lower your voice, please,” she called.

“Your roommate sounds like a joy and a pleasure,” said the girl in the beanbag chair. She looked back down at the book she was reading. A dog-eared copy of My Year of Rest and Relaxation, stolen from my bookshelf.

“I’m sorry, who are you?” I could feel my body getting hot, my jaw clenching.

“I used to live in this room,” she said. “I’m Ariel.”

“Ariel McDonald?” I had received some junk mail addressed to her in the past. “So you decided to just break in here and call it home again?”

“No, I’m just stuck here,” said Ariel McDonald. “I’ve tried to leave. Every time I get more than ten feet away from this building, I end up back in here. Kind of like the ankle bracelets they give to people on bail.” A trumpeting sound followed, and the air was filled with a pungent odor.

“Sorry,” said Ariel. “I’m gassy.”

“I’m sorry to be rude, but I can’t have you in my room right now,” I said. I was trying to work out what might be wrong with her. Schizoaffective Personality Disorder, or Schizotypal? I always got the two confused.

“I don’t have a mental illness,” said Ariel. “I’m a ghost.”

“Umm... Okay, I’m just going to step out for a minute.” I rushed out, nearly forgetting my keys.

“It’s your turn to wash the dishes,” said Siobhan, who was standing at the kitchen counter. I ignored her. It wasn’t fair to have a dish-washing schedule when I ordered takeout every night and the twins were constantly making from-scratch pasta dishes.

I ran down the stairs and away from the building, my heart thudding. I called 911.

“Police, fire, or medical?” asked the operator.

“Police,” I croaked.

They showed up five minutes later, three of them. The police officers went up the stairs while I paced in front of the building in my Crocs, trying to work out how I could add this to a set for open mic night. When they came downstairs a short while after, the intruder was not among them.

“Where is she?” I asked. “Did you find her?”

“Ma’am, there was no one in the apartment other than your roommates,” said a tall black officer. He had that pity face, like he thought I was crazy.

“No, I’m not crazy!” I said. “I only have two roommates! They’re identical twins. They have short blond hair. Chin length.” I jabbed at my chin for emphasis.

“Like my partner said, ma’am, there was no one else there.” This came from a female officer with kind eyes.

“Did you check the whole apartment?” I raked my fingers through my hair, my mind racing.

“Yes,” said all three of them in unison.

“Have a nice night,” said the female officer. They walked away, muttering amongst themselves.

I ran back up the stairs and unlocked the door to my apartment. There was no one in the living room or kitchen. I slowly pushed open the door to my room and peered inside. It was still and quiet, a rank odor still permeating the space. My eyes darted around the room. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed. The bed was unmade, the “Hello Kitty” blanket in the same exact position as I had left it. The Lana Del Rey poster that had fallen off the wall was still upside-down on the dusty floor. My collection of acrylic earrings were arranged precisely on the hanging shelf. My dead plants were still as dead as ever. No supernatural activity evident.

I considered the possibility that I might be delusional. That seemed difficult to grasp and totally inapplicable to my reality, like winning the lottery or discovering I had a long-lost sibling.

Wait a minute! She had obviously climbed down the fire escape when she heard the police coming. I shook my head at my own stupidity and closed the windows, trying to ignore the smell.

I turned around and froze. There she was on the beanbag chair again, napping. I knew for sure that she had not been there when I entered the room.

“Hey!” I shook her by the shoulders.

She mumbled incoherently as her eyes fluttered open.

“How are you still here?” I asked. “I called the police and everything!”

“I love that journey for you,” said Ariel. She heaved a drawn-out sigh, as if our conversation was exhausting her.

I opened my laptop and typed “Ariel McDonald death” into the search engine. The first result was a Wikipedia article about Slovenian athlete. But after that, I saw it: An article in the New York Times titled “Uber Driver Found to be DUI After Fatal Car Crash on Brooklyn Queens Expressway.” Below that were images of a totaled car and two side-by-side portraits of smiling young woman. One of these women was now sitting on the bean bag in my room, farting. The other girl was a redhead who looked similar to Alyson Hannigan.

“Who’s this other chick?” I asked.

“That’s my best friend, Brianna,” said Ariel. “She wanted me to ask if you found the gift she left in your mailbox.”

“The gift? You mean the stolen check I used to pay my rent?”

“I guess so.” Ariel turned on the TV and started watching Virgin River.

“Wait a second... Are you the one who’s been messing up my Netflix algorithm?”

Ariel shrugged, her eyes still on the TV. She farted.

“God, I thought the whole point of ghosts is that you’re not corporeal!” I waved a hand in front of my nose and opened a window. Delusional or not, I still could not tolerate the smell.

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That weekend, the redhead from the New York Times article entered my room, smoking a joint. She was taller than she had appeared in the photo, about six feet. She was wearing a Juicy Couture sweater set and a gold belly ring. She held out a check to me. $800, made out to cash, this time from a Sarah Rosenblatt, “Mazal Tov on your Bat Mitzvah!” in the memo line.

“Mazal tov, you’re now an adult woman,” said Brianna. “I found this in a mailbox in Midwood.”

It wasn’t like I couldn’t use the money. I slipped it into the waistband of my jeans.

“It’s fun, hunting checks, like Pokémon-Go for dead people,” continued Brianna. “I know what it’s like, girl. I used to work in a strip club.”

“I don’t think our situations are comparable. But thanks.” I shook my head as Brianna offered me the joint. “I don’t smoke.”

“I have some ideas for your set,” said Brianna. She showed me a page of scribbly handwriting on Lego stationary. It was barely legible, but all the content enterred my brain within a few seconds as I scanned the words:

My roommate Siobhan has a whole shelf in the refrigerator just for Starbucks iced coffees. But does she ever drink them? Nope! There is a peppermint-flavored one that is clearly from last Christmas at least. In coffee years, this bottle is geriatric. He’s walking with a cane and has an asthma inhaler. He has a whole pharmacy in his bathroom just to keep his heart beating. The Starbucks vet is just like, “Do you want to put him down or.... Are we considering hospice care?” [Pause for laughs, I hope.]

Speaking of vets, my roommate Kae just decided to foster a one-eyed cat named Blinkie. This cat is one creepy bitch. I swear, she’s possessed. The other day, I’m getting dressed and this cat just leaps out at me from the closet with all her fur standing up like we’re in an episode of American Horror Story. We have a standoff, me and this cat, and I’m ashamed to admit, I’m the one who backs down. Now I check all my closets every day when I wake up and before I go to sleep just in case Blinkie has plans for me.

Ariel farted again, interrupted my reading. She was still focused on Virgin River, sipping from an abandoned Dunkalatte I had started drinking that morning.

“How did you come up with all this stuff?” I asked Brianna. “None of this happened to me.”

“Oh, we had some pretty wild roommates when we were living in this apartment,” said Brianna. “One of them was straight-up psychotic. She thought I was hitting on her boyfriend, so she hid bars of ice cream all over my closet, and all my clothes were ruined. Another one set the microwave on fire because she didn’t know you’re not supposed to put paper in there. I think this apartment is jinxed.”

“Difficult roommates are just part of living in New York. But the “Paranormal Activity” vibe in here definitely confirms this apartment is jinxed,” I said. I looked at the two ghosts in my bedroom, trying to decide whether to check myself into a psych ward. I decided against it. Creative people are always a little detached from the real world. I was the Van Gogh of comedy.

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The third check appeared on my bed on open mic night. Ariel was passed out on the beanbag chair, and Brianna was probably out for a smoke, or testing out the new Astro Bot game on the PS5 at Game Stop. I had already learned her habits by now. The new check was for $300, courtesy of Chad Barnes. Brianna had left a note next to the check:

“Good luck, girlipop! You’ll do great! Mwaaa!”

A smile tugged at my lips. I felt ready.

I put on my sparkly black suit and tied my hair into a high ponytail.

The nighttime air was balmy and smelled like spicy food from the Puerto Rican food truck down the block. I jogged to the club, my heartbeat audible. When I got there, I ordered an ginger ale and wiped the sweat off my face. I was fifth in a lineup of ten, not an ideal placement.

The first comedian tried to coast by on making lots of jokes about genitals. There were few laughs, and I could see the comedian getting frustrated.

“You guys are no fun!” he said. Yeesh. Criticizing the crowd was a real low for performers.

The girl whose set followed his had a star quality and palpable stage presence. She had a bit about online dating that had the audience roaring. I wiped my palms on my pants. Maybe this wasn’t my calling. Perhaps I should get an office job.

I couldn’t pay attention to the next two acts. I kept running through my set in my head, wondering if I should have done something differently.

When it was my turn to get up on the raised platform, I almost tripped over my feet on the way up.

I scanned the audience. It’s okay, I told myself. They are just here for a good time. You can’t be any worse than the genitals guy.

Someone coughed. A paralyzing silence filled the room.

My eyes locked with those of a tall redhead in the back. She gave me a thumbs up and smiled, revealing crooked teeth. Brianna. Next to her was Ariel, wearing strawberry-colored lipstick and a lacy black camisole. So, she was able to leave the house after all. Sneaky little trespasser. “You’re gonna kill it,” Ariel mouthed.

My breath slowed. I adjusted the mic.

“Hi,” I said. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Maddy. And I’d like to dedicate this set to two close friends who recently passed away. Ariel and Brianna, I know you’re listening.” I paused.

“So, how many of y’all have roommates?”