Story Of A Ghost

I’m floating somewhere between your curtain and the glass that looks out to your window. The sun has risen a long time ago, and you’re still sleeping. You awaken suddenly by the beeping of a truck, and you check your phone. It’s half past noon, and you flip your tall body to the other side, tying yourself deeper into your blankets. I know waking up has been hard for you ever since I passed away.

I float down the stairs to the kitchen. You left the dishes from last night, a bowl with milk, a pot of coffee. The half eaten ramen is still on the counter. I wish there was a toast with eggs made for you, the way you like it, not too runny and not too hard. There aren’t even eggs in the fridge. I float to your library and I glance at all your books. That’s the one you always talked me into reading, but you know that I didn’t like to read. My drawing is still on your wall. A red hummingbird made with colored pencil. I hope you don’t take that one down, like you did to the other one that was in your room.  

Your record player is on top of the bookshelf next to the lamp. I blow through it and it triggers the music to go on. Tom Petty’s album playing out loud and it wakes you. That is the last album we listened to together. You mutter what the heck under your breath, and you stumble downstairs to turn off the music and unplug the record player. You don’t want to be reminded. You enter the bathroom and finally brush your teeth. Your toothbrush has been untouched since last week. I’m proud of you. You put on your sweatpants pants, the gray colored one, and a navy hoodie. Your beard is long overdue for a shave, you have never grown it out before. You still look so beautiful, I hope you know that.

You don’t have work today, you’re off on Tuesdays. But you haven’t been to work in weeks now. You rarely leave the house. Your coat has been hanging on the rack and your boots have been sitting in the closet like a pet waiting for their owner to come home. You come downstairs and drink a glass of milk. You go to the couch and turn the tv on. Something is bothering you. You run to the bathroom, you bend over the toilet seat and you puke. Oh it’s your tummy, I float above your hair wishing I could stroke it. It’s gonna be okay. You cry like a child, and you’re back in bed. There’s no water bottle in your room and you are dehydrated.  A pillow is tucked under your belly, and your head is curled into the pillow. Soon it is all wet with your tears, and you have no more tissues to blow your nose. 

You stay in your bed all day. Your dad calls, your boss calls, your landlord calls. You don’t pick up. You sleep and wake up, sleep and wake up, and you want it all to stop. You can’t make it go away. The sadness, the hurt, the guilt. You feel as if you were frozen in a dark icy tunnel. Everything around you is cold, still. 

You still haven’t turned to my side of the bed yet. Maybe you are afraid that it’s still warm, or maybe I will wake up next to you and you realize it was all a bad dream. 

A month and a half ago I died. We were coming home from a Halloween party. I was dressed like a cat, you were dressed like a pirate. In the car you were driving and we were both tired. The  last thing you said to me was “you were the prettiest at the party,” and I said, “you were the sexiest at the party.” And then, that drunk driver hit us. Just like that, I was alive one second and the next I wasn’t. I didn’t feel any pain. I floated out of my  body and just saw it crushed in the passenger seat of your car. A big red hole in my forehead, blood dripping down my face, and my mouth and eyes wide open and my cat ears still neatly perked on top of my head. But your body was mostly fine. Just a broken wrist, a little headache. You trembled and called for me. I wish you didn’t have to see me then. You did though, and you let out a deathly scream. When you were put into a stretcher in an ambulance, and you cried and kicked the entire ride. You refused to let them put a cast on your wrist at the hospital, and you ran away from the hospital. You ran for miles and miles in the dark till you reached that spot on the highway where I died. But I was no longer there, they took my body away. You stayed on the side of the highway all night in the cold, rocking your body back and forth, back and forth. Finally in the morning you got up and walked to your house. 

Today you are out of money. You grab your credit card from inside your wallet and there you find the two tickets to the musical you wanted to take me to. You planned to surprise me with the tickets the day after the party, but of course it was too late. You don’t care for the musical anymore, and I will never be able to go with you. You hold the tickets in your two hands feeling your eyes fill with tears, before you rip the tickets up into snowflake size pieces and flush it down the toilet drain. 

I float up to your room. It’s a mess. You’d always kept it clean for me when I stayed over. Now everything reminds you of me. Every piece of furniture, every dish in the kitchen, every magnet on the fridge. You see my face laughing through the shower curtains and you hear my breath running up the stairs. You feel trapped in memories, the memories that only you and I know. 

 You finally leave the house, just to go to the liquor store just to buy more vodka. You’re drinking shots like it’s fuel. I want to tell you it will get better, that it’s okay to move on, that it wasn’t your fault. You go for another shot and another and another. You are intoxicated and get into bed. You have never been so drunk. I peek at you from behind the curtains and it rustles against the window making noise. 

“Hello?” you say into the abyss of your room. “Just go away.” That is the first thing you’ve said all day. 

The next day you go out at night. Slowly you walk, you keep your head hunched to the ground. You pull the zipper of your coat up to hide your beard, to hide your face as if you don’t exist. Something falls out of your pocket and slumps to the ground. 

It’s a cloudy night, and you sit alone on a bench by the water. There’s a bridge near you. The sound of the cars and water compliment each other like a song to music. A pretty girl walks by, with long brown hair and big eyes. She looks at you, and you don’t look at her. You’re gazing out to the horizon, and I hear you call for me. “I miss you.” A big tear rolls down your cheek. “I just wish you were here.” Your voice cracks, breaking into sobs. “If only I could have swapped places with you.” 

Eventually, I am following you home. It starts to drizzle. You get to the door of your house and you reach for the keys in your pocket. They are missing, and I already knew. You search all your pockets, you tap your hands against every part of your body as if it were a drum, but it’s gone. You wrestle with the doorknob and you give up quickly. You sit on the stoop of your stairs, and it’s cold. You have no way to get into your house, and the only one who has a copy of your keys was me. 

You hear a door open next door and your landlady takes her trash out, dumping it in a big bin. She sees you. You haven’t yet paid rent. 

“Oh hello,” she says. “What are you doing?”

“I…I got locked out,” you say.

“I can let you in,” she smiles. She is an older woman, short and plump, round glasses. She invites you into her foyer while she gets the keys, and hesitantly, you walk in. 

“Listen,” she says, “I heard about your loss, and I’m sorry. I know it’s not easy, so you don’t have to pay rent this month.” She pauses, and looks you in the eye. “Not going out of the house at all and not showing up to work though is not acceptable. Trust me, I’ve lost both my parents. As hard as it is, your life must go on.” 

You look down, not saying anything. You are filled with gratitude and resentment towards her. The two of you walk out of her front door, you first and she’s following behind you. You are relieved to be in the dark again, where no one can see your face or the tears in your eyes. She opens the door for your house and hands you the keys. “Keep it,” she says.

Today is my birthday. November 24th. A year ago you asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said I want to be with you. You knew I didn’t like making a big deal on my birthdays. You took me to the art museum and we walked around holding hands. Some of the creations were beautiful, but you were the most breathtaking thing in the museum. When we got tired of walking around, we sat on the bench in front of a big medieval landscape painting and held each other in silence. That was my most memorable birthday and that was my last birthday. 

You go to the store on the corner and exchange a few dollar bills for a boquet of purple and yellow flowers. You hold them in your hand as if you were holding hands with me. You hesitate before you leave the store, and you head towards the cemetery where my body is. This is the first time you are here since my funeral. Apprehensive, you walk through the gates of the cemetery where all the stones are lying on top of all the dead bodies. 

The air is cool, eerie, crisp. You find where I’m buried and you stand tall in front of it looking down at my grave like it’s a strange object. You don’t understand why I have to be here and why I can’t just come home. You burst out crying. You bury your head on my stone, flowers still tight in your hand. “You must be so cold down here,” you say to my dead body. You cry and cry, your eyes a streaming waterfall, you let the tears fall like raindrops. “I love you, I always will. I’m so so sorry, babe.” I want to tell you that you don’t have to be sorry, that you did nothing wrong. But you are not ready to hear me. “I feel that you should be the one living, but here you are, buried and dead. Everything changed since you left. I don’t know how the world could go on without you.”

You stay with my body for hours. You cry a bucket full of tears. You gently place the bouquet of flowers on my gravestone. “I love you,” you say, “oh… and Happy Birthday.” You turn around and walk away. 

You feel lighter. There’s a tiny spark twinkling in your swollen eyes. Your steps are more bouncy, you notice the birds flying from tree to tree, you notice strangers laughing with each other, you notice mothers walking with their children. You sit at a bench in the park and you return the call you your boss. He asked if you are coming back to work and you say yes, tomorrow. 

There are wind chimes hanging on a fence behind you. I wisp through the chimes and they cling against each other, dancing to a melody. Your head swings and you glance at the wind chimes. You take a deep breath as if it were the oppostie of a sigh. The right side of your lip lifts into a half smile and your eyes twinkle. 

 I love you too, I say.