My Purpose

I drift through my house, alone. Through the floors, the walls, the doors. I can do whatever I please, for I am freed from the shackles of life. But alas, as I stare out the window on this bright winter morning, at the snow that has fallen over my front yard, I realize, I have no purpose. Death has not brought me to heaven, nor to hell. I am not an angel or a demon. I am a ghost.

And what do ghosts do? Are they sad? Do they pity themselves in death? Or perhaps they are happy. They can go anywhere they please, do anything they want.

A common misconception that many people have about ghosts is that we cannot touch anything. We can’t sit down, pick items up, or walk on the floor, but with enough practice, we can. I’ve only been dead a week, and yet I am acting like my normal self. Sure, I can’t eat or drink, and I can fly and go through walls if I please, but I can act like a normal person.

And yet, although I have this power, I know not what to do with it. I haven’t left my house since my death. I watched the police take my body away. Put it in the bag. Place the gun that rested in my dead hand in the evidence bag. I watched them drive away after ruling my death a suicide.

And it’s true, I had committed suicide. I didn’t have a family, no pets, I was stuck in a dead end job, I had no PURPOSE!

So I thought by taking my own life in exchange for the freedom of death, I would find a purpose. But no.

I still drift through my house, alone.

But what’s this? As I gaze out my window, a black Cadillac pulls up my driveway. A woman in a sickly green pantsuit got out of it. I narrowed my eyes at her as she went to her trunk and pulled something out. It was a sign.

A FOR SALE sign!

She staked it into the ground, breaking the perfect sheet of white snow that blanketed the ground.

No! She can’t sell my house! I’m still living in it! Or, maybe not living, exactly… oh, whatever, she can’t sell it!

She approaches the house and opens the door. I dart away and hide behind my armchair to watch her.

“My my, it’s musty in here,” I hear her mutter to herself as she pulls out her camera.

Click. Flash! Click. Flash!

The light from the camera is blinding as she takes pictures of the living room. MY living room. She then moves into my kitchen to take more pictures.

She needs to go, she needs to leave. No one gets to buy my house while I am here. So, I followed her into the kitchen. I hover off the ground behind her, I move to tap her on the shoulder, but…

I stop. I am suddenly reminded of all of the horror shows and movies I watched when I was a kid. The minute she sees me, she’ll run away, because I’m a ghost and that means this house is haunted. No, I want to have more fun with her. I’ve been bored for some time now. Why not make a game out of this?

I go over to the light switch and flick it on, and off. On, and off.

“Oh dear, a problem with the lights? That will take the property value down,” the realtor commented, marking something down on a clipboard.

I smile to myself as I follow her into the bathroom now. She looks around at the picture of a pig on the wall that says, ‘Don’t hog the bathroom’.

“Hideous taste,” she sneered.

I frown to myself. Rude. I hover over to my toilet and make it flush, and then I turn on the water in my shower.

The realtor gasped and looked around. She gazed warily at the toilet before going over to the shower and turning it off. “Hello?” she called. “Anyone there?”

I stay silent, watching her shrug and leave my bathroom to enter my dining room. She takes a picture of my cabinet of decorative plates given to me by my grandmother. I never liked those plates.

So I go over to the cabinet and slowly open it. It creaks on its hinges, startling the realtor. I then go to the wall behind the cabinet and reach through, pushing a few of the plates off of their pedestals.

Crash! Crash! Crash!

“What in the world?” The woman quickly exited the room so she could go upstairs. “Something isn’t right here.”

In order to beat her up the stairs, I fly up to my ceiling and go through the floor. I emerge in my linen closet. I don’t bother opening the door, I just fly straight through to get out into the hallway. I then go into my room and grab my scissors from my desk drawer. When I hear the realtor’s footsteps, I concentrate and make myself invisible while holding the scissors. The hall was dark, as there were no lights or windows to illuminate it. I then chose a portion of the wall and began to carve words into it.

The realtor jumped and whirled around at the sound of the scissors grinding into the wood. “What’s happening? Who’s there? What do you want?”

I let out a ghastly, blood-curdling moan that seemed to rattle the door frames of the house.

The woman cried out in fear as she stared at what I had written.

GET OUT

Tears were streaming down her face now as she read my message.

It was then that I decided to reveal myself. I made myself appear right in front of her, distorting my face into a mad grimace. “GET OUT!” I bellowed, making the woman turn pale.

“Haunted! This place is haunted!” she screamed, dropping her camera and clipboard and darting down the stairs.

She left out of the front door, leaving it open as she started her car and frantically backed out of the driveway, destroying the ‘FOR SALE’ on her way.

I chuckle to myself as I slam the door shut. “That was fun.”

A week passed, and I replayed the visit from the realtor over and over in my mind. Each time it was more and more entertaining.

The recent snowfall covered the tracks and the broken ‘FOR SALE’ sign that the woman had left.

Once more, I found myself staring out the window on a bright winter morning in the snow. And once more a familiar feeling of not having a purpose even in my death began to set in. But then, just like the other morning, a car pulls into my driveway. This time, it was a white jeep. A man got out of it and went to his trunk. Lo and behold, he pulled out a sign and staked it into the ground right over where the old sign was.

I smile to myself as I watch him approach the door. “Looks like it’s time for round two…”