Fearful Symmetry

This is the afterlife?

Disappointment runs through me like a cold breeze creeping under my jacket (maybe I just spooked myself).

I am standing in my kitchen and imagined the afterlife to be cleaner. But all I see are coffee stains on the countertop and the fucking dishes in the fucking sink. My dear husband sprays bread crumbs onto the table and licks some from the corner of his mouth. 

I cross my arms and think wow, yeah, this is paradise. 

My happy-go-lucky husband smiles his ridiculous smile while he reads the paper. 

Your wife is dead, Shawn, I scream at him, but he can’t hear me. Of course not. We never had that kind of connection. While I roll my eyes, his hand freezes in mid-air. Wait. Can he feel me near him? Maybe he … He shakes his head and guides the coffee mug to his lips as if he imagined hearing something.

Being dead disappoints. 

I’m still stuck in this house forced to watch my loveless marriage and boring life like a bad episode of a mediocre show on repeat. Over and over again. This is hell.

So I spin on my heels and leave the house. 

I'm dead and I can do whatever the fuck I want.

My body feels numb while I walk down the street. I can’t feel my heart beating. Well, it’s not. Obviously. And this is all I’m thinking. I don’t have a beating heart anymore. I make my way to Christine’s house down the street.

We’ve been best friends since school. Went to the same university. Found jobs at the same company and moved into the same street. We were inseparable and yet, somehow life ruptured our friendship. And then my death. 

I like to stand in her garden and watch her family through the window. 

She seems happy. I want her to be happy. She deserves to be happy.

My arms and legs feel cold. I stand there for hours until the dark creeps over the trees behind me. An owl hoots somewhere and my stomach moves as if maggots are eating my insides. I don’t breathe, so there is no cold breath on the window.

Christine comes to the window, about to shut the curtains and end this episode of I Love Christine for me. 

She freezes with the curtains in her hands and looks out the window as if she feels something.

See me, I chant. Please see me.

Maybe she looks through me, maybe she miraculously looks at the empty spot where I’m standing. Her eyes flood with tears and then she looks away. She presses her lips together and closes the drapes. 

I’m left in the darkness.

I miss my best friend.

The light in the upstairs bedroom comes on. Muffled voices cut through the walls of the house and penetrate the cold air surrounding me.

Her husband’s voice sounds sharp and agitated. They both start to shout at each other. 

“Well, I miss her”, Christine yells and sobs.

“Get over it, god damn it.”

Get over me?

Every single one of his words is coated in jealousy. It had killed Christine and my friendship. He hated that Christine loves me more than she loves him and that we told each other everything (he probably hated the fact that I knew about his small crooked penis).  

“I love her”, I hear Christine say. For a second my cold heart feels warm. 

“You are just as insane as her,” I hear his voice through the wall.

As a ghost, it’s super simple to enter a house. 

I creep up the stairs to make sure my friend is okay. The wood under my rotten feet creaks but no one hears that. 

Christine’s husband stands in front of the bed and I’m so close behind him that I can smell the shower gel on his skin. I see the goosebumps on his neck. His body can feel my presence, but he doesn’t believe in ghosts. 

You better believe in my wrath, I think, and slide my hands around his neck and squeeze.

To my surprise, my fingers grab his throat. 

How am I doing this?

Does rage have the power to materialize a ghost? Emotions are probably the mightiest force that exists.

While I ponder I realize that time works differently when you’re dead. Suddenly Christine’s husband lies in a heap on the floor in front of my feet. 

Did I just kill him?

I think I did.

I shrug my shoulders.

He killed me first.

But wait, how did I die? This horrific experience has slipped my mind. Possibly a defence mechanism to not relive the unpleasant event of your own death (you don’t want to suffer from PTSD for eternity, right?). Maybe I look hideous. A cut throat? A broken neck? My intestines spilled out? I look into the mirror, but I don’t have a reflection. It doesn’t matter how I died anyway.

I walk home (which sucks, I thought as a dead woman I could fly or teleport myself). 

Shawn sits in the living room and doesn’t even stir when I smash the door close.

You’re such a loser, Shawn.

He exhales.

I need to contact him because I refuse to spend eternity in this house and be ignored by my husband.

I sit down on the couch next to him. He smiles at the TV while watching Friends. Why does he not care that I’m dead? I respect that everyone grieves differently and that we weren’t deeply madly in love with each other, but this is just rude.

His cell phone rings. 

It’s Christine on the other line. Hysterical. Sobbing. Telling Shawn that her husband is dead.

Shawn lets that sink in. His hand, with the phone in it, falls into his lap. Then he turns his head and looks directly into my dead eyes. 

“What did you do?”

He can see me?

“What the fuck did you dooo?” he slurs. Horror in his eyes as if he sees, well, a ghost.

“I’m dead. How can you see me?”

“You’re not dead! You’re insane.”

I cross my arms and ignore him. That was insensitive. He could have said I’m mentally challenged, alright?

“You’re depressed”, he says and puts a hand on my decaying stomach. “You suffer from a syndrome that makes you think you’re dead, love. And I’m done playing along so you realize that yourself. You fucking killed Christine’s husband.”

“He killed me first!” I yell and realize that something must be wrong with me. 

I feel the warmth of my husband’s hand on my stomach.

Feel his pity burn on my cheeks.

I am not a ghost. It is me who is being haunted. By my own tedious life.