Spiteful Little One

I heard a knock on the door, which was unusual considering it was Halloween and children are impatient to get their candy and ring the doorbell. I hurry to the door and grab the bowl of candy that is next to it.

I opened the door to see a girl about teenage age. Something about her was familiar and her makeup was killer. The trick-or-treater had bloody clothes, a light pink dress with a gray cover-up, and on her heart was this bullet wound. It looked so realistic. With her makeup on her face, you would think she was dead. With a semi-pale face and purple eye shadow beneath her eyes. Her hair had blood clumps in the tips and it was shoulder length and floofy and dirty. If she wasn’t alive I would think she was dead.

“Hello,” I say. She just stares at me and smiles. “Would you like a piece of candy?”

“No.” She says. 

“Well then what are you doing here?”. She doesn’t answer me instead she grabs the vase on the porch and slams it into my head. 

I wake up sometime later. It could have been hours or minutes. A huge pain hit my head and I realized a liquid was dripping down my face. My hands were tied behind my back and I was on a chair. I looked up and saw the girl standing in front of the fireplace. 

“Finally you woke up. I thought I killed you.” She says.

“Well, it's not every day I get hit in the head with a vase you know.” I pant

She rolled her eyes. “You think this is funny? Breaking into my house and torching me?” I yell.

“Calm your tits, I'm not here to rob and steal from you. I'm here to kill you.” She says. 

“You think you can kill me? You're just measly little girl.” I spat

“Well, I have an advantage. For one I'm dead, and I can’t be killed again and for two you’re the one tied in the chair, not me.” She says. The girl looks so bored but with her eyes, I can tell she is here for murder. My brain can’t comprehend how she is here if she is dead, she must be lying.

“You can’t be dead. It’s not possible.” I say.

“Welcome to the side of the dead fucko. It's not much, you're cursed to walk the earth for all of eternity but there is a catch: you can only stay in one place and it’s so boring.” She complains. 

“Well if you're cursed to stay in one place then how are you here?” I asked.

“On Halloween the veil between the dead and the living is down, meaning for 24 hours I can go wherever I like, but as soon as sunrise hits I’m back to the damned place.” She says. 

“Well, why are you here then? Just to have some fun?” I ask.

“Well, I’m here to kill the fuck who put me there. Don’t you remember the strings of robberies you did? That one that didn’t go so well.?” She screams.

I remember. I was in a bad place and needed some money to get me out of some spots but that was years ago. Now those days are behind me. I did remember the one that haunted me the most. The one where I took an innocent life. I try not to remember it, it’s the one thing I regret in life the most. I feel my head drop in shame.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

The girl’s eyes widened. “OOOOH NOW YOUR SORRY?” She screams. “ Do you know what it’s like to be home alone and hear footsteps? To see a man look through your mom’s jewelry in hopes of making a quick buck. To call the cops and have this hope that everything will be alright. Then make a noise and get shot? In the heart. Man do you know how much that hurt? Then to watch as your blood pools around you and the man just walks off. To get it all over your clothes and in your hair. Desperately wanting to get up and go wash it off but you can’t get up. Now your only remaining hope is that the cops you called will come and save you as you lie there on the ground helpless.” The girl sheds a tear.

All I do is stare at her. I'm not sure what to say. She is seething with anger and I'm not sure if I can calm her down. “I'm sorry…” I repeat.

“Sorry? Sorry! Sorry doesn’t even cut it! Do you know how much pain you caused me? Do you know what it is like to see your dead body and just think please for the love of god get up! And it doesn’t. To see the horror on your mother’s face as she sees you? To see her break down. To see her every day afterward, crying, sobbing, begin a complete mess and all you want to do is to help her. To let her know that everything will be ok and you can’t. My mom eventually sold the house in her grief. I wanted to tell her goodbye so bad and now I never will. It was so lonely to begin in that house. It took forever for the house to be sold. In that time I had so much time to think and the more I tried to get out of that house and kept begin pulled back. The more I did the angrier I got.”

“I'm sorry. I regret that decision every day. Every day of my life.” I say. The girl comes closer to me and slaps me. 

“Shut up. Just shut up and stop talking. Nothing will help you with your death. I want to say my things before I kill you.”

“Then just say them,” and with that, she slaps me again. 

“I will when you shut the hell up.” I heard the venom in her voice as she spoke. “ Now. At that time I realized I wanted to kill you. I was dead and if this is the afterlife there are no consequences. I can do whatever the hell I want but not with that stupid curse. Killing you will make me feel better and what’s even better is I won’t get caught.” She says and points her finger at me.  

“Then just kill me,” I say. The girl slaps me again.

“God your so annoying. When will you get it through your dense fucking skull that I don’t care how sorry you are. You know I had second thoughts on killing you but you know what sunk in all those fantasies of killing the man who killed me? Seeing my grave just a few hours ago. I tried to see if I could leave and I was able to. I was so happy until I ran into another ghost who told me it was just for one night. I decided to go see my grave. To see how I was buried. I saw my name on the grave. “Lilly Rankins, Beloved daughter, born May 18th, 2000, died September 25th, 2014.”  That's when the sweet girl who was having second thoughts died. I decided to kill you right there right then. And how sweet that will be.” 

Lilly began walking back and forth until she left. I thought she was gone for good until I looked outside and saw the sun was not up. Lilly shortly came back. This time with my baseball bat. She looked at it with such awe.

“How many mailboxes did you fuck up with this?” She asked me.

“None. I used to play” I say.

“That’s nice I don’t care.” And she hits me in the kneecaps. I scream in pain. Lilly just smiles at me and pats the baseball bat in her hand. 

“You know this is fun,” Lilly says. She hits me in the ribs. “Ooh, I hope I cracked one.” She says. She counties blow after blow. I am in so pain until I hear sirens and flashing blue and red lights.

Lilly's face immediately goes into a rage. “Who called the dam police.” I hear an intense knock and hear “Open the door, we getting complaints of a robbery and screaming.”

Lily's eyes scream hatred and regret for not killing me sooner. I looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost 6 am and the sun would be coming up soon. Lilly goes to the door, with her bloody baseball in hand, and I hear her.

“Good morning officer,” Lilly says calmly.

“Ma’am, What are you doing with that bloody baseball bat?” 

“Beating up the man who killed me, until you interrupted me doing so.” There was a long pause between the two.

 “I need to look around and I'll have my partner with me.”

“Go right ahead.” 

I hear the footsteps of the two men coming to the living room but stop suddenly. 

“Gentlemen before you look in there can you tell me what year it is?” Lilly asked.

“Uh 2024” one officer replies.

“Thank you,” Lilly says.

The officers continue and see me. One officer gasped and went ghostly white. 

“Help...me,” I say.

“Holy shit the dude is still breathing, call the ambulance!” the officer went to his radio and called over one. The other officer helped me get my hands free from the cloth that bound me. 

I see Lilly in the corner of the room and she mouths “I'll be back” and disappears. 

“Hey where did the kid go?” one of the officers asked. The officer looked all over the place to find Lilly but she was nowhere.

“Hey the kid got loose,” the officers said.

“That’s because you left the front door open. I'll stay with the dude and you go find her.

“Ok,” the officer says. I know they won’t find Lilly and she will be back soon.

The ambulance comes and whirls me away to the hospital. The kid did a number on me. Cracked Ribs, Broken arms, knees, legs, bruised galore, and much more. It took me months to recover and now I walk with a limp and have trouble breathing, but I'm alive. 

I walk into the cemetery a place I didn’t think I would ever step into alive. I walk around the graves until I find Lilly’s. Her grave was just a gray slab, with the engravings on it. It had a photo of her when she was alive also incased in the grave. An urn was on the little ledge. Nothing was in it, it hadn’t been used for a long time I could tell. I put the flowers I brought into the urn. A pointless gesture I thought. Lilly wasn’t going to see it and Lilly could not hear me.

“Lilly, I know I will never be forgiven for the life I took from you. I mean what I said I do. I do think about the deed I did all those years ago and I'm sorry. You deserved to live, you did. I am sorry, I know that these words will never mean anything to you but I just had to say them. I don't even know why I'm saying them here maybe because it's the only way I know-how. I'm truly am sorry Lilly.”

I began to walk away from the grave of the spiteful spirit and go back to my house.