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The apartment smells acrid, molten plastic and wringing smoke. Roman knows it’s not real, but his lungs start to ache in anticipation, and Roman knows he will find Seth plaguing his living room before he’s even set foot through the door.
“Go away, shoo,” is the first thing Roman says, when he sees the spectre sprawled out on his sofa. Its legs dangling over the arm rest, it has been waiting for him.
Seth rolls his eyes, “whatever happened to ‘hello’ or ‘honey, I’m home?’, you used to be happy to see me.”
Roman doesn’t feel like dignifying that with a response — he’s had a long day at work. He's tired, the eye he pulled from the fancy garbage disposal unit is still blinking at him. Husband, wife, packed bags underneath the stairs and a whole lot of ‘if I can’t have you’ made for one gnarly clean-up job.
He goes to sit down on his sofa, Seth being there or not. A cold chill runs up his spine as Seth moves through him to get away, to stop occupying the same space as Roman.
“You know I hate it when you do that, it feels weird,” Seth complains as he takes the other seat on the couch.
Roman grunts in response, “leave then. You’re not welcome here.”
Roman would’ve sat down somewhere else, but besides the sofa and an old television set on the floor, the room is still empty. Turns out, having to replace all your furniture is expensive. But he’ll get there, piece by piece. He needs to buy mousetraps, airtight containers for his food. Give the dilapidated paint job a once over too, whilst he’s at it.
“Ouch, rough day big dog? I’m here if you want to talk about it.”
Sometimes, Roman has a hard time discerning Seth’s emotions. Seth’s never all there, blurred around the edges, faint enough that Roman might be imagining him, but present enough that Seth leaves no room for doubt. The features of his face shifting in crystalline patterns when Roman tries to look at him directly. But it’s always Seth, the rotten smell always gives it away. It’s making Roman’s stomach churn, every single time.
He keeps ignoring the shade on his couch, turns on the television to drown out the noise. Some pro-wrestling show is on. He likes those, mind-numbing violence and vapid re-hashed plot lines he doesn’t need to pay too much attention to. Dean used to like those, too. Life had other plans, but he always said he would’ve loved to try out for it sometimes.
“Real rough, huh, if you’re ignoring me.”
Roman turns the volume up.
The sound starts to snap and sputter, there’s static on the screen, snow and bleeding colours are replacing the people on the television.
“Don’t ignore me!” Roman cannot see Seth’s mouth move, but he hears him loud and clear from every direction in his mind. The wave of Seth’s fury spreads across the room, Roman is sure he can hear the fire crackle pop of the overhead girders being licked by the flames. The smell of gasoline intensifies, and it’s getting harder to breathe.
“Shut up, you’re not real!” Roman jumps off the sofa, tries to make a b-line for the front-door, he needs to get out of here — away from this apartment, away from Seth — as quickly as possible. But when he starts running, the door moves out of his reach, “you’re not real, you’re not real!”
“Am I?” Seth asks, his voice rolling over the sound of the blaze.
Outside, the sun hasn’t set yet, but darkness fills the room save for a faint orange glow. The temperature is rising, Roman can feel it scalding all around him. He reaches his hand out, hoping Dean will grab it — Dean will drag him away from here.
Seth laughs, cruelly, distorted. Roman recognizes the version of Seth’s laugh when he was alive somewhere hidden within, but it’s all wrong. An echo, chewed up and spat out.
Even on days when Seth decides to leave Roman alone, when Seth doesn’t make the effort to manifest, Roman thinks he can hear that laugh echoing through the halls, crude and taunting. It’s worse in his sleep. In his dreams, Seth’s smiling, making fresh coffee for him and for Dean, who is still soundly asleep in their bed upstairs. Seth is sitting on the kitchen counter, dangling his legs, laughing at Roman’s jokes.
In his nightmares, Seth’s laughing too, surrounded by visions of the house burning around him. Roman’s looking for Dean there, too. But he never finds him before the ash and smoke fill his lungs, the heat melts his skin and Roman dies and wakes up.
And just like that, the nightmare is over. Roman finds himself, collapsed and heaving on the floor, there’s tears streaming down his face, but he doesn’t remember when he started crying. The salt is burning in his eyes, his throat hurts, he runs his fingers across his nose to wipe away the snot.
“Oh, come on now,” Seth’s still laughing, leaning over Roman — a towering shape, filling up nearly the whole apartment with limbs too long, too wide, edges incomprehensibly out of Roman’s view, swallowed by the fire that is not quite there, “don’t you start crying now tough guy, you brought this on yourself.”
“Don’t you—” Roman tries to regain himself, he sits up, wipes the tears away. Whatever this is, it’s not his Seth. Hasn’t been for a long time. “Don’t you have a better place to haunt?”
Seth tuts, “I’m tied to my home, Roman,” but their home together burned down, “it is what it is. Now get up, your show is on.”
When Roman blinks, the room looks normal again. The commentators on the TV are speaking normally, some guy is being held down on the mat. Seth’s lounging on the sofa again, pats the empty seat next to him invitingly. Roman pulls himself off the floor, and by a lack of any other options, slumps towards the couch, defeated.
“I told you not to ignore me,” Seth shrugs. Roman puts his hands to his face, he rubs his eyes and, suddenly exhausted, he lets out something akin to a swallowed sob. The stress of everything crashing on his shoulders, more than anything his muscles hurt, pain is settling deep within his body. He mentally crosses off ignoring the ghost in his apartment as one of the possible tactics of dealing with it — along with telling it to leave.
“I’m tired, Seth,” Roman confesses, eventually. “It’s very hard to move on when you’re,” he gestures vaguely at the shape on his couch, “here,” he settles on.
The thing crosses its arms, “funny that. I guess we’re both stuck then.”
Like this, Seth almost looks normal. Limbs a normal length, his face clear to make out. That blond skunk-like streak of hair his version of Seth used to have, when they first met. Still, the dread sucks all the air out of the room.
“So, you’re just going to stay here?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” Seth’s smile is almost normal, apologetic even, “you and me, together forever — I told you.”
Seth told him, told him when he was still alive, as well. But this version of Seth carries the promise Seth had made to Roman and Dean between his teeth, like a cat would carry a mouse. Sharp fangs puncture its little neck, before Seth spits it out at Roman’s feet. More guts than mouse, but still a mouse — a bloody, miserable promise. Sometimes, a rivulet of blood drips down the corner of this Seth’s mouth when he speaks.
Roman turns to face the ghost, asks the only question he hasn’t asked over the past few months. As if it matters anyway.
“Why?”
“I just — I died angry, I guess.”
“And—” Roman swallows, “and Dean?”
When the ghost turns to look at Roman, Roman is sure he can hear a fork drop somewhere in the dishes piling up near the kitchen sink. If Seth’s here, why wouldn’t Dean be here too?
“Dean’s dead.” Seth says.
But, the fork dropped at the mention of Dean’s name.
“So are you.” Roman counters.
Roman can feel Seth’s annoyance fill up the room, a low humming static, ceiling to the floor.
“I am,” Seth snarls, Roman thinks he can see Seth’s teeth through the flesh of his cheek, briefly, he’s not sure, “Dean’s not here. He left.”
But, Roman doesn’t think that’s true. Ever since their home together had burned down, since Roman lost everything he had worked for, and everything he loved, Roman had been trying to find Dean.
Seth showed up the day Roman had gotten the keys to this new apartment, after a few weeks of couch-surfing with family and friends. No one turned him down, but he needed to move forward. A new place, a new job that didn’t ask too many questions about his past — and paid well enough.
Seth had been there, smiling at him like a Cheshire cat, tongue running along his teeth, “thought you could move on without me, big dog?”
The apartment had been on fire, too, then. One of this Seth’s favourite tricks, it seems. Over the past months, Roman has smelled smoke, tasted ash, threw up in the bathroom-sink more times than he could count. Forced to relive that night in a hundred new ways, every single time the angry ghost felt particularly cruel.
It’s worse when the ghost talks to him. Sometimes, it cracks jokes, says something Seth would’ve said, shows it knows Roman by pressing on his sore spots. Roman can almost pretend it’s still Seth. Fully human Seth, and not all this burning rage choking the life out of him.
Last month, Seth had let Roman think it was finally over. He hadn’t appeared in weeks. The smell of smoke was slowly dissolving — but what was left of Roman’s sanity left with it. He was trembling, looking over his shoulder every waking moment. Waiting to see Seth’s face again, and he had seen it everywhere. Behind him, in his rearview mirror. When zipping up a body bag. Seth had been every stranger on the street.
Until, eventually, Roman had accepted that, maybe, he could let his guard down. Move on.
Seth had not set his apartment on fire that night. Seth had taken Roman back to their house, and as the roof caved in — Roman was digging through the red-hot glowing rubble with his bare hands, digging for Dean. He’s lost feeling in his fingers long before, shreds of tender boiling flesh slid off of his bones easily as Roman kept going. He must’ve screamed, his throat was closing up with scorching fine dust, but he must have screamed. His lungs gave out in his body, respiring made impossible because he couldn’t find the strength to push his chest to move — and yet Roman kept digging as he was being roasted alive. They never found Dean’s body.
“You don’t get to forget,” Seth had said, when Roman had taken his first breath after Seth was done with him. “Dean’s gone, remember that too.”
Died angry.
Now, when he’s cleaning up a scene — he looks for them, the angry ghosts left behind in the carnage. He takes his time to carefully scrub away blood between the tiles and mortar with a toothbrush. The ever rotating roster of coworkers make fun of him for it, how pedantic he’s being.
Roman had tried to get rid of the last things that was Seth after a week of none-stop nightmares. Roman had brought Seth’s ashes into his apartment with him, the urn sat at the bottom of the singular cardboard box with what was left of Roman’s things after the fire. Seth was there, Dean was not. Roman had taken the airtight inner jar from the urn, had taken it with him halfway across town to his next job and put it with all the other biohazard waste to be thrown out.
Maybe Seth’s right, maybe Dean really is gone. Maybe, that’s what happens when there really is nothing left of you. After every clean up, he hopes he’s scrubbed away enough anger and guilt that the next tenant cannot feels the remnants of the fight.
The next day, the jar sat prominently on his kitchen table. Covered in flecks of drying blood, char, and mucus.
“Don’t do that again.” Seth had simply said. A promise, not a warning.
When Helmsley bought him out, after everything went down. His old law-firm was kind enough to pay for a memorial stone in the park the three of them used to frequent often. Gone but not forgotten, Dean Ambrose — Courtesy of Helmsley & Shield attorneys.
He doesn’t want Seth to be right. Seth is wrong, Dean would not leave.
Clean up had been quick. An elderly couple, went out together by spoon-feeding each other two months’ worth of medication. Two rotting corpses on a singular queen-bed, but not much else. Dying together, that could be true love.
Roman feels like he is at his breaking point, something has possessed him as he is going through all of his daily motions — maybe, literally. Running rotten, spreading too thin on whatever granola bar he can hold in his stomach and whatever sleep he’s allowed to get. He’s pale, his mind darts around every room he enters whilst his body remains static. He cannot go back to that apartment, it might be there again today. He’s not ready to face Seth, not so soon again.
Aimlessly, Roman just walks about the city streets and parks, for hours. Hoping to find something, a sign his apartment is bearable again. Sometimes, he looks over his shoulder, hoping that Dean would be there, in the corner of his eyes. But there’s only an empty space where Dean used to be.
The sun is starting to set when the toes of Roman’s boots hit Dean’s memorial stone, a layer of lichens is starting to creep around its edges. He makes a mental note to come back with a toothbrush and a weedkiller solution, to clean up the quiet scene in front of him.
“He’s angry, Dean,” is what Roman manages to choke out, “I don't know what to do. He says you're gone, but—”
Seth’s still there.
“I see you, when I walk down the street I know you're there. I know you're trying to reach out. The fork, the fork in the kitchen moved when I said your name and when I look over my shoulder, I know you're there, too — why wouldn’t you be?”
The stone is so quiet, it is deafening. Roman sinks to his knees, he plucks off pieces of moss with his finger nails where he can manage, but his hands are shaking. If he keeps his hands busy, tears won’t fall. Around him, people pass by without as much as a second glance, a grey cloud drifts past the moon, blocking out the light. It should be raining, but even the weather doesn’t care to match the despair.
“The world just kept turning without you, and Seth—” his shoulders hitch, “Seth’s stuck, unable to move on. Please, I — I’m sorry, I was wrong and I, we, we need you.”
The stone looks at Roman with pity. Judgement. Roman swallows, he’d rather take the apartment.
“Eh, right,” he says when he stands up, he wipes off blades of grass and dried mud from his pants, “good talk, eh,” he buries a sniffle in his throat, “don’t be a stranger, okay. Please come home.”
He cards a hand through his hair, redoes his ponytail — it’s probably time to face the apartment.
But he doesn’t find Seth in the apartment, it’s eerily empty. Too quiet. Not a single sound of any other living creature comes from the apartment complex, no television through the walls, no upstairs neighbours scuffling about. Wrongness fills up the quiet tomb, ceiling to the floor. Other life had always moved around it, left Roman and the apartment to their own devices — the mice scattering over his kitchen counter never bothered to show respect for the garotting grief. But now, not even that, not any more.
The only sound he can hear, is his heart rabbiting in his throat. He tastes bile on his tongue, but no ash.
Even when he can’t see Seth, he knows Seth must be somewhere near. Grief, like a black cat following you from room to room, but never allowing you to pet it. When the mice flee, it must mean the cat has made its presence known to them.
There’s something in his kitchen, Roman can feel it; the heart of the quiet. So quiet, he doesn’t even hear the squelch underneath his boot when he crosses the threshold, he just feels the crunch.
A mouse. Or, what used to be a mouse trampled under Roman’s weight. When he pulls away, a viscus string of pink slime connects the bottom of his sole to what’s left of the little thing. Like this, it doesn’t look like a mouse — not any more. It’s a heavy footprint left in its now wet pelt, soaked with blood. Its little bones, crushed, poking out. Little guts spilling from its burst seams.
“You should really buy some mousetraps, big dog.” an amused chuckle is leaning against his kitchen counter. Seth.
— no, wait.
“Dean?” Roman asks, carefully. But it does look like Dean.
The faint traces of a smile appear on the ghost’s face, it must take Dean a tremendous effort to show himself. Near translucent, but it’s him. In his blue jeans, and with his hair stuck to his forehead, it’s Dean.
“You listened,” Roman says, like a prayer and a release.
“I did,” Dean says, “heard you loud and clear.”
Roman doesn’t care that he’s leaving bloodied footprints all over the kitchen tiles, he can clean those up later. He doesn’t know if he can touch Dean, but he needs to — he has to try. At least, he needs to be closer.
“I told you to come, and you came back.”
Roman reaches out with trembling hands, he wants to grab Dean’s face. Hold him, close, forehead to forehead and then kiss it. If only for now, he has his Dean back.
Seth was wrong.
For a moment, he thinks he can hear that terrible snap crackle cackle echo through the walls, but — Seth is wrong!
His eyes begin to water with relief, the edges of his vision begin to blur. That’s okay, Dean is not fully visible to begin with, Roman just want to feel his presence. He blinks away the tears, a blond streak of hair, and — Roman blinks again, it’s Dean, it’s Dean.
When his hand reaches Dean, a cold chill runs up his spine. But that’s what it is like touching ghosts, Roman has learned. Yet, the chill is quickly replaced by scorching heat.
“Oh, Roman,” Dean tries to say, but his face is melted off before he can finish the words. Like candle wax, Dean is falling apart in his arms. Dean is running through his fingers as blobs of ceral goo drip down on the floor in the colours Dean used to be, Roman can make out the blue of the jeans; the black of the thank top; the mousy hair. It all lands on the floor, a big gory swirl of ooze.
“No, no, no,” Roman cries out. Desperately, he keels over as he tries to scoop up Dean and put him back together, like a clay figure. He can’t help himself, Dean is melting quicker than Roman can build.
This time, he is sure he can hear that awful distorted laugh. “Oh, Roman, Roman, Roman — I can’t believe you fell for that one. I told you, Dean’s gone.”
Seth’s leaning against the kitchen counter in the space where Dean used to be, smirking, seemingly satisfied with Roman’s despair as the remnants of the wax dissolve into thin air. Like it hadn’t even been there, it probably hadn’t.
“I hate you!” Roman screams, a visceral scream from the bottom of his heart, the pit of his stomach. He lurches forward, his hands flat on the cold tiles, he vomits.
“Oh, oh yes I know you do, you told me over and over again Roman — you’ve hated me ever since you found those papers didn’t you?”
From down on the floor, Roman can see the ghost’s crossed legs, he’s wearing dress shoes and black dress pants — the pleat neatly pressed. Seth’s hands resting on the kitchen counter beside his body. Seth’s more clear now. More opaque; more present.
“I tried to forgive you, Seth. I really did, but you were going to sell your part of the firm to Helmsley. You fucking betrayed us!”
The ugly truth is, Roman had stopped loving Seth the moment he had broken into Seth’s desk and found the contracts with his partner’s signature — an empty dotted line where Hunter Hearst Helmsley could stamp his fucking pretentious name on their firm.
Another wave of sick hits Roman, he aims for Seth’s shoes.
Seth looks at him, unbothered, the vomit moves right through him. “I was doing what was best for business. Best for our business, best for you,” he shrugs, “because I love you, Roman.”
“Fuck you, this is sick.” Roman spits.
Suddenly, he feels a hand grab his hair, digging sharp nails into his scalp. Roman feels cold again.
“Sick?” Seth snarls, “Sick? It seems you have forgotten what you did?”
Seth tries to regain his calm, but he is stuck in his anger. “Because I think I have been too kind to you. Making an effort to look presentable — the way I know you like to remember me, but my sweetheart, that's not how it went down now, is it?”
Smoke fills the room again, the smell of burning gasoline. Roman attempts to still his beating heart when Seth pulls him up to look at him. The ghost hasn't killed him yet; Roman doesn’t think that that was its goal to begin with. Just, torture and vengeance — an endless cycle of torture and vengeance.
“Look at me, brother — really look at me.”
A blistered callous hand grabs him by his chin, forcing his head in a deadlock.
“It's so much easier when I don’t have to put effort into looking good for you.”
Seth’s face is smouldering, dark blackened ash covers a layer of rotting, pealing skin. But the skin isn’t everywhere, there's tendons showing — Seth's jaw is hanging on by a tread. One eye carcass is completely empty, the black of it an infinite void for Roman to stare into. The other eye is dripping out of Seth's skull like a runny yolk, dribbling down Seth's cheek. The iris and pupil deforming like a Dali-painting.
Of Seth's hair, there's almost nothing left. Some lone plucks stick out here and there, greasily stuck together, charred. Roman remembers the feeling of running Seth’s hair through his fingers, he’s going to be sick again. But there’s nothing left to belch up.
The shiny synthetic material of the pyjamas Seth had been wearing that night are scorched — molten into Seth's skin at places in a slurry of ragged red flesh and blue fabric imbedded into the deep and blistered burn wounds.
“At least there's something left of me,” Seth laughs.
“But, Dean—” Roman heaves.
“It’s always about Dean with you. When are you going to get it through your thick skull, how many times do I have to explain?” Seth lets go of Roman’s hair to cross his arms, “Dean was going to leave us.”
“I know,” Roman says, “I saw the bags under the stairs, it’s why— it’s why I had to set the house on fire.”
Even though, Seth already knew the truth, when Roman confesses, he can’t bare to look at Seth. He lays down, spreads his arms out on the kitchen floor, whatever Seth has in store for him tonight, he’s earned it.
“Dean’s gone,” Roman whispers, “he really is gone.”
“It’s okay,” Seth’s voice is hushed, without distortion, “It’s okay, he got his wish.”
Roman feels cold fingertips trace through his hair.
“But I,” Seth promises, “I will always love you, Roman.” Somewhere, Roman can hear the distinct rustling of a mouse scattering across his kitchen counter. “I promise, I will never leave.”