Chapter Text
There's a man living in my old apartment.
I knew this would happen when they scrubbed the last of me off of the baseboard heater. It settled in that I had no more control over my fate in death than I had in life. I didn't choose when or how I died, of course, but I knew it would be something like this. I couldn't choose what happened afterwards, but I knew the world would keep moving without me.
The man doesn't know what happened in his room, that someone had both lived and died in it. He takes it for granted that the last tenant left.
But I didn’t leave.
I've had nothing but time to waste wondering if this happens to everyone after they die. But, then, the world would be filled with ghosts, wouldn't it? People would've noticed, right?
I guess not. The man in my apartment moved in two weeks ago and he hasn't noticed anything amiss. But that's probably because I haven't actually done anything to get his attention. I wouldn't know where to start with that and I don't even know if I want to. Why bother this guy with my problems? I keep promising myself that I won't drag anyone else down with me and yet it keeps happening. Maybe one day I'll be holding on to him when I'm finally released from this world and I'll drag him down to hell with me somehow.
I don't want to do that. The man doesn't deserve to go to hell.
Now, a disclaimer: I don't like to watch him. I'm not really in the habit of spying on random strangers. But there's nothing else to do.
He's a biologist. He was orphaned as an adult a year ago. He lost his last job two months later. Now he works at a middle school as a science teacher.
I know all of this because he talks to himself. A lot. I don't know if he's always been like that or if it's because of my presence but at first I thought he was talking to me. It scared the shit out of me. But, no. He just thinks out loud all the time.
Hence why I know so much about him. I wish I didn't. I wish I could just ignore him. But he lives in my house. And I'm not stupid enough to try to get him to leave. There'll just be another tenant to replace him.
And he hasn't really done anything to me, after all. It's all been my fault I'm so miserable. The worst thing he's done to me is watch terrible television. The second he does something, though, I'll raise hell the best I can.
However. About that. I've been declawed, so to speak. It's good and it's bad. I can't hurt anyone, but I can't hurt anyone. It's excruciating to exist without something to touch. I don't care what it is, I need to touch something. I need to make a mark somewhere. It's driving me fucking crazy.
When I died, that was supposed to be it. Whoosh. Blown out like a candle. Nothing. I hadn't prepared for my ghosthood. I don't know what ghosts can and can't do and I don't know what they're supposed to do or anything like that. There's no owner's manual for this thing.
So I just sit and watch.
—
Watching is NOT enough.
I start feeling insane when I notice he has a shit ton of classic jazz records he never listens to. Paul Desmond, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, mostly best-ofs, just sitting there collecting dust, and it hurts to look at. Jesus Christ, it was like this guy was made to taunt me specifically. Seeing that, my sanity escapes me, and so, while he’s in the shower, I test a theory. I sneak in and write a request on the mirror in the condensation before I can think better of it.
All caps: CAN YOU PUT ON YOUR PAUL DESMOND RECORD?
And I leave.
I know he's found it when I hear him… scream. It’s more of a screech, really. And I feel pretty bad, I guess. I wasn't usually around to hear that noise. I was typically gone by then.
He rushes out of the bathroom, completely naked, holy shit! I whirl around and try to avoid eye contact with his junk as he madly dashes towards the kitchen and grabs a knife, and then scrambles into what is technically still my bedroom.
I hear him dial something on his phone. Smart. Calling 911. I probably should've figured out a way to warn him not to do that. The police aren't going to find anything, and they don't. All they find is the message I left on the mirror.
After the cops clear the place, the man emerges from the bedroom, thankfully clothed this time.
Once they leave, he mumbles to himself about how he’s probably going crazy. There was no evidence of anyone entering the apartment, there was no evidence of anyone entering the bathroom, and so he is “definitely, totally, undeniably insane” and “probably beyond help at this point” and “this new job is getting to him.” No way for him to know that I’ve been here the whole time.
I decide not to push him on anything. He spends most of the night sitting in the same exact spot on the couch staring into space. I’m about to stop watching him and twiddle my thumbs somewhere else when he makes himself a little smaller and peers around the room with a furrowed brow.
He stands up, slowly walking over to the record shelf, and, with shaking hands, puts on his Miles Davis record. And then he goes to get ready for bed and I am left standing there in surprise.
I walk over to the couch in a daze and will myself to sit down on it. I sink through the couch cushions a little, but that’s okay. I listen in bliss.
It isn't exactly what I asked for, but the sentiment is there. It’s sweet of him. That or he’s scared of me and trying to appease me or something. Like a god. I laugh incredulously.
I wasn't that scary in my daily life while I was alive. I didn't have a reason to be. I only intimidated people when I had to.
I preferred to stay unassuming but detached. Like I wanted to be left alone. I'm kinda short for a man, and the jacket makes me look skinnier than I really am, so it was easy. And I've been told I have sad, tired, non-threatening eyes. Whatever that means.
So I don't like this. I’m never around people who are scared of me for very long. It doesn't feel good.
I sigh. It looks like I have to get to know him.
—
I decide I'll wait until the next time the man showers. He wiped the mirror down after last time, so I have a blank canvas.
The only problem is that I've caught him on a long weekend and he hasn't showered in three days. He might not have slept, either. I haven't been able to tell.
He looks like a mess. His blue eyes dart around, his hair is greasy and uncombed, and he's got pretty severe dark circles. He hasn't shaved and he hasn't changed out of the plain black t-shirt and ridiculously small shorts he pulled on after the mirror incident.
I watch and watch and watch him, getting more nervous as the hours go on. What if I seriously messed him up? I have a habit of doing that. I keep getting flashbacks to the way Irene looked at me as the elevator doors closed. That's what he looks like. I can't help but wonder how long her face stayed like that after I left, if it was for this long. It hurts, so I stop.
Finally, on Sunday night, he musters up the strength to take a shower. It's only after he gets out and wraps a towel around his waist, hopefully more secure this time, that I scrawl another message onto the mirror.
SORRY I DIDNT MEAN TO SCARE YOU
He must've caught me in the middle of writing it because he stops drying his hair and freezes like a deer in headlights. I finish writing, and he doesn't move.
“Nope!” he exclaims all of a sudden, and walks out of the bathroom.
“Nope, nope, nope, nope,” he says, pacing outside, “I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm crazy, I'm going insane, I'm losing my mind, this is it, this is how it finally happens- I NEED TO LEAVE.”
He stomps off into his bedroom and lugs a suitcase out from the depths of his overflowing closet.
“That's it! I’m booking a hotel tonight! I'm calling out of work and…” He smacks his hands on the side of his head, eyes wide. “I CAN'T CALL OUT FROM WORK. STATE TESTING IS TOMORROW. Oh, gosh…”
He starts pulling at his hair.
“What- what do I do???” He stares around the apartment like he's asking me a question. “What do I do about this? Help me!”
I don't say anything, because he won't hear me and I also don't fucking know what to do. I wish I did, for both of us. Unless he goes back to the bathroom mirror or something else I can write on with my finger, I can't even start to explain myself. And he's not going to do that.
He stops and stares straight through me. He slumps.
“I don't know what to do. There's totally something in my apartment and I don't know what to do. What even are you? Have you been here the whole time?”
He pauses, listening for an answer. I can't give him one.
“Right. I don't think you can talk.” He stops to think for a while, and then his brow furrows and he walks past me with a purpose into the kitchen. He's still very wet. He rummages through the drawers until…
“A-ha!” He pulls out a little chalkboard and a stick of chalk, the side of which he rubs all over the chalkboard until there's a layer of chalk dust on it. Smart.
“If you're real and I'm not crazy,” he says, placing the board flat on the ground and stepping back with his hands raised, “Write something on the chalkboard.”
I pause. I owe him an explanation, don't I? I don't want to get any more involved and this feels pretty involved. But I kneel down in front of it anyways. I write:
HELLO
Behind me, his breathing quickens.
“Okay. Okay! Okay. Alright, so… what's going on? What are you, what is this, what's up?”
I consider for a second how to answer literally any of that, and decide to keep it simple like always. No way to fuck it up. I write under the last message:
GHOST
“Okay! No, that's fine. Just. A ghost. In my home. A real ghost. Unless you're lying.”
NOT LYING
“Okay, and why should I believe you?”
I frown. I don't know! Why is he asking me like I know?
DONT KNOW
“Okay. So I get the feeling we might both be on the same page here.”
Finally. Someone said it.
YES
and then under it
YOURE IN MY APARTMENT
He lets out a little nervous noise.
“Um, how angry would you say you are about that?”
A little.
A LITTLE
“Enough to, like, hurt me?”
CANT
He breathes a sigh of relief.
“That's good news. I'm not dealing with an evil ghost!”
I don't write anything about that one.
“Hey, so, um, have you been here like… the whole time?”
YUP
“Okay.” He claps his hands. “So you've just been watching me this whole time.”
Fuck. He put that together. I have to clean this up. Why me? Why did this have to happen to me? Well, I know why. I’m not the type of person that good things happen to.
TRAPPED HERE NOTHING ELSE TO DO SORRY
“Oh,” he says awkwardly, “Well, that sucks.”
I turn around slightly to see him staring at the board with a thousand yard stare. He's obviously not taking this well. I panic. Shit. I'll give him an out. Social situations have never been my forte.
ILL STOP BOTHERING YOU IF YOU WANT
He shifts on his feet a little. Scrunches his eyes closed.
“Please,” he says, voice strained.
I can do that. I should do that. I should have been doing that this whole time.
I stand up and he picks up the board and he puts it away and he goes to bed and that's it.
—
The next week goes by… strangely. The man is obviously pretending that he doesn't know I'm here. Out of respect, I try to clear out of a room when he enters it. Not that it makes a difference. He's acting like my eyes are always on him anyway.
He does everything he normally does. He goes to the laundromat on Thursday night, cooks spaghetti on Friday, and he sits down to grade papers over the weekend.
But he's completely silent. There's no more thinking out loud. He'll sometimes be compelled to speak if he drops something or gets hurt, but he quickly cuts himself off every time. Because he knows I can hear him.
The cat's out of the bag. God damn it. He can't forget about me. I just don't know how long he's going to torture himself by ignoring me.
On Monday night, he breaks.
After he gets up from the dinner table, he groans, deep and full-bodied. It sounds painful.
“There's no point. I can't just… act like nothing's going on!”
He fishes the little chalkboard out from where it was sitting under his stack of lined paper. His dinner table is a disaster.
“I'm just going to leave this here. Talk if you want. I guess we're friends now. If you're not a figment of my imagination.”
I don't know what I want to write. There's nothing I can do to make any of this more comfortable for either of us. A joke, maybe?
YOU COULD ALWAYS CALL AN EXORCIST
He jumps in his seat a little, and then stills. He looks around. He never finds me.
“You don't want to be here either.”
It's a statement, not a question. And he's right.
He sighs.
“What can I do?”
Uh. What? What can he do? I don't know!
DONT KNOW
He seems nervous now. “Do… do you really think an exorcism would work?”
Oh. He thought I was serious. I'm rarely good at jokes. There's been maybe two or three times in my entire life where I made someone laugh with a joke.
I add a STILL before the previous DONT KNOW.
“How do I hire an exorcist? Do I like, go online? Do I go through the church?”
I roughly circle the STILL DONT KNOW three times to really hammer in the fact that I DON'T KNOW. I DON'T HAVE ANY ANSWERS.
“Sorry,” he says, “I'm kinda panicking.”
I DONT KNOW ANYTHING
He hums and grabs his chin.
“I'll do some research online about exorcisms,” he says, standing up from the table and stretching, “And then I'll get back to you. But I'm tired. Don't watch me while I sleep, okay?”
I'm just a little bit offended. I don't want anything to do with this guy, why would I watch him sleep?
He peers over at the board. I'm running out of room to write, so he lathers it up with chalk again.
DO YOU THINK IM A CREEP
He snorts. “Well, you do watch me shower, right?”
No. I absolutely do not watch him shower. Where is he getting this?
WHAT?
He actually laughs this time. “You keep writing stuff on the mirror in there, so I assumed…” He trails off as I frustratedly scrawl:
ASSUMED WHAT THAT I WAS LOOKING AT YOU NAKED?
His face turns bright red. “Yes, thank you for clarifying that you don't… do that. At all.”
Okay, what the hell is wrong with this guy?
Something seems to dawn on him and his hands fly to his crotch instinctively.
“You haven't seen me naked, right?! Please tell me you haven't seen me naked. I didn't ask about that specifically so now I'm going to ask that. You can't weasel your way out of this one!”
I… I'm not weaseling out of anything! To prove this, I tell him the truth.
BEFORE YOU CALLED THE COPS YOU RAN OUT THEBATHROOMNAKEDSAWITALLSORRY
It's all squished together at the end because I’m running out of room so it takes him a second to read it but he eventually gets it and his face goes even redder. He covers it with his hands and throws his head back with an “UGHHHHH.”
He stands there frozen for a second before letting his arms fall down.
“No, I'm sorry. That one's totally my fault. Sorry if I scarred you for life… death… whatever.”
He sighs and resets the board.
IVE SEEN GUYS NAKED
I look down at my body and back up at him as if to prove a point. I know he can't see me, but I do it anyway.
He snaps his fingers. “Shoot! Are you a girl? I've been assuming you were a guy this whole time! Whoops.”
While he starts rambling away anxiously about how he thinks anyone can become a ghost, I stand there in confusion. He really took that the wrong way. Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. I guess the MEN implies more than one…? Maybe I should have been clearer.
Well, he's wrong about me being a girl, so I tell him that.
IM A MAN
He stops talking and looks down at the board. He freezes.
“Oh, you're gay…?”
…What?
I mean, sure, sometimes, but…
What?
MY OWN BODY.
For the first time, I add a period for emphasis.
“OHHHH. Oh, oh my gosh, sorry.” He laughs nervously. His eyes dart around. “Should have caught that.”
Should I tell him the truth here and risk him getting even more paranoid that I'm watching him shower or should I let him live in blissful ignorance?
I grind my teeth on a toothpick that doesn't exist. One of the many mortal things I couldn't carry through the veil of death was my toothpicks. I need a toothpick so bad right now. I feel like maybe I'd know what to say if I just had a toothpick.
Fuck it.
I decide to drop the bomb.
I write:
BUT I GO BOTH WAYS
His face, which has been flushing and paling over and over, is currently tomato red. It looks like it hurts.
“Woah, ha ha ha, okay,” he rasps, “That’s… is that, like, relevant… right now?”
NO
He's hot, but he's living in my apartment and I don't like it. That's a little hard to overlook. And he's pissing me off right now.
“Oh, good.” He lets out a massive breath he must've been holding in, and then abruptly turns tail and retreats into the bathroom. “I'm going to bed. Good night.”
Rude.
I wander over to the couch and sit down. I tilt my head back. I don't really think about him. I can't. That conversation took it out of me. What I would give to still have my car. If I was still alive this would be the perfect time to take her out somewhere nice and set my focus on the road instead of the ceiling.
I miss her. I wonder where she is. She probably got sent to the scrapyard when I died. I would've loved to have rehomed her, but that's not how things worked out. She was technically supposed to go to Shannon if I kicked the bucket, but he was dead, too. So she'd been crushed up into little pieces.
She was my only real home for the past eight or nine years, and now she's scrap metal. I feel my eyes water a little. I haven't let myself think about her, what's done is done, but I guess I'm just feeling particularly alive tonight. Sue me. A man can cry about his car all he wants.
I tend to cry easily, though. I’m good at holding the tears back, but that doesn't stop the feeling. And, unfortunately, it hasn't stopped in death. But, I realize with a sense of relief, nobody can see or hear me now, so I let loose and choke out a couple pathetic little sobs to dull the pain.
I'm staring at the ceiling through tears when I distantly hear a door open and close. Footsteps trail into the living room and I hear a rustling noise and some clicking and then the sound of piano and string bass.
I sit up just in time to see Ryland flee into the bedroom and I'm left looking at his door while the noise floods in around me.
I curl in on myself like a child and wrap my arms around my body, gripping the smooth fabric of my jacket. I don't know how to take it off. I've tried. Every time I try to unzip it there's just another zipper underneath. That or maybe my vision shifts to convince me that's what's happening, because I blink and it's right back how it was when I started.
But right now I couldn't care less about the damn jacket. I let my mind dissolve into the music. It's nice.
And I barely register it, but I don't have my gloves on anymore.
I feel a little bit free.