It is not yet midnight when my ghost appears for the first time. I was alone in my living room a minute ago, the lights of the Bay Bridge twinkling outside my window. And now he is here, standing right in front of me, in a black t-shirt and torn blue jeans. Docs on his feet.
After the shortest of shocked pauses, I begin to scream like a scared little schoolboy, wetting his scared little schoolboy short pants. Perhaps this is because, although I am nearly forty years old, I really am just a scared little schoolboy, wetting my scared little school boy short pants. The room is a microwave. The moon is a lemon.
The skin of my ghost is pale. He is translucent, like a jelly fish. He looks just like I always imagined a ghost looks. He is all skin and bones, graveyard skin and mortuary bones. His eyes are the eyes of an albino. They are alive. He is alive. But from the moment I first saw him ninety seconds I ago, I have known that he is dead; I have known that he is a ghost. He is no fake. Even in his silence, I can feel his death. He is sitting in my lazy boy, scratching his stubbly chin, dully observing me. I do not know why I am referring to him as "my ghost." There isn’t much I can see that makes him mine. I can barely think at all.
There is blood dripping from a small wound on the side of my ghost’s head. He doesn't seem to notice. There is blood on one of his shoulders, underneath the wound. Other than the wound and the dead in his flesh, my ghost looks young, maybe twenty or twenty-one. I find it is more difficult to measure age in death than in life, so I cannot promise to be precise. Maybe he is four hundred years old, for all I know.I am twisting and turning. My eyes are darting this way and that. I am shifting my weight from one leg to the other and back again. I am sweating. My fingers feel numb and tingly at once.
My ghost stands up as if to approach me. I begin to yell some more, loud and guttural. "Aaarghh! aaaarghhh!! aarggh!!!" is all I can muster. He shakes his head slightly from side to side, but seems otherwise unaffected by my shrill screams. My ghost is clearly bored. I guess he expects more from me.
I am looking right in his eyes. He is looking right back at mine. "So what's your name," he asks me casually. I don't know how to respond. I throw up instead.
** **
And so this tale begins. This tale of my ghost. Of my ghost and me.
** **
I am sitting at the kitchen table now, staring at my ghost. The yellow light of the morning sun drips down on us. I do not know where the night went. Here now, the room is still a microwave. Somewhere, the moon is still a lemon.
I had always believed that if ghosts actually existed, they could only show themselves in the dark; in the dreary corners of a decrepit haunted house and so forth. This, apparently, is not so. The sunlight did not seem to bother my ghost at all. He just starts talking.
"I would like this to be a dialog, bro. Not just a monologue, you know what I’m saying? How does that sound to you?"
I don't know how to respond to this at all. So, I throw up again. My ghost just shakes his head, completely unimpressed. There is a silence in the room I cannot explain. I would like to say it is the sound of a feather, but that is not right. It is the sound of the silk on the bottom of a coffin.
As he continues to speak, I am trying not to scream.
“Oh bro, I know some demons. Nasty, nasty demons. Shit torments me night and day.”
I just stare at him. His face is so white. He blends in with the wall behind him, his dark long bangs hanging down his forehead, like charcoal on chalk. There is some odd combination of goth and grunge in him I don’t quite get. It feels very nineteen ninety-two. I just stare at him.
“I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I’m going. It’s not like you think it would be. I mean, I know how I got here, don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying is, like, I kind of thought there would either be answers, you know what I mean, answer to it all.”
He pauses and looks at me. The thought occurs to me that he is waiting for me to respond. He could wait all day, for all I care. I have nothing to say. After a moment, he resumes. I try to make sense of his words, as he is pacing around the room like a young Lenny Bruce.
“You know, I kind of expected that it would be more free, like you could go everywhere you want, anywhere you want. That’s kind of what like my fantasy about it was. Like maybe I could hover over my house and watch all my friends at my funeral, all crying and everything.”
“That’s not what it’s like?” I am speaking to him, but I barely recognize my own voice. It sounds so dark and hoarse to me. His dead eyes grow bigger as he looks at me in glee. I can see he is delighted that I am beginning to respond.
“No, man! Not at all. Not all. That’s just the fucking point. I can’t fly. I can’t see through things. I can’t sense anything. I can’t even walk through things.”
“Really?” I find myself in genuine surprise. I guess I had always presumed that ghosts would be able to walk through things.
“No.” He hesitates. “At least, I can’t. Not really. Not consistently. Not yet.”“So, does that mean you will be able to walk through things some day?”My ghost looked out the window, suddenly quieter, less animated. “That’s what they say.”
I pause for a moment. “That’s what who says?”
He looks up at me in alarm. And literally from one second to the next second, everything changes.
** **
Lights off. A loud noise. A bang. I hear a scream. It is a woman's voice. The room --which was flaming hot like the inside of a volcano moments ago -- is suddenly frigid. That woman screams again. It is a piercing wail of a scream. I feel momentarily as though it could break glass. I find myself looking at the outside window, wondering if it will break. The sky outside seems thick and red, like the bottom of a wineglass after all the merlot is gone.
There is something inside me, too, that feels like that, like the dregs of a once fine wine. I get the sense that I may throw up again. I am slow and sludgy. My head is spinning like a top, like that little girl with the pea soup in the Exorcist, round and round and round again. I begin to make these peculiar gurgling sounds, as though I might be drowning.
There is a woman in front of me now. She wasn't there a moment ago. The lights above me are flickering wildly, racing on and off. The woman in front of me is scabbed and gray. Her hair is a mound of wire. Her eyes are not human. She seems a hundred years old. She is flailing about, her torn, dirty dress a tornado of rags and rips, oily and juicy. She is frothing at the mouth, her jaw hiccupping up and down, mad sounds drawing out of her.
She points at this and that around the room, and my belongings go flying. A flower pot flies over my head. My mattress flies off its frame. Records zing through the air like frisbees, crashing into walls and exploding into a hundred pieces of black vinyl tragedy.
I am covering my head. I am screaming but it is no longer a high-pitched screech. It is a low, throaty yowl, just vaguely aware now of the bad things I am facing. It is a wet cry, a soaking yelp.
I grab at the arms of a chair and try to hold on for dear life. The ceiling above me is a magnet. I am a bag of nails. I use all my strength to just stay in the seat. I am breathing heavy like I’m in a marathon. I am hyper-ventilating. My lungs are primed to explode. She is inside me I can feel it. My head is readying to pop off my shoulders. I cannot breathe. My head is a cement block. It is all about to end. I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum. The pressure on my skin lets up. My sinuses loosen. My nose drips. I can feel the snot on my upper lip. It is cold. I look around. The lights stop blinking. In fact, the lighting has become nearly romantic. There is no more shaking. There is no more sweating. There is no more screaming. I am alone.
I know I am not alone.
I hear something. I make out a sound. I can see no shapes. Everything is blurry. But, I know I hear something. I know I make out a sound. I try to stand up. I wobble for a moment and am convinced for a second that my legs will buckle underneath me. They do not buckle. I put one foot in front of the other. I find that I am walking. I find that there is blood in my veins. I find that there is strength in my muscles. I turn my neck left and right. I take another step. I take another step. I hear another noise, it is a moan, or a groan perhaps. I walk towards what I believe is this noise.
The noise is right in front of me. It is moaning. It is groaning. It is slurping. It is sloppy. It is wet. It is passionate. It is kissing. Goddammit. It is kissing.
Just as I come to this realization, their images begin to come into view to me. They are kissing passionately. They are making out. They are groping at one another’s body. They are locked together.
And she is absolutely beautiful. In fact, she is divine. She is a siren. She is a muse. No more than twenty-one. Skin as white as a puffy cloud. Sad eyes of blue. Wispy locks of blonde. She is tiny. She is nineteen fifty seven art deco cool. She is a little china doll of beauty.
My ghost is all over her. The two kiss and touch, lips pouting, tongues exploring one another’s mouth. She seems to be weakening, slowing down slightly. My ghost, who started off below the woman, is slowly rising up above her. Their hands are all over one another. Their moans and grunts are loud, pulsating.
It is the sound and vision of love. No, it is the sound and vision of making love. It is coital for certain. It is pulsating. It is sweaty. It is raunchy. It is fucking. I am watching two ghosts fuck. I find I am aroused. I cannot help but be aroused.
I can see the desire in their eyes, locked hard onto one another. I can sense their urges in their embrace, entangled deeply in one another. I can feel each of them. I am one with them. My body begins to shake. I struggle to control myself. There is fear in me. There is love in me. There is hate, too, and exhiliration. And there is want. My body is not in my command. I feel like my body is seizing up. I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum. And in a wisp of colored smoke -- green and blue and red and more -- she is drawn upwards, sucked upwards and disappears. Just like that. As quickly as her presence appeared, now she is gone.
And as suddenly as it started, it is over. Her eyes are still piercing, but they are only in my memory. That beautiful spirit is gone. After another moment, I begin to make a noise. It is not a scream or a gargle or a yelp. It is more like a stutter. "Well, well, uh, well. Wh, wha, wha, wh . . . whut?" The shards of words get louder as each one escapes out of my mouth. Involuntary protest, I suppose, of what I had just seen.
Through the fog, I hear a laugh. It is not, it seems to me in my muddied confusion, a malicious laugh. It is a genuinely amused laugh, almost warm. Comforting. Home. I am not threatened.
Through the fog, I hear a voice. It is not, it seems to me in my blurry uncertainty, a vitriolic voice. It is a soothing voice, almost welcoming. Perhaps I will find some wisdom in this voice. I concentrate hard.
"Dude, what is that face, bro?" I can barely understand the words through the guffawing. Guffawing.
It is my ghost, and he is reclining on my couch, guffawing. He is lighting a cigarette. "This is one of the great things about being a ghost. I always have the same seven cigarettes in my pack that I had the day I died." He holds his pack of American Spirits up as an example. "I can smoke all day, and I still have seven cigarettes. Fuckin' rad." He leans his head back and exhales a long, wide cloud of smoke. I cannot smell any smoke.
"Anyways, man. She's out of your life now."
I am trying to focus on anything at all. It occurs to me that my face is frozen in a contorted mess. I turn my efforts towards wiping that terror-driven scowl away. I am not certain how successful I am, but I shake my head once and move on. I attempt to find some words to say.
This is the best I can do: "But . . . bu. . . who is she?"
It is enough to keep the conversation going.
"No clue, dude. She was haunting that ashtray." My ghost points to a green ashtray I had bought back when I lived in Manhattan fifteen years ago, three lifetimes ago. "She's gone now."
"But . . bu . . . where? how?"
"No clue where, bro. No clue how."
"But . . bu . . . what did . .. what did you do?"
"Ah, some ghoul told me about some other ghoul that could shut a ghoul down just by getting down with it. It took me forever to get up the balls to try it. I just went for it, no idea what was going to happen. Same fuckin' thing. Crazy shit turns into hot chick. Disappears into smoke. She's off to go find the next piece of her puzzle. Free from that ashtray now. Don't know how. Don't know why."
I had nothing more to say. That was no explanation at all, but I cannot even think of a follow-up at all. Crazy shit turns into hot chick. Disappears into smoke. That about says it all.
"But, but. . . " I am trying to think of all the questions I have. Not just the obvious: what piece? What puzzle? But also, all the wonders of the world, the meaning of life, life vs. death, the doors I could have opened but did not; the windows I forgot to look through. The pathways I didn't even know where there, that I could have followed but didn’t. I can't think of a single thing. I improvise instead, trying hard to focus on something my ghost said, anything my ghost said.
This is the best that I can muster: "You talked about demons and torment? But, bu . . well . . . you don't seem tormented."
** **
He has me by the tie.
"Tormented?!? You wanna fucking know about tormented???!?? Do you have any fucking clue dude? Huh, motherfucker??!! You imagine what it's like to have dreams, bro? Fucking dreams, man? And you take the fucking jump and what the fuck is there? but here? I don't even know what mother-fucking year it is, asshole."
He is a completely different entity than thirty seconds earlier. He is no longer translucent. He is transparent. Eyeballs zinging out at me. My ghost's face is much longer than it was moments earlier and sunken, a villain in a Poe tale. There is nothing I can do. He has me by the tie. Veins are popping out of his forehead, popping out of his neck. The room is shaking violently.
"I will tell you, I have paid my dues and I don't what the fuck is going on, but you try to tell me I'm not tormented? My fucking life is black man. I wanted it and I got it. Life is a goddamn pit, a puss-infested swampland. I am walking around in circles man, and for all I know it's for fucking eternity. This is not what I expected. I knew it would be bad, but it's the not knowing that is destroying me."
He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me violently, his voice deeper now than a low E. "Is this purgatory, man?! Is this purgatory?! Is this as good as it gets?! Is there nothing else?! Is that what I get for my decision??!!"
I don't know what to say. I should say something wise. I say this instead:
"Whu..whu...whut decis-, decision?"
** **
My ghost just smiles at this. He is suddenly my ghost again.
“Oh, bro, enough about me. Sure, I'm a little tormented . . ."
"Yes, yes you are," I chime in. I want to make certain he knows I'm on the torment team.
"A little tormented! Who isn't, right?" He is delighted at my agreement. "Anyways, I don't remember exactly what you're asking, but maybe we could talk about it some other time. I'm fuckin' spent now."
"I see." His whole demeanor is different. His shoulders are slouched, his eyelids hanging low. He looks almost high.
"I have to go now. I'll see you around, though, bro," he mumbled confidently. He was suddenly a young man again, just barely dead and with all the arrogance and naïveté of youth.
"Wait," I call out as he seems ready to disappear or evaporate or whatever he is clearly about to do. "If you just give me a second, I am sure I will have a thousand questions for you. Like, why did you show up here in the first place? And where are you going?"
He just smiles, the tortured rage from a moment ago is a million miles away. "Oh, don’t worry, bro. I’ll be back.”
I am disappointed at the response. Where is he going? Why is he here? And even though he says he will return, perhaps I will wake up tomorrow and this ghost will be gone. I do not know if I will be relieved or disappointed if he never returns.
“Hey, by the way,” my ghost calls out to me over his shoulder as he prepares to go who-knows-where. “You know why you keep thinking of me as your ghost?”
“No,” I reply quietly, but with sudden anticipation. “Why?”
He pauses for a moment. “Because,” he answers slowly, a smile subtly conquering his face. “Because, I am.”
** **
I do not know what to make of this response. I get the sense that maybe my ghost doesn't, either. That doesn't make him any less here, any less standing right in front me.
** **
"Hey, one more thing," I call out to my ghost, suddenly recalling something is instantly of primary concern to me. He looks back at me, almost as if he knows what I am going to ask. "Um, is there anything else in my apartment that's haunted, other than that ashtray?"
My ghost smiles. "Honestly," he asks? "Yes," I respond, nervously nodding my head up and down.
"Honestly . . . I have no fucking clue." The room is a microwave. The moon is a lemon.
After the shortest of shocked pauses, I begin to scream like a scared little schoolboy, wetting his scared little schoolboy short pants. Perhaps this is because, although I am nearly forty years old, I really am just a scared little schoolboy, wetting my scared little school boy short pants. The room is a microwave. The moon is a lemon.
The skin of my ghost is pale. He is translucent, like a jelly fish. He looks just like I always imagined a ghost looks. He is all skin and bones, graveyard skin and mortuary bones. His eyes are the eyes of an albino. They are alive. He is alive. But from the moment I first saw him ninety seconds I ago, I have known that he is dead; I have known that he is a ghost. He is no fake. Even in his silence, I can feel his death. He is sitting in my lazy boy, scratching his stubbly chin, dully observing me. I do not know why I am referring to him as "my ghost." There isn’t much I can see that makes him mine. I can barely think at all.
There is blood dripping from a small wound on the side of my ghost’s head. He doesn't seem to notice. There is blood on one of his shoulders, underneath the wound. Other than the wound and the dead in his flesh, my ghost looks young, maybe twenty or twenty-one. I find it is more difficult to measure age in death than in life, so I cannot promise to be precise. Maybe he is four hundred years old, for all I know.I am twisting and turning. My eyes are darting this way and that. I am shifting my weight from one leg to the other and back again. I am sweating. My fingers feel numb and tingly at once.
My ghost stands up as if to approach me. I begin to yell some more, loud and guttural. "Aaarghh! aaaarghhh!! aarggh!!!" is all I can muster. He shakes his head slightly from side to side, but seems otherwise unaffected by my shrill screams. My ghost is clearly bored. I guess he expects more from me.
I am looking right in his eyes. He is looking right back at mine. "So what's your name," he asks me casually. I don't know how to respond. I throw up instead.
** **
And so this tale begins. This tale of my ghost. Of my ghost and me.
** **
I am sitting at the kitchen table now, staring at my ghost. The yellow light of the morning sun drips down on us. I do not know where the night went. Here now, the room is still a microwave. Somewhere, the moon is still a lemon.
I had always believed that if ghosts actually existed, they could only show themselves in the dark; in the dreary corners of a decrepit haunted house and so forth. This, apparently, is not so. The sunlight did not seem to bother my ghost at all. He just starts talking.
"I would like this to be a dialog, bro. Not just a monologue, you know what I’m saying? How does that sound to you?"
I don't know how to respond to this at all. So, I throw up again. My ghost just shakes his head, completely unimpressed. There is a silence in the room I cannot explain. I would like to say it is the sound of a feather, but that is not right. It is the sound of the silk on the bottom of a coffin.
As he continues to speak, I am trying not to scream.
“Oh bro, I know some demons. Nasty, nasty demons. Shit torments me night and day.”
I just stare at him. His face is so white. He blends in with the wall behind him, his dark long bangs hanging down his forehead, like charcoal on chalk. There is some odd combination of goth and grunge in him I don’t quite get. It feels very nineteen ninety-two. I just stare at him.
“I don’t know how I got here. I don’t know where I’m going. It’s not like you think it would be. I mean, I know how I got here, don’t get me wrong. What I’m saying is, like, I kind of thought there would either be answers, you know what I mean, answer to it all.”
He pauses and looks at me. The thought occurs to me that he is waiting for me to respond. He could wait all day, for all I care. I have nothing to say. After a moment, he resumes. I try to make sense of his words, as he is pacing around the room like a young Lenny Bruce.
“You know, I kind of expected that it would be more free, like you could go everywhere you want, anywhere you want. That’s kind of what like my fantasy about it was. Like maybe I could hover over my house and watch all my friends at my funeral, all crying and everything.”
“That’s not what it’s like?” I am speaking to him, but I barely recognize my own voice. It sounds so dark and hoarse to me. His dead eyes grow bigger as he looks at me in glee. I can see he is delighted that I am beginning to respond.
“No, man! Not at all. Not all. That’s just the fucking point. I can’t fly. I can’t see through things. I can’t sense anything. I can’t even walk through things.”
“Really?” I find myself in genuine surprise. I guess I had always presumed that ghosts would be able to walk through things.
“No.” He hesitates. “At least, I can’t. Not really. Not consistently. Not yet.”“So, does that mean you will be able to walk through things some day?”My ghost looked out the window, suddenly quieter, less animated. “That’s what they say.”
I pause for a moment. “That’s what who says?”
He looks up at me in alarm. And literally from one second to the next second, everything changes.
** **
Lights off. A loud noise. A bang. I hear a scream. It is a woman's voice. The room --which was flaming hot like the inside of a volcano moments ago -- is suddenly frigid. That woman screams again. It is a piercing wail of a scream. I feel momentarily as though it could break glass. I find myself looking at the outside window, wondering if it will break. The sky outside seems thick and red, like the bottom of a wineglass after all the merlot is gone.
There is something inside me, too, that feels like that, like the dregs of a once fine wine. I get the sense that I may throw up again. I am slow and sludgy. My head is spinning like a top, like that little girl with the pea soup in the Exorcist, round and round and round again. I begin to make these peculiar gurgling sounds, as though I might be drowning.
There is a woman in front of me now. She wasn't there a moment ago. The lights above me are flickering wildly, racing on and off. The woman in front of me is scabbed and gray. Her hair is a mound of wire. Her eyes are not human. She seems a hundred years old. She is flailing about, her torn, dirty dress a tornado of rags and rips, oily and juicy. She is frothing at the mouth, her jaw hiccupping up and down, mad sounds drawing out of her.
She points at this and that around the room, and my belongings go flying. A flower pot flies over my head. My mattress flies off its frame. Records zing through the air like frisbees, crashing into walls and exploding into a hundred pieces of black vinyl tragedy.
I am covering my head. I am screaming but it is no longer a high-pitched screech. It is a low, throaty yowl, just vaguely aware now of the bad things I am facing. It is a wet cry, a soaking yelp.
I grab at the arms of a chair and try to hold on for dear life. The ceiling above me is a magnet. I am a bag of nails. I use all my strength to just stay in the seat. I am breathing heavy like I’m in a marathon. I am hyper-ventilating. My lungs are primed to explode. She is inside me I can feel it. My head is readying to pop off my shoulders. I cannot breathe. My head is a cement block. It is all about to end. I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum. The pressure on my skin lets up. My sinuses loosen. My nose drips. I can feel the snot on my upper lip. It is cold. I look around. The lights stop blinking. In fact, the lighting has become nearly romantic. There is no more shaking. There is no more sweating. There is no more screaming. I am alone.
I know I am not alone.
I hear something. I make out a sound. I can see no shapes. Everything is blurry. But, I know I hear something. I know I make out a sound. I try to stand up. I wobble for a moment and am convinced for a second that my legs will buckle underneath me. They do not buckle. I put one foot in front of the other. I find that I am walking. I find that there is blood in my veins. I find that there is strength in my muscles. I turn my neck left and right. I take another step. I take another step. I hear another noise, it is a moan, or a groan perhaps. I walk towards what I believe is this noise.
The noise is right in front of me. It is moaning. It is groaning. It is slurping. It is sloppy. It is wet. It is passionate. It is kissing. Goddammit. It is kissing.
Just as I come to this realization, their images begin to come into view to me. They are kissing passionately. They are making out. They are groping at one another’s body. They are locked together.
And she is absolutely beautiful. In fact, she is divine. She is a siren. She is a muse. No more than twenty-one. Skin as white as a puffy cloud. Sad eyes of blue. Wispy locks of blonde. She is tiny. She is nineteen fifty seven art deco cool. She is a little china doll of beauty.
My ghost is all over her. The two kiss and touch, lips pouting, tongues exploring one another’s mouth. She seems to be weakening, slowing down slightly. My ghost, who started off below the woman, is slowly rising up above her. Their hands are all over one another. Their moans and grunts are loud, pulsating.
It is the sound and vision of love. No, it is the sound and vision of making love. It is coital for certain. It is pulsating. It is sweaty. It is raunchy. It is fucking. I am watching two ghosts fuck. I find I am aroused. I cannot help but be aroused.
I can see the desire in their eyes, locked hard onto one another. I can sense their urges in their embrace, entangled deeply in one another. I can feel each of them. I am one with them. My body begins to shake. I struggle to control myself. There is fear in me. There is love in me. There is hate, too, and exhiliration. And there is want. My body is not in my command. I feel like my body is seizing up. I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum.
** **
I hear a loud hum. And in a wisp of colored smoke -- green and blue and red and more -- she is drawn upwards, sucked upwards and disappears. Just like that. As quickly as her presence appeared, now she is gone.
And as suddenly as it started, it is over. Her eyes are still piercing, but they are only in my memory. That beautiful spirit is gone. After another moment, I begin to make a noise. It is not a scream or a gargle or a yelp. It is more like a stutter. "Well, well, uh, well. Wh, wha, wha, wh . . . whut?" The shards of words get louder as each one escapes out of my mouth. Involuntary protest, I suppose, of what I had just seen.
Through the fog, I hear a laugh. It is not, it seems to me in my muddied confusion, a malicious laugh. It is a genuinely amused laugh, almost warm. Comforting. Home. I am not threatened.
Through the fog, I hear a voice. It is not, it seems to me in my blurry uncertainty, a vitriolic voice. It is a soothing voice, almost welcoming. Perhaps I will find some wisdom in this voice. I concentrate hard.
"Dude, what is that face, bro?" I can barely understand the words through the guffawing. Guffawing.
It is my ghost, and he is reclining on my couch, guffawing. He is lighting a cigarette. "This is one of the great things about being a ghost. I always have the same seven cigarettes in my pack that I had the day I died." He holds his pack of American Spirits up as an example. "I can smoke all day, and I still have seven cigarettes. Fuckin' rad." He leans his head back and exhales a long, wide cloud of smoke. I cannot smell any smoke.
"Anyways, man. She's out of your life now."
I am trying to focus on anything at all. It occurs to me that my face is frozen in a contorted mess. I turn my efforts towards wiping that terror-driven scowl away. I am not certain how successful I am, but I shake my head once and move on. I attempt to find some words to say.
This is the best I can do: "But . . . bu. . . who is she?"
It is enough to keep the conversation going.
"No clue, dude. She was haunting that ashtray." My ghost points to a green ashtray I had bought back when I lived in Manhattan fifteen years ago, three lifetimes ago. "She's gone now."
"But . . bu . . . where? how?"
"No clue where, bro. No clue how."
"But . . bu . . . what did . .. what did you do?"
"Ah, some ghoul told me about some other ghoul that could shut a ghoul down just by getting down with it. It took me forever to get up the balls to try it. I just went for it, no idea what was going to happen. Same fuckin' thing. Crazy shit turns into hot chick. Disappears into smoke. She's off to go find the next piece of her puzzle. Free from that ashtray now. Don't know how. Don't know why."
I had nothing more to say. That was no explanation at all, but I cannot even think of a follow-up at all. Crazy shit turns into hot chick. Disappears into smoke. That about says it all.
"But, but. . . " I am trying to think of all the questions I have. Not just the obvious: what piece? What puzzle? But also, all the wonders of the world, the meaning of life, life vs. death, the doors I could have opened but did not; the windows I forgot to look through. The pathways I didn't even know where there, that I could have followed but didn’t. I can't think of a single thing. I improvise instead, trying hard to focus on something my ghost said, anything my ghost said.
This is the best that I can muster: "You talked about demons and torment? But, bu . . well . . . you don't seem tormented."
** **
He has me by the tie.
"Tormented?!? You wanna fucking know about tormented???!?? Do you have any fucking clue dude? Huh, motherfucker??!! You imagine what it's like to have dreams, bro? Fucking dreams, man? And you take the fucking jump and what the fuck is there? but here? I don't even know what mother-fucking year it is, asshole."
He is a completely different entity than thirty seconds earlier. He is no longer translucent. He is transparent. Eyeballs zinging out at me. My ghost's face is much longer than it was moments earlier and sunken, a villain in a Poe tale. There is nothing I can do. He has me by the tie. Veins are popping out of his forehead, popping out of his neck. The room is shaking violently.
"I will tell you, I have paid my dues and I don't what the fuck is going on, but you try to tell me I'm not tormented? My fucking life is black man. I wanted it and I got it. Life is a goddamn pit, a puss-infested swampland. I am walking around in circles man, and for all I know it's for fucking eternity. This is not what I expected. I knew it would be bad, but it's the not knowing that is destroying me."
He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me violently, his voice deeper now than a low E. "Is this purgatory, man?! Is this purgatory?! Is this as good as it gets?! Is there nothing else?! Is that what I get for my decision??!!"
I don't know what to say. I should say something wise. I say this instead:
"Whu..whu...whut decis-, decision?"
** **
My ghost just smiles at this. He is suddenly my ghost again.
“Oh, bro, enough about me. Sure, I'm a little tormented . . ."
"Yes, yes you are," I chime in. I want to make certain he knows I'm on the torment team.
"A little tormented! Who isn't, right?" He is delighted at my agreement. "Anyways, I don't remember exactly what you're asking, but maybe we could talk about it some other time. I'm fuckin' spent now."
"I see." His whole demeanor is different. His shoulders are slouched, his eyelids hanging low. He looks almost high.
"I have to go now. I'll see you around, though, bro," he mumbled confidently. He was suddenly a young man again, just barely dead and with all the arrogance and naïveté of youth.
"Wait," I call out as he seems ready to disappear or evaporate or whatever he is clearly about to do. "If you just give me a second, I am sure I will have a thousand questions for you. Like, why did you show up here in the first place? And where are you going?"
He just smiles, the tortured rage from a moment ago is a million miles away. "Oh, don’t worry, bro. I’ll be back.”
I am disappointed at the response. Where is he going? Why is he here? And even though he says he will return, perhaps I will wake up tomorrow and this ghost will be gone. I do not know if I will be relieved or disappointed if he never returns.
“Hey, by the way,” my ghost calls out to me over his shoulder as he prepares to go who-knows-where. “You know why you keep thinking of me as your ghost?”
“No,” I reply quietly, but with sudden anticipation. “Why?”
He pauses for a moment. “Because,” he answers slowly, a smile subtly conquering his face. “Because, I am.”
** **
I do not know what to make of this response. I get the sense that maybe my ghost doesn't, either. That doesn't make him any less here, any less standing right in front me.
** **
"Hey, one more thing," I call out to my ghost, suddenly recalling something is instantly of primary concern to me. He looks back at me, almost as if he knows what I am going to ask. "Um, is there anything else in my apartment that's haunted, other than that ashtray?"
My ghost smiles. "Honestly," he asks? "Yes," I respond, nervously nodding my head up and down.
"Honestly . . . I have no fucking clue." The room is a microwave. The moon is a lemon.
