Be careful what you wish for, they say.
Sure enough, I fell fatally ill, and had to lie in the hospital bed, with doting parents beside me yadda yadda. I never thought that being confined to my bed would be granting a wish in a subverted way, but I didn’t think much back then. I probably should have looked back on my life, but I can do that all I want now, and it wasn’t like it would make me better. Though I did get better, kind of.
One day, all that pain, all that weariness...it vanished in a second. Energy filled me, and I was looking at myself. Motionless, unmoving me.
Dead me.
The sound of my mother’s sobbing echoed through my brain. “Mum?” I reached for her, to show her where I was, but I found myself being pulled away from her.
“Mum!”
I flew through the window, pulled by an invisible hand, into the night sky.
“Mum!”
It was obvious what I thought upon seeing the clouds. I expected a bright light to open before me. I dreaded a bright light opening before me.
That light never came. I saw no shining ice-cream clouds in the clotted black sky. The neighbourhood was still visible beneath me.
I kept on moving forward. My body – though I’m not sure if I can call it that – overcame my mind, setting me on some rollercoaster around the area.
I needed to move.
As I drifted above the rooftops, I tried to stop, just so I could try and find my way back home, back to Mum, but I was forced to keep on moving, swimming through invisible waters, until the whole world kept spinning around in a frenzied blur. There seemed to be no way to control the form, until I accepted the truth.
I was dead. I was a ghost.
Yes. I was a ghost. It made sense really, and not because I had unfinished business or anything like that. I didn’t really want to go to Heaven, and I definitely didn’t want to go to Hell, so I suppose staying on Earth was something of a compromise.
It took a while to gain control...well, not exactly a while, I think about a few days. I’m not sure, for some reason time seems to be moving faster. When I had found a way to move of my own accord, I dashed towards my home at last.
When I floated through the window, I ended up in my bedroom. I lingered there for a while, just to remind myself of what it was like to be alive, as even then I was forgetting. Yet I still had to keep moving, so I could not afford the luxury of lying on my bed, waiting for the hours to pass. Should I be regretful that I lived a wasted life? Is it really wasteful if you enjoyed it?
My mother entered. My father entered.
I lost control again.
I flew over the houses without rhyme or reason, making the world a distorted blur again. I missed seeing my parents, and thus never got to speak to them again, yet when I exited, a sense of relief washed over me. Still, shouldn’t I have stayed? Aren’t ghosts supposed to haunt their old homes?
So what is being a ghost like? I’m sure that’s what everyone wants to know, but, though I’m sure I haven’t been a ghost long enough to give a full summary, I’m going to tell you as best as I can. It’s...it’s strange. I’m not sure if it’s really good or bad, but I still wouldn’t recommend it.
It turns out you actually do look like you’re wearing a bedsheet. Though that doesn’t really matter as no-one can see you. In the moments where I’ve gained control, I’ve floated on down to the streets, seen the people walking on by, and nobody pays any attention to me. I’ve even gone ‘Wooo, wooo’, thinking that would make me visible.
But nobody can see me. The people can’t see me. My parents can’t see me.
So what is there to do as a ghost? Well, not exactly a lot. While I may occasionally want to taste chocolate and the like, I never get hungry, and I never get tired, so the days that were passed by lounging on my bed really are gone. Maybe I am in Hell after all.
Well, there is something to do. You have to keep moving, so I keep moving. And I’ve gotten pretty good at controlling it. At least now I can visit some places I kept meaning to go to, but never got around to. For example, there was this club that opened a few months ago. I kept telling myself to go there, but I never listened to me. Well, now I could get in for free, so I floated on in. If I had to keep on moving, at least I would be moving to my favourite songs.
None of the people there saw me either.
So during my first few weeks or so as a ghost – I’ve lost track of time – I tried to visit just about every place I wanted to. One day I floated on to the zoo, just to relive my childhood, I guess. I was actually seen there, if the monkey screeching was any implication. Of course, I could also see movies for free...well, parts of movies anyway. Try as I might, I can’t linger long in any of those theatres, so I only see about thirty minutes or so. Just as well, as most of them were pretty much boring. Still, at least they made the time go somewhat slower.
So yes, travelling is all you can do when you can’t stop moving and no-one can see you. You can’t really talk to anyone, but since I didn’t really talk to anyone when I was alive, I guess it didn’t matter. That’s what I keep telling myself; there’s no point in complaining on what I never did when I was alive, because I was never going to do those things anyway.
Actually, to tell the truth, I did manage to get some conversation.
What surprises me most about being a ghost is the fact I haven’t seen that many around. So many people die, and I’m pretty sure most of them don’t want to go to the afterlife either. The sky should be filled with restless phantoms, yet, for the all the time I’ve been dead, I’ve only seen a few.
I saw one floating above my neighbourhood the week after my death. I wanted to go up and talk to it, but, even though I had gained some degree of control over my floating at that point, I unconsciously drove away from it.
The other day, however, a ghost came to me.
That day was an especially drizzly one, so I didn’t see much people on the streets, and the time passed slower than it usually did after gaining this form. Since the time was moving slowly, and the scenery wasn’t much to look at, I floated around in circles, bored, pondering on what to do. Then, she came.
“Hi!”
She looked almost exactly like me: a glowing bedsheet, with a tail where legs should be, and no face other than eyes and a wide grin. Would a ghost need teeth? I began to float away from that grin, but she floated besides me, waving.
“You know, I don’t see many ghosts floating around,” she said. She sounded like she was about my age, no, more likely younger.
I had nothing better to do, so I decided to talk with her. Hey, maybe I’d learn something. “I don’t either.”
“I keep expecting to see some,” she said, her smile fading, “but I never do. Well, except you, I mean.”
“Yeah...” I spent the next few minutes in silence, looking away from the ghost and her grin.
“Aren’t you going to say something?”
“Okay...what do you think of being...a ghost?”
She did a somersault in the air. “I think it’s great. Great. You never get tired, you never have to eat...and you can see such beautiful places.”
“I know.”
“Have you ever been to the Amazon Rainforest?”
“No.”
“Well, you should. We can go wherever we want, you know.”
“I can’t stop moving...”
“Neither can I. I think it’s because we have so much...” She closed her eyes and shook. “Energy. Anyway, the rainforest. There’s all these lovely flowers, and these trees...”
“Maybe I will go there, when I feel like it...” All the time I’ve been a ghost, I’ve stayed in my own country. I suppose I’m afraid of leaving it somehow. “Well...”
“Well what?”
“I’m...pretty new at this?”
“Are you scared?”
I paused. “No.”
“You can tell me. I’ve felt afraid when I first became a ghost, but I’ve...got used to it. So will you.”
“Thank you.”
She floated closer to me. “My name’s Charlotte.”
“I’m Lawrence.”
“That’s a nice name,” she said, that grin returning. “I think we should be friends.”
“Maybe we should...will we see each other that much?”
“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure we will though. But I do think I should have a friend. I’ve never really talked to people that much...”
“Well...we can’t talk to people anymore, can we?”
“I mean, I didn’t talk to people much when I was alive.”
I tried to float away from Charlotte, before I found myself right beside her again. “Well...neither did I....”
Charlotte’s eyes bulged upon hearing that. “Oh, really?”
I chose not to reply.
“Well, maybe we were meant to meet each other. Maybe, if we become friends...no, no.”
With that, she floated away towards the clotted clouds, leaving me in the middle of rain I couldn’t feel.
So it’s been a while since I’ve been a ghost. Have I got used to it? I guess. I’ve tried to travel the world like Charlotte suggested, and it isn’t that bad. I’ve never been near the sea before, so I have flown over it a few times, and I’m not really sure how to describe it without sounding like a wannabe poet. Sometimes I look for Charlotte again. Sometimes. Other times I’m afraid to.
