Ghosted.

Literally.

The following short fiction is in response to the Fictionistas September Prompt.

Let me know what you think!

Photo by Matt Hoffman on Unsplash

The night I died, I ghosted the girl of my dreams.

I shouldn’t joke, I know. I’m sorry. It’s really tragic, the whole thing. I had been planning this date for months. You know that Rolling Stones song:

Wild horses. 

You know it, don’t make me sing it. 

Couldn’t drag me away. 

Right, well, turns out it wasn’t wild horses, but a flat tire and a man who fell asleep behind the wheel of one of those overnight delivery trucks. That’s what dragged me away. 

The driver survived, in case you were wondering. 

It was raining the first time I saw Veronica. Her dark hair was in a tight bun at the top of her head, but tiny, frizzy ringlets escaped to frame her face. She looked tired, and her order confirmed that: double espresso, iced latte with almond milk.

She came up to my counter that morning like I was her salvation: help me, Obi Wan Kenobi. You’re my only hope, except she didn’t actually say that, she just communicated it to me through this instant, electric connection we shared. 

Her eyes were bloodshot—which only made the green in them more prominent—underlined with dark crescent moons. She wore all black—I would only ever see her in black. At the time it didn’t seem morbid; she was just broody, and I’d always been a sucker for emo girls.

I thought she would cry when I handed her the coffee. But she didn’t even say thank you. She just closed her eyes and sucked on the straw like she was taking her first or final breath.

I was hooked.

She came in sort of irregularly after that—I couldn’t figure out her schedule—and her coffee order was almost as unpredictable. For three days in a row one week she ordered a non-dairy cortado, and let me tell you, by the fourth day I could steam that oat milk to the perfect temperature and texture in my sleep. But she didn’t turn up the fourth day, or the fifth day. When she finally did come back in the following week—on a Wednesday no less—guess what. She ordered a dirty chai. That floored me.

I tried to get her to talk to me, so I could learn something about her besides her rotating espresso preferences, but we never really got any further than the weather. People call that small talk, they bash on the weather in favor of pretentious political gossip or some intimate personal details. Honestly, though, I don’t care about how your cat is doing—unless Veronica had a cat she wanted to talk about. I’d rather talk about the magic that is the weather. It’s different every day, and here on the east coast we get seasons. Is there anything more magnificent than the transition from one season to the next? Veronica always expressed some similar awe when it came to the weather, even when it rained. Especially when it rained.

The day that I died was the first day of fall, the equinox. I could smell the leaves that morning when I walked to the shop. Is it just now that I’m dead that I’m fully appreciating how incredibly nostalgic a feeling that was? My last autumnal morning, and the first time Veronica actually noticed me.

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When I was twelve my dog died. Maple was a rusty Siberian Husky. She had icy blue eyes, and she was the most disloyal creature you could imagine. If burglars had broken into our home in the middle of the night, she would have brought them her favorite toy, tail wagging, and begged them to play fetch.

Huskies love to run. They really can’t be trusted off leash, at least that was what I learned from Maple. She got out of the house, ran, and was hit by a car one afternoon while I was at school. I didn’t know she died, though. My mom was late coming home from work, but I hadn’t suspected a thing. How could I have known Maple was dead when the moment I walked in the door to my house she greeted me the same as usual, she followed me up to my bedroom and rolled around atop my comforter until she found the softest spot, and she whined at me for the dog biscuits she knew I kept in the top drawer of my desk?

That was the first time I was haunted. Apparently, it’s a thing that happens to the women in my family.

In my experience, most ghosts only stick around for a few days, a week at most. I guess it takes some time for them to come to terms with the fact that they’re dead, to let go. Sometimes they need the closure of their own funerals—I get it, it’s a party where everyone you love comes together to say nice things about you. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to attend my own funeral one day.

Jeremy has been hovering over me for three weeks and two days, and I wish I had never sought out his ghost in the first place. Because now I’m the one who can’t let go.

Maybe it’s not like you imagine it. It’s not like he’s alive; I can’t warm my feet under his calves while we watch television on the couch together, he can’t taste the morning glory muffins I bake from my grandmother’s recipe, and we can’t hold hands on the street as we walk back and forth along the familiar street from his apartment to the coffee shop—it’s the only route he seems to be able to take.

He is only an echo of himself. But I can smell him—coffee and cotton, I can smile at his jokes—he’s the most jovial ghost I’ve ever met. I can feel the suggestion of his touch like a warm breeze on my skin, and his kisses brush my lips like butterfly wings.

Sometimes, I can almost forgive him for standing me up on our first date. But I’ll never forgive him for everything after.