Irma Naggington lay snug under a heavy foam comforter, deep in a dream about living on a beach in Tahiti with a handsome stud of a man who ran around wearing a tight Speedo most of the time. She was slowly awakened by a man’s voice, saying, “Hey, Irma, wake up! Come on, open your eyes!”

Irma opened her eyes halfway and said in a groggy voice, “Who’s there?”

“It’s me, George!”

Irma sat bolt upright in bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. She reached over, took a pair of glasses off a nightstand, and put them on. She was a 70ish woman with vivid red dyed hair, which she had wound up in curlers, bobby pins, and an old scarf, in 1960s style.

“You can’t be George! George died two months ago! Who are you and where are you? I have a gun and I’ll shoot it!”

“I know I died two months ago. Don’t remind me. And you don’t have a gun, so don’t tell me you do. It wouldn’t make a difference, anyway, because I’m a damned ghost. I’m over here by the armoire. You can’t see me yet because I haven’t materialized. I see you got rid of my clothes. Who did you give them to? I hope not that worthless brother of yours.”

“No, I gave them to the Salvation Army. They’re too big for my brother.”

George materialized into the figure of a tall, 79-year-old man, clean shaven with a full head of white hair, who looked like he would be in good health if he weren’t transparent.

“Speaking of relatives, my reason for haunting you is to tell you to get your ghost-hunting mother off my back. She won’t leave me alone. I can’t haunt anyone without her finding out. Tell her to go look for some other dead people and leave me alone. I get no privacy. The old bag makes me nervous.”

Irma’s nostrils flared, a vein stood out in her neck, and her body tensed.

“Don’t you dare call my mother an old bag!” she shouted so loudly that the lamp on the nightstand shook. “If she wants to hunt you down, I won’t stop her.She’s the president of the local Paranormal Society and a nationally recognized expert on ghost spotting. Just last week, she found four ghosts over in the Allstate Insurance office.”

Irma fell back onto the bed, breathing hard. Then she picked up a book from the nightstand and threw it at George.

George smiled as the book passed through him and crashed against the armoire.

“By the way,” said Irma. “I’ve been looking all over for the life insurance policy, and I can’t find it. Where the hell did you put it?”

“I don’t know. I gave it to you? What did you do with it?”

Irma threw her covers off and aimed a fist at the apparition of her dead husband.

“You did NOT give it to me! You never gave it to me! You’re such a liar! Where did you put it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t remember. Oh, wait!Now I remember. I put it in the pocket of my sports jacket. The one you were so eager to give to the Salvation Army.”

George laughed, hearty and long. He floated over to an armchair next to the bed and collapsed into it with his feet up on the edge of the bed. He continued to laugh until his ghostly nose ran. He took a Kleenex off the chest next to the bed and blew his nose.

Irma groaned and bent her head into her knees.

“Why did you do a dumb thing like that?”

George stopped laughing and glared at her.

“I don’t know. Why did you run over me with the lawnmower?”

Irma froze in shock.

“How did you know it was me? You were busy trimming the hedge, and you weren’t looking. Anyway, I didn’t do that on purpose!”

“Yes, you did, and you killed me! Aha!Now I know what I’ll do! If you don’t get your mother off my back, I’m going to haunt the police office and make sure they know that you were the one riding the lawnmower that day! How do you like THAT?”

For a moment, Irma couldn’t speak or move. Her face turned pale, and her eyes blinked rapidly.

“Please don’t do that!” she shouted in a quivering voice. “I’ll do anything you want! Just don’t report me.”

“Okay. But you keep your nosy, grasping relatives away from me and my stuff. If you don’t, I will haunt you every night of your life in ways that will scare the living stuffing out of you and anyone with you.”

“I will, George, I will. Anything you say! Please don’t come around anymore. I’m just getting used to you not being around here.”

“Really? You’re not planning on remarrying, are you? You know how I feel about some gigolo coming in and taking over my stuff.I wouldn’t recommend it. I can make a lot of trouble, being dead and all.”

“Oh now, come on, George! That’s too much to ask.”

George’s eyebrows went up, and he looked straight at Irma.

“Don’t forget, I know where the police station is.”

Irma’s hands went up in front of her face, and she waved them back and forth.

“Okay, okay! I get it!”

“Okay. Listen.I’ll go over to the Salvation Army store and make sure they take the insurance policy out of my pocket. I don’t care about you, but my mother is a beneficiary, too, and I want her to get what’s coming to her.”

“I’ll take care of it, George. Just don’t hurt me.”

“Good night. But I’m right here if anything disturbing happens, and I’ll be back! You can count on that! And you can’t kill me anymore, so I can do whatever I want.”

George stuck out his tongue, disappeared, and flew unseen out the window. Irma lay down and pulled the covers over her head.