The alcoholic and the ghost

CW: Substance abuse, mental health issues, grief

I stare into the fridge at its sparse contents.

My appetite is low, but I have that itch, that empty feeling.

I thought maybe something sweet might dull it if only for a moment.

But I haven't been shopping recently.

A cold breeze brushes my skin, and I feel an instant pinprick of goosebumps across the back of my neck.

I rub at them.

"I guess I forgot to close the window again," I mumble to myself.

I slam the fridge closed before the insistent beeping pierces my ears, and I turn toward the bench.

Where the glass bottle sits, but it's not the only thing waiting for me.

A woman is watching me, and I see the flash in her eyes as she notices I stare straight at her.

"You can see me?" She asks.

She's not fully there; she's like a ghost.

The bottle on the bench is in my shaky hands; I am taking a swig without even registering what I'm doing.

"I've fucked my brain." Tears pierce the corners of my eyes.

I watch her roll her eyes.

I take another swig.

My tears keep streaming.

This can't be real.

"It's real," she continues, watching me. Waiting.

I swig again, false bravado.

With the fucked minimal remnants of my life a psychotic break was nothing.

"What then?" I mutter, "Gunna take me on a journey to show me all the pain and suffering I've caused? Finally shake me out of this misery and reform my decade-long hitch to the bottle."

She evaporates.

I rub my eyes; my hands still shake.

Mum had psychosis.

Alcoholics could get psychosis.

Who fucking cares.

I grab my bottle and make my way to my bed.

"A journey through my pain and suffering," I laugh dryly to myself. "Like I don't lie here going through it all night and day until I pass out."

I consider how she looked.

Young, she was not familiar to me.

Her hair was mid-length, impossibly thick, and wavy brown.

It shone with the lustre of health.

Her eyes; the warmth of the brown.

It would seem my ghost had colour.

I close my eyes.

I see him.

He had brown eyes.

"Are you going to do something?" Her voice is irritated.

I sigh, open my eyes, and turn to my side; she sits at the end of my bed.

"Like what?"

She sighs; she almost trembles with anxious energy.

"I've been here a long time, Casey. Watched you let the house get this way. Watched you slowly kill yourself." She spreads her hands out. "It's fucking boring. Do you think I can find a way out ?" She frowns.

I pull myself into a sitting position and survey her as she speaks.

"A fucking alcoholic. I don't get it. Do I have to save your soul to free my own? That type of shit. It doesn't make sense though."

"You're not real," I say, grabbing the glass bottle from the bedside table to take a swig.

Feeling the familiar burn.

She doesn't hide the judgment on her face as she watches me take a drink.

"Call the hospital then, Casey," she says in a low voice, then, in an impossible flash, she's face to face with me; I feel that coldness again and pinpricks across the skin.

My heart races and my hands sweat.

My mouth suddenly dries.

"No. Not the hospital," I hold her eyes.

Almost as if she hadn't moved to me for a face-off, she's back to the edge of the bed.

She speaks again.

"That's what I thought, boring. And me? Stuck. I was in fucking accounting, not people in crisis, so I don't know why the fuck I've been pulled here."

"I'm a lost cause too, so I don't get it either," I offer.

"So what do we even do? Why is it today you can see me?" She looks to me, searching my face.

I take another swig.

"Today?" I tried not to know what today was. My morbid and equally morbid misery obsession wouldn't let me forget it.

"Today would have been my son's 18th birthday."

"His dead," she speaks softly now.

I guess she has some sense of empathy.

"No, I'm dead to him. I'm dead to all of them," I tell her.

"Well, if we could switch, everyone in my life wants me to be alive," she laughs, so much for the empathy.

"You going to say happy birthday to him? Call him?" She says after a while.

Loneliness was crushing me.

Had my desperation unlocked this insanity, and why did it take on the persona of this irritating woman that appeared to have no benefit to my situation at all?

The familiar destructive wave of rage bubbles over me; it had been a while since I'd flexed this muscle.

"Oh, piss off,, would you. Indignant snob," I sneer and eye her off. She holds my eyes, she doesn't shrink.

"Fuck off!" I yell.

She flinches and vanishes.

Good.

My husband's voice replaces hers.

"Do you remember what you said to him last night, Casey? A 16-year-old boy?"

"No, and please don't tell me." I whimper. I did remember. I could see my son, the hurt filling his eyes. His shoulders deflating.

I have another swig.

As I pull my phone out to place another order of vodka, she is back.

"Fuck you," she's floating above me, her brown eyes staring me down. "I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere."

I scramble under the covers. I feel like a child as I pull my doona over my head to finish placing my order.

"Oh Danny boy," she starts to sing.

The songs change up a bit; in a sense, it's almost a welcome distraction. The thoughts intermittently creep in.

Will he call me this year? Will his dad send me a photo?

Would they finally unblock me?

Hospital.

I said I'd never go back there again.

I cancel the delivery and flick off the doona.

"Stop!" I yell, Hospital. " I'll go to the fucking hospital!"

Medicate this fucking ghost away.

She had been cross-legged on the floor, and she maniacally grinned at the news.

"If you don't," she warned, "I'll be back."

Then she's gone.

I did hesitate.

She must have felt it.

"Don't fuck with me," her voice rang through the house.

"Hmm hm. Visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations. Will you consent to staying?"

I nod; I ache for a drink.

I managed an Uber there and threw my vodka bottle in the bin as I went in.

"Anyone we should call?"

I pause, consider my ex-husband, Dave.

Would the news phase him?

"No," I clear my throat.

"How long until the hallucinations stop?" I ask her.

"Hard to say, love." The nurse stands and indicates for me to follow her.

A ghost-induced detox.

My son had spent his teen years wishing I'd stop drinking; maybe it was his 18th birthday wish.

Nothing would ever last, though.

I'd let him down so many times already.

Later I'm lying in the hospital bed, medication down.

Eyes closed.

Things in my life had been boring.

The nurse had strongly advised me to shower before changing into the mandatory inpatient clothes.

The Ghost. She had said boring.

I hadn't showered for days, and I didn't bother with cleaning.

My house smelt; I smelt. My sheets felt gritty.

It was always tomorrow's problem.

Whilst it was clinical here, it all felt clean, smelt fresh.

My stomach swelled momentarily with hope. Soon chased away with a cynical thought. You don't deserve it

I want a drink.

"Finally."

I jump at the sound of her voice.

"Twitchy," she eyes me off. She sits on the chair beside me.

I consider the nurse's words. Hard to say, apparently.

She stares ahead. She looks spooked herself.

"A lot of others here. They're angrier." She looks shaken and quickly looks at me, then away again. "Did you see any of them too?"

I shake my head.

"I found me," she speaks softly, "the saddest thing I've ever seen. Mum can't let me go, Casey." Tears soak the corners of her eyes like two large pebbles, and then they stream down her face.

"I know what we need to do." Her tears vanish, and I feel numb at her words.

"You, you haven't got anything more to lose, Casey." She speaks softly.

"You need to help, help her turn off the machines."

I'm shaking.

This is absolute lunacy.

She clears her throat. "Oh, Danny boy!"

"Stop." My head is spinning. They made me sign off on an involuntary admission; it was at their discretion to let me go.

It's as though she read my mind, she was my mind I correct as she speaks again.

"It's not a locked ward. You're a good psycho. Ask to go to the cafeteria, and I'll show you."

When my eyes flutter open, she's hovering over me.

Impatience alive in her eyes, but she's dead quiet.

A nurse is buzzing around my room.

I hear a rough scrape of Velcro being pulled apart as a cuff is attached to my arm.

"Got lost, did you, lovely?" An older fifty-something nurse croons. My arm is squeezed to oblivion as the air fills the cuff.

"Hm, BP a bit high; get you to rest in bed, elevate those feet. Eat!" She fusses about some sandwiches on a tray table before me.

I go to speak; I know my face is a picture of horror.

Casey mouths "don't"; she is still floating above me.

Fear silences me.

The nurse bustles out.

Was it real? Did it really happen?

The events preceding this moment come back to me in quick succession.

Casey had led me to a room.

A woman, eyes gently closed, a large breathing tube down her throat, that familiar, ever-so-familiar thick brown hair.

The whiteboard had her name: Rory.

My ghost.

An older woman stood and walked over me, considering my confusion. She had her daughter's eyes. Her eyes; my son had always had my eyes and then nothing.

"My mum, she won't let go," whispers Rory now.

Settled now into a less foreboding position, the chair beside my bed.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

"Why me?"

"You know," Rory speaks, but she's staring ahead. She's not looking at me.

"I didn't tell you why I am in the bed."

Tears streaming in my eyes, my gut twists.

"Don't ", I whisper.

"I know why it's you."

I moan and shove my head into my pillow.

"Your son is dead, isn't he, Casey?"

"Stop," I cry, the dampness of my pillow on my skin as I press my face into it.

"He wanted to go, Casey, as I did. You couldn't let him. But your husband did."

She speaks over my sobs.

"It was a car accident," I moan.

The police had said they'd never know for sure based on the wreck.

Intentional or not

I see his frail sixteen-year-old frame, tubes too large down his throat.

My husband was in power while I was prisoner to the bottle.

My mind begins its usual hauntings as another memory overcomes me.

"You killed him!" I didn't care who was watching or listening.

That was always Dave; he always had. He would never let me forget the embarrassment my behaviour caused him.

His eyes are fire, and he is on me in a flash.

Tonight it would seem he doesn't care either.

"Don't you dare," he hisses; his spittle catches my cheek, and I quickly scrub it away. The lips that had once kissed me so softly are now only ever full of venom.

"You. You won't remember what you said to him. Did to him. You never do." his eyes are dark. He's never spoken up to me before, never spoken to me like this. It stills me. Silences me.

"He would be here. But you don't stop!" He snatches the vodka from my hands and flings it across the carpark, glass shattering.

"It was a car accident," I manage to say as he walks away, but he doesn't acknowledge me, so I scream it.

"It was a car accident!"

I watch my husband walk to his mother, standing there waiting for him. Waiting to pull him into her arms. And I stand there alone. My son's voice ringing through my head.

"Mum, I know you can. I know you can because you love me. I know you do."

"Casey," Rory speaks, and I surrender.

Stoic, I turn to her.

"If you couldn't give him what he needed. Then maybe you can do it for me."