Being Dead Sucks

When I died and came back as a ghost I was kind of embarrassed about it. 

I’d been squished by a semi-truck and I guess by ghost logic you look like your body at the time of death. So I wasn’t a particularly attractive ghost to look at.

I didn’t really know where else to go, so I kept going to my community college classes. I’d sort of go home afterschool, except my mom had terrible anxiety and I figured she wouldn’t want to see the semi-dismembered ghost of her twenty year old daughter while she was eating spaghetti. 

So I’d just stand outside and wave at our dog Frodo, but he’d always bark, so I stopped doing that too. Eventually I just stopped going home altogether. 

I’d linger around the community college campus more afterschool. There were a few other ghosts there and we’d sit together at the bus stop. They didn’t talk much, basically just sat there and moaned. I don’t know why. A lot of the other ghosts do this weird moaning thing. I never really got into it.

Days turned into months and it didn’t take long before I completely lost track of time. As a ghost I couldn’t touch things, I could only watch life happen like an endless movie. So I spent a lot of time in my head.

“Maggie?”

I turned to see a big football player rushing towards me. I say big, but I mean it only in width. He was extremely short, and his shoulders made him into nearly a perfect square.

“Maggie?” he said again. He was closer now, looking at me, and for some amount of time I thought I’d escaped into a particularly visceral memory. But Jack Anthony looked about ten years older than the last time I’d seen him, and he was wearing a letterman jacket I didn’t recognize.

“Jack?” I said. My mouth was sluggish, I had to consciously operate the machinery of my jaw.

“How are you?” He said it so naturally that I almost responded before I remembered that I was doing unutterably terribly. I looked down at my crumpled, transparent body.

“I’ve been better.” This made him laugh. I felt an emotion flooding my chest, but I couldn’t remember what it was called.

“How’s your family?” he asked.

“They’re good,” I lied.

“I’m sorry to hear about Frodo.”

I blinked. “Frodo?”

“Yeah,” he sat down on the bench. “You know, I’ll never forget the time he pissed on my shoes.”

I stared at him half-smiling for a moment before I remembered what he was talking about. Frodo had peed on his all white prom outfit two hours before the dance. 

I laughed. “I told you that was a terrible outfit.”

“I don’t think Frodo’s piss had anything to do with my clothing choices.”

“I trained him to have a finely tuned aesthetic sense.”

Jack humphed and we sat there smiling together. Then he stood up. “This is my bus.”

“Okay.”

“We should talk again,” he said as he boarded the steps. “Where can I find you?”

“I’ll be here,” I said.

I watched the bus go. A few other ghosts had slunk onto the bench where he’d been sitting. I felt annoyed that these braindead ghosts found me welcome company.

But as more strangers on the street passed me without looking, that warm emotion in my chest gradually left, and I faded into the bench with them.  

I stayed there with the vague notion that Jack was coming back, but when I did see him again his beard had grown in some. So it must’ve been awhile. But he had that same smile and my chest started to glow. I did my best to hide my excitement. 

He sat on the bench next to me and the other ghosts at the bus stop drifted away. Most of them try to stay away from the living.

I searched for the right thing to say. “How’s it going?” I managed.

“Good!” his face was flush with color and he looked like he’d just gone rushing from somewhere. 

For a moment I was jealous. I could barely remember what the pressure of time felt like, only that it existed.

But he was saying something.

“What?” I asked.

“I was saying, I have an idea of something for us to do.”

I giggled embarrassingly. I sounded like a two year old. “What is it?”

“Come with me.”

His small, square body lurched off the bench with an impressive impulse. I glided after him.

We walked down street after street, talking at first but eventually lapsing into silence as we ran out of things to say. It was fine with me, because following a linebacker navigating the busy sidewalk took plenty of concentration. 

And then we stopped in front of a large, abandoned house. The windows were all boarded up and the lawn had grown into a small field.

“Are you a real estate agent?” I asked him.

“What?”

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to sell a haunted house to a ghost.”

He stared at me. “I’m not a real estate agent.”

We walked up the steps and he opened the big front doors in a cloud of dust. “Tommy!?” he called, echoing into the house. We stepped inside.

The foyer was dark brown with frayed, ancient carpets draping off all the railings, as if they were drying from a rain. There were paintings on the wall that’d either been torn to shreds or graffitied over. And there was a large chandelier which had come crashing down into the center of the room.

“Tommy?!”

Up on the mezzanine a small figure appeared. The figure was so light that up against the sun-blasted cracks in the windows it almost looked like a trick of the light. But then I heard his voice.

“Yes?”

It was a delicate voice, and the small figure drifted down from the mezzanine onto the floor so I could get a clearer look at him.

Tommy was the ghost of a boy with long arms and legs and a small body keeping them all attached. His entire body seemed rigid, his skin seemed tight over his skeleton.

“Who’s she?” Tommy asked.

“This is Maggie, my friend.”

I smiled and waved at him. He glanced at me for just a second but didn’t seem ready to address me yet.

“Why is she here?” he pressed.

“I wanted you guys to meet.”

I found the movements of the small dead boy fascinating. He had a unique tick where he’d clap his feet together while he talked, and lick his teeth while he listened. His eyes were extremely active, shifting all around the room. He reminded me more of Jack than the ghosts at the bus stop.

Jack turned to me. “Maggie, this is my older brother Tommy.”

It took me a second to figure out the logistics of what he said. Jack had never mentioned having any siblings. I held out my hand to him. “Nice to meet you.”

Tommy paused a moment before holding out his hand too. We tried to shake but our hands just passed through each other. 

This made Tommy laugh, and it made me smile too.

“Tommy, why don’t you give her a tour of the place?”

Tommy inspected me one last time. I found myself standing up straight, trying to appear professional. I don’t know why this felt like a job interview.

But apparently I passed the test. “Okay,” he said, and turned towards the foyer stairs. I followed him.

Tommy’s haunted house was quite impressive, complete with a toy room, a room with comic books spread out all over the floor, and a TV room. How Jack got electricity running in this place was beyond me.

“This is the bathroom,” Tommy said. “I don’t need this one, and I think the toilet’s broken anyways. Jack still uses it sometimes,” he giggled.

We returned to the TV room and sat on some bean bags. The TV was playing an old episode of Scooby Doo. 

“Tommy,” I asked, “Do you live here all alone?”

“Sort of,” he said. “Jack visits almost every day. And I don’t stay here all the time. I have a bedroom at home if I want it.” He said this like it was the plainest thing in the world.

“You go home?”

“Yeah. Don’t you?”

There were linebacker footsteps down the hall and we both turned to the doorway. “How do you like the place?” Jack said, smiling.

“It’s nice, but there’s a distinct lack of books.”

“Books?”

“Yeah,” I said, drawing a rectangle in the air with my hands, “they’re like comic books but without the pictures.”

“I could get you some books.”

He and Tommy looked at each other and something seemed to pass between them that I didn’t understand.

Suddenly there was a knocking of the front door of the house. Jack groaned and turned back down the hallway.

“Who’s knocking?” I asked.

“Sarah, Alan, and Mike,” Tommy said, just as the door opened and their voices filled the place.

“Where’s Tommy?” I could recognize Sarah’s voice from anywhere.

I knew them growing up, but I mostly knew them through Jack. 

Tommy stood up. “We should go say hi.” 

But I didn’t go anywhere. I inspected my smushed ghost body in a broken mirror. I was a gory sight. Tommy stood in the doorway, waiting for me.

“C’mon,” he said. “Don’t be impolite.”

A new feeling had flushed itself through my chest, one I hadn’t felt in a long time. Dread. I stood up and followed Tommy down the hall.

Tommy greeted them with a big wave. “HELLO!” he bellowed from the balcony. I didn’t know a ghost could emit such loud, clear words. He floated down to the floor to meet them. I stayed behind in the hallway for a moment.

“Where’s Maggie?” I heard Jack ask.

“She’s upstairs,” answered Tommy.

This piqued Sarah’s interest. “Maggie’s here? Maggie Thornwall?” Jack shrugged and nodded. I hated my last name. 

Rather than let them begin a search for me I glided down to meet them. I raised one hand in silent salutation.

“Hello,” Sarah waved back, before turning back to Jack. 

I felt monstrous standing next to all of them. My caved in head was wildly out of place next to these healthy young adults and one adorable child ghost.

I noticed the three of them glancing at me throughout the conversation but we never managed to make eye contact. Jack was talking about some football trade. I racked my brain for something to say.

The last time I spoke to Sarah I was getting pissed at her for dating Ryan, my high school ex-boyfriend, two weeks after our break up.

“How’s Ryan?” I blurted out. It was all I could think of to say. I didn’t intend for this to be mean or provocative, but it silenced the group and they stared at me. Seconds passed.

“We aren’t dating anymore,” Sarah turned up her nose a bit as she spoke. 

I wanted to explain myself, that as a dead person I had bigger concerns than high school ex-boyfriends. But by the time I’d found the words they’d already returned to football trading. Jack was laughing his welcoming laugh and Tommy was laughing with him.

Slowly I faded further into the background of the room and they forgot about me. I found myself yearning for the silent, brain dead ghosts at the bus stop, who’d long forgotten how to participate in life. I was more similar to them than I was to Tommy, who seemed to sometimes forget he was dead.

I made my first independent decision all day, and quietly left. I melted into the back wall when nobody was looking and then I was outside, and I started the long walk back to the bus stop.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. The sun came and went with the busses. At first my head was full of thoughts and anxieties but the longer I stayed there the more my thoughts melted away into nothing, and I started staring into the void with all the other ghosts. The timelapse of the world started to move faster. Hours, days, weeks, months.

I hate to say it, but I even started to get the whole ‘ghost moan’ thing. The more disconnected you get from reality, the more time starts to speed by. It’s kind of like scrolling TikTok: fast paced and utterly mindless. The moan is like expelling mental steam, a vague pressure that builds in your mind over time. I’d thought it was just for attention.

Occasionally a thought of Jack or Tommy or Frodo broke my trance. And I’d sit there blinking, looking at the other ghosts, feeling like a drowning person who’d just surfaced for air. But then again I’d sink further below.

On one of these surfacing moments, Tommy was sitting next to me. 

“Maggie,” he said. He might’ve been saying my name for the past hour, I’m not sure. Across the street Jack stood watching both of us. “You should come back.”

I didn’t respond or shake my head or anything. I thought if I just sat there unmoving long enough he’d go away and leave me here.

“It’s good to be with people.”

I opened my mouth to explain myself but only a husky moan came out. And I guess that was really all the explanation I needed. I made eye contact with Tommy, and his expressive, dead face looked a little frightened at what he saw.

“When I first died, I walked the streets for three days all alone. I remember feeling very cold. Then after three days Jack found me and brought me home.” He kicked at a rock, but his foot passed right through. “Why don’t you ever go home?”

All I said was “spaghetti” before I trailed off.

Tommy raised and eyebrow at me and started to giggle. “You’re scared of spaghetti?”

Against my better judgement I started to smile too. “I’m scared of my mom screaming when she sees me, and ruining dinner.”

A big bus pulled up and stopped in front of us. People started to get off.

“I don’t think she’d scream,” Tommy said. “And even if she does, so what? People eventually stop screaming.”

He said this like it was a scientific fact. All people will eventually stop screaming. 

People started boarding the bus.

“Tell Jack I’ll be by tomorrow,” I said, getting up. I gave Tommy my friendliest smile and waved at Jack across the street as I boarded the bus.

I stood there nervously on the porch for somewhere between fifteen minutes and several hours. It was the same yellow door I’d knocked on and opened my entire life. Every once in a while I’d peek through the window and see different things: my sister doing homework, my mom cooking dinner. Now they were eating.

I took one last breath, and I knocked on the door.

And obviously, it didn’t make a sound. I’d spent so long deliberating in my head I’d forgotten that upon knocking, my hand will just pass right through.

But then I heard a familiar dog bark. It got louder. Silverware stopped clinking.

Without opening the door, Frodo passed right through. He was almost exactly how I remembered him, except there was a chunk of his ear missing, and he was as transparent as I was. Frodo had died.

“What happened to you, bud?” I whispered.

I pretended to pet him and he pretended to lick me back, neither of us able to touch the other. I kneeled there on the porch with him and for a moment forgot where I was.

Then the door opened. 

My mom stood there, staring at me, her face like stone. I met her eyes and was too afraid to say anything so we just remained in silence while Frodo panted and barked.

But then her eyes started to well up, and her stone face broke into a smile.