Roommates with the Dead

Subverting expectations to the point where I no longer subvert expectations. 

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Transcript

So I’ve met the ghost in my house, and they’re not really as bad as I would of thought. Because, of course, when I hear, imagine the sentence “there’s a ghost in my house,” I immediately start, uh, freaking out? Because, I mean, who wouldn’t? Because, like, we all think of ghosts as being vengeful little things, someone we’ve wronged in the past who comes back to wreak ethereal vengeance on us. Have the lights flicker on and off, or have the walls bleed, or, choke you death in your sleep, that’s the sort of thing you expect ghosts to do. Because if you were trapped forever in the mortal plane with an extremely limited amount of power to influence people’s lives, what would you do? Because, I mean, I would get real bored. And what do real bored people do? They go out and torture things. That’s what we all do when we’re bored, if it’s not torturing a person, it’s an animal, or ourselves, or a robot, something like that. It’s just what happens. It’s the nature of our beast. 

But, no, it turns out that’s not what ghosts do, because they’re not as awake as you’d expect them to be. Even at best, when I was talking with Matthew, or talking to him, more like, he was on;y half attentive, which, I mean, if you were dead, and you hadn’t had a good conversation in say, twenty years? How would you react to the first conversation you had with someone, the first time someone actually got to know you? I mean, if you’d gone completely insane in those twenty years, then maybe you just stare out into space the entire time. 

But, I mean, if I were me, which I am, but if I were me in those different circumstances, where the only voices of people I’d heard had never been talking to me, the egotist that I am, and this one dude who sees me, and actually tries learning about me, I think I’d be more attentive. What person isn’t obsessed, at least a little bit, with themselves? But, yeah, I’ve got a ghost in the house, and frankly it’s not all that bad. I figured there was something wrong with the house when the washing machine kept going out. I checked all the hoses, the pipes. The electrical wiring, everything was fine. The washing machine was fine, too. It just kept going out at 12:07PM, which I later learned was the time Matthew apparently died here, washing his clothes. Which I’m still not so clear as to how that happened, because I can think of probably… fifteen hundred thousand different things that are easier to die from than washing your clothing. I mean he wasn’t going down to river to get eaten by a hippo or whatever. But yes, apparently, he died washing his clothes at 12:07pm, which is why every single time when I tried to do my washing during my lunch break, it went out. All because of his ethereal essence getting mad or something about the concept of water touching fabric. But, fortunately or unfortunately, even though he’s here, he’s not here enough to project farther than that. 

And what do I mean by project? So, I try to imagine that if I died doing my laundry, and I little power over the house, and this one dude comes in, he’s all up in my house, and I can’t normally do anything about him… except this dude always comes in at twelve, the remembrance hour of my death, and he washes his clothing right there, in that same spot that killed me… it would be so easy to get mad at him. Because, I mean, even though obviously me being a dude who moved here because of work… I had no connection to this place, no idea that this poor sap managed to get himself electrocuted probably drying his linens… of all the things that you can guess in the world, you can’t guess that. And, even if you did, even if you did guess that the weird scraping that was happening to your floors wasn’t just the floorboards expanding and contracting due to temperature fluctuations, but actually some ghost walking on it, even if you projected that far, would you think to yourself, hey, since this ghost died washing his pj’s at high noon, I personally am going to mock him, showing him how I survive cleaning my underwear every single time. 

But, of course, the human mind doesn’t work that way when it’s emotional, or when it’s connected emotionally, rather. Because, like, if I died under those circumstances, and this dude did the same thing, this exact same mocking thing, I would get pissed. Even though logically there’s no way I’d ever be washing my shirts in the middle of the day to mock the guy. Because, of all the marginal and sadistic things in the world, just nothing. It doesn’t add up. But, yeah, it’s a good thing that he’s only halfway there, because otherwise I know he’d be mad for something I could not really control in the past. Which is cool. Basically I just have to see a shadow pressed against the wall from time to time, and I have to think, oh, that’s weird, it’s Matthew again. Or maybe when I’m washing my clothes, it feels a bit colder in that part of the house than insulation would allow for. And that’s him. And sometimes in the mirror I see him staring at the pile of laundry on my bed, and, there you go, that’s him. No attempts at murder, nothing even really bitter going on in the house. Tried talking to the dude, tried swearing at him, praying, all sorts of things. Nothing. Just the washing machine is weird, and I see vague sillouhettes of a bushy haired man in the mirror. And that’s a ghost.

 Which leaves me both relieved and surprised at the same time. Sorry, not surprised, but in fear. Because I never really expected ghosts to exist, especially in such a shallow form. A shadow of a shadow. It’s a bit depressing, really. Because now I have to worry if that’s what the dude is entirely now. Because think about it. If he’s marginally conscious about it, and he’s doing these real petty things… that’s gotta suck. Just that being your existence? You have to live in what is now some other guy’s house, and get spiteful at him for doing his laundry? Honestly, I would rather just not exist at all. So now I’ve got all these religious ideas rumbling around in my head, ‘cause of course this sort of ghost doesn’t correspond with anything in the major religions. Probably not even the old pagan folklore. But Matthew’s there, and he’s made me a lot more conscious of what I do around the house, which I think is really the worst part. Because even though he’s not really a full person, I think, anymore, he’s still a guy, kinda, in my space, kinda, destroying my privacy, kinda. Which is annoying. It means I haven’t been able to do things the same way I would have done them before without feeling a little embarrassed. 

But… at least he hasn’t like, I don’t know, what are the things that ghosts are said to do? Oh, like throw lamps at me. He hasn’t done that. He hasn’t tried to kill me, he hasn’t put a curse on me… for the most part, things are going well otherwise. I thought a couple times about going to get a catholic priest to exorcise my house. Is that the word? Ex - or - cise? Probably not. Perform an exorcism on my house. And then I figured, hey, Matthew wasn’t bugging me enough for that. I mean, if he ever gets bads, if he ever drops into that stereotypically ghost behavior from the movies ooooooooooo, then, yeah, I guess I’ll call on an exorcist. But I just live with a ghost now. Of course, I’m not going to tell anyone about it, unless… not even then. Matthew’s just too boring for a movie, a book, even a true horror podcast. There’s just… could not imagine that living with a ghost would be as boring as this.