Inelegant metaphor by Dan Marvin
Drifting without mass through a wall, Reginald vented his frustration with life, or the lack of it. The outward manifestation of his angst was slightly colder spot in an already cold and empty room. The Madison family knew conceptually about him. They knew that he had died, messily, in this very room. They knew that the murderer had never been caught. They knew that late at night they would sometimes hear a creak in the hallway or see a shadow that shouldn’t exist. And they knew that Tuesday was shopping day and on Thursday they watched TV and Jimmy had soccer on Saturday. In other words, they knew about him, and went right on living anyway. How he envied them.
For the first 100 years or so, Reginald figured that the happy afterlife was waiting for him to figure out how to cross over. That’s what people always said about ghosts, that they had not yet crossed ‘over’. Like a puzzle where you didn’t even know where to find the pieces, Reginald had looked for over so he could cross it without much success. Or any success.
The next 50 years, he had been a bit of a grouch. He had banged and thumped and tried his hardest to make his displeasure known. The toughest part was the boredom. Being a disembodied spirit without any other disembodied spirits to play with was boring. Really boring.
Now, 17 years past that, he had settled into a routine and pretty much kept to his cold room and his depressing thoughts. He held out some hope that over would present itself or he would be offered up a choice of two doors or some other spirit would drop by and explain to him why he was stuck here. Mostly though he just moaned and sulked.
The muffled sound of the doorbell was something vaguely interesting, Reginald decided to check it out. Part of the rules appeared to be that he couldn’t leave the house. Still, he could pop his head out of the eaves over the front door, so he did. Standing on the stoop was a group of youngish people, dressed in the sloppy and disheveled way of the young. Conversation didn’t come through intact to the afterlife so he tried to interpret what they were saying and failed uttlerly. In they trouped and there was a bunch of noise and then all the lights went off. Fair enough, he would retreat back to his room.
As he drifted and pondered the meaning of this new intrusion, the door opened and a bright light appeared. This had to be it! Bright light, for sure now he would cross over! He headed towards the light not feeling particularly drawn to it but trying to play along.
From near the light there was an excited buzz. Gages spiked, buzzers buzzed, and someone talked into a microphone attached to a camera. They chased him for the rest of the night, capturing shadows that shouldn’t exist and hearing a muffled sound or two. It was the worst night of his death.
The End
