A Living Ghost Story

My wishes came true on Saturday night of 18th November. I was lying on a bed, watching the ceiling fan egregiously turn…so cyclic and so mundane. The room was bathed in the gentle glow of a lamplight knocked askew on the floor, and the silence holding it hostage was broken only by the rustling sheets wrapped around me. Suddenly, there was a static, hissing buzz in my ears, tearing my senses apart, like a woodcutter chopping down a tree, until everything around me halted with an epiphanic, shrill click. I realized that I did not have anything to say to anyone; I effectively was already a ghost. You do not have to die to be a ghost. Sometimes, even when you are alive, if you try really hard, you can be a ghost. Like me.

Time passes differently as a ghost, and before I realized it, the night subsided to pave the way for another cloudy Sunday morning. I hovered out of my bed and recoiled as gatherings of crumpled papers blew past me. I floated towards the window and caught a strange, dishevelled man in a blotchy, coffee-stained bathrobe confined in the window’s reflection. His hair was greasy and hung loosely by the napes of a brown tie. When he blinked, the entirety of his face – from the patchy white beard to the ubiquitous breadcrumbs – shivered with wrinkles. I did not recognize the man, but his face somehow felt unnervingly familiar, the man’s name wretchedly evading the grasp of my tongue. I couldn’t bear to look at it, so I punched the window. I did not mean to shatter it. I stood by the window till the moon showed up. Ghosts only float around at night, meaning I could finally leave this forsaken room I was trapped in.

The streets were cold. I silently hovered along, past people who swarmed away from me – either in fear or neglect. There were occasional glances that I discerned as genuine concern, but whenever that occurred, I would make a nasty, unpleasant expression and shove them away with a disgruntled wait. Because that is what ghosts do. They haunt. When it started raining that night, I knew I had to seek shelter somewhere, so I picked a few pieces of abandoned cardboard that I found outside a grocery store and used it to create my little hut behind the trash can opposite the pharmacy.

A new feeling washed over me as I sat under my shelter, watching rain platter against the granite-black pavements. How strange, I wondered, that I felt so calm once I knew I was a ghost. To have those dirty mortal eyes off me felt so liberating. There were pangs of solitude thrusting their unwelcomed presence, but it did not matter in this beautiful silence amidst the tapering of rain. It was devoid of pain. There is so much suffering that comes with being human, and the most hurtful of all these is the suffering of compassion. The suffering of compassion is truly the strangest suffering of all. In a world drowning in sorrows of famine and war, how does one bear empathy for all these tragedies. In the end, the suffering of compassion induces a sense of kindness in humans for everyone except themselves, and a mortal feels the least compassion for themselves.

A strange man with a dog sat beside me that night, admiring the rain. He did not have a shed, and I wondered how he could bear being wet in this chilling weather. I didn’t have to ask him that for him to respond. “Beautifool, nay? A poyet’s dream! Rain leevin’ a reminder behind threw may?” the man said in his hoarse voice marked by a heavy accent. I did not fully understand what the man meant, but the more I observed him gleefully smiling as the raindrops plummeted unmercifully all over his body and his poor dog, I cursed at his human obsession with legacies. The rain did not have a legacy to leave behind on his body. The rain did not need to prove its presence. And neither do humans. A memory floats along, devoid of faces but full of voices. “Art is a way for us to leave a part of ourselves behind,” a voice said. How myopic and arrogant. Nothing survives, not even the Universe. Can art really measure up to the ticking clock of the Universe’s demise?

When the rain subsided, and dawn strolled along, I pulled myself out from my hut and watched a slimy, red liquid ooze out of spots on my skin. I did not remember what it meant, but I wandered along since it did not hurt. When I walked in the day, I saw colours flow through the world once more. How beautiful that the yellow Sun shall grace mere apparitions with strokes of red on the Autumn leaves, green on the moss and blue in the sky. It is even more glorious that, as a ghost, I no longer have an impact on disturbing these colours of the world with my presence. Sans the mortal obsession to leave a legacy behind, I no longer have any ability to hurt or impact any remnant of the world, really. Perhaps that is why mortals are even afraid of ghosts: they fear the freedom that comes with not having an impact on the world. Being a ghost is existing in a world of untouched wilderness, and that is when the world is at its fullest glory.

“Richard,” a familiar voice pierces me, and I feel a cold touch on my shoulders. “What’s happened?” – I turn around, and a woman immediately starts caressing my face – “Let’s get you home.” She looks worried as if she knows me. Yet I do not know her. “I’m sorry…I tried calling you earlier-”

I ran away before she finished. I heard her chasing after me until there was a loud thump. Maybe she had fallen, but I could not turn back. I ran until I found an alley to squeeze myself into, closely monitoring her footsteps. I heard them return, and they echoed of tiredness. Who was Richard? Was he the man in the mirror? And how could the woman see me? I waited till her presence faded away. I guess some people can see ghosts even when they do not want to be seen. It is not much different from being a mortal. People may notice you, love you and care for you. But what difference does it make when you cannot feel it? You, after all, are a ghost like me, are you not? “Kindness is for yourself,” a voice from within reminds me, and I scorn, for if I am kind to others for myself, I only create more ghosts who feel no effects of this kindness.

The woman’s voice returned, accompanied by more voices now. How terrible! All of them kind for their own sake. They do not care about Richard. I ran away again. When I finally stopped near a lake, I knew this must be it – the perfect display of wilderness untamed by mortality, meandering through the untouched valley and washing past the hue of glittery sand.

“Richard!” the woman returned. She was bothering me now. Ghosts do not want to be found! “I don’t want to be found!” I yelled out, but the woman stopped a few feet away from me this time. She could no longer see me. Her face was overcome by dread and tears, her gaze fixed on the river. I followed her sight to find a body floating in the river. Pale and delicate, the limbs danced with sheer grace as the setting sun cast its final glow on the man’s face. He seemed to enjoy himself, even though a mortal man had once again disturbed the wilderness that a ghost craves.

And so, with a deep sigh, I wandered away.