I Hope This Doesn't Haunt Me; May 8 2021

The last couple of weeks have been Very Stressful. I’m trying to orchestrate a move while being met with resistance every step of the way, and the Canada Revenue Agency is asking for documents I don’t have. I provided what I could and I’m waiting to find out whether that was considered good enough, but until I hear back, I’m always on the verge of an anxiety attack.

Thus, it’s hard to think about something fun or positive to blog about, today. Instead, I’m going to share with you a short story I wrote for a prompt:

‘Without killing or harming their target, your protagonist must ruin someone’s day.’

So, here’s my short story, I Hope This Doesn’t Haunt Me.

‘Congratulations! You have graduated from RESTLESS SPIRIT to POLTERGEIST!’

Sam stares down at the post-script written at the bottom of Ms. Petrelli’s phone bill. It’s remarkable how little attention people pay to what’s written in their mail; they zero in on the dollar signs and skim over everything else. It makes stuff like junk mail and bills the perfect way for higher-ups to convey information to the ghosts inhabiting residential spaces.

So Sam rifles through Ms. Petrelli’s mail after she’s gone to bed to find out exactly what being a poltergeist entails. She’s beyond sick of haunting her old house and would very much like to move onto whatever the next stage of the afterlife is. Unfortunately, there isn’t a lot to go on. Some politician’s pamphlet advertises the little-known highlights of Hades; a letter from Ms. Petrelli’s old college asking for donations also outlines the benefits of possessing the living.

Finally, Sam finds something that outlines standard poltergeist activity. She throws the opened letters down onto the end table by the shoe rack, sending something clattering onto the floor, but she doesn’t pay much attention. She sits down by the shoe rack to read.

Some of the go-to suggestions involve bloody walls and gas leaks. That sounds a little extreme for Sam’s tastes. Other things on the list involve throwing books at people, making light bulbs or television screens explode, gouging the eyes out of portraits...

Sam moans in aggrieved despair. It’s an appropriately ghostly thing to do. Too bad no one was awake to hear it.

Ms. Petrelli is a perfectly nice lady in her thirties, renting the place for a modest fourteen hundred a month and driving a beat-up Honda to her job working reception for a doctor’s office downtown. She binge-watches crime dramas and cooks bulky meals to freeze and reheat throughout the week. She’s perfectly nice.

All she really needs to do to prove that she’s ready to leave limbo is torment Ms. Petrelli a little, right? Tomorrow isn’t the greatest day to do it (if she recalls correctly, Ms. Petrelli has an evaluation for a raise coming up) but Sam can’t honestly bear to wait.

So Sam drifts through the open door to Ms. Petrelli’s bedroom and unplugs her cell phone from its charger. That’s step one.

Little known fact: ghosts need their rest, too. Sam doesn’t sleep, exactly, but she does hang around in stasis for several hours. She’s come up with a few ideas to gently torture Ms. Petrelli. She had hoped that unplugging her phone would mean the battery would die before her alarm went off, but the sound of wind chimes rouses them both at seven-thirty in the morning.

Ms. Petrelli groans and buries her head under the blankets. Unheard, Sam whines in matching protest, but drags her eyes open.

Time to prove herself worthy of the afterlife. Although, now that she thinks of it, this feels like a good way to qualify for Hell instead of Heaven. Are those even actually things that exist? Even her daily mail has been kind of dodgy about answering that.

Whatever. Can’t be any worse than being a ghost. Everything in the physical world feels adjacent to her, like trying to function through thick brain fog. She can’t eat, never feels rested, and is bound to a single location. The monotony is killing her.

... In a manner of speaking.

So Sam leaves the bedroom ahead of Ms. Petrelli, on the hunt for her ring of keys. Step one is to hide them. They’re usually kept by the front door, always in one of three places: her jacket pocket, the end table, or hanging from a peg specifically installed to hold them. She does a quick scan and doesn’t see them.

Ms. Petrelli shuffles over to the bathroom, yawning audibly. She doesn’t notice Sam ducking around the end table to see if the keys fell on the floor, because of course she doesn’t.

Can’t waste too much time looking. They’ll turn up over the course of the morning, Sam is sure. She leaps on the opportunity while Ms. Petrelli is out of her bedroom, figuring she has a good fifteen minutes before she comes back.

Unless she isn’t showering, this morning. Damn it, what if she doesn’t take a shower?!

Sam works fast. She opens the sock drawer. They aren’t paired, which makes her job easier. She roots through the drawer, tossing one after the other over her head and jumbling up the pile. It doesn’t take too long to make sure there are nothing but mismatched socks left, then Sam turns to the bed.

The water is running in the washroom. Perfect. Sam gathers socks up into her arms – a very strange feeling, it’s like trying to touch something through a layer of vinyl – and carries them off to the basement.

She’ll put them in Ms. Petrelli’s dirty laundry basket. She doesn’t want to put them anywhere too hard to find. That just seems downright mean.

Ms. Petrelli comes back to her bedroom with a towel around her body. She holds it up with one hand while rummaging for some work-appropriate clothing. Sam checks in, then politely gives her some privacy. She waits outside her room and crosses her fingers, listening in for signs of frustration.

None come. When Ms. Petrelli goes to make herself breakfast, it’s in a dress shirt, some sensible slacks, and socks with two different patterns.

Okay. Okay, that’s fine. Sam’s just getting warmed up, that’s all. She follows Ms. Petrelli to the kitchen, though not before doing another scan for the keys.

Ms. Petrelli drops some bread in the toaster, then goes about replacing the filter for her coffee maker. Sam cranks the toaster’s setting to ‘max’ while her back is turned. While Ms. Petrelli prepares herself a mug, Sam goes back to the front hall and checks the floor again.

The keys aren’t under the end table. She doesn’t remember seeing them last night – maybe Ms. Petrelli put them somewhere else? Sam frowns; that isn’t like her to do.

The toast pops. Ms. Petrelli curses, and Sam perks up. She rushes back over to the kitchen in time to watch Ms. Petrelli toss the blackened toast into the garbage. Congratulating herself, Sam waits for Ms. Petrelli to adjust her toaster’s settings and put two more slices into the slots. Then she turns the dial to maximum again.

The coffee drips steadily into the mug. Sam knows she’s going to spill it, but doesn’t know when. She doesn’t want to do it while the drink is too hot – that could hurt her.

Ms. Petrelli leans against the counter and stirs her mug. She’s staring into space with a subtle frown. She jumps when the toaster pops and sighs loudly when her breakfast comes up blackened.

“It’s fine,” she mumbles to herself. “I’ll just pick up breakfast on the way.”

Ms. Petrelli puts the coffee down and inspects her toaster. She obviously thinks something is wrong with it. Sam tries to blow on the coffee to cool it down. Sadly, she has no breath.

Reaching right through Sam, Ms. Petrelli picks up her mug and takes a sip. Sam pushes the bottom of the mug upwards, and coffee rushes over the brim.

Ms. Petrelli chokes and spits. She hisses and swears as hot coffee slops down her front. Sam feels a little bad. Some of it got on the floor, too. Ms. Petrelli sets the mug down with a thud and yanks several paper towels off the roll.

“Gonna stain... I don’t have time for this,” she groans.

She’s not tormented yet, but she’s certainly inconvenienced. Sam gets another idea and drops through the floor, fading down into the laundry room in the basement. Pushing the basket of socks aside, Sam grabs a couple of pods of laundry soap and opens the lid of the washing machine. She positions them inside carefully, not wanting Ms. Petrelli to notice it until it’s far too late.

Minutes later, Ms. Petrelli comes down the stairs in nothing but her underwear. Her clothes are bundled up in her arms. Sam covers her eyes again, but the gesture is moot because she can see through her translucent fingers.

Ms. Petrelli tosses her clothes into the washing machine with some soap and starts a small cycle. Despite herself, Sam is delighted. That’s going to take no time at all to overflow with suds.

Following Ms. Petrelli back upstairs, Sam checks out the front door again with slight vexation. The keys going missing will be the cherry on top, if she could just find them. Just because Sam hasn’t located them doesn’t mean Ms. Petrelli won’t. Briefly, she takes a seat by the shoe rack and puzzles over places Ms. Petrelli might’ve unthinkingly dropped them.

Maybe the kitchen? Sam checks there again.

After a little while, Ms. Petrelli has re-dressed herself, but she seems more aggravated than before. It’s apparent why, and Sam whoops when she realizes the problem – Ms. Petrelli is wearing a knee-length pencil skirt with her blouse, which makes her mismatched socks look rather silly. She’s on her way back downstairs, probably to look for some matching socks.

The washing machine rumbles and rattles. It echoes all the way upstairs once Ms. Petrelli opens the basement door.

“Oh no, no, no,” Ms. Petrelli whines and hastens down the stairs. The suds are already spilling over onto the floor. Frantically, Ms. Petrelli stops the cycle and grabs her dirty clothing out of the basket, dumping them onto the floor to absorb some of the mess. All of the clean socks Sam squirreled away join the catastrophe.

“I’m going to be late,” Ms. Petrelli bemoans. She searches herself for her cell phone before remembering she doesn’t have any pockets. Sam floats after her, and Ms. Petrelli bolts to her bedroom to start rifling through her bed covers for her phone.

“Maybe I just won’t wear socks,” Ms. Petrelli sighs, still searching. When she finds her phone, she seems to calm down, running a hand through her hair and taking a slow breath.

Damn it. Sam doesn’t want Ms. Petrelli to calm down. Unfortunately, she seems to have centred herself. She marches out of her room and grabs towels from the hall closet.

“Just deal with it later,” Ms. Petrelli mutters, and repeats it like a mantra. She goes downstairs to drop the towels around the sudsy spill, ditching her socks along the way. Sam hurries over to the shoe rack, realizing that Ms. Petrelli will probably look for shoes that don’t require stockings.

And that’s when she sees them. Crouching in front of the shoes, Sam spots the keys. They must have been sent skidding along the floor some time earlier. Triumphant, Sam snatches up the keys and hides them in Ms. Petrelli’s sneakers.

She won’t be wearing those. She won’t think to check there.

Temporarily sorted, Ms. Petrelli comes back upstairs and grabs her only pair of sensible heels. Then she checks the end table, and her face crumples.

Sam bites her lip.

“Damn it!” Ms. Petrelli checks her phone, and she looks like she’s about to cry in sheer frustration. She dials her workplace, but she doesn’t get past the second ring before her battery dwindles and dies. With an outraged whimper, Ms. Petrelli nearly slams her phone onto the end table and double-checks her jacket pockets for her keys.

Sam teeters from one foot to the other, shifting weight she doesn’t have. Ms. Petrelli doesn’t give up the search for several minutes, eventually looking out the window to her car. With tears in her eyes, she makes sure the front door is locked, then goes to the kitchen. Sam follows.

“Have to walk all the way to work in heels... I’m going to be so late, miss my evaluation, won’t get my raise... Could get robbed while I’m gone...” Ms. Petrelli looks awful, and Sam wants to apologize. Even if she did, Ms. Petrelli wouldn’t hear her.

Unlocking the back door, Ms. Petrelli heads out and shuts it hard behind her. Sam checks every window to watch her progress, gnawing at her lip while Ms. Petrelli circles the house on her way downtown.

Ms. Petrelli doesn’t get robbed, but Sam wallows in guilt all day. When she comes back, it’s in the car of a coworker. She looks drained, trudging up the walkway to grab her mail and going around to the back door.

Sam hovers around the kitchen and watches Ms. Petrelli sulk off to clean up the basement. Then she pounces on the mail, rummaging until she finds an advertisement for someone’s moving services.

She locates the ghostly script written at the bottom, and lights up.

‘Congratulations! You have graduated from POLTERGEIST to WAIT-LISTED APPLICANT TO HEAVEN OR HELL.’

Sam plants an incorporeal kiss on the flyer, beaming.

So Heaven is a real thing, then! How about that.