Short Writing Week 1
Some context here
“The Ghost”
The ghost has tried to communicate with me multiple times, with minimal tangible success as of yet. I note down these instances to try and discern a pattern.
Once, several months ago, it knocked a book off a table. After I replaced the book in its its original position, the ghost immediately knocked it off again in exactly the same fashion; both times it opened on page eighty-seven. I examined the page thoroughly - it was Lydgate being introduced to someone significant to society in Middlemarch - but I couldn’t grasp any relevant message. Likewise the number eighty-seven itself had no particular meaning to me. I put the book back a second time but nothing further occurred, and it remains there still. Was this a ghost or a coincidence? I didn’t, at that early stage, consider the supernatural to be a possibility, but later events hinted that I should perhaps have opened my mind.
Thus, weeks later, it refused to let me close the fridge door. It exerted just a little outward force so that the door bounced back open when I gently pushed it with the intention of it swinging closed itself, and it maintained a gap of a few inches when I tried to close it more forcibly. I didn’t want to damage my own fridge door, so I didn’t give it the full force of my shoulder, but rather opted to wait. Once a minute or two had passed and I grew concerned enough over the state of my perishables - unreasonably, I admit, they would likely be perfectly fine for hours - I nudged it again and it closed successfully. I couldn’t find any significance to this at first blush either. I had letter magnets on the fridge which, if one could affect items in the physical world, would suggest themselves as a much stronger candidate for communication, but they remained untouched. The medium of choice was apparently the angle of the hinges, its message sadly unheeded.
More recently, Thursday last week to be precise, it appeared in front of me in semi-human form; arms and legs tapered to shredded wet flesh as it presented as mostly torso and face, skin peeled entirely off, giving it a constant, open-mouthed leer, coughing raggedly in my direction. It shuffled the length of the kitchen, leaving a trail of dark blood as it approached, trying to speak, though all of the necessary ligaments and organs were severed or atrophied, or even visibly hanging out of the gaping apertures in its body so it was unable to make its intended point. Its life force, such that it was, began to visibly break down in front of me when it was within one or two metres of my position, and it collapsed to the ground with a damp, snapping sound, twitching several times as it reduced to a black-red liquid that thankfully dissipated of its own accord once the ordeal was finished. The whole incident lasted under one minute.
The final - to date - encounter was today, which has prompted me to begin noting down these encounters. Across two pieces of toast, if placed together at a slightly askew angle, the words “I AM” became evident as part of a pattern of light burning. This is the first clear evidence of an ability to communicate, and I will report further if breakfast tomorrow provides anything substantial.