The Lonely Ghost (A Short Story)

This is a story I tweaked a lot since its original conception, more so than any other story I've written.  The original idea just started from a ghost holding a girl at night - in my more lonely moments I always imagined what I'd do if suddenly a ghostly hand appeared on my shoulder and held me tight.  I've also been thinking about ghosts lately.  A friend of mine wants to do a sort of Martian Chronicles with robots, I'd like to do the same with ghosts, maybe with a Sandman-like world surrounding them (though my idea so far is more akin to Beetlejuice).  


My final revisions aren't completely done with this story yet - actually, I haven't revised anything in months!  I feel a bit guilty about that, since this is another story from my Fiction class.  I would've liked to post some more recent work but none of that stuff is ready for public display yet, so this will have to suffice.  Please leave comments and criticisms!  I apologize for the weird paragraph breaks, it got messed up in the copy and paste but doesn't affect the story at all.  Anyways, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoy!


p.s. Feel free to let me know if it's boring or crappy or anything, PLEASE tell me, don't have me suffer the ignorance of my own mediocrity!  Thanks.

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The Lonely Ghost
by Matthew Stalbaum

    My boyfriend of six months had broken up with me.  He said he hadn’t felt like we were working out as a couple, and I wanted to tell him I loved him, but I just agreed instead – telling him the truth wouldn’t have changed anything. 
    Things got lonely.  I kept going to work, showing up at the bookstore with all the people bustling past me or asking me about whatever titles they were looking for, and I’d give them answers and smile weakly, wishing I could go out back to smoke a cigarette or something.  I don’t smoke, but it seems like a lonely thing to do, sitting outside, alone, with just your thoughts.  I guess it wouldn’t be lonely if there were other smokers there too, but I probably wouldn’t talk to them.
    I didn’t sleep much that first week back in my apartment.  The bed felt too big, I couldn’t seem to find my space in it.  I curled up in a little ball on the right side of the bed – that had been my side usually – and wrapped my arms and legs around the blanket, cradling the pillow under my head.  Then I closed my eyes real tight and tried not to think about anything, but that never worked.  Little images would flit through my head, echoes of things we’d done together, wishes for how things could have been.  In my head he was still walking over to the bed, kissing me on my shoulder, calling me his sunbeam.  I felt him still breathing softly against my neck, rubbing his fingertips against my stomach, like he was making sure I was real.  But he was gone, and eventually I fell asleep.  Sometimes I dreamed about him, and those were bad nights.  Other times I wouldn’t dream about him, but those were still bad nights – I’m still not sure what I preferred more, wishing he was there, or dreaming that he was.  It all amounted to waking up alone.  Before opening my eyes I’d reach out to try and grab him, but of course he wasn’t there.  I’d pull the sheets in closer, hugging them, never opening my eyes, holding on a bit longer to my dreams, as though they had soaked into the bedspread.
He was everywhere in my apartment.  The memories were on everything, like a film of dust I couldn’t brush off.  He had mostly come over to my place, and had a habit of kissing the things he thought were beautiful – my record collection, old scrapbooks and photo albums, even the dinner plates.  My entire antique collection must have touched his lips.  If I had known it would hurt so much when he was gone, would I have still let him come over so often, leaving fragments of memories on everything he touched?  I don’t know, probably.  It doesn’t matter I guess.  The apartment was so quiet and still, so dull and bland, even though, when I remembered him being there, it all seemed brighter.
    For a while I put myself into my antique collection.  It was something to do.  I bought a lot of cheap, old trinkets online, figurines with paint chipping off and small cracks, signs of their past lives that I’d never know.  I could get distracted for hours just dreaming about the pasts those trinkets had.  A couple things I got from local listings, places I could go to in person.  I don’t talk much.  I usually shy away from talking to people – in the bookstore I hide in the stacks a lot.  I thought it’d be a nice change from the silence of my moping around.  Honestly, I imagined I’d become one of those really sociable people who can talk to anyone about anything, but the few people I did talk to I just smiled and nodded.  Smiling’s easy, you can even do it while you’re sad.
I bought an old camera from this very nice older man close by.  He had a large, grey beard, with large wire-frame glasses.  He had lots of exciting stories about taking pictures in exotic places that he wanted to tell me.  When he talked he always looked off somewhere, like he was seeing the events he was describing right there. 
He showed me some of the pictures he’d taken with the camera.  I noticed in some of the pictures of wildlife and nature that there was a figure standing off to the side.  He was always faint, almost like a wisp of smoke, but it looked like a man staring at the camera.  The old man said, “Well, I don’t know if you believe in this sort of thing, but it’s haunted, a ghost in the machine?  I’ve heard that somewhere, don’t know where.  You see, when I take a picture and develop the film, there’s this guy just standing there in it, not looking at the camera or anything, just standing there.  Doesn’t do for good photography if your pictures have ghosts!”  He laughed a little at that and started coughing.  “He’s real faint, you wouldn’t even notice him except that he only shows up when no one else is in the picture.  Maybe he just doesn’t like people, ain’t nothing wrong with that.”
I took the camera home but didn’t take any pictures.  I would’ve had to develop them at some point, and if the man was wrong about the ghost then I’d just have a bunch of pictures of a lonely house.  I put it in my room, on top of my dresser.  It looked nice sitting there anyways, like it was from another era.
A few days later I began hearing the ghost walk around my apartment.  I could hear him shuffle down the hallway, like he couldn’t lift his feet, or he was trying to keep from floating away.  He walked very slowly.  Sometimes I’d hear him walking somewhere, and I’d hear a door creak open very carefully, then creak shut the same way.  He was a very polite ghost though.  He always tried to stay out of my way, and he was never loud.  I wasn’t even scared the first time I heard him shuffling through the apartment.  His walk sounded like he had nothing to do but be sad.  I thought how horrible it had to be, being dead but not angry or adventurous or even mischievous, just sad.  What a poor life.
I didn’t see him do any of this for a couple of days.  I only heard his feet dragging along the carpet.  After a while I got curious about what he looked like.  I heard him walking around the corner of a hallway, by the bathroom.  I peaked around to where he was but couldn’t actually see him.  The bathroom door opened by itself and closed by itself, and the toilet flushed a couple of times, one after the other, like he just wanted the sound of it, or maybe wanted to see the water swirl down.  The bathroom door opened again, closed again, and that was it.  I didn’t hear him for the rest of the day.
After that he got more comfortable.  He walked around me more, and sometimes he’d pick up my antiques around the house, spin them in his hands, and then put them back down exactly where they were.  Do ghosts have hands?  It seemed like he had hands, legs, a body, like he was a real, living person.  I guess ghosts don’t really count as people – they were people – but he seemed like a person to me.  He acted like one anyways.  He touched everything my ex had touched, almost with the same wonder and care.  It was hard to see my things being held and not be able to hold the hand that was touching them.  Sometimes when I saw something floating in mid-air, I imagined my ex was holding it still, about to kiss it.  Once I saw the ghost holding a porcelain tea cup and I got close to him and felt where his arms would be.  The cup fell to the ground and split in two.  I left the pieces there and went for a walk.  I needed to get away from it all, the apartment, the memories, everything.
That night I slept hugging my blanket with one arm while the other cradled my pillow underneath my head.  My arm was bare to the world, and usually I find that uncomfortable, but I didn’t care that much right then.  My pre-sleep thoughts were more like sighs.  Just thinking about it all made me tired, but they wouldn’t stop and I couldn’t fall asleep.  All of a sudden, I felt the ghost’s hand on my shoulder.  I had always heard of ghosts being very cold, but his skin was warm and smooth.  I could feel each finger pressed calmly against me.  It didn’t scare me – it felt nice.  My troubled thoughts stopped then.  I imagined him lying right behind me, with just that one hand on my shoulder.  It made me smile, and the next thing I knew I was asleep.
The ghost did the same thing again the next night, and without even thinking I put my own hand over it.  The instant I touched him, I got scared that my gesture would make him disappear like before, and I could even feel it quiver for a moment, as though he weren’t sure whether to vanish or stay.  Then his hand just pressed a little harder, a little deeper, and I fell asleep feeling warm all over. 
The next night I wondered if he’d do it again, and I felt his arms wrap around my stomach, and his body press against mine.  It wasn’t creepy or disturbing or anything, just – something I needed.  I never tried to see his arms around me, never needed to prove that he was real.  I just pulled him closer and laid in the ghost’s arms as I fell asleep.  He never woke me in the middle of the night, never repositioned himself or left me, so far as I could tell.  He was fine just holding me, I think, and I was fine with holding him back.
Life went on as usual.  I went to work, kept to myself, didn’t talk much, came home and listened to the ghost walk around the house, watched him pick things up and put them down.  He’d walk right behind me sometimes, and we’d play a game where I’d walk and he’d walk, then I’d stop and he’d stop, and I’d try to trick him.  I laughed everytime I was able to hear his footsteps bounding after mine had stopped.  He never made a sound aside from his footsteps, but I’d feel him take my hand and squeeze it lightly.  I imagined him smiling, and that made me smile.  I didn’t even know who the ghost had been in real life, but the more it went on, the more I felt like I did anyways, like I knew what books he liked and what foods he enjoyed, even those little things you don’t notice about someone until you wake up next to them in the morning.  I’d wake up in the mornings and his arms would still be around me, and I’d pat his hands to let him know I had to get up and he’d just hold me tighter, like he didn’t want me to go.  I think he had been lonely too, locked in that camera for however long, in those frozen, empty photographs.  I don’t think we felt a bit lonely right then, with each other.
This guy started showing up at the bookstore around then.  He was cute, brown hair and eyes, little taller than average and slightly muscular, very faint beard but not creepy looking somehow, polo shirts.  I kept seeing him around in the literature section, though sometimes he’d wander into the poetry section too.  He’d pick up a book, sit on the floor, read for a while.  My eyes always managed to wander over to him.  I would always catch him looking at me, and his eyes would dart back to his book.  He was always smiling.  I just thought he was really enjoying whatever book he was reading.
    Another week went by trading glances with him by day and enjoying the ghost’s company by night.  I was putting up some books on one of the shelves when he wandered over into my aisle.  “Hey,” he said.  I didn’t realize he was talking to me.  “Um, hey,” he said a little louder, and I turned to him.
    “Oh, hi, can I help you?”
    “Yeah, uh, this is a little embarrassing,” he said, “but I’ve been coming here reading Love in the Time of Cholera trying to work up the nerve to talk to you.”
    “Did you like it?” I asked.  I guess I didn’t speak loud enough because he said, “what?”  I asked again a little louder, “did you like it?” 
    “Oh, yeah!” he said.  “It was really good!”  He said “um” for a moment, and I just kind of stood there while he thought of what to say.  I really did think he was cute.  He had this look in his eyes, or what I saw of them, they were pointed down a lot – what I could see of his eyes, there was this endearing fear, like he had ignored it for a moment, just long enough to talk to me, and then remembered it again.
    Before he could go on, I said, “I just broke up with my boyfriend recently.  I’m still kind of getting over it.” 
    For a split second his smile went away as he said “oh,” and I felt my heart break for him a little.  But then it returned and he said, “that’s alright, really, it was kind of crazy anyways to come here and…”  His words were getting quieter, the kind of quiet where you force yourself to speak because it distracts you from your rattling thoughts.
I felt so bad for him, I told him I was sorry, then kissed him on the cheek.  His face was a little hairy and rough, and it reminded me of the ghost suddenly, his smooth hands on my stomach.  I missed him right then.  The boy smiled though, and I smiled back and said, “you’re cute, you’ll find someone else.” 
He said “thanks” before leaving the store.  I saw him put his hand to his cheek as he walked out, and it was strange to know that I had left a memory on him like that.  I was in a daze for the rest of work.
That night, as I was drifting to sleep, I felt the ghost’s arm around me as usual.  Without even thinking about it, I opened my eyes to take a look at it, to see if I could see it there.  It was like a normal human arm, although it was gray and airy, like fog.  Then he went up in a cloud of smoke or dust that hung in the air.  I reached my hand out to it but it just blew away and I didn’t feel it anymore, I didn’t feel him anymore.  I felt like Orpheus coming out of hell and taking that one glance at his lover, seeing that she’s really there as she vanishes.  The bed felt empty again – the bed was empty again.  I stared into the darkness for a little bit and started to cry, both for myself and the thought of the ghost wandering around the apartment again, lonely again, lonely as ever.  I couldn’t stop crying.  I had cried when my ex broke off our six month relationship, but this was different, more painful in a way.  It was like waking up from a dream that you felt was so real, and you’re left with that confusion of worlds as the alarm clock buzzes. 
I always wonder about that guy from the bookstore – maybe I should have gone out to coffee with him at least.  He could have shaved his beard so it wouldn’t have felt so rough to kiss – but would it have felt as nice as the ghost’s hand playfully reaching out to mine, his skin so perfectly smooth, so soothingly warm?  I wonder sometimes if he wanders around the apartment still, tracing my steps, never able to make a sound, forever trying to simply brush against my shoulder and always passing through.  No one has to be lonely, not even a ghost.  I hope he’s not lonely.