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Gabe’s eyes opened as he became aware of his surroundings. Had he been asleep?
He raised his hand in front of his face, sensing that something was different. The longtime scar on the back of his hand was gone.
Gabe looked down at himself and saw the usual black t-shirt and jeans, the same Dockers and socks but all of it seemed too clean like he had just bought all of it—his body included—from some ritzy store.
“What the—” Gabe’s voice didn’t make a sound. He did project something out into the ether, but it wasn’t air particles that vibrated. It was something else. “Am I dead, or something?” That’s when he remembered the accident.
The images of the backhoe barely kissing the rebar pile, the shouts of warning and the brief whisper of pain before everything going dark. I really am dead, he thought. What a bad rap.
He looked around, shrugged and started heading off in a random direction. He tried flying, no dice; passing through stuff, sort of… fuzzy; and picking stuff up, but nothing happened.
“I guess that “Ghost” movie had a pretty good handle on things,” he thought-spoke.
Looking to his left he saw living people walking off a bus. Aw, what the hey, it’s worth a try, and he headed over to the closest person and started thought-speaking to them.
“So, what’s up..?” The person walked past. “Just going to ignore me, yeah?” He tried someone else but with the same result. “That’s cold, my friend…” They couldn’t hear him. So, he continued on his way.
No skin off my nose if they can’t hear me… if I even have skin. He stopped and felt his face for a moment and it seemed to be there, at least to him.
Gabe wandered the city. He saw the busy living scurrying around on their errands. He watched a guy eating a hotdog. “Man, what I’d give to eat that! I mean, what I’d give just to hold that!” He thought-whined.
The fellow took one last bite, looked around, and tossed the remaining bun and aluminum wrapper in a bush before leaving. Gabe felt a twinge of distress at seeing the surreptitious disposal.
“What? Too busy to throw that out?” Then he remembered that he used to toss stuff over his shoulder all the time. “Well… I guess it isn’t that big a deal.” Gabe took one last mournful look at the discarded remains and went on his way.
***
On the bus, Gabe stood when an elderly woman wanted a seat out of habit; though they could’ve shared with little discomfort. He thought how odd it was that he was a ghost and that he still had to resort to public transit
Finally, the bus rounded a corner revealing his old high school. “Why of all places am I coming here in the afterlife?“ He thought-chuckled to himself. Then he left through the mostly closed bus door and strolled up the sidewalk.
He walked the halls, remembering the good times and the bad: when he got on the football team, when he didn’t get into college, when he had his first kiss, and when his first girlfriend broke his heart. He strolled past the principal’s office quickly, also out of habit. He had a few too many memories of that place.
Gabe walked past the old music room and came around to the trophy case. There he found a man standing and gazing upon the case’s contents, engrossed in the pictures and other memorabilia.
“You got the same idea as me, huh?” Gabe thought-spoke. The man turned quickly, startled. “You can hear me!” Gabe fist-pumped once. Then he looked at the man again. “Wait, don’t I know you?”
“I uh, don’t know…” he responded looking uncomfortable.
“I do! You’re Nicky Ricci! You were the best quarterback we ever had! Wow… what’re you doing here?” Nicky smiled a sad smile.
“Just remembering the good days… I never played ball again after high school.” He turned back to the trophy case.
“Bad rap… but at least you were something sometime; I never amounted to much.” Gabe walked up next to him. “I only got in this case was when I was second string and the team won the city tournament… looks like they don’t even have that in here anymore.” Gabe shook his head smiling and Nicky just kept on reading. His name was in there a lot. Gabe broke the silence:
“So is this like a football ‘Field of Dreams,’ or something? Do we need to gather up all the washed-up dead guys and play a few, before we can cross over?” Nicky turned to him with a confused look on his ethereal face.
“What?”
“You know, like maybe this is our unfinished business. That’s why we’re here after we died.” Gabe put part of his hand through the glass as far as it would go for emphasis. Nicky crossed himself and backed away.
“Get away from me, ghost!” Nicky yelled, terrified. Gabe raised his hands in frustration.
“You’re dead too! That’s why you can hear me.” Nicky turned to run, looking around frantically for an exit. “What? Are we not going to play that game now? Come on!” Gabe followed him; he had missed having someone to talk to.
“I’m not dead: I’m not dead; I’m not dead,” was all Nicky kept saying over and over. Nicky came to a locked door and tried to open it, but couldn’t. He spun around at Gabe who was right behind him and shouted: “I’M NOT DEAD!”
The force of Nicky’s psychic shout nearly knocked Gabe backward. Then Nicky closed his eyes and disappeared suddenly.
Gabe was left alone and a little confused. He turned to the right, then to the left, but Nicky was gone.
“Hey, for a dude that’s ‘not dead,’ you’re sure good at magic tricks…” he looked through the windows in the doors for good measure. “Aw whatever,” and he turned and left.
He decided to go and try and find another ghost to talk to. They might know more about this situation and be able to help him.
“But where do dead people hang out..?”
***
Gabe spent the rest of the morning going to every part of the city he thought someone might want to haunt and he managed to find a few other ghosts, but none seemed any better informed than him. Some even pulled the whole Houdini trick that Nicky played earlier to ignore him. I have to learn that, Gabe thought to himself the third time.
“You’d think there’d be a manual or something… like in ‘Beetlejuice,’ but no.” It seemed that he wasn’t going to get any help from anybody—alive or dead.
***
Gabe watched a couple of movies at the theater, then he wandered around the restricted sections of government buildings reading classified documents over agents’ shoulders (which was way more boring than he expected), and then finally watched the sunset from the pinnacle of the radio tower. What a day, he thought to himself. It’s too bad that you’ve got so much to do while you’re alive. All this stuff is wasted on ghosts. He closed his eyes to imagine the last warm rays on his face as the sun sank beyond the distant hills.
With his eyes closed, he realized that he was just as aware of everything around him, but he couldn’t see himself anymore.
“Whoa… is this what they’re doing?” He ‘opened’ his eyes and suddenly, there he was again. He ‘closed’ them and he went invisible. Cool trick!
He tried jumping down from the top of the tower while still invisible, and he floated down like a dust mote. Weird. He landed and then drifted in this spectral state, unsure of where he was headed but feeling a slight pull toward somewhere. He felt less real, more like a dream.
That gave him an idea.
Gabe ‘opened’ his eyes and ran to the nearest house. He ran into it looking for someone sleeping, but no-one was home. So he ran to the next house, and the next; does nobody go to bed early anymore?
Finally, he found a teenager asleep on his couch with his, apparently boring, homework open on his lap. Gabe ‘closed’ his eyes and tried to connect to the thoughts of the teenager, straining with all of his ghostly being:
“Can you hear me… from beyond..?” He thought-spoke then waited… but nothing happened.
“Maybe if I possess him or something… then he’d be able to hear me?” Gabe tried to enter the teen’s body, but like all other physical objects so far, he couldn’t quite pass through him, no matter how many hops, wiggles or cannonballs he tried. But when he touched the guy’s chest with his finger he felt something different, like what speaking with Nicky had felt like. A presence in whatever plane Gabe was occupying.
“You got a ghost in there too I guess, or uh, the ghost is you.” Gabe patted the sleeping teen on the shoulder. “Aw, what’s the use…” and Gabe got up and turned to leave, but standing in front of the door was a woman.
“You’re new, aren’t you?” She thought-asked, still moving her mouth out of habit.
“Uh, yeah. Are you the welcome wagon?” He thought-asked back. She shrugged, looking curious.
“I guess I could show you around.” She turned gracefully and walked out through the screen. Gabe had to hurry to catch up.
Once outside, he found her staring up at the moon, sadly; he thought.
When he was alive, he never would’ve been able to talk to a girl as pretty as her. But what the hey, I’m dead anyways so what can it hurt? He stepped up beside her and looked at the moon too.
“So… where do we start? I know I’m dead and I imagine that I’m here because of some unfinished business; I can’t fly and I can’t exactly walk through solid stuff.” She smiled slowly.
“You’ve been busy!” She thought-laughed. He had never experienced something as pure and light as to feel her laughing. He laughed too, a little embarrassed.
“Uh yeah, I guess… oh and I can turn invisible,” he said.
She nodded. “You’re remarkably well adjusted to all this…”
He shrugged. “Ah, it happens, right? Everyone dies, eventually.”
She nodded but looked sad again. “Some of us before our time.” She looked at the moon once more, thought-sighed, then turned to him with a resigned look in her luminescent eyes.
“You were right about unfinished business, but it’s not what you think…” she looked over her shoulder as if she heard something in the distance. She turned back to him. “Close your eyes for a moment…”
He squinted at her a little suspicious, but then thought: what’s she going to do, mug you? So he closed his eyes and she continued:
“Okay. Do you feel something pulling you anywhere?”
Gabe reached out and thought he felt something. Places he used to visit flashed through his mind in varying levels of clarity: places he grew up and job sites he used to manage.
“I think I feel something” and he opened his eyes. She nodded again.
“You do catch on fast. Okay, take my hand.” She reached for his and he pulled away reflexively. She laughed. “I don’t bite…”
Gabe felt dumb for it, but he never used to hold a girl’s hand until they’d gone on a few dates. It was old fashioned, but his Nonna had taught him to take that sort of thing seriously.
“Alright.” He took her hand and was surprised at how solid it felt to him. He hadn’t realized how much he’d missed feeling things.
“Okay, so close your eyes again and focus on the strongest place you can feel.” Gabe did what she said and he felt what seemed like a light wind blowing him, or maybe like underwater gravity guiding him slowly down to the place he remembered. Only ‘down’ had become across somehow. All the while, he felt the presence of the hand of the most beautiful girl he had ever met, dead or alive.
After a few moments, Gabe stopped drifting and opened his eyes. They were at the last job he had worked before the accident. The cement wasn’t even laid yet.
“Huh, why’d it bring me here?” He thought-asked.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “Does anything stand out to you?”
He shrugged, but then, something did.
He looked over at one of the new trees they had planted and felt a tug at his center.
“Hey! I’m supposed to do something with the tree!” He thought-spoke excitedly. “Maybe I’m a guardian angel for plants or something!” She shook her head, trying not to laugh at his idea.
“It’s not the tree… it’s what’s under the tree.”
Gabe raised a ghostly eyebrow at her, and she pointed for him to go and check. As he walked over he felt the tug getting stronger and stronger until he passed into the tree’s streetlit shadow and there he saw it.
“…A Ding Dong wrapper?” He turned back to her. “What’s a Ding Dong wrapper have to do with my unfinished business?” She smiled sympathetically.
“It is your unfinished business.”
“What?”
“Litter prevents you from moving on.” Gabe suddenly felt light-headed—if a ghost can ever be said to not have a light head.
“Are you KIDDING ME!?!” She shook her head. “But I’ve been tossing trash for years!“
She cringed. “…Then you might be hanging around awhile.” Gabe shook his head and walked back to the wrapper. He tried to pick it up but his hand just passed through it.
“This is the worst…” he tried picking it up again one more time. “but at least you told me. My guesses weren’t even close.” He turned back to look at her. “What’s your name, by the way?“
She tilted her head and smiled at him. “I guess we weren’t ever introduced, were we?” She walked over to him. “My name’s Celine; it’s nice to meet you.” She stretched out her hand for a shake. Gabe couldn’t help thinking that he was happy his ghost hands were ‘cleaner’ than his hands were when he was alive.
“Pleasure, I’m Gabe.” They shook hands once then she let go and looked up at the moon. Not that again, he thought to himself. So he started talking. “Uh… so, do you do this often? Introduce new ghosts to why they’re stuck?”
She looked back at him and smiled. “Not really… I was just sitting in my old friend’s house when you came barrelling through looking for someone to possess… so I thought you might need some help.”
“I wasn’t trying to possess anybody! I just wanted to try and talk to someone asleep, like in that “Sixth Sense” movie… it didn’t work though.”
“It wasn’t a bad idea… and to answer your earlier question, things aren’t totally hopeless.” She extended her hand again. “Here: hold on.”
This girl is pretty touchy for barely meeting me, he mused, but he took her hand anyway. She closed her eyes, going invisible, but he could still feel her there. She started pulling him off towards the center of the city.
***
After watching the city pass them by, they stopped outside of a movie theater. Celine opened her eyes and turned to Gabe.
“So, the living can’t sense us, right? No seeing, hearing, feeling or anything.” Celine waved her hand in front of a teenager talking to her friend to demonstrate.
“Yeah, seems so…”
“Well, we can affect them in one way.” Celine took a deep centering breath that she didn’t really need, and closed her eyes, somehow without disappearing. Then she smiled.
Gabe could feel the positivity radiating from Celine like a laser show. It moved him like Nicky’s shout had, except he wanted to lean in instead of run away. She opened her eyes.
Gabe expected the girls to turn and see the beautiful spirit that was Celine standing before them, but all they did was giggle, hug, and bound off to their car.
“Those were some seriously positive vibes you sent out… but nothing happened, right?” She shrugged.
“It’s subtle, but it’s something. Just like how we’re talking with feelings, the living can sense our strongest emotions.”
“So they do have a sixth sense!” Gabe laughed and a couple stepped closer together and held hands. “Ha HA! That’s super cool!” Celine smiled at him, less sad than when they had first met.
“Do you feel any of your ‘unfinished business’ nearby?” She asked and Gabe nodded.
“I grew up in this city. I feel it everywhere!’
“Let’s try something.” She stepped closer, and Gabe stretched out his hand naturally, already feeling the tug starting before closing his eyes. They were close enough that he just led her down the street a little. Strolling hand-in-hand like new lovers, or old friends.
Don’t make it weird, he kept thinking to himself.
Once they got to the crumpled up can that the tug was leading him to, they stopped in front of it.
“You know, you seeing all the trash I’ve tossed over the years is kind of embarrassing.” She just giggled and let his hand go. He hadn’t heard her giggle before, had he? He paused mid-thought: “You can’t hear what I think to myself, right?” She giggled again.
“What would make you think that?” She looked behind/through him. “Wait, watch this.” Gabe noticed that she hadn’t really answered his question, but he looked back anyway.
He saw the same couple who he had affected a moment ago. Celine did the same meditation and positive pulse and the man stooped down as he passed, picked up the can and lobbed it leisurely into the garbage can that was only ever 10 feet away.
Gabe felt the tug disappear.
“Wow… that was amazing! Do they always throw away your garbage if you make them feel happy?” Her head tilted at the odd statement, but she answered.
“No, some litter can’t be solved by even the most positive feelings.” The sadness returned to her eyes. “Then you just have to hope that it degrades one day.”
Gabe wondered what was weighing so heavily on Celine, but didn’t ask. A moment later she turned back to him.
“So, do you have any other close ones? Maybe we could clean up a little more of your mess before everyone goes to bed.” She winked at him and put her hand out daintily before her.
Is she flirting with me? He thought, still not entirely convinced that she couldn’t hear it.
“Sure, I’ll show you some more of my dirty laundry and you can vaporize it with jolliness.” Gabe gave her an arm instead of his hand and they promenaded down the street.
***
The rest of the night Gabe and Celine walked around the city, trying to lead the few living still awake to pieces of trash that Gabe had dropped throughout his life. Every piece had a story and Gabe shared them all with Celine.
The archeologists were right; you learn a lot about a person from their trash.
Celine listened attentively and laughed at the antics he and his friends used to get up to together; she gave him a hug when he remembered the afternoons he spent playing chess with his Nonno in the park before his stroke; and she took his hand after hearing about how much he missed his dog.
If Gabe didn’t know any better, he would have thought that their evening together had, at some point, turned into a kind of date.
“Okay, okay. You’ve learned a ton about me,” he thought-spoke. “So tell me something’ about you.” She shrugged with a cute smile that would’ve made Gabe blush if he had any blood to rush to his cheeks.
“Hmm. Well, I’ve always loved to read… so on the hard days, I go to the library and read over someone’s shoulder. But they almost never read the whole book in a sitting, unfortunately.”
“Can’t you just blast them with positivity? You make people pick up trash! Couldn’t you get them to turn a page?” She shook her head.
“If only it were that predictable. Half the time you make someone feel good they put down the book and call their mom.” They chuckled together, then Gabe tilted his head in thought.
“So, I’ll be honest Celine. I don’t know how good you looked alive, but you’re gorgeous now.” Her cheeks did color somehow, surprising Gabe, turning a darker silver than the surrounding skin. He continued: “And I just can’t imagine you throwing a taco out your car window.” Celine’s sadness settled onto her shoulders like a well-worn jacket. “So…”
“Why am I here, still?” She asked quietly.
He hesitated, then: “Yeah. Why’re you still here?”
She looked at the moon, steeling herself. Then she turned back to him, sticking out her hand without saying a word. She became invisible almost before he could grab on. Then they sped across the city faster than he had ever experienced.
He hadn’t known it was possible to drift that fast. Maybe your drifting gets faster with frequent use.
He was barely able to think that before they were there. Wherever there was.
Gabe stood next to Celine while she breathed in and out heavily like she was trying to stop herself from crying. If there was air for her to breath… or tears that would even fall.
He was mad at himself for thinking such a flippant thought when she was so obviously hurt.
“Okay,” he thought-spoke, “so, this is it? Your unfinished business?” Celine nodded and pointed to the gutter over by the curb. Gabe walked over to see.
It was an old cell phone, from back when the smaller a phone was, the cooler it was.
“Yikes… one of those Nokias. They’re indestructible.” She just nodded, glowing tears falling down her ghostly cheeks. Apparently, I don’t know squat about what ghosts can and can’t do, he thought.
Gabe walked back to her and gave her a hug. His heart skipping a spectre beat in his chest at feeling her in his arms. He led her to the curb and they sat down together, just a step away from the one thing tying her to this world.
“So… what’s the story?.. You were talking in the passenger seat and it just fell out of your hand? Or it escaped from your purse when you were in a hurry?” His fervency made her laugh even while the tears fell.
“No. I threw it. I was so mad that I… I just threw it.” A new bout of tears began. “I heard that my mom had died in an accident. It came out of nowhere! I was supposed to visit her that weekend, but she just, she just died!” Gabe pulled her closer and she cried into his shoulder for a moment, unable to get any more words out. Finally, she continued:
“And now, the only reason I can’t move on to see her is because of that stupid phone.” The pieces fell together in Gabe’s mind.
“Wow… that’s the worst.” She nodded, wiping the tears with her arm out of habit, though they were unaffected. “How long have you been waiting?”
She seemed like she didn’t want to answer. “Years… I’m older than I look.”
Gabe shrugged. “Well, I guess you age well.” He winked, trying to cheer her up. “And… for what it’s worth, I’m happy you were around to help me. I’d still be sneaking around people’s houses trying to ‘possess’ them.” She left her head on his shoulder with her eyes half-closed as her tears slowly dissolved into nothing.
Gabe sat with her as the sky started to lighten. Watching the black change to grey.
“So, you’re telling me that with all your positive meditation and everything, no one has ever grabbed your phone?” She shook her head, looking more tired than sad now.
“Nope. And it’s by the grate where the street sweeper can’t reach. So… I’m going to be here for a long time.”
Gabe nodded slowly, not sure what to do next. “So… what do you think the other side is like?” He asked.
She thought for a minute, then she responded: “I think we’ll be with the ones we love… but I’m not sure what else.”
Gabe nodded. “I kinda hope I’ll see you there…” He realized that he had thought-spoken the last statement. He turned his head slightly to look at her reaction from the corner of his eye.
She was looking back at him. “I wish I had met you when we were alive.”
“Hey, you would’ve been way out of my league back then”
She looked away and that same darker silver color flooded her cheeks. “I want to try something… can you close your eyes without going invisible?”
Gabe tried unsuccessfully at first, but then closed one eye followed by the other, feeling what it felt like to have them closed without disappearing. Then he slowly closed both of his eyes.
“…Am I doing it?”
Gabe didn’t even notice the early morning foot traffic that had appeared with the first rays of sunlight, sitting there with Celine.
He felt her reposition herself, but he kept his eyes closed. She leaned in toward him, but it wasn’t until her lips touched his that he realized what she had been planning.
They kissed, and it was like the sun exploded. Gabe had never felt so alive.
It was the most perfect, the most simple, the most wonderful kiss ever and his soul glowed having experienced it.
Gabe opened his eyes and saw Celine smiling back at him. Did she feel that too? He leaned in for another kiss, but he saw her eyes widen in surprise as she watched something going on behind him, so he looked too.
The entire street around them was affected by their kiss. He saw perfect strangers hug, shake hands and laugh together; he saw a homeless man offered a warm breakfast from a deli; and he saw a kind young women pick up an old Nokia and place it delicately into the garbage.
“No way!” Gabe turned just in time to see a look of peace flood over Celine’s face as she radiated brilliant light and disappeared.
Gabe just sat there a moment, his mouth gaping wide. “…ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!”
He stood up walking towards the garbage can then back to where Celine had been sitting only moments ago. A moonflower Gabe was certain hadn’t been there before bloomed from a space between the cracks in the sidewalk.
Finally, he stopped his pacing and he looked up at the sky shaking his head. “I meet the girl of my dreams, hold her hand, spend the night talking, KISS HER, then she poofs into angelic light? Am I in purgatory or something?”
A warm thought blossomed in his heart and slowly replaced his anger. His thought-shouting had ended the elated exuberance of the surrounding living, but most still carried a smile.
“If I can deal with my trash, then I can move on too… and she’ll be waiting for me.”
It almost felt like her happiness was affecting him from the next plane like theirs had affected the living. Maybe she’s watching over me now… he looked around, squinting, trying to catch a glimpse, but nothing. Well, Celine. I hope you get all caught up with your mom because I want to take you on a second date when I get there.
With that thought—hope, really—projected into the universe, Gabe got up, closed his eyes and drifted to his closest tug. A funny thought crossed his mind as he floated, a little faster than he had the night before.
“…I’ve been ghosted.”
The End.