Thursday, February 11, 2010

The Ghost of Noel Way

It was a small apartment, and old, older than it seemed.
Brown shag carpeting lined the floors, dirty from years of unknown tenants and guests.
Guests who slept on couches.
The kitchen sink stopped working long ago and needed to be filled with the drip of water
from the faucet to do dishes that pilled up on the lime green counter tiles.
The stove stood alone and was layered with the grease of occasional cooked dinners and haphazard lunches, and late night snacks creatively prepared after visits to bars.
Cookie sheets sat with partially eaten spagettio nachos made on baked pita bread.
The bathroom, with its bright window smelled of mildew from the many early morning summer showers left to rot in the intrusive sun.
In the afternoon it served as a sauna for weary workers returning home.
This is where the ghost would like to spend his time.
He frequently traveled from the hall between the bathroom and the bedroom.
On dark nights, especially lonely weekends in the apartment with only one or no occupant, he liked to come out for a visit, to make his presence known.
He sat on the edge of the bed, or rattled the pipes, or shadowed across the hall making weary souls reluctant to turn in for the night.
He passed the days in invisible silence, with a promise to return each evening, until being banished out of his earthbound home.
But he was called back, gratefully.
He infiltrated the plumbing and made a terrible racket which could be heard from the laundry room below.
They left one day, left him alone and the apartment empty with only a few gratuitous piles of trash and such on floors.
He sifted through them to find a clue, to pass the time.
Then finally one day the workers came, and put in new floors,
painted his walls, and prepared the space for the new guests.
He did not like them, they did not pay any mind or attention to him as the last tenants did.
They did not care for his late night roamings and hauntings and such.
There were no fights or disagreements to keep him occupied or curious.
So one night, amongst the many trees that surrounded the small duplex like a rain forest,
he went up on the roof and stomped up and down, he stomped so hard, he caved in the bedroom ceiling, right onto the husband and wife.
She had to be rushed to the hospital.
And there he sat, lonely once more as the wind blew against the plastic tarp,
and the emptiness bored him to death.

~Jenny Miller

No comments: