---

 

This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book... “What Remains” Down in the Dirt, v143 (the March 2017 Issue) You can also order this 6"x9" issue as a paperback book:

Order this writing in the book Study in Black the Down in the Dirt July-Dec. 2016 collection book		get the 418 page Jan.-April 2017 Down in the Dirt issue anthology 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Order this writing in the book On a Rainy Day (the 2017 poetry, longer prose & art collection anthology)		get the 298 page poem, longer prose & art collection anthology as a 6" x 9" ISBN# paperback book:

Hunting Ghosts

James Wade

    You don’t have to die to become a ghost.
    Before entering the rundown, slum-like building, I glance again at my watch, and time taunts me with the inevitability of its passing. I will do this again, approximately 110 times, before I eventually drift off to what passes for sleep in the 21st century. But for now, I try to focus on the task at hand.
    The smell, even in the hallway of the building, is strong enough to bring questions— not just of its origins, but of its very existence. The odor solicits heartfelt ruminations of the world we live in, and how anyone or anything could survive in a place where smells like this are permitted to subsist. The already-low ceiling is sagging under the weight of a cheap, plastic fixture housing burned-out fluorescent bulbs. My hand moves toward the door knob, and a lengthy piece of the tube lighting flickers on for a moment, as if using some stored away strength to reach out—perhaps to warn me of impending doom, or maybe just to beg me not to release the stench. My nose finds it hard to argue with the latter. If the miasma of mortality and depression that surrounds this job is closing the lid on my coffin, then surely this soul-rotting smell will hammer in the nails.
    I usually forgo the traditional Vicks under my nose, because I read once that it posed a risk of lung irritation, and with decades of dedicated tobacco use on my resume, I doubt my need for help in that particular department. Besides, I can usually handle the fetor of decay I often come across during these investigations. But this foulness is a special breed, so I coat my nostrils with the slick, pungent VapoRub, and turn the knob.
    The door creaks open, awkward and unsure, as if it has been out of practice for months and is nervous to perform. The floor is covered in cheap carpet that has grown hard and coarse— forgetting what it means to be soft, or that it ever was. The faded, floral-marked sheets of paper on the walls are cracked and peeled in so many places, they appear to be making an escape attempt. The walls themselves, now partially exposed, leave crevices where they are pulling away from the stained and drooping ceiling, as though they are embarrassed to have stayed so long and were also hoping to sneak away quietly. The space is mercifully small. I open my bag and began in the living room.
    The furniture, a hodgepodge collection spanning multiple color pallets and decades of style, is arranged in a semi-circle around the only bare spot in the room. Rectangular divots and some tears in the carpet suggest a wooden television-box may have once held court in the empty space. Two pictures hang above the phantom TV’s abdicated throne. The first is an old photograph, perhaps of a husband and wife. The man, in coveralls, stands unsmiling, arm begrudgingly slung around the neck of the woman in a dress that could be any color but black. She looks nervous, but proper. In contrast, the color in the second photo leaps off the wall— so that the little boy and the swing are, together, a reflection of joy that cannot otherwise exist in this room, or this apartment, or this life. Across the bottom of the picture, near the base of the tree that showers the child with autumn leaves, is the name of whatever vaguely-familiar company produced the frame and placed the stock image inside. I remove the black and white picture and let it slide into the bag. I leave the reprinted boy.
    I lift the couch cushions, exposing a series of stains which cover the fabric in a variety of sequences and patterns, like something at the modern art museum. There is some loose change, which I bag, and a handful of dead insects, which I do not. I notice there is only one couch pillow. It does not match the couch. The ghost of the man who once bought this sad apartment appears to be more a slob than a hoarder— though the latter may have made my job easier. I need proof, proof that an old man whose neighbors described him as “friendly, but quiet,” existed more than just in the flesh.
    The flesh, once you’re dead, isn’t good enough. We need bank statements, family members, Facebook pages. Your memories won’t cut it, unless they’re documented, or unless other people can tell the stories now that you’re gone. It’s a curious thing when a person has experienced death, the most human experience of all, and I am left to prove they lived.
    I check my watch, a reward for having waited at least ten minutes since the last time. I realize I have to move quickly through the rest of the apartment if I want to avoid the spirit-consuming misery of rush hour traffic. I begin to see myself flicker, a ghost in the making. I shake the feeling like it’s a spider crawling up my arm, and pick up a crumpled envelope with an address that isn’t this one. I drop it into the bag anyway.
    The kitchen holds little respite from the desolate feeling of the front room. While the other was lonely, this galley-style bastion of bacteria is quite literally crawling with unwanted guests. They have, no doubt, been lured by the appeal of rotting Chinese food, molding pizza crusts, and spoiled milk. Bags of trash are stacked in front of the stove, which appears to have been relieved of its duties long ago. I pull open the drawers and cabinets, sending the bugs scurrying behind appliances and into the walls. I bag a rewards punch-card from a diner I passed on my way to the building, but nothing among the pens and plasticware gives me a name.
    The refrigerator was once white, years later yellow, and is now mostly brown— except for the dried, sticky streaks of who-knows that decorate the door. It looks as though the once-liquid substance, some sort of juice perhaps, had been in a race toward the floor when time suddenly stopped, forever preserving the moment. The smell seems to be strongest near the refrigerator. With all the expediency of a man agreeing to a colonoscopy, I open the door. All the Vicks in the world could not keep me from slamming it shut again.
    I retreat into the bedroom, which is made so by the twin mattress shoved into the corner. There are no sheets, but the mystery of the second couch pillow is solved. I put a cigarette between my lips, remember seeing the ‘no smoking’ sign in the hallway, and then lite it anyway. Somehow the nicotine mixes well with the toxins of ghost-hunting. Cancer hanging from my mouth, I rifle through the closet. More food, more roaches, and clothes that, while entire generations had passed, remain untouched. The hands on my watch remind me that the clock is ticking for all of us.
    The bathroom is cramped, even for such a compact apartment. The toilet lid is down, and I dare not upset that status quo. There is no shower curtain, but the rusted rings hanging from the bare rod suggest this has not always been the case. The truth in such a suggestion is not unique, but rather a standard in the industry. There are always these tokens of a life once lived, serving as reminders that things were different for these lost souls, before the world and all the people in it decided to leave them behind.
    My bag is too light, in both pounds and importance, when the lost becomes the found. Behind the cracked mirror, in a dust-covered medicine cabinet, are two plastic pill bottles with the same name and address. This address. I call it in, and just like that, the body of the ghost— currently in a swollen state at the county morgue, and found only when the security guard investigated complaints of an awful smell— becomes Mr. Waldo Simon, 1804 Martinsville Rd, Apt #1206.
    I use the dying end of my cigarette to give life to another. My task is complete. The name will be run through the system, medical and financial records will be pulled, and once it’s verified that the old man existed, the case will move on to another investigator who will try to track down his next of kin. As I sit, chain smoking in what had, only hours earlier, been Mr. Simon’s tomb, I think about this life we believe is our own— this shadow of a whisper. The hands on my watch coldly inform me I will not beat the traffic. To get back to the office I will have to sacrifice more of the one thing we all want more of in the end.
    When I began this job, I always expected, or at least hoped, to find evidence of a life well-lived: a photograph taken at a large family reunion, letters from a girl who wrote every day during the war, trophies from a bowling league, or the recipe for a pecan pie that won the blue ribbon four years in a row. But those lives rarely produce ghosts, as they are the ones not forgotten. It would be nice though, at least once, to find those things, to see what they are surrounded by, so that I might change my own fading future. Because the worst part of ghost-hunting, is how familiar everything seems to me— even after I’m home. You don’t have to die to become a ghost; you just have to keep breathing. The world will do the rest.

Copyright of written pieces remain with the author, who has allowed it to be shown through Scars Publications and Design.Web site © Scars Publications and Design. All rights reserved. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Problems with this page? Then deal with it...