Chapter 1
1
T hat motherfucking piece of shit.
If I ever see that lying bastard again, I’m going to kill him. Grab the nearest piece of wood, snap it in half, and drive it right into his heart. Better yet, I’ll take up whittling. Make some stakes and carve his name in them. It’s not like I don’t have the time.
After all, I’m dead.
My only friend in the afterlife took what little hope I had for a somewhat tolerable eternal existence as a ghost and destroyed it.
Just like I’m going to destroy him. That vampire will rue the day he decided to fuck with me.
My rage deflates into resignation as I look out through the window at the man hammering a “house for sale” sign into my lawn.
I’m not going to get my vengeance, and Vincent knows it. I’m trapped and helpless, which is why he targeted me—the pathetic newly dead woman with no clue about how the paranormal world works and no sense to not trust the first person who offers their assistance.
Fuck. I’m such an idiot. You’d think that with death, maybe I’d have gained some wisdom. But no. I’m still me, just less…corporeal. Same Dot who keeps dreaming of a happy future, no matter how many times that hope gets crushed.
Once the man in the yard finishes, I head outside. Part of me wants to tear the sign out, but it won’t make a difference. I’ve already tried that, and the realtor just came and put it back in. There’s nothing I can do to keep my house. Someone is going to buy it, and I can only pray they’re not too terrible.
I sink down onto the grass, barely feeling the dampness as it soaks into my dress. Chester, my neighbor’s chiweenie, barks as he walks by, tugging toward me. I reach out to pat his head as his owner gives him a befuddled look, unsure why her dog is barking at thin air again. His fur is an echo of the softness I felt when I pet him when I was alive, but I still savor it. I thought I was touch-starved back then, but that doesn’t compare to now. Everything—pardon the pun—is a ghost of a sensation it was in life.
Loneliness and fear crash into me as Chester gets tugged away.
What am I going to do? I can’t tell anyone that Vincent took all the money left in my accounts, ownership of my house, and my car, because I voluntarily created a will to give everything to the fake identity he holds the credentials for. More importantly, I’m a goddamn ghost and no one but a vampire and a dog knows I exist!
It’s not like I haven’t tried to connect with people from my previous life. While I don’t have any family to speak of, during my first weeks of being a ghost, I emailed my friends, explaining what happened to me. I spent hours agonizing over what I could say to convince them, compiling a list of things only we would know about each other and evidence that I’m still here.
It didn’t go well. My emails, handwritten letters, and texts were all met with hostility. They refused to believe that it wasn’t a cruel joke or a scam.
Why would they? I wouldn’t have believed me.
After that, I gave up. It was too painful to beg the people I cared about to see me, knowing I was hurting them with my attempts.
I pull out my phone as I wipe away my tears, looking at my texts with the futile hope that maybe someone other than a political spam bot has contacted me. It’s one of the only possessions I have left, along with a few other essentials I could stash away behind a false panel in the guest room closet. Everything else save some of my old furniture and what they’ve used to stage the house was cleared out when Vincent put the house up for sale. Everything I spent over a year curating in my quest to make my home an inviting place where I could welcome love into my life.
What a waste.
That morose thought brings the question that constantly rattles around in the back of my mind to the forefront.
Why am I still here?
I ask it like I don’t know the most likely answer. Sure, maybe the universe is random and there’s no reason why I’m a ghost. But in my gut, I don’t think that’s the case. No, I know why. I just keep hoping some other less pathetic reason will surface if I consider it enough.
I’m here because I’m a hopeless romantic who died without ever finding love.
It’s absurd. I’m dead . But if the theory of spirits clinging to the world because of unfinished business holds any merit, my ridiculous craving for romance is certainly what would anchor me here.
I spent my entire life waiting for the day I’d meet my soulmate.
It started when I was a kid, sold on the fairy tale of meeting the love of my life. Finding that perfect person who would make my dreams come true.
It turned into unrequited crushes and pining as a teen with crippling social anxiety and a chubby body at the peak of 2000s fatphobia.
By the time I pushed past my flatlined self-esteem and body issues enough to date, I’d take anyone who showed interest. Shockingly, that didn’t work out well for me.
Years passed, and I focused on other things. When I worked up the courage to dip my toe back into dating, I convinced myself I’d found the one . It took time for me to warm up to him, but he was funny, decent looking, and had a stable job. We were together long enough that I imagined marrying him, but it didn’t work out.
Apparently, in all my time I’d spent single, I’d become too self-sufficient. He told me point blank that he wanted to be with someone who “needed him more”. In retrospect, we would never have worked. We both were too insecure—me needing someone who would reinforce my confidence and him needing someone less capable so that he’d feel in control of the relationship.
Still, it hurt. I put dating on hold again, for the sake of learning how to truly love myself. It had the unfortunate side effect of making me realize my self-worth and narrowing down my already minuscule dating pool.
I’d spend hours swiping through countless profiles of men who had nothing in common with my strange self, forcing awkward conversations that petered out after a few generic pleasantries. On the very rare occasion I met someone in person, they weren’t a match.
Ugh, that’s a lie. There was one guy who sparked my interest, but my ego tries to erase him from my memories because it didn’t work out. And by didn’t work out, I mean we spent days on end texting and getting to know each other, had an amazing first date, and then… nothing. No more messages. Not even a “sorry, I’m not interested” or “my life is too busy right now”. He just vanished.
Needless to say, that crushed my remaining will to be on dating apps. So I stopped trying.
I told myself that there’d be time. That I’d get back into it once life felt more settled. Once I met my next goal or work slowed down a bit. It seemed like a given that I’d get back to it, even as I kept pushing it off.
That’s the funny thing about time. You never know how much you have left. Turns out, I ran out a lot sooner than anticipated. A freak accident and poof. Life over.
Or rather, life as I knew it was over. Now I get to spend what I assume will be eternity thinking about what I missed out on.
Forever alone really hits different when you’re dead.
With that cheery thought, and after I’ve checked that, no, Vincent hasn’t replied to my hundreds of angry and pleading texts, I shove my phone back in my pocket and head inside.
It’s time to face the facts. I can’t stop the sale of my house, so I need to focus on what I can do.
I can lie here and wallow in my misery, crying until I fall asleep.
I can use my vibrator and attempt to distract myself from my misery. That one will likely backfire, since even my wand at full strength has a hard time getting me off now.
I can quit stewing in anger and fear and make a goddamn plan.
With a sigh, I decide to go with that last one. If it doesn’t work out, I can always fall back on the other two options.
I wrack my brain, considering what I have at my disposal to form any sort of strategy to make it through this mess.
It’s not much.
As a ghost, I can move and interact with most objects, though if I get distracted or lose focus I’ll phase through them. Because of that, I think I’ll be able to move through solid objects at some point, but that requires my brain to forget that my spirit “body” exists. A morose trade off—the more disconnected I become from my body, the more ghost abilities I’ll have.
I’m invisible and inaudible to everyone but myself, dogs, and other undead creatures. Though sometimes, when the moon is bright, I’ve caught a faint shimmer of the outline of my body.
I can sleep, eat, and breathe, but I don’t need to do any of those things. Sadly, the novelty of eating food wore off pretty fast, especially since I can barely taste anything. The only thing I can’t seem to stop doing is crying. Where those tears come from, I have no clue, but I’m like a leaky faucet half the time.
The obvious option that fits with those meager spirit skills is attempting to scare away any prospective buyers. It’ll probably work on some people, but the house is nice enough that eventually someone will be willing to deal with a few floating objects and flickering lights.
I groan and flop onto the couch. Come on, Dot. Think.
It takes a few hours of watching clips from various ghost movies and shows before inspiration strikes. I’m approaching this the wrong way. Instead of fear, what if I try to make the house as appealing as possible to the least objectionable buyer? Sure, I can also try to scare off other buyers, but maybe I can make it seem like the house is meant for the one I like the most. Someone sweet and friendly, who won’t keep my house looking like a cold, boring shell of what it once was.
Some of the crushing dread lifts. This could work.If someone nice moves in, maybe I won’t be so lonely. Having someone else to focus on, someone to help and make smile, even if they don’t know I’m there, actually sounds pretty nice. I’ll still harbor fantasies of staking Vincent, but maybe that con artist vampire did me a favor when he stole everything from me.
Once again, I let hope for something good on the horizon blossom inside me. Please don’t let that hope bite me in the ass.