“It is not the dead who haunt the living, but the living that haunt the dead…”
She hid behind a corner and wondered how the person walking past could not hear her frightened breathing or heart beating. It felt like it was thundering in her ears and she was sure it would be a visible pulsating in her neck.
“Calm down, he can’t see you,” the slightly sultry male voice whispered as she jumped around in shock at the intrusion.
He poked his head through the wall and looked at her with heavy-lidded eyes as he emerged. He wore a grey sleek business suit and had the business type of overly done, casual hair style, which had always annoyed her. “Stop following me Chris, you’re not helping,” she admonished as she watched the other man disappear down the building’s long corridor.
“But you are fascinating. Can’t help but see what you do with the extra time before you fade,” he shrugged, smiling a lazy half smile.
“Yeah, I’m going to take psychological tips from the guy from the nineties who fell down the fire stairs and smashed his head! How many days did it take them to find you? Two, ten?”
“Well, at least I didn’t just suddenly keel over from a heart defect at the age of thirty-two in a meeting room filled with horny old executives, who only gave you the time of day because of the length of your skirt!”
“Stop it, we keep having the same argument. I’m tired of it. I want to find out why we’re stuck here,” she looked at him hopefully.
“Maybe we are just too bad, or good to go in either direction. Limbo is a pretty common theory,” he remembered a few others who had faded spouting the same types of religious theory on him a few years back. The religious ones, either by their belief or faith often got to their peace pretty quickly. The woman was new and he relished the company as he had been alone for quite a while before her sadly sudden death on the tenth floor a month ago.
“Don’t you want to see if Halloween will allow us to be seen. I know that security guard, Mike, saw me! his eyes didn’t leave me! Plus, we’re only a few days away. We have got to try get a message to our loved ones!”
“I’ve seen more determined than you try,” he sighed with resignation, “Actually, nice ending, she was trying to stop him from jumping off the roof due to her death and failed, which meant they could finally be together and fade together. I think that it was a horrible sweetness, that kind of made you want a sour gummy worm?” He put his head to the side as a question.
“Yeah, can see you’ve never been in love,” she scoffed.
“I’ve been dead long enough to know that miracles are fleeting,” he turned seeing the security guard approaching and pulled a funny face at him.
“I don’t understand how you could become so blasé about this! I have heard so much and learnt so much. It’s fascinating watching these people,” she enthused.
“Try twenty six years. They all are the same,” he sighed.
“But why have you stayed? There must be a reason, can you think of anything that would keep you here?” she felt herself being pulled away again and sighed as she faded and found herself next to a bed.
Looking at the alarm clock she saw that it was blinking two a.m. She heard the sobbing before her eyes adjusted to the dark room. When she had first been dragged there, she had tried to hold and comfort, but had felt such an opposing magnetic force push her away, that she could only watch, in pain. In those moments she felt like she was truly in hell. The immense pain she could see was beyond torture. She had stayed and watched the daily pain for a long time, but eventually felt herself returning to the spot that her soul had left her body. She cried out and cursed that she had been taken too soon. She cried that she had caused him pain. She asked, preyed and begged that she could talk with him. But no one answered her grief. No one helped.
Then Chris had shown up. He didn’t comfort her hysterics, he just sat with a non-helpful expression, until she had tired herself out from ranting. She accused him of being a demon first, then decided he was a figment of her imagination, then a traumatic memory and he had killed her. Then eventually she regarded him as a part of the world she had found herself in. During the day they watched the odd and often weird personal problems of the office building, which was a good distraction, then waited until the security guards swept through the building on their routes before having a speculation on the newest theory of ‘moving on’ that she may have come up with. At first she had been dragged back constantly, now she only got random hours of the night. The worst part was the pain. It felt like someone had stolen her breath and put a crushing weight on her chest. Wasn’t death meant to mean relief from pain?
She watched her love turn on the television and slowly his mind turned away from her and let her drift back to the building, where Chris was waiting patiently on the reception desk. he looked at her with almost sympathetic, hollow eyes, “Any easier?”
“Never, it breaks me every time,” She turned and felt her shoulders shake with the strength of her sadness.
“It will become less and less until eventually you won’t go back anymore,” He shrugged.
“Well, I will be praying for that day,” She said resolutely, “When will the pain end?”
“Well, we could look at grief theory?” He mentioned and watched as she latched onto the idea.
“You mean denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance?” She asked looking at her dreamers emotional progress, rather than her own. He dreamed more about her than he had allowed when she had just died. He seemed to have pushed her presence or the pain into his subconscious to deal with it. She never wanted him to feel pain and wished he would allow her to rest in a numb state. “Can I make him think of me as numb again? You must know how to do that?”
“If you numb someone for too long it becomes repression and will cause a mental block. Don’t do it. It’s far more painful,” he cautioned with a haunted look…
Maxine the Magnificent 