hwango

It had been a lousy day. I'd stubbed my toe getting out of bed, burned my breakfast, and gotten stuck in traffic on the way to work. Then work itself was how it always was - soul crushing and leaving me feeling vaguely unclean. After I got home I took a shower, which usually made me feel a little better. Alas, it turned out that my crappy day was not over yet.

The water turned from pleasantly hot to icy cold so suddenly that I actually jumped out of the flow of water and crashed into the wall. After a few frantic moments fiddling with the knob I gave up and shut off the water. I realized that I could see my breath in the air - it wasn't just the water that was so cold, it was the whole room. I stepped out of the shower and hastily wrapped myself in a towel. The lights flickered and I heard a faint whispering. That's when I finally figured out what was going on.

"Oh, come on," I said. "Why would -" I started to say, but then stopped when letters started to write themselves in blood on my mirror.

I THINK WE SHOULD SEE OTHER PEOPLE, they said. IT'S NOT YOU, IT'S ME. they continued.

"Damn right it's you!" I shouted at the mirror. I couldn't believe this. I knew things with Alice and I were shaky, but I thought we might work it out. And nobody enjoys being dumped, of course. But breaking up with someone by ghosting them was just such a crappy thing to do, and an extra kick in the teeth considering what I did for work. All of my feelings for Alice snuffed out in an instant.

I wiped at the mirror until the blood was all smeared sort of evenly, and then wrote back with my finger, "Message received. I agree." I was really tempted to add another couple of very unkind words, but managed to stop myself in time. But really, she couldn't do this in person? Maybe over the phone? Even a text message would have been better. This was either thoughtless or cruel.

A few seconds after I wrote my reply the room warmed up again and the blood sort of sucked itself back into the mirror. I thought about the ghost itself for a moment, and how it might feel about all of this. I mean, people say they don't really "feel" things, but I don't know.

They sure fight back when I'm imprisoning them in a car and binding them to the GPS system. But hey, self-driving cars are the future, right?

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From:

tatdatcm

Nice twist on the prompt.

hwango

Thanks!

sarcasmoqueen.livejournal.com

Enjoyed this!

Glad to hear it!

static_abyss

Clever reimagining of ghosting. And also vaguely creepy with the ending bit about binding ghosts to GPS systems of cars.

That is how self-driving cars work, right? They're all haunted, aren't they?

Seems right to me.

halfshellvenus

Hahahaha! Oh, that final turn down the path of wrongness! Who saw that coming?

I take it that here, ghosting someone is messaging them by ghost? Maybe a bloody, extra creepy one to really get your point across? :D

Well, sometimes people just won't check their email or they have their phone off, you know? That's when you need the spirits of the unquiet dead to descend upon them! = )

kehlen.livejournal.com

It is kind of wrong how calmly he reacts to something so spooky :)

And damn to hell such technology.

I figure if you deal with the restless dead all day at work you start to get a bit jaded about the whole thing. Kind of like how so many of us think nothing of the internet or electricity or the giant space jellyfish that protect us from cosmic rays.