This is a Valentine's Day contest story. Please vote.
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A man is stalked by a ghost, albeit a beautiful ghost, his dream woman.
Did you ever feel you're being watched and that someone is following you, stalking you? Feeling so disconcerted that you turn around and every time you do, there's no one there and you're alone with your bad self and your paranoid imagination. Still the foreboding feeling doesn't stop and you're certain there's someone watching your every movement.
You just know there's someone there. You can just feel it and feel them stalking you and watching you. As if you're being watched on camera, only there are no cameras where you are because the feeling doesn't just happen outside, but indoors, too. Yeah, sure, there are a lot of cameras everywhere today, but not where you live. It happens in your apartment, while watching television. It happens in your bedroom, while trying to fall asleep. It happens in your bathroom while showering, going to the toilet, shaving, brushing your teeth, and, you know, doing other things.
At first I thought I was imagining things and being jittery and paranoid, but then things in my apartment were moved around, as if someone or something had been there and was looking at and going through all my personal stuff. A desk drawer ajar, a kitchen cabinet door left open, and my personal papers moved and not left in the way that I had left them. Am I imagining things? Did I leave it like that? Or was someone here? But who?
What do I have that anyone would want? Is someone trying to steal my identity? They can have it. I'm just a boring accountant. Is someone trying to steal my money? If they find any, they can have that, too. Living week to week like everyone else, I don't have very much.
I felt spied upon. I felt violated. I felt uneasy. I felt afraid. I was angry that someone had been in my apartment, but who and why? Even though there's no one physically there, it's an odd feeling, but I sensed someone was there in my apartment or was still there watching me.
Whenever I open my apartment door, I get chills, the willies, and the heebie-jeebies, as if somehow knowing and sensing that there's a big, black bug lurking somewhere waiting to spring out at me, when I least expect it. Now, every time I enter my place, before I even close and lock my door, leaving it open in readiness to bolt, I go from room to room looking to see what's been touched and looking to see if there's someone still there hiding, watching, and waiting. I know someone was here. I can just feel them and sense them, especially when they are still there watching me.
Sensitive to feeling that kind of unearthly energy, it's almost as if, with someone else there, the air in the room changes, the atmosphere, and the room changes, too. Suddenly, with the sensation of someone else there in the room with me, the room feels smaller. I hate the feeling and I hate living like this in my own apartment, always afraid and nervous.
Jerry, a friend of mine, told me that I probably have a ghost.
"A ghost? Seriously? A ghost? I never even thought of that. That would explain my eerie feelings, but there's no such thing as ghosts, are there?"
"Don't be so closed minded, Dan," he said. "We have no idea what else is out there in the vast universe. Now scientists are theorizing and close to proving that there are other dimensions, parallel dimensions, where we could be dead in one dimension, but still alive in another. As far as they know, scientists believe that we can't leave one dimension to return to the one we've already lived in, but we can go to the next dimension. Some scientists go as far as saying that we never die but just travel to the next dimension."
"That's so scary to think that we could literally disappear in a parallel dimension," I said.
"Yeah, well, that's because you're the anal accountant. You only see black and white or in your case, black and red and debits and credits. Besides with trillions of stars and billions of galaxies in the universe to think that we're alone and to think that our laws of physics are the only laws of science are foolish thoughts. For sure, nothing that we think we know or that we believe is true is true somewhere else in the universe. Our upside down could be their right side up, somewhere else."
"I don't know," I said. "All of that is just too much for me to wrap my brain around. I'm no Einstein and science and science fiction have never been my strong suits. I don't believe something exists, unless I can see it, touch it, and feel it."
"Don't be so naive, Dan. Ghosts do exist. Based on what I've learned by watching that paranormal television program, The Ghost Hunters and TAPS, The Atlantic Paranormal Society, if you have a ghost, confront it. Ask it what it wants. It may tell you and if it's something that you can give it for it to rest in peace or travel to the next dimension, where it should have gone, when it left our world, it may go away and leave you alone."
"Okay," I said. "I'll try it."
When I returned home, as soon as I opened my apartment door, I could feel it. Someone or something had been here. My ghost had been there and my sense was that it was still here. Oh, God. All the hairs on my forearms stood up. It was a frightening feeling. I can't believe I have a ghost. Why me?
"Hello? Hello Mister Ghost?"
Why I thought it was a male ghost and not a female ghost was beyond me.
"Are you here? Dad? Mom? Grandpa? Grandma"
Since both my parents and grandparents on both sides are deceased, I figured maybe it was one of them checking up on me. Maybe they are my Guardian Angels now. I thought of all my dead friends and relatives, everyone I ever knew who had died and wondered if it was any of them to come back to haunt me. As soon as I thought of their name, I said a prayer for their departed souls. Maybe my prayer is all they need to make it into Heaven. Maybe that's why they are here, asking me to pray for them. Then, what the Hell? I figured if I was doing them a favor by praying for them, maybe they could do me a favor by giving me tonight's lottery number.
"What's tonight's lottery number? Can you give me the winning lottery number? Hello? I really need a new car."
I waited and listened. Nothing.
"I know you're here. I can feel you. I can sense your presence. What do you want? Is there something that I can give you, help you with, or tell you to make you go in peace? Give me a sign."
I waited for a response but received none. Only, as if I could hear it breathing, I could feel it's presence and the hairs on my arms stood up again. The ghost was here. I just knew it was. I could feel it.
I was so discombobulated. I didn't know if I should sit, stand, or flee. I wanted to run, but where would I go? I live here, obviously, with a ghost. After living here for three undisturbed years, except for nosy Mrs. Platt always watching me from across the courtyard, she needs a life, I couldn't believe I suddenly had a ghost. Why? Why me?
"You're not going to hurt me during the night, are you?"
"No," someone said, not aloud, but as if it was in my brain.
With the answer so immediate, was that the ghost speaking to me or did I just think that? If felt the same, as when I'm talking to God and I sometimes think that he answers me. Is he answering me or am I thinking the answer? Is that me, my conscience or is that someone or something else communicating with me?
Then, there was laughter, a woman's laughter. Now for sure, I knew that wasn't my conscience because being a guy, I have a male conscience. Now I knew that it was a woman haunting me. My ghost is female. Shit, I wonder if she saw me naked and, just as I thought that, I heard her voice and her laughter again.
"Yes, I've seen you naked lots of times. I've even watched you masturbate," she said laughing.
Eww. My female ghost is a voyeur. Wait until I tell Jerry. He'll never believe me or knowing him, he will.
"Who are you and what do you want?"
"I'd tell you, but you wouldn't believe me. You wouldn't understand. I don't understand. Here one day and gone the next. I know only two constants."
There was a sadness to her voice, a resigned heaviness that I immediately picked up on, maybe because she's dead and doesn't want to be.
"Two constants?" All I could think of was my two constants, taxes and death. Even after I die, they'll tax my survivors with an estate tax, that is, if I leave an estate. "What are they?"
"I was taken before my time. It was a mistake."
Thinking that all prisoners in jail believe they are innocent, I wondered if all dead people think they were taken before their time and that it was a mistake.
"Is that the two constants? You were taken before your time and it was a mistake?"
"No, that's only one constant."
"What's the other?"
"We were supposed to be together."
She floored me when she said that. My soul mate is dead? We never had a chance to meet. No wonder I'm alone and can't find someone.
"We were? Me and you? Seriously, like girlfriend and boyfriend."
Suddenly, I felt disappointed, as if I was denied and cheated out of my chance to be with her, the love of my life. Weird, but I was angry that she was taken before her time and by mistake.
"Husband and wife," she said.
"No kidding," I said. "Well, that may explain why I'm still single," I said with a laugh, "and alone and lonely. Do I know you?"
"No, we never met and it's not funny," she said suddenly sounding hurt.
"I'm sorry," I said looking all around the room and up at the ceiling trying to pinpoint her voice that only existed in my mind. Nevertheless, not wanting to piss off my ghost and make her angry. There's no telling what she could do to me. "Where are you?"
