TW: References to self harm/suicide and sexual assault.

It turns out that hell is real. Its physical location is in Ohio, go figure. 

The calendar on the refrigerator is the only thing that reminds me of how long I’ve been here. I'm not in the future, I'm in the past. My mother, who is the same age that I was when I died, keeps forgetting to tear off the calendar pages on weekends. She is oblivious to the torture this causes me. It’s been September 9th for three days. She will remember soon, I keep telling myself that. 

I’ve been dead a month, but it’s felt longer than any single year of my previous life. I would not call whatever this existence is a life. Any other atheist would likely feel relief. Most of them want to be wrong deep down. You can see it in their eyes. Instead I find myself frustrated. Disappointed. In a state of constant annoyance. 

If it were possible, I would float away to go rustle the papers on Richard Dawkins’ desk, wherever he is. Whisper, “God is real” in his ear. Spook him. 

There are two major problems. One, no matter how emotional I perceive myself to be, or how much I want to, I can’t move anything. I can’t touch, I can’t shake. I can’t talk, not even to let out one of those little moans or wails spirits are known for. Not that I would want to scare my family. Especially myself. At age eleven I was immature, overly sensitive. At least I was never mean to Carrie, I was a good big sister. And at six years old she is the most picturesque little thing. Watching her at this age has been the only reprieve of this cursed non existence. My sweet and tender little sister who saves me all the yellow skittles even though they are her favorite too. 

Once in my therapist’s office when she was giving me a hard time about my issues with aging, Drew asked me,

“What’s the root of your anxiety, is it your mortality or is it the patriarchy?” 

No brainer, duh, the patriarchy. Death never scared me. It should have, my knowing without a shadow of a doubt that there was nothing coming after. It didn’t bother me. What can I say? I’m a freak who finds that comforting. The book ends with me. It should have anyway. 

Seems stupid now, caring so much about the fine lines on my forehead. The timing was right, at least. On November 10th I was scheduled to get my first ever Botox. If I had lived three more days. That would have been so stupid, not to mention a waste of money. I hope that Carrie is putting what I left her to good use. I hope she and Mom are in Paris right now. 

See, that would make sense. If there was a higher power. One that leaned good and sensical. I would be watching them enjoy The Louvre instead of stuck back in what was the worst year of my life. 

I can get as far as the mailbox. I learned that when I followed Princess through the yard. If I go beyond that, I become lost. Not only mentally, but physically too. Like thinking about taking a step but realizing you have no legs. And I become so, so aggravated. I can feel the outline of my shape sizzle, like static on an old television. 

They always say that cats can sense spirits. But Princess never notices me, she’s totally unaware. She scampers through me sometimes when chasing after a loose mole. When she is scurrying over to child me or to Carrie for a piece of dinner we’ve saved for her. When she licks the brown fur on her inner thigh I often try to see if she will notice my watching her. No, she keeps cleaning away.

It’s been summer, so the routine is the same every day. No school for us yet, but Mom studies and writes constantly. She hardly leaves the house. One year left until her Masters. When I'm alone I don’t think of myself as abandoned. I have Princess. She was so beloved in my childhood memories, but watching her as much as I have now, she has proved a real menace. I’ve seen her take out countless birds, moles, chipmunks, even a full grown wild rabbit. There is the occasional visitor. Gina or the pesky neighbor Miss Carole. Always borrowing things. 

In my memories, babysitting was a weekly thing during this time. It was either Melissa or her sister Bethany. Tonight was the first time Mom left Carrie and I alone. She had her monthly card parties. They play gin rummy and spoons after they’ve had a few drinks. I wish I could go with her. 

The babysitter, its Melissa this time, did not come alone. A woman in her forties was with her. At first I thought it was Melissa’s mom. But I don’t remember us ever meeting Melissa’s mom. Surely I would remember that, it would have been a big deal to me at the time. Melissa was my idol. She was too cool. A twenty two year old college student. She sometimes let me watch reruns of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with her. Her ears were pierced in three places. 

My mom leaves. Melissa takes Carrie and I into the backyard to play. No one has acknowledged Melissa’s mom. I am left alone in the kitchen observing her.

“Who are you?” 

She addresses me. She is forty something years old and her ears are pierced in three places. She is dead Melissa.

Instead of telling her who I am, I ask her how she died. Ovarian cancer, that’s awful. Unlucky. I am too eager, I haven’t spoken to anyone all month, 

“I was hit by a bus!” 

I can feel the corners of my mouth raised. I am smiling. She is horrified. The subject must be changed. After a short exchange about our life stories, which are both fairly boring, there is a long quiet period. She stares out the window looking at nothing in particular. I am rusty and I was never all that talkative anyway. 

To me, this is very special. I had existed in a void until now. There are others, of course there are others. There's not a shred of enthusiasm on her part. She already knew this, that there were others. 

“How would it be possible that you were the only one?” 

She rolled her eyes and stepped to the door, like she was planning to leave me. 

They started coming out of me, the questions. It was possibly my only chance to find out. Since I couldn’t leave the property, I’d have to wait who knows how long. No other ghosts had come with Gina or Miss Carole.

Melissa's theory was simple. She could not believe I hadn’t thought of it myself. And she was especially flabbergasted by my lack of ability. 

“What exactly have you been doing this whole time?” 

I shrug. It’s a little embarrassing. I mostly watch Carrie or Mom. I watch the movies my mom watches. We’ve watched a ton of obscure foreign films, a few of them familiar. Some things never change. If I'm not doing that, I'm outside. In the bush by the swing set. I don't know why I like it there so much. It used to creep me out when I was a kid. 

Melissa hadn't been hiding in bushes. Melissa had gotten around. Melissa even went to Cleveland where she met a whole slew of others. Her patronizing tone was getting the best of me. I told her I didn’t believe her. She told me she could move any object, anytime that she wanted. 

I almost yelled. 

“Show me something then.” 

Ghost Melissa, without hesitation reached in the sink. One of the floral printed thin glasses my mom got as a gift from Gina on her thirtieth birthday. We were not supposed to touch those. Melissa had it hovered high above her head. She let it drop. Glass everywhere. Impressed, I ask her to teach me. No, that would be wrong. She doesn't say why. More silence. 

She declines the invitation to return. Ghost Melissa won’t be coming back. Our correspondence is pointless. This is all temporary according to her. We are here for one reason and then we will move on to heaven. Even though I want to be friends with her, I can’t help myself. 

“I don’t believe in a heaven.” 

She is not phased. 

“Well, you’ll move on to hell then. If you ever learn how to do anything here before you float down there, come see me.” 

This was a comfort. Until I realized I would have no way of finding her. I didn’t know where she lived. Then she was gone. 

Inside the house, Carrie and eleven year old me come running through. Instinctually, I yell out. They don’t see the broken glass and Carrie gets a shard straight into the big toe of her bare foot. A fit ensues. Blood everywhere, even though the cut is pretty small. Carrie blames me for her confusion and pain. My little face shouts back at her. Living Melissa is distraught. She calls my mom on the blue corded phone on the wall. 

I remember it. I remember this night. Carrie got a scar on her toe. Mom was furious that one of her glasses was broken. She blamed me. I always liked those glasses even though I was not supposed to drink out of them. That's got to be why I liked them. They are actually pretty hideous. Sometimes I’d get a stool out and climb on the counter to retrieve one from the very top of the cabinet. Sparkling cranberry juice. Fancy.  

The glass was broken by dead Melissa. Living me was blamed. If I had a better memory, I'd have put it together sooner, told Melissa not to break the glass. Saved Carrie's toe. That would have altered the earth’s entire history. Well, no, unlikely not. But at least my history. Carrie's history too. 

The point of my being kept from a complete death is to prevent something from happening.  I thought it over and over.

I’d rather be outside. I don’t like spending too much time in the house. One benefit of being the way I am now is that the pesky Midwest mosquito clouds have no interest in me. They swarm all around the yard. It’s a strangely warm end to summer. 

Princess stalks and catches another unsuspecting pigeon. She tears out its feathers one by one, just for fun. Nature is Satan’s church.  

September fades to October. I manage to do something on September 26th. In the backyard, child me pushed Carrie too high on the swing set. She flew off the swing. While she was in the air, I twisted her so that instead of falling on her face, she fell on her butt. If she’d landed on her head, it would have smacked against the railing of the old sandbox. She was saved from stitches or worse. 

That’s all. I can’t do anything else. I’ve tried. Probably not enough, but I have. I have no motivation which ironically is the thing that most reminds me of who I was before I died. 

Then, on October 1st, I scared my mom. It was terrible. She was watching Before Sunrise for some reason. We watched that together when I was nineteen and she was visiting me in Denver. It was a very nice visit. Christmas time. The movie isn’t set at Christmas, but I always think of it as something to be watched at Christmas only. 

“You’re watching this too early.” 

I tried to joke. But unlike all the other times I’ve spoken to her, she heard me. She didn’t hear exactly what I said. It was clear that what I’d said must have come through as an unintelligible noise or rustle. 

She jumped off her bed and looked all around the room. Then she looked under the bed. Like my voice had been transcribed into the scuttle of vermin feet. How depressing. She was very unnerved after that. She did not finish the movie that night and it took her a lot longer than normal to fall asleep. Then, when she finally did, Carrie stood in the doorway not twenty minutes later calling to her. 

Carrie went through a restless phase that fall. It was like she could sense what was going to happen to me. Mom didn’t, I didn’t, but Carrie knew, I think.

There was also the incident at the pool. But that mostly just amazed us more than scared anyone. It’s the one thing that ever made me doubt my non-belief. Mom had signed Carrie up for swim lessons. After her first lesson Carrie snuck back to the pool while everyone else was in the changing room. She tried to jump off the diving board but hesitated and hit her head. She was knocked out. She doesn’t remember what happened next. But when the instructor came out a few minutes later Carrie was in a chair by the side of the pool. And she was wrapped neatly in a towel, hair soaked. She should have drowned. She was immediately taken to the emergency room. Nothing major except a big nasty bruise. Carrie always tells this story with excitement. The time she cheated death. Our family miracle, my mother always calls it. I can’t deny even now that it was a miracle.

More time passed at a snail’s pace. It was when I saw his car I knew what I’d been sent for. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Of course, the whole point was to stop something bad from happening to myself. It was the worst thing to ever happen to me. Not because of the incident itself necessarily, but because of the trajectory it sent me on. When the time came, I’d be able to stop him. I’d save myself. Hearing his voice inside the house, I rushed to the refrigerator to see the date. It was on the third and fourth day of the visit that it happened. Mom’s cousin from out of town. 

He had always been so old in my mind’s eye. But joking and laughing with my mother was a twenty year old kid. Still, standing next to Carrie and I, there was no denying he was older. 

If I had physical guts inside me, they would have felt my disgust. He was so nice. Gave me a lot of attention. Mom kept saying how sweet it was. I tried over and over those few days to do something, anything. To make my mother hear me again, to scare him or better yet, mortally wound him. Nothing. I couldn’t even prompt the salt shaker to tip over when they ate dinner. 

It was the first full night I spent inside in my own bedroom. I’d pretty much avoided it until now. My child self wasn't asleep. As usual she was reading in secret with the Mickey Mouse flashlight. 

I thought I felt the outline of my form start to tingle, turn electric. I was gearing up, I was ready. I’d bring the bookcase in the corner up into the air and then on top of his head. It hadn’t been the right time before. Now it would be, that was certain. My energy was in bubbling up in flames.

Nothing. I couldn’t do anything. I watched, thinking that at least my child self would know she wasn’t alone. I tried to talk to her after, voice shaking. I tried to tell her she shouldn’t wait, she should tell someone. Anyone, even if it was Ms. Metcalf at school. 

Days passed. Mom’s cousin left in his stupid red mustang. No questions asked. 

There is a higher power alright, I kept thinking, and it’s completely ambivalent. In the bush by the swing set. Maybe if I stayed there long enough I’d crystalize or become part of the branches. I watched Carrie and I from afar coming in and out, leaving for school and coming back. 

On a nameless afternoon Carrie followed Princess to the swing set. She held a little brush meant for doll hair. Princess sat in her lap as she brushed. Carrie whispered those sweet little nice things children say to their pets. Things that make your heart melt. Her face was so calm and darling I would have cried if I could have. My little sister. The moment was broken by my mother, hurrying out the door.  

“Carrie, come on we’ll be late on the first day, that would be bad. And zip your coat up, you’ll freeze!” 

Carrie's zipper went up over her bathing suit. I followed her to the car. The pool was on Main Street. The community center. In a small town, there are only so many streets. That’s where Mom drove us. Only eight or nine blocks when you really think about it. 

It was a miracle at the pool that day that saved my little sister. If there are no angels, no God, the miracles still have to come from somewhere. It can’t always be blind chance. Some things are too important. Like the life of a most beloved little sister. 

Past the mailbox and the neighbor’s sludge grey house. Round the corner of Cherry and down to Main. It was easy.