Abode

Home is where the heart is, they say. I have no idea what that means. I guess it means people love where they live, or some such junk. This isn’t the case for me because I hate this place. Hell, it’s not even a home; it’s a house. There is a big difference. Perhaps, home is meant to be a place where one can love and be loved. I have never cared for anyone here. No one has ever had feelings for me in this dilapidated structure, either. This place isn’t technically my home. It’s empty and abandoned. Finders keepers, that’s another thing people say. Now, that saying I understand.

This place used to belong to the son of a bitch that kidnapped me and murdered me in this very kitchen. I don’t know what part of it all is the most sickening: the fact that the guy had no motive other than the fact that he liked to kill for fun, or the fact that his ass never got locked up for it. He was one of the lucky criminals that never seem to get caught, no matter what they do . After I died, I got my sweet revenge. That sweetness lasted for decades. I fucking haunted his ass along with the other ghosts of his victims every day. That guy is dead now; lucky fucker got a death he wasn’t worthy of. He died of natural causes, painlessly and in his sleep, no less. Life is unfair, or so I have been told. Apparently, death is equally unfair. Not only is he gone (he’s in hell, taking Satan’s pitchfork up the ass every damn day, I’m sure), but so are all the other ghosts. They all ended up crossing over sooner or later. I had gotten the chance to get to know all of them very, very well. Let me tell you, I am actually honored to have gotten to meet such amazing people in my life. Well, in my afterlife, I mean.

Let’s see who I can remember. It’s kind of hard since they've been gone for so long, although, I do remember this one woman named Sarah. She was a special needs teacher, and she loved her students like they were her own children. She even let them come to her house on weekends to play. She often baked the class cookies and made them other treats. I remember that she told me once of a kid that always word the same clothes to school every day. She said he only had the one outfit because his family was poor. She ended up buying several new outfits for him and she gave them to his mom one afternoon after school. Those kids meant a lot to her, which I realized just by listening to her talk about them them. Now that I think of it, maybe they were such a big part of her life because she had no children of her own. Sarah told me that a doctor told her that she never would. One thing if for sure, she ain’t in the same place as our killer. If she is, I’m giving up religion…again. Geeze, it must have been years since she told me that story. I can't believe that I remember it. Not only do I remember the story, I remember the day she told it to me. I can actually envision us in the dark, dusty attic as she tells us about it. Wait...who's that listening next to me? He was one of the other spirits here. What was his name?

After spending a good while pondering my memories for the guys name, it finally come across it. Dave, that was his name. I remember him, as well. His story amazed the hell out of me. I remember when he first told me that he ended up befriending the guy that shot him in the back, causing him to end up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life; I thought he was a crazy idiot. He wasn’t, though; he was just a guy with a golden heart. Dave was a cop, you see, and this all happened, ironically, on what was going to be his last day on the force. He was planning to retire the next day.

Dave told me that on his last day, a guy was robbing a bank; there were about twenty-five hostages. He and the rest of his squad were there, standing outside the bank. Long story short, the robber shot Dave in the back. He got hit it part of his spinal cord, and it led up to him becoming a paraplegic. Shortly after leaving the hospital, Dave heard through the grapevine (that’s another thing people say) a little info on the guy that shot him. He had lost his job earlier that month and was a single parent to three young children. He was the only provider in the family, and all of his kids were really young; the oldest hadn’t even started school yet. The guy robbed the bank just so he’d have some money…so he could feed his hungry children.

If I had been in Dave’s situation, I would’ve had a heart full of hatred towards the robber for the rest of time. Dave, however, was different. He actually found out where he and his family lived, and he showed up on their doorstep with about three-hundred dollars’ worth of groceries. I remember asking Dave, “Why the fuck did you do that? That sorry sack of shit ruined your life.”

Dave had responded, “Now, Joey, just because I spent the last few years of my life, before I was murdered like you, in a wheelchair, doesn’t mean my life was ruined. Also, he wasn’t just some criminal, some careless person that shot me. He was just a person with a broken spirit that was in a desperate situation, a guy that would do anything to take care of his children. Even good people can do bad things in certain situations.” So Dave helped him and his kids out, which later evolved into a friendship between the two. I know I would never see it in my heart to do something as selfless as he had done.

Let’s see, who else used to be here? Hmm… Well, I remember this one elderly woman who used to build toys by hand and give them to impoverished children during the winter holidays. It was something she was well known for. She started doing it when she was twenty five years old, and judging by how she looked, that was at least 6 decades before I had met her. She was really old. Geeze, what was her damn name? Anyway, I remember that she said that she had even been interviewed by a few local newspapers about what she was doing. She built toys all throughout the year and would actually go around all of the low-income areas in town and deliver gifts to all the homes that had children. She was pretty much a local version of Santa Claus, except, unlike Santa, she actually existed. She, whatever the hell her name was, was an actual human being, and not some bullshit myth that was created by corporations in an attempt to sell material objects and make money. Fuck, what was her fucking name? Ugh, it’s going to drive me crazy all night, I just know it.

Anyway, she told me that after a decade of doing her whole Santa operation, a local news station did a story on her and what she was doing. I remember how excited she seemed when she told me about that part, the bit about being TV. That made sense, though, for her to be excited. I mean, if I had ever gotten the chance to be on television back when I was living, you best believe I’d be making a big deal about it. I loved watching television (I still watch it now, but it is nowhere near as enjoyable when you are dead, believe you me), and like most people in this fucked up 21st century world, I had a desperate hunger for fame and attention. The idea of having random strangers know my name, if only for a few minutes, was just so appealing to me. I figured that was why she enjoyed talking about the time she was on the news; she must have enjoyed her short time in the spotlight.

However, as she talked more and more, I realized that that wasn’t the case. She wasn’t like most folks. She didn’t care if people knew her name (funny, because I can’t seem to remember it now); she liked the fact that her story was on the news for a different reason. You see, the television broadcast was merely a way to let more people know about her DIY Santa gig. People actually started showing up on her doorstep all throughout that December, asking for gifts. It turns out, there were a lot of poverty-stricken homes that she had been missing, ones that she failed to go to during her first decade of doing the Santa thing. She didn’t know just how many people there were in the city that couldn’t afford holiday gifts for their children. So, people that lived in neighborhoods that she had accidentally skipped began to come to her asking for gifts, too, because they had seen her on TV.

Me, personally, I would’ve told all of those bums to get the fuck off of my damn doorstep and away from my house. I’d tell them to go screw themselves, too. What fucking right do they have to ask me to give them shit? This woman, however, was different. She was glad that the word about her gift giving was spreading and that people in need were approaching her for help. Soon, it got to the point that she was so well-known around town, that she stopped delivering the presents. During winter break, the local middle school actually let her use their auditorium to set up areas with all the toys and stuff she made. Any and every one that had children that weren’t fortunate enough to be blessed with presents that year was allowed to come up there and pick a gift to take home. This kept going on for years; she’d build toys throughout the year, set up in the auditorium in December when school was out, and people would come. Eventually, she began to grow tired, too tired to make gifts, but that’s what happens with age, I suppose. Wait…wait…EMILY! Her name was Emily. Yeah, that was it. I remember her story; I remember how happy she looked whenever she told it. I especially remember how I always ended up feeling like shit after hearing it.

Now that I think of it, I felt miserable after hearing all of their stories. I can’t remember any of the other ghosts that used to hand around here. I can’t remember all the stories, names, or faces very well, but I remember that terrible feeling. That feeling that you get when you realize that you are nothing but a worthless shit stain on the face of the Earth. You know that feeling, I’m sure. Whenever a damn “do-gooder” talks about all the selfless stuff they’ve done and how they’ve helped society, you end up realizing that you haven’t contributed in any way at all to make the planet better. You end up seeing that you aren’t such a great person after all like you thought you were. In fact, you discover that in all your years of life, all you’ve been aiming to do was just look after yourself. You realize that…that you’re evil.

No one can hear me crying right now. I’m all alone in this dilapidated, dusty house. My spirit is trapped here; I have nowhere else to go and nothing to do. I’m dead and have yet to cross over, so every damn day of my afterlife is fucking miserable. I can’t produce tears anymore, due to the fact that I no longer have a body to reside in. I can still make crying sounds, though. Whimpers, sniffles, and moans echo throughout my empty abode as I wallow in my own wretchedness, my own self-hatred. I should be used to this by now; I do it every day.

I have this theory that one becomes more in touch with one’s emotions when in the afterlife. This seems to be the case for me, anyway. When I was alive, I was so cold and heartless, caring about no one but myself. In the afterlife, I learned that there is beauty in the human race, that good people do exist. I learned that people deserve to be treated with kindness and that selfishness leads to misery. All the other ghosts told me stories that showed me how amazing it can be to help others. This is what hurts me so much, knowing what a shithead I’ve been. When I was living, when I was in a position to be a Good Samaritan, I took it for granted and did nothing. Now, I’m dead and all alone, just like I deserve to be. I never helped anyone in need; I was never as great as Emily, Dave, or Sarah.

I was, or I still am, rather, completely useless. I hate thinking about this, but it’s all that lingers on my mind anymore. This feeling, a mixture of worthlessness, loneliness, and unimportance, envelops me, and it makes me dismal. What makes it worse, though, is the fact that I know this is why I never crossed over. I don’t deserve to move on since I’ve done nothing of value. So I am trapped here…forever.