Full of holes
The wind blows the door open and the rusted hinges creak.
People don’t come up to this floor unless the roof leaks too much.
Even then, those who know this place, don’t stay here too long.
Even the landlord hates it, and is too cheap to fix it up, despite the fact he could get a lot more rent for it if he did. He must know by this time I live here, and is scared of me.
I’m as lonely and empty and as full of holes as the room is, though it is no ordinary wind that blows through me.
I am always cold, always aching to light up the old stove, though no fire can warm a man who long longer owns bone or flesh to keep a spirit it.
On some lonely days, I watch the paint peel and the pipes rust, and wonder how long eternity is, and why I don’t own a watch or have a reflection in the mirror.
I remember how cold I felt the day they carted by old bones out of her, the sad faces, the frightened stares, and how carefully the policed carried the pistol out, as if it was a limb that had come loose from me when I pulled the trigger.
At first, when left alone, I was smug, thinking of how I had cheated death by living on after my heart ceased and my brain no longer functioned.
I assumed, naturally, that death settled everything, tying up the ends of those loose threads I so tangled while alive.
If you believe pulling the trigger was a brave act, then you’re wrong.
Not compared to the web of tangled woes I had weaved in life that made death seem attractive.
I did not know how much worse off I could become when finally free of all those threads, an unencumbered spirit who could not untie one last threat, the one that bound me most firmly to this room.
I ache for when the roof leaks enough to force some human faces to appear if only to fix the leak rush out.
Sometimes, I can peer out the window and see the shapes of people passing far below, mostly shadows against the landscape, yet living things none the less.
When people do wander up here for some reason, they sense me, and flee as fast as possible, making the loneliness more acute after having had them come so close.
Sometimes, rats and mice keep me company, fickle friends seeking refuge from the hunters in the rest of the building, their children and children’s children passing through, rising from and falling back to the dust when I do not.
Years pass and the ache of loneliness increases, each year making me ache for another finger on the trigger so I might shed this last thread with a piece of lead.
Yet how do you kill a ghost?
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