Chapter 8
-Wrigley-
Cash just keeps laughing despite my best efforts to shut him up, so in the end I give up and leave him to laugh in the corner of my room. Occasionally glancing over at the ghost, I try and ignore him whilst I brush my hair before braiding it.
I vaguely notice him stopping laughing eventually, and then I’m aware of a slightly cold feeling on my arm. Looking to the side, I see the solid Cash sitting right next to me, watching as I braid my hair, his hand touching my arm ever so slightly.
“Is your mum ill?”
I stare down at my lap, my hands momentarily freezing in my hair. Sighing, I stand up quickly, moving away from ghost-dude and heading to my bathroom. “Sometimes. Now can we have a general rule of not entering rooms when they’re locked? Because I don’t care if you’ve already seen me naked, I don’t fancy having you phase through any walls whilst I’m trying to shower."
Cash nods, still sitting at my desk. Turning around, I lock the bathroom door behind me. I don’t actually plan on having a shower, I mean I just plaited my hair and I showered this morning, so. But I just…didn’t really want to talk about my mum.
Most of the time, she’s fine. But occasionally? She completely loses it. And it’s upsetting for us all when that happens. The problem is that as time progresses, her two states begin to merge. And like today, she becomes more and more certain that she can see my dad.
But my dad doesn’t have a ghost. It was one of the rules my mum first taught me about ghosts. And I checked with Cash when he first told me how he died, but I didn’t need to. I knew he didn’t commit suicide.
Because those who do, don’t have ghosts.
And neither do those who die of old age. It’s all about losing your life before your time - people like Cash, people who had accidents or were murdered, or randomly got sick…they were taken too soon. So, they get a sort of…second chance. It isn’t the same, but it’s something.
But people who die of old age? They already had their chances. They got to live their lives, so they don’t become ghosts. And neither do suicide victims because in a way, that would just be cruel, making them have to keep existing as a ghost for an indefinite amount of time.
My mum still sees my dad everywhere; she just can’t believe that he left her. But my dad didn’t die of old age, and my mother doesn’t want to believe that he was struggling so much. So, at some point, she drove herself crazy trying to search for his ghost.
She could see all these other ghosts, all these other people’s loved ones. But she would never be able to see the one person she longed for.
And my sister stopped believing her. She stopped believing that our mother could see ghosts at all, and was certain that our father’s death simply sent her over the edge. And maybe it did. But the end result is the same: my mother is stuck in a psychiatric ward where they’re all certain that she’s mad.
But she isn’t insane, she’s just grieving.
And she may think that her husband’s ghost visits her all the time in the form of different doctors, but that- that’s just her mind in denial. And whilst no one believes her, I do. I do believe that she can see ghosts, and I do believe that she’s seeing my dad’s ghost; what she thinks is my dad’s ghost.
I just also think that she’s being deceived by her own sadness.
But I hope that one day, one day, she’ll be able to accept what happened. I just want my mother back. Because it feels like when I lost my dad, I also lost part of my mum. And it hurts to see her in pain, so what do I do?
I don’t look. And that makes it all worse, I know it does, but for once, I just want to close my eyes and pretend that everything is fine.
I’m vaguely aware of the cold bathroom tiles beneath me as I huddle up against the wall, my knees up to my chest and my face hidden in them whilst the feeling of talking to my mum and all the sadness that experience brings with it washes over me.
After a while of crying silently, cold arms wrap around me and my face gets pushed into a white shirt. Still snivelling slightly, I’m not an emotional wreck enough that I can’t punch Cash’s shoulder.
“Ow, what was that for?” He says, trying to sound angry but just sounding concerned. “I told you not to come in,” I say after a moment, wrapping my arm around his back and wiping the last few tears from my eyes.
“Yeah but there was only so long I could listen to you crying without doing something. And you can’t even lie and say that the hug didn’t help.”
Huffing slightly, I poke Cash’s shoulder but continue hugging him. It’s true, the hug did help slightly, but I’d also just mainly finished crying by the time he arrived.
Clearing my throat, I eventually stand up, still facing away from Cash slightly as I wipe my face quickly. “Yeah so um, thanks. I guess. Cool. Right. Well I’m going to bed, see you tomorrow.”
Breezing past Cash, I pull my bathroom door open again and practically throw myself in to bed after quickly swapping my clothes for pyjamas. My main light turns off after a moment and Cash says quietly “goodnight, Wrigley.”
I don’t know where he goes after that, I don’t even know if ghosts sleep. I don’t even know if Cash can eat anything, surely he could when he’s solid? But I guess when he’s solid it’s not like he’s alive, he’s just not slightly see-through anymore.
I still have a lot of questions to ask him, important stuff like ‘how the fuck are you wearing clothes if you died in the bath’ and ‘why aren’t you perpetually soggy if you died in the bath’ and ‘was your hair always white’ and ‘did you seriously go out in public wearing all white? That’s kind of weird but hey no judgement here if that’s your shitty taste in style then so be it’ and also ‘hey so are you actually gay then?’
All important questions, like I said.
Comments (15)
See all