Unfinished Business

Meghan

My name is Meghan, but people mostly just call me Meg, unless it’s my mom yelling at me to do the dishes or my great-uncle greeting me as Miss Meghan McCabe.  I’m fairly normal, I guess.  I wake up, go to school, take care of my garden, do my homework, eat dinner... the usual stuff that people do.  Except for now I’m dead.

Yeah, it sounds cliche.  But hey, at least I didn’t have some dramatic demise where I laid down my life to save my one true love or I suddenly developed cancer after winning the Nobel Prize or something.  No, my death was possibly one of the most stupid, pointless things you could’ve imagined.    

So there I was, waiting for the train to come to take me to school, as usual.  It was freezing cold, and I was so bundled up in various hats, gloves, scarves, and jackets that I could barely fit my backpack on over everything.  But hey, at least I was warm.

Unfortunately, my boots were not of the non-slip variety, and as I stepped forward in anticipation of the train’s approach, I skidded on a patch of ice, and onto the tracks I fell.  When the train hit me, my layers of warm clothing didn’t do much in the way of protecting me.  They did keep most of my body parts from spewing out all over the tracks for the various onlookers to see, so everyone thought that maybe I had survived.

By the time that someone had leaped down from the platform and announced that I was probably dead and that someone needed to call 911, I was having ye olde out of body experience, complete with frantic denial, oh-god-what-is-going-on, and a generous helping of tears.  When the ambulance arrived, I had discovered that no one could hear, see, touch, smell, or in any other way sense my presence.  I had already pretty much figured out the deal of what was going on by the time my parents showed up at the hospital.

See, the story goes that if you’re stuck on earth after you kick the bucket, you still have unfinished business left.  So I figured that I’d better start cracking on this whole moving on to eternal peace thing.  Of course, it would be rather helpful if I actually knew what my unfinished business is, but then I wouldn’t still be here, telling you my story, would I?

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One pretty cool thing about being a ghost is that even though I can’t get people to notice me directly, I can still mess with inanimate objects.  It’s a lot easier when I’m alone - I guess even ghosts get nervous around people.  So the first thing I did after following my parents home - and let me tell you, this whole walking as a ghost thing is the weirdest thing, what with the whole I-can-float-through-walls thing - was to go into my room, grab a pen and a piece of paper, and make a list of all the things that I wanted to do but never did.

It was a disappointing list, given that the only thing it included was a title.  To be fair, I had made it a really nice title, all orante and curly and flowing, but that was just to kill time as I tried to think of any unfinished business I had.

Okie-dokie.  There had to be something that I wished for with all my heart.  Graduate high school? Nah, it’s not that important.  I mean, I’m dead after all.  I’ve gained a little perspective.

Fuck someone?  I didn’t think that was physically possible anymore.

Murder someone?  My mind went instantly to that one really annoying guy in my class, - actually, four out of the seven classes every day, thankyouverymuch - the dudebro that always shouted out obnoxious answers to everything the teacher said.  Of course, the teacher never did anything about it, making it a bazillion times more annoying.