I am not a Ghost ... You just can't see me

I am not a ghost... You just can't see me [3]

It would not be long before the young couple who had bought the house would arrive. So I had better start packing. I got up from the window ledge and went to pack my stuff.  For the last 7 and half months I have claimed a small corner in the back of the attic for my own; which I surrounded with forts of moving boxes and mostly useless junk. I don’t have a lot of material possessions; well ones that mean much to me anyway. I basically live out of an old suitcase that my father once used when he was a young man. The suitcase has obviously seen much better days but it is a piece of the shattered mirror of my past, and in the reflection my fathers smiling face.

Over the years many things have filled it; from old toys to CDs. Every so often I unload the content in secret places around my dwellings; in parks, old drain pipes and I even once put my stash inside a cemetery. Every time I hide a new load I write myself a treasure map to find it again (a habit I developed young and one that I find is hard to break). At the moment its contents are more reasonable than in the past; a small laptop-which I acquired while sharing a house with a door-to-door computer salesman- and a small collection of clothing including my favorite hoodie which is covered in bright paint spatters; I like it because it reminds me that one of the benefits of being invisible is that you can wear whatever you want and no one can ever judge you for it. I also have a couple of keepsakes from my last 4 haunts in the case as well; they are only small things like a bracelet, a old copy of Dracula, a well-worn toy bear and an iPod I collected off an amazingly well off family.

In the last 11 years I have ‘haunted’ fifty or so families, and from every one I have collected a little memento.  I have been the sock monster equivalent for the past 11 years, taking the odd piece of clothing here and there as well as some other nick knacks. It is my way of remembering all the families that I have haunted and all the fun I had doing it.

My favorite thing that I managed to ‘collect’ would have to have been the checkered rainbow hoody with speakers- which is currently buried at the very very bottom of my suitcase, while I love it I have outgrown it and so I was planning to drop it into a second hand bin when I next come across one- The only thing that I actually remember about the family that I ‘collected’ it from was that the daughters room was always covered in clothes, which made collecting the hoody without being noticed a breeze. What really shocked me was that she didn’t even notice that it was gone. I mean it was the most freaken awesome thing I had ever seen and she didn’t even know it was missing!! So I took advantage of her obviously lack of caring about her stuff. I ended up getting a whole outfit from her.

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As I put the last of my stuff into the old suitcase I quickly gave the house the once over, before packing my mothers spell and ritual books into my satchel.

Those books were the only things I had of my mother. I remember before my parents died that she would try to read me a fairy tale before I went to sleep at night and ever since I can remember I use to tell her that I wanted her to read to me from ‘her books’, and she always would reciting small spells to make ghost-like butterflies flutter around my room. They were so beautiful.

Once I was sure I had everything I placed a charm to hide my bags and walked out of the house suitcase and satchel in hand. Before I left that attic for the last time I recited the charm my mother used before putting me to bed;

Butterfly pulchra ardor lucida luceat lux vestra, cape ab astris felicitate quam quondam audire solebas ... 

 three small ghost like butterflies fluttered around the room for a moment before disappearing back into the musky darkness of the attic. I didn’t know where I was going but that was always the fun of moving…