The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) (DRAFT)

The Almost Rock Star (A Ghost Story) 17, The Stranger

Chapter Seventeen

The Stranger

The room shifted again, and I had flash of a familiar face in my mind. It was a beautiful man. He looked like a bit of a rake; intense blue eyes and dark hair. It fell to his shoulders. He looked like a knight, a prince, a romantic ideal of my “Leader of the Pack.” Today, women might say he looked like a drug lord. To me, he looked, well, like the guy I was looking for before I died. He was everything I had ever wanted in a face. He was more. 

A thought came strongly into my head. I thought and heard the name “Daith” at the same time. Then the face was gone and my mind went dark. 

Why was he familiar looking? Who was it?

Just as quickly, the dark presence seemed to leave, too. The room was lighter. The shadows were just dark places where the late afternoon light falling across a room didn’t penetrate. 

Aja was looking at me. I blinked. 

“You’re visible all the time now, you know,” Aja said. “Are you concentrating?”

I was still staring at Aja. I was thinking of the familiar face. Aja looked somehow less to me. My best friend, my almost lover. He was just a friend. He was no longer someone I could think about marrying. Of course, now I couldn’t anyway. 

This new existence was something I was rebelling against. I was no longer among the living. Did this mean I didn’t have a life? I didn’t really feel that different.  A little lighter, maybe. A little less constrained in the space around me. But still me. 

Regardless of my state of being, I still wanted to find my soul mate. I didn’t want to be dead. I hated it. I hated my new life. 

“No. I’m not. Maybe you’re looking at me harder,” I said. “You’ve always seen ghosts. Maybe you’re the one who’s concentrating.”

He shook his head. Looked around. I did too, mostly wondering if the goddess was still here and if the evil presence would return. I wasn’t feeling safe here. 

Aja had one of his latest Biology 101 interpretations up on the wall, and that didn’t help. It was horrifying. I was used to Aja’s choice of subjects to paint, but that didn’t hide what it was. Another dissected fetal pig. “Tony’s Best.” In abstract, in oil paints. The red splash of paint across the canvas reminded me of my own death. The gory Picasso-esque paintings were Aja’s future. He was a great master chef, but he was an artist at heart. Creating dishes, he always said, was like painting a canvas. The only problem, he said, is that the art ended up down the toilet. Aja wanted something more eternal. 

The rest of the apartment looked like it always did. A cornucopia of life. A huge pile of dishes were in the sink. Normally in someone’s house, that would mean they had cooked for a whole family for a week. With Aja, it was probably just breakfast. He once made me a brunch that included a fluffy cheese omelet, homemade blueberry waffles with a homemade mixed forest berries syrup, smoked organic artisan bacon and chicken apple sausage, fresh baked herb cheese bread with pasture butter, and I can’t even remember what else. I was so stuffed I couldn’t eat all day. By the time I left, there were at least twenty-two dishes in the sink.