Ghostly, Yours

October 29th

I couldn't help it; I laughed at him. He just glared at me, standing widely in front of me. He rolled his eyes and I nearly dropped my pickles as I continued chuckling.

All of a sudden, he looked at the kitchen. Then, one of my knives came flying around the corner. It looked shaky, but I couldn't take my eyes off it. Suddenly, it flew at me and I dropped to the floor. It landed in the wall just above where I had been standing and my eyes widened in fright.

Just then, I let out a loud shriek as I stood up abruptly, cradling my pickle jar. I stumbled away from him, running into every single thing in my house. I paused, took a deep breath, and started screaming once more. The man— ghost, whatever, just stared at me with hardly concealed disdain. Finally, I stopped screaming because my throat became hoarse.

Once I stood still, he started walking towards me leisurely. I took a few steps back before tripping over my shoes that were in the doorway. Thankfully, my pickle jar landed on my stomach and didn't shatter.

He started walking faster, closing the distance between us. I tried to crawl backwards, but my back hit the front door. As he came toe-to-toe with me, he reached down and offered me his hand. I looked at it curiously before reaching out. I leaned forward and tried to grab his hand, but ended up falling forward and right through him.

He let out a booming chuckle as I rolled forward and hit my head on the floor.  As I groaned, my pickle jar rolled out from under my stomach slowly. I held my head as I stood up clumsily and turned around to face him. He was standing right in front of me, leaning over me ominously and I squealed. I jumped back slightly and my heel landed on the pickle jar, sending me flying. My back hit the floor with a thud and my head soon followed.

This, set the ghost into a fit of laughter. I clutched the back of my head in pain before shutting my eyes. I sat up straight and opened my eyes, feeling dazed. My vision was a little blurred and all I could see was a blob of blonde hair towering above me. Once my eyes focused, I saw a hand in front of my face. I glared up at him, my head pounding, before standing up and looking around for my pickles.

I found them in the corner and walked right through the boy. He felt solid, but not. It was almost like a faint resistance in the air when I crossed through him. He made a sound of discomfort as I did so, but I ignored it. I tucked my black hair behind my ear before bending down to pick up the jar. My fork had long since disappeared, probably somewhere in the living room.

I hadn't quite processed everything yet, but my head was hurting too bad to even try. I walked back to the kitchen, completely ignoring the ghostly entity that was following me around. I put my pickles back in the fridge, no longer hungry.

"Who are you?" He asked, tailing me like a shadow.

"Someone who doesn't want to get decapitated," I snapped, angrily. It didn't feel like I was talking to a ghost, he seemed as real as I was and I had a hard time understanding that he wasn't.

"That was just a little bit of fun," he defended as if that was a valid excuse.

"For you," I replied, sitting back down on my chair and pulling out my phone as if he wasn't even there.

"Hey," he said, "pay attention to me."

"What are you, a child?" I retorted, almost snorting at my own reply.

"Well, I already told you that I was a ghost, but you're clearly not the best at taking information," he snapped, sitting on the coffee table. I looked up from my phone to glare at him before playing a game. I wanted to say something really mean, but I bit my tongue. Partly because I didn't want to be mean, but also because he was a ghost and he could probably kill me in my sleep.

After literally fifteen seconds of silence, he broke it by saying, "I'm Chris, what's your name?"

I didn't reply, I just kept my mouth shut. My head was still vaguely hurting, but I was ignoring it like I was ignoring him.

"Why won't you answer me?" He asked with a sad pout on his face. I scoffed and looked up at him.

"I'll let you find the answer to that question. It probably has something to do with the recent events." I said nothing more as he seemed to think it over for about two seconds.

"Okay, fine, what I did wasn't nice and I'm sorry," he said, sounding sincere but somewhat rushed.

I watched him skeptically and waited for him to say something more. When he said nothing, I sighed.

"They were just jokes..." he muttered, really sounding like a child this time.

"I hit my head on the floor. Twice," I stated, getting angrier by the second.

"I said I was sorry," he repeated, crossing his arms over his chest. "Can I have a second chance? I promise I'll be better."

I thought it over for a moment. I really didn't want to be haunted and from what I understood, he just wanted to be noticed. The minute I stopped paying attention to him, he started pining for it. He's like some of the children at my work. So, that's what I based my decision on.

"Fine. I'll give you a second chance," I paused when he started grinning ear-to-ear, "but, I have a few rules."

At that, he frowned and slouched a little. "One, no throwing things at me." He smiled a little to himself.

"Two, at least try to be nice to me," I continued and his grin only grew making me wonder if I'd made the wrong choice.

"And three," I had to think about this one, "I get to ask you one question a day and you have to answer truthfully." He tilted his head curiously and this time, I smiled.

"So, here's my question, how old are you?" I questioned, smiling happily.

"Didn't your parents ever teach you not to ask people that question?" Chris asked, smirking at me with a quirked eyebrow.

"Well, you don't really qualify as 'people', as you keep reminding me," I retorted. Now it was my turn to smirk at him.

He glared at me and answered, "I'm 87."