The problem is, the kind of person I want to meet is the kind of person who doesn’t enjoy socializing. I dislike attending loud gatherings, and I abhor “wacky freak encounters”. You know, the ones where a woman with her nose in a book is walking down the sidewalk, and bangs her head into unconsciousness at the unexpected arrival of a lamppost in her face. The young man would pass by the scene, smirking slightly at the adorableness of the fall, and of course, at the pale blue dress this girl is wearing. The savior would rush to her rescue. Upon waking, she takes, one look, and she KNOWS! OH MY GOD SHE KNOWS! He’s the one.
No. I would prefer to already have someone. To skip the rather boring practice of meeting and getting to know. I detest the notion that I am required to ask someone what their favorite ___ is (Or any Yes/No question for that matter). Perhaps this is the root of my recent tendency to stay at home Friday nights with a body pillow and my laptop, laughing coyly once in awhile to the body pillow, nudging it slowly, and eventually, making out with it.
This creative solution to my loneliness lasted about three weeks. Until around May 20th, when the old lady started showing up. I mean, It’s kind of awkward to make out with a pillow when the ghost of an old lady could be standing at the foot of your bed at any moment. At first she’d just stand there, and we’d stare at each other until I’d start to nod off, at which point the old lady would put a fur hat on her head, seemingly out of nowhere, and let out a short, huffy, “HA!”, the sound itself was like a puff of smoke. POOF. Then she’d disappear. It left me sleepless, more neurotic than usual, and an even less pleasant person for others to be around.
Naturally, I told my dentist about this. She was the only person, after all, who I came to trust in the matter of my dental health. Who else would understand the fragility of this information?
She didn’t respond well. Actually, she grimaced, as though uncomfortably withholding a much needed bathroom break. She excused herself—I assumed to visit the Ladies’. But she didn’t come back. Instead I ended up spending the night in the hospital psych ward, where they stuffed me full of “I See”s and “Oh, a ghost? Wooooow. So take these pills here…”
The next morning I drove home, cradling a prescription for sleeping pills and a five hundred dollar hospital bill. Not to mention the loss of a trusted dentist, which I embraced heavily in the shoulder region, it was slumping me down, into bed, into the face of the old woman again.
“Look, lady, I burned sage in here when I first moved in—maybe you didn’t get the memo. You should probably, just you know, move along into the next world, or face your earthly purgatory, or turn into a turtle—you know, whatever you—“
“HA!” a finger pointed at my face, the hat again.
“Right. So, leave or, I’ll try to…vacuum you or something.”
The old woman crawled into my bed and sat on my stomach. There was no weight to feel, however the sheets and my squished stomach reacted to her normally, making indentations where frail, decrepit limbs should be.
I was thankful that I didn’t have to actually touch her rotten skin, her drooping muscle far too dramatic and walrus-like to belong to a normal senior citizen. Her face was almost unrecognizable because the skin was flaked and chapped all over. Even her dark, beady eyes had their own mustaches of flaky peach fuzz. It was as though her soul had continued rotting, as her body served platters of worm food somewhere.
She whispered to my face, her S’s hissing and her body visibly shaking. It seemed a great feat to be able to speak.
“Turmoil over Yosemite.”
“What?” I squinted. She seemed to be fading away. She stared at me like the Cheshire Cat with horrible news. Her eyes remained after everything else was gone. The entire room had gone darker, but the whites in her matted eyeballs were still bulbous and glowing. Then they too, were gone.
My stomach felt squeezed together and angrily acidic. I turned on the light. I opened the blinds. It was sunrise. Which didn’t make sense, because it was definitely only eight p.m. when the ghost lady first appeared.
I must have been abducted by aliens, I thought instantly. This thought felt way more comfortable than An old lady appeared and creepily said one sentence that turned the night into day.
At that, my dog Clarence jumped on my bed and wagged her fat corgy tail at me. I screamed “yes!” out loud and made a touchdown hand gesture as Clarence licked me, pinning me down to the pillow and happily chose my neck as a place to lay her front paws. I was relieved to have a reason to get out of bed at sunrise.
It was dewy and harshly cold outside. The air felt like it was splintering my nostrils when I breathed in. Clarence immediately lifted her leg at the curb of the driveway. She was a masculine little gal. Always got my mind off things like taxes, loneliness, and elderly ghost aliens.
The garbage man pulled up.
“MORNING!” I yelled over the engine of the truck. He gave me a nod.
“SO I WAS ABDUCTED BY ALIENS LAST NIGHT!”
His mouth moved as if to say. “What?” but I couldn’t hear his voice. So I repeated myself. He turned off the truck, walked up to me and guessed, “Suns is seducted my checkerboard?”
“So I was abducted by aliens last night.”
He turned around, his face unchanged, mumbling something about how he never should have left Minnesota. Then he got in his truck and left, my recycling untouched.
“Shit”, I thought, staring vapidly at Clarence’s mid-poop squat. “This is for real.”
fictionconsolidated 