My Own Desert Places

By Jon Ureña

I have endured the faded, lonely afterlife for about twenty years. Recently I heard Alazne, a breathing woman, play her guitar desperately, and I have haunted her house ever since. My Alazne has gotten a taste of the afterlife through her loneliness and depression. Now that we share a cramped apartment, I love to watch her playing the guitar in her underwear, I love to admire her naked body from centimeters away, I love to witness how she pleasures herself, I love when she breaks the silence to declare to nobody that she wants to die. Although my beloved ignores that I exist, she has given me a faint hope. I retain the ghostly ability to possess people, and I want to find some way for both of us to live again.

 

An irreverent mix of dark comedy, drama, erotica and supernatural, set in the north of Spain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jon Ureña
• Release date: Oct 5, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201966492

Book preview

Copyright

© Copyright 2021 by Jon Ureña – All rights reserved.

Cover art by Betty Martinez.

The cover is built upon Atom Hovhanesyan’s artwork called ‘Standing Woman homage to Giacometti’. Therefore, the cover art of this novel is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

About the Author

Social Media

Chapter 1

I love Alazne, and I have grown beyond caring about the damage it will cause me to admit it. I love her pale, freckled face, those big hazel eyes that always seem minutes away from tearing up. I love her soft voice, and how intimate feel those few instances in which she speaks to herself at home while she’s conscious. I always yearn for the next time she will get undressed, rest her guitar on her thigh and play for a couple of hours, caring very little about the neighbors. I love how she sits on a stool under a warm shower and pleasures herself for twenty minutes. I love how she spits on her toilet paper before she wipes her ass. I love lying in bed next to her naked body and admiring the pink skin of her nipples or her pussy from a few centimeters away. I love when she returns exhausted from another meaningless day in the office and she collapses onto her wrinkled sheets. I love how she breaks her silence sometimes to admit to nobody that she wants to die. I love how she mumbles in her sleep, and how some nights she barely gets an hour of respite and spends the rest rolling around, half of the time crying. But I hate that I will never get her to look into my eyes. I will never hold her in my arms, nor drink the pain away from her mouth.

Today was one of those days in which I can’t bear it. I exit her place and walk the kilometers-long path to my pal Iñaki’s dilapidated home to spend the night. I don’t bother taking the train today; walking it off will do me some good. As soon as I leave the populated streets behind I feel my anxiety washing away. Iñaki’s place has been abandoned for maybe a hundred years. The guy hates opening up about his past, and I like people who don’t talk much anyway.

Close to nighttime I reach the half-ruined front of his house, all those busted windows and graffitied walls. As I walk through the doorless doorway I spot Iñaki standing in the middle of what remains of his living room, if one can still call it that. He’s staring down at the open pages of a yellowed, piss-stained hardcover novel. He must have read the same words hundreds of times, but I guess it’s better than following the spiders and cockroaches.

Seeing him cheers me up. He always listens. I can’t say that about most people.

What’s up? I ask. Haven’t seen you in what, like a week and a half?

Seems like forever, doesn’t it? Iñaki shrugs. I don’t know how you can stand living with one of them.

Carefully, I lower myself onto the ruins of the sofa until it holds whatever passes for my weight.

Yeah, you would hate it. And I didn’t enjoy all those others, to be honest. They were more like distractions. But this woman… she’s the one.

Iñaki turns from his book to look at me. I recognize his exhausted expression in the shadowy frame.

Has she brought someone else over to her place? he asks.

Well… not just someone. She brought her soulmate.

Iñaki chuckles, although it sounds like wood creaking.

I think that only about one in millions would willingly bring one of us in. And those are crazy.

Her music called me. She wasn’t just playing, she was pleading to the uncaring world. It’s just too bad that I can’t give it to her…

Iñaki wanders out of the room. I listen to his erratic footsteps. He likes to do this kind of shit, he gets fed up with the company that quick and needs to release his anxiety. I don’t mind.

He returns a few minutes later.

And how long do you plan on staying with her?

Until I disappear, like I should have done.

Iñaki takes a seat next to me. The stars must have aligned.

Does she hear you at all? he asks with a hint of sadness. Sense you at least?

I need to yell very loud for that, and she has never understood the words. I don’t like confusing her, she has enough on her plate. She already thinks that she’s this close to losing it.

I don’t understand your types. Then why do you stay with someone who doesn’t care nor can sense you?

Why do I stay? Maybe because I retained some shred of hope, or because Alazne’s all I have now. Hope of what? There’s nothing better coming. There can’t be. We can’t even look forward to the changes in our decaying bodies. And I have no clue if they ever recovered my corpse.

Sometimes… it gets too much, escapes from my mouth.

Iñaki sighs deeply.

I understand. Knowing that all this will come to an end one day, and you will never see any of your favorites again. It makes it even worse that you don’t know when it’s coming.

My friend stands up from the ruined sofa and wanders out of the room once more. I’ll give him some time to cool down. But I should have caught this guy on one of his silent days, because my anxiety remains strong, and the old weight, the black mass, is pulling me towards the ground.

Around one in the morning, a van parks on the overgrown yard, maybe twenty meters away from the ruined front of this house. I stand on the doorway as three excited guys wearing coats start unloading a bunch of strange equipment.

What the fuck are they doing? I ask out loud.

Iñaki is standing next to me.

Those idiots again. They scouted my place a few days ago.

And what exactly are they doing?

They blabbered all about it. Some ghost hunting garbage, for that internet thing.

I roll my eyes. I know all about the internet, but Iñaki hates computers. My Alazne loves wasting her time online, and I usually stand behind her as she watches YouTube videos, browses Reddit, or touches herself. I still don’t know why she bothers going incognito for the porn sites. It’s not like anybody enters her apartment.

In five minutes, the three idiots from the van have gathered their electronic equipment on the nasty floor of the living room. As one of them unpacks something that resembles a video game console, he kicks Iñaki’s open book. The guy turns and notices that it’s a book instead of some ghostly shit, but then he complains about the piss stains. He kicks the book again towards a corner, causing the hardcover to close. Iñaki narrows his eyes. If he could control his powers properly, he would probably poltergeist the crap out of him.

I walk up to the ghost hunter and yell in his ear.

Get the fuck out of here, punk!

He flinches and turns towards me. I take a step back, as I don’t want his face that close.

Did you guys hear that? the ghost hunter asks, concerned. It was like a whisper.

I’m pissed off, that’s who I am! You want some of this?

The other two idiots listen in silence for some seconds, then shake their heads.

No, I didn’t get that, one of them says. But this place is promising. Let’s get rolling.

The three of them have set up a camera on a tripod, and are unpacking stuff that looks like a mixer, a cassette recorder, and a bunch of wires. Also a couple of handheld cameras. They’re talking about frequencies or some equally boring shit. One of the guys is fiddling with his camera’s settings, another one takes out his phone.

I would have expected Iñaki to curse at them and then walk off either to the second floor or the basement, but he has crossed his arms and is staring at the intruders as if evaluating their performance.

Yep, this should do it, says the ghost hunter who placed the camera on the tripod, as he checks the screen of his phone.

They mess with the wires and the cassette recorder until they seem to be done. They look at each other and nod while they smile in satisfaction.

Let’s do a test recording, one of them says, and presses some buttons on the device.

Alright, if there’s any ghost in here, please speak into this recorder. It should be able to catch your voice if you speak loud enough or put enough energy into it. Say whatever you want.

I look at Iñaki in case he wants to try. He remains still, with his eyes narrowed. Maybe it would embarrass him. I lean in towards the recorder and shout some insults. After twenty seconds or so, one of the guys replays the content.

You hear that? It sounds like a girl.

Can’t quite catch what she’s saying, though.

A girl ghost.

I’m fully grown, I say.

They listen to the recording a couple more times. Content, they try recording again.

We heard you! one of the guys says into the recorder. Please talk to us some more. What’s your name? Are you lost? Do you know you are dead?

It amuses me enough, so I talk into the device again.

I’m Irene. I would prefer to pretend I don’t know I’m dead, because my demise was pathetic. It happened around twenty years–

They interrupt me by stopping the recording. They listen to it. I can’t hear clearly enough, but as the guys do, they lift their heads and stare at each other.

You heard that, right? She said ‘mommy’. She must be looking for her mom.

Oh god. That’s so sad, one says while the others nod in agreement.

I stomp on the dirty floor.

There was nothing close to that word in my sentences!

For five minutes, the ghost hunters walk around Iñaki’s ruined place while they call out to a little girl. I keep insulting them, but they only hear whispers. They say they are going to post this recording online.

I hope the comment section rips you guys a new one, I mutter.

Iñaki grunts loudly, which terrifies the ghost hunters. One of them suggests they should leave. What a bunch of pansies. Oh well, it was a good enough night. But the guys decide to stay and instead ask more questions with their cassette thing while they point at it with their cameras.

As the guy holding the recorder is about to interrogate us, one of the others pats him on the shoulder.

That sounded like a demon. Maybe it’s a demon pretending to be a little girl.

The guy with the recorder seems troubled. His gaze darts between his friends and the corners of the room. He stops the device.

Should leave this place? he asks. I’m getting really bad vibes all of a sudden. Like we are messing with something evil.

I would punch you if I could, I say.

We already brought over our stuff, the third ghost hunter says, and snatches the audio recorder. Let’s get some more evidence.

He asks for whoever grunted to speak to them. I was going to try recording my voice again, but to my surprise, Iñaki steps forward and speaks loudly, with a grave voice.

Here I am.

When the guys listen to the recording, they are amazed.

You heard that? It said ‘I am’, or something like that.

Here I am, suggests another.

Let’s get more. What’s your name?

Iñaki.

That was a name, wasn’t it? one of the guys says.

Was it Íñigo? says another.

How old are you? When did you die? asks the guy with the recorder.

Iñaki leans in so his mouth almost touches the recorder. He speaks so resoundingly that it sends chills down my non-existent spine. There must be ghost magic involved.

Basement.

What was that? the guys say.

When they record again, Iñaki, irritated, insists.

Go to the basement.

After the ghost hunters listen to the recording, they all confirm that they understood loud and clear. For a couple of minutes they compare how the hair on their arms has stood up.

Will you move on? I ask them, annoyed. People get chills and their arm hair stands up when ghosts are around. You don’t have to keep repeating it.

The ghost hunters are too excited to pay attention to me, and they can’t hear me anyway.

Let’s go, to the basement! one of them exclaims.

They descend the half-ruined, dusty stairs to the lower floor. I follow them. Iñaki is sticking close, but he seems even more somber than usual.

Hey, are you that sick of these idiots that you are planning on trapping them somehow? I ask him.

He gives me a funny look.

Why would I want them dead?

Because you can’t stand them. They remind you of the fact that you’re dead.

Being dead reminds me that I’m dead. The boredom and resentment of having so much free time and no way to affect the world reminds me that I’m dead.

I lack a witty answer to that, so we descend to the basement.

It’s so dark… one of the ghost hunters grumbles, and cold.

How else did you expect a basement in a ruined house to be? I ask.

Do you feel that? asks another. The temperature has dropped.

You bunch of cookie-cutter bastards, I tell them.

They ignore me and start setting up their gadgets, some of which they carry on their belts. One guy shines a flashlight here and there, looking for something to catch.

I turn to look at Iñaki, but he’s no longer standing behind me. Instead he’s half-crouched near a corner of the basement as if waiting at the starting line of a race. It looks wrong on such a lanky ghost. He bursts into a sprint that disturbs some dust. The ghost hunters turn towards the sound. Iñaki had put all his effort into the run, and his footsteps had broken into the realm of the fools whose hearts still beat.

Those were footsteps! one of the ghost hunters says while he records the general area of the sounds.

As if someone sprinted, another adds.

Where are you? asks the third as he sweeps the space with his flashlight.

Iñaki’s sprint had taken him to the opposite corner of the basement, and there he hides, unseen.

One of the ghost hunters tries to follow Iñaki’s path along, hoping to catch some evidence, and he suddenly stops and crouches towards a yellowed newspaper on the floor. He lifts it. Whatever he finds under it startles him.

Oh shit, a ouija board! The ghost hunter’s voice trembles as he holds the board. This explains everything!

What the hell is it supposed to explain? I ask.

They must have summoned the ghosts, a ghost hunter says as he shakes his head. Some idiots that didn’t know what they were doing.

Some kids, probably, the previous ghost hunter adds.

Iñaki has returned to my side.

How come you own a ouija board now? I ask him.

It was some kids. They came to drink down here, act tough and have sex. They ended up fleeing, but left that behind.

What a mess. Watch out, these bastards will end up conjuring a demon.

The ghost hunters are stupid enough to gather around the ouija board and dare each other to try talking to us. I sigh, but this is my entertainment for the night.

The three so-called ghost hunters join fingers on the planchette. Iñaki and I haven’t even approached them when one of the guys gasps and lifts his index fingers off the small wooden board.

There’s someone writing! he says, spooked. It’s moving!

Hey, keep your fingers on the planchette!

Both me and Iñaki walk up to tower over their shoulders. The planchette is motionless.

If you don’t help them move it, Iñaki, I say, they’ll get bored and leave. Is that what you wanted?

Iñaki remains silent. He bends his long legs so that his hand can reach the planchette. He concentrates as he nudges the small board to make it spell out something. H-E-L-P.

The ghost hunters freak out for a moment, then laugh nervously.

You are still recording, right?

I think so! another ghost hunter answers as he fiddles with his handheld camera.

I want to crouch next to the planchette and spell out FUCK OFF, but I have never been any good at moving stuff on the plane of the living. And although some ghosts insist that you can train for these abilities, I never had to train for mine. I don’t want to put in the effort anyway.

I feel like joking around. I turn towards Iñaki’s shadowy face before I have thought of what to say, but the determined look in his eyes unsettles me.

I need your help, Irene, he says.

With what?

Take one of these guys.

Excuse me?!

I nearly jump back. It felt like he was demanding me to shove a knife into my eye, if I had been able to interact with physical objects for the last couple of decades. The very thought makes me dizzy.

Hey, don’t joke around with that. I have told you how it feels! You can scare these idiots with anything else.

Iñaki steps closer and places his hands on my shoulders. It feels cold and nebulous. One never gets used to another ghost touching you, even as a ghost.

I remember your vivid description. But do it for me, just this time. Because this is it. The end of my plan.

What plan?

My plan to make it right.

Iñaki, I don’t want to help. Look at you, you are nothing but a rotten soul.

Yes, sure. That’s why you come by so often. To gape at a miserable, bitter ghost.

It’s better than television.

You come by because you don’t want to be reminded that you will never be alive anymore, and you remain among the damned because you haven’t come to terms with it.

My ghostly eyelids twitch. I want to turn around and leave, but I get the feeling that Iñaki would force me to stay.

I came by for your stories, and that’s all, I mutter. Stop hitting below the belt.

Look at me. Look at what I am. No light, no body to speak of. No one would ever know. And you will forget me too, in the end.

I’m sure you were a miserable bastard even when you could breathe.

And that’s why you’ll help me.

I close my eyes and try to calm down. Iñaki truly wants this for whatever reason, and he has never been as forthcoming with me.

Let’s get this over with. It better be important.

As the ghost hunters wonder out loud how come the talkative ghost has abandoned them, I jump-crouch into one of the idiots as if I were cannonballing into a pool. Possessing a breathing human is the worst feeling in the world. The person’s soul engulfs yours, touches you all over as if it were a thousand greasy tongues, and the more you spend in the body, the more insisting the licking becomes. In the past it made me so angry that I started beating up the people who had come to figure out why my vessel was rolling around on the floor of the supermarket.

I can hear Iñaki to my left, even though I’m trying to get used to looking through someone else’s eyeballs.

You can talk and move the guy’s body, right? He sounds impressed. To be honest, I thought you had been lying.

L-lying?! I blurt out through a stranger’s wet mouth. Who do you take me for?!

I apologize, Iñaki says.

In front of me, seated on the dirty floor, the remaining two ghost hunters are trembling as they stare at me wide-eyed.

Jokin, what’s wrong?

I think… I feel… this so called Jokin whispers through his body I’m possessing, because I was distracted.

When I take the control away from him, my eyes roll to the back of my head, and the body becomes limp for a moment. I feel as if I were sliding through goo filled with pubes.

I glare at the two idiots.

There’s no Jokin here any longer, I mumble, showering them with spittle as my lips twitch. Only the devil.

The two ghost hunters scream. I’m sure they’ll scramble to their feet and run away, but they seem to fear that the moment they turn around, I’m going to pounce on them. I may.

Irene! Iñaki shouts. I didn’t want to give them a scare! Please, listen. You need to convince them to break through a section of the wall behind you. That’s why I wanted you to suffer this uncomfortable process. Turn around. It’s a reddish stretch that looks like the bricks don’t belong, that they were put together by someone who didn’t quite know what he was doing.

I look over my shoulder as my possessed hands tremble. I can’t see shit, but this Jokin guy had left his flashlight on the floor next to him. I pick it up, switch it on and light up the dusty wall. I spot the reddish bricks immediately. They look as if some mold had grown on that specific area.

The other two ghost hunters are talking to me when I turn towards them again. I haven’t paid attention to what they were saying.

Hey, I was kidding about being the devil, I say while drooling. Typical ghost joke. You must be new at this, huh?

To his credit, one of the ghost hunters hasn’t peed himself. He’s holding his handheld towards me while staring at his possessed friend.

Y-you want our help? So you can finally rest in peace? You better not be joking around, Jokin!

I’m getting mad with all the licking, I groan. Listen to me, you pair of cocksu–… Do you see the wall behind me? That spot with the distinct bricks? I need you to break through them for whatever reason. There must be something behind, I’m guessing.

Y-you want us to break a part of the wall?

Am I talking into a recorder here?

Because you left something inside?

I mean, probably! Go ahead and get to kicking or punching or hitting it with something. If you refuse, when I abandon your friend’s body I will follow you home, and for the rest of your life I will witness how you touch yourself.

The two idiots, excited and scared, run over themselves to reach that dodgy spot of the wall. When one pushes the bricks, they shift slightly. He takes off his shoe and starts hitting them hard. The dust makes him cough.

I stand up with this wobbly body, but I trip and nearly faceplant. The ghost hunters are distracted, which preserves my dignity. I stumble towards them to oversee their efforts.

You are lacking in power! Puny humans! I scream through their friend’s mouth. I also drop his flashlight, but pick it up in time to shine it directly at their faces.

A-are you gonna help us or what? one of them dares to say.

He has guts, so I shrug.

Let’s trade places. I’ll be on the left and you on the right! Go!

We hit the bricks with more intent. This Jokin guy will have to visit the hospital to get his knuckles fixed. Serves him right for being alive.

As we continue damaging our precious fingers, the bricks start crumbling, and soon their pieces pile up into the cavity. One of the ghost hunters shines his flashlight at the newly formed hole, and the three of us are hit at once with the old, stale stink of a dead body.

Oh crap! shouts one of the ghost hunters.

He reaches towards a trash bag that even these morons would realize it contains the remains of a previously living creature.

I had assumed that we had found Iñaki’s corpse, that he had been murdered and sealed inside the wall, and that was why he had remained nearby and turned into such a miserable bastard. But the almost mummified corpse that the ghost hunter has revealed carefully is far too small. About the size of a toddler.

Because I got distracted, I was pushed out of this Jokin’s body. I return to being a regular ghost, while Jokin falls on his ass and breaks into coughing.

You wanted us to find this child, didn’t you?! the ghost hunter lighting the hole says over his shoulder, but he notices that Jokin has returned to being himself. The ghost left!

Because we managed to help him, the man handling the trash bag and its contents says solemnly, in a self-satisfied tone.

He takes the trash bag out of the hole and places it on the floor ceremonially. Then he straightens his back and searches his coat until he finds the phone.

We need to call the police. Maybe this proves a murder or something.

Finally, some evidence! the other ghost hunter says excitedly as he pats Jokin on the back. The previously possessed guy looks traumatized and keeps whining about his bloodied hand.

I don’t understand. I turn around to locate Iñaki, only to realize that he was standing behind me. He’s looking down with sadness in his eyes at the toddler-sized, mummified corpse.

Iñaki, what… I begin.

That’s my daughter, he says in the thinnest voice.

At first I thought I was imagining it, and the ghost hunters moving around and talking are distracting me as well, but I can’t deny it any longer: Iñaki’s form is brightening to the extent that I can’t consider him a shadow anymore. He observes his own hands as if he just noticed he had them. I can barely tell apart his features when he faces me, holds my gaze and smiles.

I enjoyed having you around, he says.

What… What the hell…?

Iñaki vanishes. Nothing remains, not even a hint of him having existed.

Chapter 2

Iñaki is gone. Now I understand that the old miserable bastard had wormed his way into becoming my friend. My only friend. But the traitorous fiend went and disappeared into the great beyond, abandoning me.

For a couple of days I walked aimlessly through the surrounding cities, wondering what the hell I was supposed to do. I had so much to talk about, so many concerns to voice out loud, but nobody would want to listen to me. For now, while my beloved Alazne is at work, I have decided to travel around. If I spot some living person getting into a taxi, I sneak in, no matter where the passenger was headed. And I also board trains with the purpose of stopping at specific cities. I’ve come to appreciate rambling around Donostia again, which was the main reason why I chose to settle in this area after I visited every country in Europe during the previous decade. But even returning to some of my old habits isn’t erasing my anxiety. I had allowed myself to rely on someone. Now he’s gone, and I am alone.

I used to believe that dying had been a blessing. I was discovering places that I could never find the time, resources and strength to visit back when I was alive, because I would need the money to support myself, temporary homes to crash at, and I had to fear that someone would assault me, rape me, kill me. As a newbie ghost, my then seemingly endless curiosity led me farther than I would have ever thought possible for me. But eventually the sights grew similar, and a feeling of disconnect crept into me. I was traversing a dead world, series of memories unrelated to me, because I could never influence them nor make myself noticed in any significant way. I got to learn about and even care about some breathing people, but there’s a limit to how many human stories you can witness before they become stale.

Back then I was what others call a newbie ghost. Through dying, I had been transported into a parallel world full of possibilities. I couldn’t understand how virtually every other ghost I came across pitied me, or didn’t want to give me the time of the day. I felt like a teenager all over again, failing to get why all the adults replied with varieties of ‘you’ll understand when you are older’. But now I get it, for sure. It’s all the same, you do little else than pile up regrets and disappointments, and you end up isolating yourself to avoid losing your mind entirely. Who knows for how long we will remain damned, and an insane ghost is a sorry, embarrassing sight.

Even now, sitting on the edge of a roof with a panorama of nighttime Donostia, it feels like a faded picture from another era. I have to suppress the urges to try to scratch people and throw objects, which I have never managed to do, because pushing a vase off a table at least would confirm that I retain some power in this world.

Losing myself in the streets, often less than a meter away from people if I can’t avoid them, doesn’t improve anything. It’s just gray, washed out shit everywhere, and those breathing, decaying people cannot see me, cannot hear me. It gets so tiresome. No wonder some ghosts just retreat to an abandoned refuge and become recluses. May as well waste the afterlife in some decaying ruin, because nothing holds any meaning. You can’t form any ties to the world from which you came, and other ghosts are unreliable. Even worse, once you are dead you can’t force yourself to die again.

How could I have been so stupid as to let myself rely on someone else? I always told myself that I just interacted with other ghosts because I needed to kill time. But I have never learned my lesson. Although I lost others along the way, I ended up falling for it again. I find myself needing to share some opinion or realization, and I wish for someone to look back at me and acknowledge that I still exist.

I’m bound to lose everyone in the end. It’s just the way things are. But what is there to do in this empty plane when you can’t connect with anyone who matters, and you are damned to witness the world pass you by?

And there’s Alazne. I fell in love with someone who is oblivious to my existence. How could I recognize that it’s indeed love? I never felt it back when I was alive. Maybe I’m just obsessed. But no matter how I refer to this need, the fact is that I have to return to her place over and over so I can be around her, watch her, listen to her. When I stop pitying myself, she’s all I can think about. I can feel my obsession growing whenever I visit her apartment. It’s only a matter of time before I completely crack, especially because the more time passes the lonelier I am.

I can be honest with myself. It isn’t love. No matter how much Alazne occupies my mind, and how justified I feel in spying her, it can’t be love when she doesn’t even know I exist. Me wanting to caress her, make love to her, make her think about me as much as I think about her, is pure selfishness. After all, love is for the living. It’s tied to time, to future plans, to creating a family and passing on the genes. When you can’t care about any of that, nor connect with anyone, you wouldn’t be able to form a personal relationship. What do I have in common with those who still breathe, with their mad rush to fulfill goals? All I know is about remaining a witness to the decay and eventual oblivion of it all.

Still, knowing won’t stop me. If on one side I can only look forward to roaming through a wasteland until the end of time, and on the other I can satisfy my needs by stalking my miserable woman, I’m choosing the option that will make me feel better. After all, nobody can judge me any longer.

Alazne continues sliding slowly along her downwards spiral. She doesn’t use makeup, but she spends a few minutes every day studying the damages that approaching thirty has inflicted on her pretty face, or what looks like a pretty face for someone in love. She hates her dead-end job in an office doing boring shit that she hasn’t mentioned, and I haven’t been interested in following her there. She browses the internet idly, and her masturbatory habits barely pause her depression for as long as the orgasm lasts. Still, when she gathers enough energy to grab her guitar and lose herself in an hour or more of playing other people’s songs, she gets a taste of how her life could have been if she hadn’t been dragged down by the rest of herself. She has tried to write a few songs of her own, but she grew frustrated and loudly declared that she didn’t have any talent.

Sometimes, when I’m feeling masochistic, I try to touch her gently. Put all my energies into it. Alazne never feels it. If she wanted to, she could walk right through me, and she would never know I was there. Now that Iñaki is gone, I also spend most nights with her, lying sideways and staring at her sleeping face. When I try to lick her drool with my ghostly tongue, my efforts pass through the molecules. I want to cry, but nothing comes out.

As I roam around I find myself looking out for other ghosts. I can’t deny to myself that I want some company, of any shadow who might want to look back at me. There’s the usual groups of ghosts who follow each other even though they don’t have enough to say; still, getting separated could mean losing their pals for a long time. Ghost children enjoy their time in the playgrounds, crashing birthday parties, trying to appear in group photos. Some of the naturally talented ghost kids befriend toddlers or even older children, until those breathing kids lose the ability to peer into their beyond. Personally I don’t know why anyone would go through the pain of befriending one of the living, if they will inevitably forget you. Some adult ghosts join reunions and convince themselves that they are involved in these strangers’ lives. And the saddest ghosts sit on empty stools at bars, or on empty benches at parks, and gaze longingly at young couples.

One of those nights I was staring at Alazne’s relaxed face as she was lost in a dreamworld. I miss being able to fall asleep, for my brain to produce a crazy hallucination that would grant me a parenthesis from the horrid world outside. When I stop to think about it, life as a ghost is like one of those nights I used to endure while alive, in which I managed to sleep for an hour or so and the rest I would roll around wishing to die.

In any case, I couldn’t deal with having Alazne so close and yet being unable to fondle her, so I hit the darkened streets in search of some entertainment. In the third bar of the night I spot a female ghost that is sitting at one of the empty tables in the back. She acknowledges me for a moment, then she looks back down and loses herself in her own worry, regret, resentment and all that garbage.

I sit on a stool at the bar, although shortly after a living customer approaches me and I get out of the way before he sits through me. I want to have a conversation with that female ghost. I can’t make out all the details in the shadowy blur to which she’s been reduced, but she has waist-length, disheveled hair, and she’s wearing a nightgown. I approach her nervously.

Ah… If you don’t mind, I’ll sit with you.

She offers me a vacant stare. I sit down next to her as I try to ignore the awful smell of the room, or that the walls are covered in writings and drawings by drunken patrons. The ghost woman is silent.

So… What’s a girl like you doing in a place like this? I ask nervously.

She looks down and opens her right hand, revealing a small pill bottle. Likely she had been holding it the day of her death. I never understood how, for example, some clothes ended up dying along with us, so we are spared the embarrassment of spending an eternity naked. I wish I had been a Pharaoh. Maybe I would be riding through the afterlife in a chariot.

I’m having a rough night, I continue. The usual for all of us, huh? And I thought it would be nice to have a chat.

She attempts to drop the contents of the bottle in her ghostly mouth.

Hey, those are prescription, I raise my voice in protest to stop her from swallowing the pills.

I reach for the bottle. She makes no effort to prevent me from taking it, likely because it’s now empty, and in the process I feel her cold skin. Her body seems so fragile and small.

Did I ask you to bother me? the ghostly woman asks with disdain.

She has dark bags under her eyes, and her nose is bleeding somehow. But despite the decay, she’s still beautiful.

You should take better care of yourself, I say. What’s your name?

You wouldn’t know it.

I might. I’ve been around here for a long time. I may know your family.

I’m allowing words to leave my mouth without thinking. I just want to talk to someone who can answer back.

Carmen, she says finally. My name is Carmen.

I’m Irene, I say as I offer my hand to shake. She merely stares at me with pained resentment.

I guess I’ll have to repeat myself. Why are you bothering me, Irene?

I attempt to smile, but end up avoiding her gaze.

I’m lonely. Isn’t that your case as well? I try to talk to those breathing bastards, but none of them cares.

They do care. It’s most of what they do. And they happily live their lives away.

Well, I’m not one of those ghosts who can move stuff or appear for the living. I can only possess some of them, in limited circumstances. So they can’t listen to my troubles.

And you thought that I would care about whatever you are going through? the woman asks mockingly. Why on earth would I wish to speak with you?

You are troubled, aren’t you? I reply too eagerly. You can tell me everything that’s hurting. If you just let me in…

Carmen’s face becomes livid with rage.

You are pathetic, she snaps. I don’t need ghosts to listen to me. I’ve survived on my own without any help.

You haven’t survived, and neither have I. You can’t call it surviving when we can’t die any further. And I also killed myself, you know? At the time I thought I had good enough reasons. We can get along, lessen each other’s pain… Isn’t it what this is all about?

Fuck you. I’m calling the police. She pulls out her phone. I guess she also died holding it. She pushes a sequence of buttons, then lifts the phone to her face. Hello, I’d like to report a stalker.

I have never come across such a thing as a ghostly police force, nor ghost phones that worked, so this woman is likely nuts.

If you don’t want to talk to me, that’s fine, I say in a low voice. But I mean it, you know? I’ll listen to whatever, and you can listen back. Please.

Carmen looks down at her phone. After a few seconds of staring, she raises it to her ear and says: Hello, my name is Carmen. I’d like to report…

Carmen, please let me in. I’m begging you.

She throws her phone across the room in frustration. It passes through several people.

You’re just angry, Carmen, I say in a conciliatory tone. I know. I’m here for you.

She turns her head away from me, refusing to make eye contact. Her breaths are rhythmic and forceful, as if she’s trying to avoid crying.

Until recently I had a friend, I continue. I also thought I didn’t need others, but that’s because it hurts too much when they leave. We are lying to ourselves. Just someone being able to listen to us can change everything. I want to be that person for you.

I inch closer to Carmen and extend my hand out to touch hers. She clenches that hand into a fist.

I don’t give a shit about your problems, she mutters. Nobody does. Whether you are hurting or not, it makes no difference. You are already gone. You don’t matter. Where do you think we are, idiot? This is our punishment.

Although I have felt like shit for many years, I haven’t approached the rage and bitterness evident in Carmen’s voice.

Whatever this place is, we can make the best of it, I reply carefully. We can still communicate if we want. Or do you believe that you deserve to spend the rest of possibly eternity in pain?

She glares at me, maybe contemplating how to kill me. Although I’m a ghost, I can feel fear. I wouldn’t be surprised if my body was shaking visibly.

Carmen exhales and closes her eyes.

Shut the fuck up, she says, exhausted. You don’t know a damn thing. Just go away.

I won’t. I’ll stay right here in silence, possibly for an hour or a couple. If you want to share something, I’ll listen.

I don’t have anything to fucking say.

Okay, that’s fine. I’ll just share my thoughts, and if you have something to add, great.

Carmen groans, then stands up forcefully. She kicks through our table an empty beer bottle, and it sails through the air until it crashes against a living person’s back.

Hey! a middle-aged guy who looks like a tourist exclaims. That hurt! Who the hell threw that bottle!

Carmen glares at me and walks away. I feel hollow. I lower my head, but I don’t have to follow this ghost woman’s movements to know that likely I won’t see her around for a while, and when I do, she will consider me an enemy.

I takes me around half an hour to gather the strength to stand up and leave the bar. I want to return to Alazne’s cramped apartment, to her likely warm bed, where I can close my ghostly eyes and daydream of living together with the woman I love, of marrying her, of spending the rest of my limited life watching her grow old. But as I shamble along the street, I can’t bear it any longer and I fall to my knees. I ball my hands into fists and I let out a guttural wail. I wish to do nothing else for as long as this consciousness of mine remains than to scream my heart out, knowing that nobody would listen to me nor comfort me. Like an abandoned baby left to die in a sewer.

Nobody will love you, you know that?

A man’s raspy voice says this to me. I shake my head and rub my eyes.

You don’t love yourself either, the voice continues.

I open my eyes. Some old, homeless-looking ghost is staring down at me. The kind that mutter to themselves and that I ignore in case they direct their stream of crazy towards me.

What is it to you? I ask in a hollow voice.

You’re a ghost. You have no right to live in this world, let alone try to form connections.

I definitely feel now that I don’t have the right to do what I want. I narrow my eyes.

So what? You’ve never done anything wrong?

I lived a good, clean life. But ever since I died, I’ve been doomed to wander this city. I was never able to move on to the great beyond. My spirit is trapped, just like you.

He continues staring at me with those soulless eyes. He seems to be waiting for me to ask more questions. I stand up and wipe my eyes in case some ghostly tears remain.

Nobody cares about your problems, I say, and walk away.

Chapter 3

Like other days at this hour, I’m sitting on the living room sofa in Alazne’s apartment and checking out the time remaining until my girl returns home from work. I daydream that I stand up and walk up to her, and that she, wearily, takes her street clothes off and finds comfort in my loving arms. Of course, in my daydreams Alazne can see me and talk to me, and in them I’m also alive.

I finally hear Alazne’s steps as she approaches the front door. Her key enters the lock. However, she unlocks the door with frantic, urgent movements, which puts me on edge. Even worse, Alazne steps in, closes the door behind her and slides down the wooden frame until her ass hits the floor. She must have been containing her tears, because she cries silently in constant streams while her vacant eyes look straight ahead.

What can I do now…? she murmurs to herself. I can’t do anything. I don’t know how to do anything else.

I must have remained paralyzed for half a minute. I run up to Alazne, crouch in front of her and put my ghostly hands on her shoulders.

What’s wrong? What happened? I ask, distraught, as if she could hear me.

Alazne continues crying quietly for about five minutes, then she says ‘please’ as if begging to an invisible presence different than myself. She repeats it a few more times in silence, merely moving her lips. Suddenly she stands up, passing through me, and walks up to the living room sofa. She lets herself fall forward to bury her face in a pillow. For the next half an hour Alazne’s shoulders tremble as she cries in silence, except for the few times she whimpers like a child.

I have been kneeling next to her head. I can’t even see her face, as her hair is hiding the facial features that she isn’t pressing against the pillow.

Something must have happened at work. The most reasonable conclusion is that she has lost it. She has been fired because she isn’t easy to get along with, likely brings down the mood of everyone around her, and maybe she’s a shitty worker as well. I don’t care whether or not she deserved to lose her job, though, because I don’t want to see my Alazne like this. I fear that she has hit her limit, and she has nobody to calm her down.

Suddenly, Alazne stops crying. Her eyes are still red and puffy, but they have dried up. She sits straight up on the sofa and stares at the opposite wall as if she has figured out a solution. She rushes to her bedroom and sits in front of her desktop computer. A couple of minutes later she changes her status on the local employment services as available. She attempts to search for administrative jobs in the area, but she gives up, and her Google searches turn creative: ‘what is the most painless way to kill oneself’, ‘I hate my life’, ‘how to commit suicide without pain’, ‘I need to die’.

As I sit next to Alazne, I witness her falling down the rabbit hole through several websites and forums. She considers pills and alcohol, as well as which of the varieties of pills would do the trick, but she dislikes the possibility of her body betraying her by vomiting the deadly mix. Then she gets fascinated by the idea of hanging herself. She browses through a variety of noose pictures as if she were stalking online models. Along the way I’m losing my mind out of worry, fear and impotence. Eventually Alazne shuts off her computer, curls up on the bed in a fetal position and falls asleep.

What should have been a nap turns into seven hours. Alazne wakes up in the middle of the night confused and groggy. Her stomach gurgles, and she shambles to the kitchen to prepare herself some food. When she looks into the refrigerator, she grimaces. It’s full of rotten food that should have been thrown out a couple of days ago. Alazne can’t stand the stench, and decides to order a pizza instead. However, it’s midnight.

To be honest, I was surprised that she could keep a job to begin with. I love Alazne, but she’s the kind of plain-looking woman with whom men wouldn’t bother, she’s very withdrawn and lacks a natural instinct to interact with others. She doesn’t have the faintest hobby that would cause random men on the streets or public places to approach her even because they mistook her for someone else. She’s sliding down quicker and quicker towards dying alone. It would be fine if she had accepted it, but it clearly hurts her down to her bones.

It seems Alazne has saved up enough money to avoid searching for a job immediately. Or maybe she has ceased to care. For the next couple of days she barely did anything but masturbate. On the third she made a rope out of her sheet, then tied one end around a doorknob. She lied face down some distance away from the door, she wrapped the other end of the sheet-rope around her throat and then she twisted her body in a new form of yoga, testing which positions would allow her to choke to death even if she fell unconscious.

The fourth day she visited her parents’ graves, and cried.

Throughout all this I felt as if I would have vomited several times a day, if I still had a working digestive system. But at one point, as I was staring at Alazne’s purpling face while her DIY suicide device strangled her, I though, well, if this is what you truly want, Alazne, then come over here. Abandon that painful body and join me in the wasteland of the afterlife. But I picture her soul being squished out of her recently deceased body only to immediately dissolve into light. And I know that Alazne would also be miserable in the afterlife. Maybe she would travel for a couple of years without having to worry about money, and lacking a brain that clinical depression had hijacked would help a bit, but decades tolerating the afterlife bring all new varieties of despair.

I keep watching Alazne from the afterlife. I daydream about being alive and saving my beloved, while she attempts half-heartedly to die. Still, Alazne’s track record suggests that she would fail at killing herself the same way she failed at everything else.

Through some of the documents Alazne brought home, I learned that she intended to ride her unemployment benefits until she couldn’t justify staying home any longer. She grew addicted to new series, and even started reading novels again, which I had only seen her do twice since the day I heard her play guitar and I chose to haunt her apartment. After she seemed to relax a bit, my daydreams transformed into me being alive, having a very well-paying job and allowing my Alazne to remain a housewife. What a life that would be, saved from the nightmarish stress of pointless jobs, bastardly bosses, shitty coworkers, as well as having to worry constantly about making enough money to pay the bills. The more I replayed that daydream the more excited I became, and I would have masturbated if I could. It felt like the best gift to give