Only the Living Feel Remorse

By Ash Deza

Some mistakes will haunt you to the end.

 

Imagine being haunted by a ghost. In life, he was your best friend. Now he wants you dead.

Who would you turn to for help? How far would you go to escape? How much would you be willing to sacrifice?

 

This is the gripping story of a flawed man who finds himself in a deep well of misery, haunted by his past, desperate for a way out. Will he be able to save himself? Or will the price prove to be too high?

 

"Only the Living Feel Remorse" is a suspenseful yet fast-paced horror novella. It tells the story of a friendship gone bad, a vengeful ghost and neo-pagan blood rituals which end up costing you much more than you bargained for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ash Deza
• Release date: Aug 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223737520

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Copyright

First edition, September 04, 2023

Copyright © by Ash Deza

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by E.U. copyright law. For permission requests, contact [e-mail]

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by Ash Deza, cover photo by Rahul Pandit

Dedicated to Lucy. You know what you did.

Acknowledgements

I think every author says this, but books most definitely do not happen in a vacuum.

This book definitely would never have existed, had it not been for all the support and encouragement I had.

Special thanks go to Sunny, for believing I could publish long before I did, and for all the sparring sessions about plot lines and ideas. Also, a huge thank-you goes to both Coby and sunshine for proofreading, editing and good suggestions.

A big thank you to Jen for putting up with me while I was engrossed in writing this and buried deep inside my own head.

I love you all and could not have done this without you.

Preface

This is a ghost story. This means it’s a story about bitterness, regret and loss. A story about how sometimes our mistakes come back to haunt us.

Content Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Death, Rape, Suicide Attempts, Self-harm, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Trauma

• • •

The seed of this story was planted when I asked myself what makes ghosts scary?

The answer I came to, was that ghosts are often a manifestation of the past not staying buried. Especially if we weren’t always good to the deceased person, the idea of them coming back becomes frightening. It gets worse if they may know secrets that we had hoped would stay buried along with them.

When I set out to write this book, I wanted to write a straight horror story. At some level, horror is always about the darker sides of life, about fear and trauma. Since the advice is to write what you know, I built on my own experiences growing up.

Several readers commented that I’d essentially written a story about toxic masculinity, and I have to say they are right.

At the surface, this is a story about ghosts, dark rituals, blood and gore. On a deeper level, it’s about the ways in which our world causes men to make choices that ultimately end up harming themselves.

It’s a story about loneliness and fear. About not belonging, and feeling like you’ll never measure up.

It’s a story about the ghosts that live in my head. I hope you’ll enjoy meeting them.

1

John almost succeeded today. I came to just in time, feeling the rough abrasive texture of the rope around my neck, my feet on the edge of the foot stool. For one heart-stopping moment, I thought I’d lose my balance, but I managed to regain it.

Very gently, I loosened the noose and stepped off the stool. I collapsed on the ground, breathing hard. He had never come this close before. With shaking hands, I pulled the flask out of my pocket and took a swig. The liquor burned, going down my throat. It was cheap shit, but that was all I could afford these days.

Ah, who am I kidding… It had been a while since I could afford anything decent. I hadn’t been able to hold on to a job ever since… well… since. As the work available to me became shittier, so did the booze that I could afford to numb the pain.

Drinking was always a crap shoot. Generally, I stopped seeing John after the second drink or so, and I’d have some semblance of peace for a while. But once I fell asleep… that’s when he’d come back. I’d wake up, and he would be there. Some days, he would just be staring at me from the foot of my bed. Those were the days I could deal with. But other days… on other days, I’d find myself in situations like this. Balancing on the edge of my own demise.

So far, I’d always been able to pull back just in time, but the escapes were getting narrower.

• • •

John and I grew up together. He was always the handsome one, the successful one. I tagged along, hoping some of his shine would rub off on me. I was never quite sure if he really liked me, pitied me, or was simply using me to make himself look better. Honestly, I didn’t really want to know.

We grew up in Shithole. Obviously, that’s not what the signs at the town limits said, but it is what they should have read. It was the kind of place that city folks used to scare their kids. Back in the 50s, it had been a proud hub of industry, but all those jobs had long since disappeared overseas. Everybody that could get out had long since done so.

The people who got left behind were all just scraping to get by. My old man used to work a factory job until he got laid off. Now, he mostly sat around watching TV, drinking cheap beer, and shouting at the world in general. To keep his benefits, he had to write a bunch of application letters each week. Putting as much profanity as humanly possible in those were one of the few joys he had left.

There wasn’t much of a nightlife, but we made the best of it. There was the seedy bar that the old guys would drink at and the grungy little discotheque. We’d buy cheap supermarket beers to get us started, then go to that little discotheque and hit on all the cute girls.

Oh, the girls, they flocked to him. None of them would ever give me a second glance while he was around. But, he never once ditched me. If some girl tried to get him to come home with her, he’d always just ask for her number instead. Only on the rare occasion that we’d both been able to meet someone interesting would he take them up on the offer. I always wondered if I’d be as chivalrous if the situation were reversed, but of course, I never got to test that theory.

We both graduated when we were 17, and I knew John would be leaving for college in September. During the summer, he got a job doing data entry work at the office where his dad worked. From what he told me, he had about 2 hours of actual work per day, so he spent most of the time reading comics. They had decent coffee and air-conditioning. With a big grin, he told me that he thought the receptionist liked him. He was thinking that maybe he should try asking her out.

When I went looking for a job, I was less lucky. With no college prospects to speak of, I figured I would pretty much need to pick between flipping burgers and cleaning toilets. That summer, one of the big online retailers opened up a warehouse nearby. When I got the opportunity to work there, I jumped at it. It was shitty pay, and my feet killed me at the end of a shift, but at least it didn’t involve hot grease or actual shit. The work was hard but not relentless. It certainly beat the alternatives.

That summer was exceptionally hot, and the heat of the days tended to linger long into the night. It made spending time indoors unpleasant, to say the least, so we stayed out until late most evenings.

Our favourite hang-out spot was the local lake. Shithole was far from the ocean, and there were no natural bodies of water in the area. So, in the heyday of the town, an artificial lake had been created. Basically, it was just a big pit dug into the ground. Trees had been planted around it to add some greenery. There was even something resembling a beach, where they’d trucked in sand to make the lakeside more appealing. It wasn’t great, but it was something.

After we’d get off work, John and I would buy some beers and just hang out on that beach. We’d watch the sun sink, talk about girls and our favourite TV shows, and tell bad jokes.

On the few nights that it did rain, we took shelter in the pavilion. The name made it sound way more fancy than it was. It was more of a wooden shack with an open front, near the edge of the lake. It had originally been meant as a meeting spot during the colder months of the year.

Some optimistic city planner had probably envisioned senior citizens sitting there, watching the sun go down and sharing stories of the glory days. In reality, it was mostly used by teenagers who needed a place to smoke and drink beer away from the gaze of their parents.

It was old and rickety, but it had a roof and a little bench. We’d sit on the bench and listen to the patter of the rain on the roof while getting ever more drunk. Those were good days. I’d forget about all the other shit for a while. I tried not to think past that summer. Who knew what would happen.

That was when I met Suzie.

2

My job was shitty, but the one thing that made it all worthwhile was Suzie.

I met her on my second day of working there, and we immediately hit it off. We’d push carts around collecting orders, and every time our paths crossed, she’d smile at me. We’d joke about how shitty this job was and speculate about which boxes contained sex toys. I liked Suzie.

At night in bed, I’d slip my hand inside my boxer shorts and think of her. I’d picture her