Who was Lisa? Probably his daughter.
He sent emails with way too many exclamation points. He called his dog “Lil-Muffin-Wuffin baby girl” in a voice that made my soul curdle.
It was… infuriating. Why did he get happiness and to live, when all I got was to rot!
He wasn’t broken. Not haunted. Not even guilty, justfine.
But his wife was never seen around the house. I don’t even know who his wife is, if he even stayed with Judy or if it’s this mysterious Lisa woman. His children moved out… he was alone with his dog.
So, I escalated my plans.
Mark was a creature of habit, and every day he would pick a ham sandwich to eat on a park bench.
The same bench.
Every day.
Without fail.
So, I knew I could begin haunting him even without Grumble catching on. There’s one trick fellow Bin-Spirits showed me, and I’ve been dying to try it out on someone who deserves this. And if he does what I hope he’ll do after I try this new trick, I’ll be able to take my haunting to the next level.
I waited in the bin nearby and then, like clockwork; he sat down. I slithered out and touched the bread as he went to take a bite of his sandwich.
The moment it touched his tongue, it decayed. Rot bloomed beneath his saliva, spreading across the bread likerevenge. He took a bite of it, munched on it slowly, and then I could tell by his sour face that something wasn’t right. As he looked down at his sandwich, he saw that the bread had gone completely black and green, the meat slimy and greying.
He spat it out in a furious panic.
“Fucking gross!” he said, spitting out the food, and tossed it into the bin. The same bin I was in.
It still had some of his saliva on it. This was exactly what I'd hoped he’d do. Grumble taught me I just needed a part of him, something he discarded, to form a connection. I figured Grumble meant something sentimental, but surely some of his discarded body products would work too?
I licked up his saliva globule and, like a sudden kick to the head, memories knocked my skull and flooded my mind. They weren’t mine, but they were of me.
A connection was made.
It was like I had gone back in time. Mark and I were in the throes of a pounding session. He had me on all fours, facing away from him, but his massive hands were over my eyes, around my neck, pulling me back. His tongue was deep in my throat after he had just eaten me out, my ass sweat all over my face. His heavy breathing in my ear. Hot and wet. His thick cock deep inside me. As he groaned and erupted inside me, he gripped me tight. Like he never wanted to let go.
Then the memory shifted.
He pulled out. Zipped up. Lit a cigarette. He didn’t even look at me as he went to leave.
“See ya,trash!” He said.
I jolted back to reality, sitting in the bin next to his sandwich bench, discarded rotted food still in my hands. I drop it. I was seething.
Grumble’s voice startles me–at some point during my vision, he had joined me in the bin. “Thought I lost you,” hethen whistled. “That was a damn good ride.” He glanced at me and grinned, not his usual aloof or cheeky grin; this was sharper. Like a lightbulb had turned on in his head.
“You just memory bonded with Mark. That was much faster than any Grouch I’ve seen. You’reinnow!”
“Memory bonded? In now?” I asked him, and he shuffled into an open burger box like it was a couch. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” he said, flicking a discarded lettuce leaf off his shoulder, “you can get inside his head. Play tricks on him. Haunt him for real.”
And we did.
We hopped a ride on a rolling piece of trash and then rode the sewer line to Mark’s home during the day. The plotting of his true haunting could finally begin.
Chapter 12 - Recognised
