Page 6 of Earthly Ties

Learning about the afterlife is important, but admittedly, I am also curious about Esther herself. What she’s like outside of work. If she actually does speak in questions all the time, and not just because Gilda makes her nervous. If she’s anything like the Esther I’ve been dreaming of since we met a little over six months ago. After everything today, I am drained beyond belief; basking in her presence is enough.

Esther must not live too far from me, because she enters an apartment complex I’ve passed on my way home, maybe only a block or two away. I hadn’t noticed on the way to work, too caught up in accepting my paranormal state to observe anything worthwhile. As Esther kicks off her shoes, I float over to perch above her table, somewhere safe where she won’t accidentally walk into me.

When I turn back, a laugh escapes me. Before she’s even set her bag down, Esther is kicking off her pants with a sigh of relief. “Finally! Pants off o’clock! Home sweet home, baby! Happy Friday to me!”

Despite the shock of everything today, her sweet silliness softens the blow. I don’t bother to hide my smile—there’s no one to see it anyway. If I must be dead, if I must be haunting someone, I’m glad it’s Esther.

Three

The worst part about being a ghost is how long the nights are.

I’ve been dead for a week. I know this. I know I know this, because today was Friday. Friday. Friday. Or was yesterday Friday? Either way, when the sun rises—“Will it rise? How do I know that?”—it will be Saturday. It’s been one week since I died, and every night has been an eternity long enough for me to lose myself.

The sun set approximately sixty million years ago, and Saturday has not yet brightened the window. Esther is curled up on her side, snoring softly. I pace in circles around her bed, talking to myself as I float around her. How do I know her name, this woman buried in blankets and darkness?

I’ve been very careful to keep track of the days. All of my careful voice notes—“What are voice notes? Is talking to myself a voice note? Is that why I can’t shut up?”—that I’ve taken every day vanish from my memory each night; I need to have some semblance of awareness, some way to feel in control, even as everything slips through my fingers with each passing hour. Knowing what day it is is all I manage to keep, once the sun goes down and Esther clicks off the light. I wouldn’t have bothered with something so unimportant, but the first night lasted for decades. I was stark raving mad by the time Esther’s alarm went off and her singsong “Good morning!” to herself put me out of my misery.

For someone so used to being alone, I hate when Esther sleeps. The sixteen or so hours that Esther is awake go by in the blink of an eye, and the eight hours she’s asleep crawl by painfully slow.

“Like I’m the ghost of Rip van Winkle’s wife, slowly dying as I wait for her to wake up again.” I shake my head, wondering why I can remember a silly folk tale when I can’t even remember my own name. “Except unlike Mrs. Van Winkle, I’m already dead!”

I pause. “How do I know that? That I’m dead?” I hold out my hands, seeing only dense gray smoke in the dark, wisps that seem to glow and dance as I move my fingers. “Oh, right. Ghost. Haunting Esther. I’m documenting what being a ghost is like. It’s Friday.”

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a week, when each night feels like an eternity. There’s no escape, no distraction from my waiting. In an attempt to retain my sanity, I lecture to no one about my observations, form hypotheses, and synthesize my data.

“I’m Dr. Lucy Monae. I’m dead, but I was a professor,” I tell myself; I’ll need the reminder again soon. “I’m collecting primary source data on metaphysics.” All for naught, because in the dark, everything I know to be true slips away like water between my fingers. As an academic who specializes—“Ugh, specialized,” I correct myself—in philosophical conceptualizations of the afterlife, being a ghost is a unique and unprecedented opportunity for field research. If I ever find a way to communicate with Esther, or track any of this, I would become the leading authority, a foundational primary source for the field. “If anyone believed her anyway. Doubtful.” I sigh, because even communicating with her is impossible.

“Time, for example, moves unexpectedly in death, but not as weird as I thought it would. I hypothesized that everything would kind of overlap and skip around, seeing as time is a human construct. Everything happens all at the same time, and our brains process it into a logical sequential order so we can understand it.” I huff, pacing as I lecture. “And since I’m a damn ghost now, I no longer have a brain to process the Everythingness and Everywhenness into a logical order. I should be experiencing chaos.” I laugh at myself, the sound strangely muted. “Those aren’t even real words, Dr. Monae. No respectable journal would publish that.”

Esther murmurs in her sleep, and I snap to her side, anticipation thrumming through me. The sound chimes through the quiet the way I expect my voice to, yet never does. Her sleep talk is the most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard. I float over the bed to smile down at her, wondering if she’s going to wake up, needing her to.

But the sleep talk fades, and her soft snores resume.

“‘Should’ being the operative word here. I should be experiencing chaos. But short-term memory loss isn’t exactly chaotic. Just annoying,” I mutter as I roll onto my back midair, returning to my lecture. “Despite my lack of corporeal body, everything is logical. Trying to keep track of any of it is hard as shit, but it is undeniably chronological, even if the chronology isn’t evenly spaced.” It’s like my ghostly not-brain has ADHD, and my special interest is Dr. Voigt. I can’t focus on anything except Esther; remembering anything outside of what she’s doing at the exact moment is a challenge. Even now, as I’m trying to stare at the ceiling, my not-body keeps rotating back around so I’m facing her again.

It takes concerted effort to look away.

How ghosts can be aware of anything is something I’ve been struggling to wrap my head around. Cogito ergo sum and all that, but how do I cogito without a physical brain?

“And yet, cogito. Ergo sum. Or would it be Cogitavi ergo eram? Are my actions now in past tense if I’m dead?” I spin in circles above and around Esther. “Or am I capable of thought and processing time because I’m somehow using Esther’s brain? But how, if I’m not in her head? How could my consciousness be using her brain, if I’m not in her physical body?” I pause, and float back down to the duvet next to Esther. If I must look at her, at least I can pretend I’m lying in bed with her. The dim of night makes the pink cotton just as gray as my skin, my form a faint line marring the darkness. Did dying erase my capacity for rational thought? Why is this so hard to figure out?

“My current hypothesis for why nights are so hard is that Esther is offline, deep in her circadian rhythm, instead of helping me think. Her brain is busy turning experience into memory, and readying itself for the next day of life.”

That’s also the only explanation I’ve been able to think up as to why the fuck I’ve been talking so damn much! I have always been a very quiet person, going for days without a single sound, unless I was playing the role of competent academic and professor. I was never that competent, but at least I knew what people wanted to hear from Dr. Monae.

But since dying, I can’t shut up. All of the poems and soliloquies, social scripts and presentations I’d memorized in life flow out of my mouth as easy as breathing. So, I must have a ghost-brain. It just can’t store anything new, only what I already know. Unless Esther also has a photographic memory and is a secret fangirl of Poe, because I can still recite the Tell Tale Heart with no hesitation.

“I think it was his eye! Yes, it was this! One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it.” I curl my legs to my chest midair, reminded suddenly of my mother’s eyes. Her watery blue eyes that I could never bear to look at. “Though, you have blue eyes, too, Esther. Your eyes are so pretty. I wish you’d open them.”

“Open your eyes,” Esther mumbles in her sleep. Just as soft and lilting as her voice is in the waking world, Esther’s murmurs are a nightly serenade.

In my forever-night induced delusions, I smile, imagining she’s talking to me. “My eyes are open. Yours are closed.” I sigh. “I wish you could see me. Hear me. Know me.”

My breath catches in my throat. I’ve never felt so much like my mother as I have in death. Limerence is a powerful drug, an intrusive obsessive melancholy that plagued her in life. Now it plagues me. “I wish you could see me,” I repeat, quieter this time. “Open your eyes.”

When Esther is awake, I have something to listen to because she talks constantly, narrating her life like she’s filming her own documentary. When she first awakens, when I’m at my weakest, I even reply, adding commentary that she’ll never hear, asking questions she’ll never answer, and sharing my thoughts on all of the endless rhetorical questions she doesn’t expect anyone to respond to.

Another sixty billion years pass as I slowly circle Esther’s sleeping form, floating around her as if pacing in circles. Over and over, I talk to myself, reminding myself that it’s Friday night, and tomorrow is Saturday. It’s been one week. A new to-do list in my journal that my chronic procrastination will inevitably make useless. Dawn is Saturday. Friday, Saturday, Friday, Saturday.