The Gossamer Curtain

School taught me all kinds of useless things, but a class on how to be a haunt would have offered value beyond measure. Evaporating from humanity is paralyzing, like the feeling you get upon losing your wallet; panicked, stuck…still you, but no way to prove it.

An oyster escorted me into the hereafter. The slippery little bivalve stuck in my windpipe five minutes before I planned to ask Abagail to marry me; five unsuspecting minutes of nervous anticipation followed by choking panic and then…everything seemed a bit hazy and my body felt buoyant. I thought it was the champagne.

The adjustment period has been a challenge. Seasoned residents of the afterlife avoid newcomers, as if our recently silenced hearts still carry the contagion of mortality. The scent of resistance and fear clings to our soul as we struggle to accept that old customs of existence mean nothing on this shadowy side of the veil.

Talking, touching and all the human modes of contact are ineffectual when trying to fraternize with those who have their feet firmly planted in the mortal realm.

I’ve got to find another way to let Abagail know the depth of my love. After all, she never saw the ring. It slipped from my pocket while a sweaty paramedic thrust his meaty arms beneath my ribs in a failed attempt to dislodge the offending mollusk. The diamond and I both found our resting place on the thick carpet pile of Anderson’s Seafood Restaurant.

The ache of watching Abagail cry is enough to rupture my soul.

This evening, in my desire to reach out, a passionate resolve overtook me, seeming to manifest in a tangible, swelling wake. For a moment, her sobs paused and I felt a curious, cosmic interlacing. Is she aware of the ethereal curtain between us, so thin and gossamer it’s nearly just the essence of a boundary?

Afterlife is teaching me to be as expansive and elastic as the universe. The metaphysical door must have a key! My programming will need a bit of reconstruction. I’m still here. I just have to prove it.