Zoetic

It doesn’t take long for me to realize that there is a dead man above me, but he’s dead in a different way than I am. I can hear his slow, shuffling gait that sometimes seeps through the cracks in the ceiling. After a while, it’s clear that he gets up occasionally to go to the refrigerator, then back to the couch. My ears are sharp, and I can hear the glass bottles scuttling across the floor, the way he twists the top of his drink. There’s a tiny burst of sound and a click as his bottle opens. And then all is silent again. Soon the dead man will have fallen into a drunken stupor. I wait, and then I push my way through the ceiling and into the room above me.
As I suspected, the man is dead to the world. He lies on his threadbare couch, sprawled like a toy someone forgot. The room is dark and dusty, but I am used to such conditions. I wish I could pick up the scattered bottles, straighten the room, but my hands are too light to pick anything up. Even a feather slides through my fingers.
I am here to observe. I am not here to right this man’s life. There’s no reason to be here at all, but I was visiting my little sister. She lives below the man, though he doesn’t know it. She is not dead, not in my sense, nor the man’s. I love to come and watch her as she plays with her dolls because of the life that pours out of her. It’s like bright sunlight to me, the way she dances through the apartment, the way her eyes twinkle. Sometimes, she sees me, but she’s not afraid of me anymore. She thinks I am part of her imagination, and sometimes I wonder if I am.
The man lets out a deep breath, and I mimic him, moving my lungs in and out. But no breath escapes from me. I wonder if the man knows he’s dead. Maybe he wishes he were. If only he knew his wish had already been granted. Your body doesn’t have to abandon you for you to become a ghost.