Blam! Blam! Blam!

 

Every night it’s the same. I’m laying in bed and I hear the gunshots. Three of them in rapid succession. I grab my pillow and cover my head in an attempt to block out what comes next. The sobbing. That dreaded sound of her asking why. The shooter never answers. Maybe he is unsure himself. But that spoken ‘why’ keeps playing in my head. I can’t shut it out. I know it will be over in a few minutes, but still to hear it night after night over and over again can be maddening to one who just wants to sleep.

   As long as it’s been going on, you would think I could sleep through it by now. For a while I would lie awake waiting for it. Like clockwork the minutes tick off in my head.

  Blam! Blam! Blam! There it is. I could have set my watch by it. But now it’s changing. It’s a few minutes off. I lie here waiting and waiting, trying to prepare myself for the gun blast and then it doesn’t come.

  The minutes tick off until finally as I’m about to succumb to sleep it arrives like an unwelcome alarm…Blam! Blam! Blam!

  I know you’re asking yourself why doesn’t he get up and stop all this shooting. Well, it’s not that easy. You see, no one is really there. The gun shoots, the woman cries and asks why, but none of it is real. This house is haunted. I should know, I live here.

   A few things about ghosts. Let’s forget all the ectoplasm pics you see on the Internet, the wisps of smoke in digital pictures, and all that other junk. And definitely forget white-sheeted specters rattling chains. That’s a frigging Casper fairy tale.

   So instead let’s talk of real ghosts. The kind that burrow their way into your soul slowly driving you mad with their repetitions. It is best to view ghosts as if they are a movie. A movie that is stuck on the same damn scene. Doomed to play over and over until the scene finally reaches its climax and then begins again.

   It’s like when bad things happen they leave an imprint on the fabric of reality. A trace of all tragedy remains like a snapshot in an album that you must view repeatedly. What you are experiencing is not happening at that moment, but is merely a shadow of something that occurred long ago.

   Blam! Blam! Blam! Sound carries loudly in hauntings. It’s like the very trauma of death amplifies it and in some cases increases steadily in volume with each manifestation.

   The first time I heard the gunshots they seemed so distant as if I were having an out of body experience. The echo reverberated in my head, almost ingraining itself in my own selective memory. The far away rumble passed from mere sound and into vibration. My hands shook in that echo of violence as I gripped the pistol tighter.

  Her face loomed into view, utter disbelief in her eyes. She asked why and I looked at the gun in my hand. If I had known this event would follow me for so long I would have turned the gun on myself. Not through shame for what I’d done, but out of cowardice for not being able to face her again and again, long after I had killed her.

   Why she asked, her breathing coming in ragged gasps. I looked at the gun and raised it to pull the trigger once more.

   “I want to be free of you,” I whispered. “All you do is..”

   “Shut up”, she said. And then I heard it. Blam! Blam! Blam!

   But it wasn’t the gun in my hand this time. It was the gun in her hand. I looked disbelieving at her. I wanted to speak but the blood was caught in my throat.

   “Why?” she asked. “Why couldn’t you just leave? Why did you make me kill you? Why?”

  

   Real ghosts. They are doomed to live the same scene over and over. The tragedy of their lives playing out either as victim or cruel instigator. Some ghosts are both. Some intend to create a victim and become one themselves, often from not realizing that maybe someone else has a plan too.

Ghosts are about plans. As living beings they plot and they scheme, and as spirits they relive those mistakes over and over again.

   I should know.

Reviews

[Shawna Johnson]

Co-dependent ghosts. Great concept.

[Toni Bennett]

I just love all of your ghost stories.

[Jake Weller]

I like this one. I got a little confused at the part were she gets shot, but i figured it out. Good work.

[Here No More]

NICE twist! I really enjoyed the journey in this. The only possible thing I can think to adjust would maybe be the removal of "I am a ghost..." at the end. By that point, the reader's already figured it out, and it's just a little more chilling to have "I should know." as the last instead of something redundant. Otherwise, very well-played!