HOW JIMMY BECAME A GHOST

I had a rather silly dream last night....

   Jimmy Jones had never believed in ghosts until he met Alice.

He woke one night with the sort of bladder pressure that sent him skedaddling to the toilet like at his age it often did, and when he returned there was Alice, sitting on the end of his bed as large as life and totally naked.

“Crikey!” he exclaimed, “do you want something? And who are you, if I might ask?”

“They call me Alice and I don’t know that I want anything. I think I must be dead,” she said, and smiled so sweetly he completely ignored the swell of her bosom.

“Dead?” he asked.

“Obviously,” she said, “there I was, in my hospital bed, tossing and turning and feeling as awful as a woman can feel if she happens to be dying, when something monumental happened.”

“What sort of monumental?” he asked, hoping he’d wiped his nether regions properly because as far as he was concerned the last drop of urine might be a right turn-off if he found himself in the presence of an attractive woman in the middle of the night.

“The sort that involves your heart stopping,” she said, and smiled sweetly again.

“And yours stopped?” he asked.

“It must have. I haven’t noticed it thumping away for at least a fortnight,” she sighed, “and my bed sort of vanished. And the doctors and nurses, the whole company of carers. They all vanished in the twinkling of an eye and I found myself doing the round of other people’s beds in their homes. That’s how come I’m here, sitting on yours, though you were splashing in the bathroom when I got here. I was next door last night and who knows where I’ll be tomorrow night. Some bloke, I hope. It’s no fun snuggling up to another woman when you’re dead.”

“I can see that,” he mumbled, more as a way of gaining a few extra moments to think in.

“I mean,” she enthused, “a woman notices when you’re cold, and I’m freezing even in summer now that I’m dead. And a woman notices the smell.”

“The smell?” he queried.

“Of course. You must have noticed. You see, I rather think I’m decomposing. Inside, you know, where things can easily start rotting away. I can hear it bubbling like crazy when it’s quiet in the world And it smells. It’s with me all the time. I get fed up when I notice its pungency. You must have noticed my pong: what do you make of it?”

“Roses,” he replied, “or begonias. Some floral fragrance from a summer garden, the sweetness of things like that.”

“You are lovely! I’d let you snuggle up to me, but my skin’s getting loose and anyway I’m due to fall to pieces any day now.”

“Fall to pieces?” he asked.

“Yes. You must know how it is. Bits fall off me. My nose might go, or my knee-caps. It’s true: we haven’t got time to get to know each other in time to get married, but I’d like that. Can you imagine it? Long languid nights between the sheets and real human breath washing over you. But no. My bits and pieces will all fall off and I’ll be left with no more than the shape of me.”

“That doesn’t sound, I mean, it’s horrible,” he extemporised.

“You can say that again! Oh gosh! There goes my bottom lip and half a dozen teeth, all in one pile of me!”

He heard a clatter and saw a nice white shiny tooth roll across the carpet not far from where she was sitting.

“My hair went yesterday,” she told him. “They say the hair’s always first to go. It doesn’t cling on as tightly as it might. This,” and she swept one hand through her lovely golden locks, “this is a wig. Courtesy of Marble and Sons, Undertakers to the gentry. Blast it! There goes my thumb!”

“What are you going to do?” he asked, “I mean, you can’t stay there all night or there’ll be nothing left of you.”

She sighed. “It happens every night,” she moaned. “I find a nice cosy bed to sit on and before you can say jack Robinson all that’s left is a stinking pile of decomposing body parts, and my spirit. And I can’t expect you to see that! Spirits are so very invisible, and yet they’re pure as anything. I dream of finding a man spirit and actually cuddling up to him in the night, but it never happens. That’s the trouble with being invisible: you can never spot your heart’s desire even when it’s right there before you.”

Jimmy thought for a moment.

“Come to bed with me now, while there are still bits of you left,” he suggested, “it would be a novel experience for me, and, my dear, you look a bit on the cold side.”

She sniffed. “I am,” she replied, “as cold as any ice anywhere. And I’ll take you up on that. Have you ever slept with a ghost before?”

“Once,” he told her as she climbed across the bed, leaving her left leg behind.

“You have?” asked Alice, her eyes wide open, “when might that have been?”

“I think it might have been a dream. Or a nightmare. You see, I don’t believe in ghosts. There’s no such thing, never was, isn’t now and never will be.”

Alice shuddered. “Oh dear. You shouldn’t have said that. Didn’t you know? Every time you say you don’t believe in ghosts, one returns to life as a fairy? And you must believe in me, surely? I’m here, climbing over your bed and ready to do anything you want me to do, and, no, please no…”

“No what?” he asked.

“take it back! Take it all back! I can’t stand the idea of being a fairy, all shimmering wings and goody-goody talk to little children! Say you do believe in ghosts. Loads of ghosts! Dead people animated in spirit form! Please say you believe in me!”

He might have recanted his denial of ghosts, but he was too late. In a magical sort of conversion Alice lay before him on his bed and fluttered her wings and rubbed her new nose on his old one.

“You sweet man,” she trilled, “and I’ve got a special treat for you! Come on, babe, come and love me like you want to!”

It was all before him, a pleasure palace rich in seduction, but it was all too much for his old heart.

It stopped like all hearts eventually do, and he lay perfectly still like corpses always do, until deep inside him, something started to bubble and stir.

© Peter Rogerson 01.04.22

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