2019-05-14 - Still Living With Your Ghost

[1 WEEK AGO]

The USMC rucksack is dropped to the floor with a thud. The sound somehow perfectly encapsulating the relief mixed with disappointment that Easton Marshall feels at having arrived. The family's vacation apartment, his new home, looks the same as ever with the awkward posed family portraits on the beach, the pastel palette better suited to the Outer Banks than Washington's coast line and everything 'just so' to give that magazine-spread ready feel.

Between everything he owned stuffed in the rucksack at his feet and the abundance of throw pillows covering every possible seating surface it's like his two pasts have arrived for a camp versus pastel battle for his future. The thought causes a smile to cross his face and his eyes to crinkle ever so slightly. It doesn't last though when his roommate, Tom, appears.

Tom "Banks" Richmond and Easton met in officer training school in the Marines. They served together and Banks has been the closest thing he's ever had to a brother.

But Banks is dead.

That doesn't stop his ghost from appearing at random in Easton's life. It's been a year now, most of which Easton spent back in the states recovering from the accident that killed Tom and took the lower half of his left leg. Turns out, being dead doesn't stop Tom from 'sitting' on the couch, the crowd of throw pillows simply sticking through where his lower torso would be. He gives the room a ghostly survey and proclaims his verdict by making a gagging motion.

"I know, it's everything you dreamed of. Fuck off."

Two double middle fingers and an eye roll prove that despite Tom's ability to speak their communication remains intact beyond the grave.

[HOURS LATER]

The throw pillows alone filled the dumpster. The expensive rugs, floor lamps, sandpiper sculptures and stacks of family portraits spill out over and round it. The pastel bedding flows out like the dumpster ate too much cotton candy on the nearby boardwalk. If Easton could light the whole thing on fire without drawing unwanted attention to it or his arrival he would, but for now he's happy to just leave it there.

Coming back up the stairs and opening the door, he's pained to realize the now nearly empty apartment feels worse now, instead of better. Somehow he thought if he could just excise that part of his past and pretend like this place was just some brand new empty shell it would feel more like a clean start.

While pouring the glass of whiskey to wash down a few oxy's for his aching leg, Tom appears once more to first question the empty room with a quirked eyebrow and then to point at the questionable self-medicating.

"Fuck you. You're dead! You're. Not. Real!" Each word in the last phrase punctuated with a thrown ice cube. And maybe ghost's don't like such things? Because that's all it takes for Easton to find himself once again alone in the empty apartment.

"I'm just crazy."

And with that he washes down the pills, walks over and flops on the couch (now with space to actually sit on) and unhooks his prosthesis.