SINCLAIR

     "Whoa, mate, I might be dead, but you're very much alive. You might want to, you know, drive with a little more caution," I say as he shifts the car back into the proper lane of traffic and then promptly blows through a light that is very narrowly still yellow.

     "You're not real," I hear him whisper. I can tell he's not doing great with this whole I'm a ghost, and you can somehow see me thing. He's white-knuckling the steering wheel, which I guess is just knuckling, considering how pale he is.

     "I guess that depends on our definition of real here," I say with a laugh, hoping to ease the tension. I can't really imagine what's going on in his head, but this is pretty much the best thing to happen to me since I died (granted, this had very little to compete with.) The unfortunate fact of the matter is afterlife is terribly lonely.

     "You're not real," he repeats like a mantra. "You're not here. You're in my head."

     Grinning, I say as I reach for him, "No, if I was in your head it'd be more like this."

     I expect my hand to go right through his skull, so when it doesn't, I'm actually just as shocked as he is. I end up with a fistful of blonde hair instead.

     The guy jerks away from me, swerving into the opposite lane again. I grab the wheel, yanking it so we're back on the right side before he can kill himself.

     "Sorry," I say quickly, letting go of the wheel when I think he won't crash the car. "I didn't mean to startle you. That never happens."

     "This is it," he croaks. "I'm losing my god damn mind."

     "Going out on a limb here, but I'm guessing I'm the first ghost you've ever seen? Not to say that there are more ghosts. At least, I haven't met any. You haven't met any either, right?"

     He doesn't respond, staring ahead. His expression tells me he's the kind of guy that people describe as 'brooding.' Maybe even moody. The all black attire is very moody.

     "You're the first person I've run into who can see me," I tell him, unable to mask the joy in my tone. Not that I would want to. This is pretty fucking fantastic for me. Afterlife is certainly looking up.

     "You're the first person I've been able to touch, too." I reach out without thinking and graze the back of his hand with my fingers. I feel a spark that maybe he feels too because he flinches, and I immediately pull back.

     "Sorry. I just – this is new. I haven't touched a person since before I died." I quickly add, "Consensually, of course. I don't just go around touching people." I squeak nervously. It's kinda balls that you can be dead and still feel things like nerves. "Let's just strike all of what I just said from the record."

     The car slows down, and pulls up to the curb. "I think we should start over," I say turning to look at him. "I'm Sinclair, your friendly neighborhood ghost. A pleasure." I hold up my hand for a handshake. He lifts his in return, and points across me.

     "Get out," he says simply, looking at me but avoiding my gaze, somehow, too. I hesitate, not sure what to say, not even sure what I can say in this situation.

     "Okay, I know this a lot to take in, but I mean, we'd be crazy not to figure out why you can see me, right?"

     He's glaring at me, but he has the kind of stare that I imagine is always kind of stiff and cold. I decide it's his dark eyes, which are big and protrude a little more than I think is normal. He's got heavy bags under them that only makes them more striking.

     He leans across me suddenly, yanking on the door handle before he gives it a push. His face is in-line with mine and he smells like cloves. He must smoke. I used to smoke in the before. There's no point to smoking in the after.

     "Out," he says again, and this time I don't try to argue.

ALEXEI

     The walk from my car to my apartment door is all the time I need to convince myself I am hallucinating. That this is a direct effect of poor sleep over many months. That I have imagined this... this Sinclair person. Crafted him from a state of deprivation. Some base part of me hungers for companionship, a part I consistently deny, and in my weakened state my brain has played a trick on me.

     He is not real. He was not really there.

     The doorman greets me with a curt nod as I pass. That's the extent of the pleasantries I've received in the three years I've lived here. Severe silence is damning and it only took a few interactions for Rolf to get the picture. My silence is not a doorman thing but a person thing. I hope he doesn't take it personally but not enough to greet him with more than a passing nod.

     The woman across the hall, Simone, tried very hard to build some sort of rapport. The thing people don't seem to understand is that the only people you need a rapport with are your clients and I've built the sort of technical reputation where I don't even really need that. People don't come to me for small talk, they come to me to secure or save their information from whatever lurks in the ether — bots, hackers, malware.

     I enjoy the fact I take the elevator four floors up with three other people and not a word will be spoken. That when I enter my apartment, the silence continues.

     I feel the fatigue settle in my bones like mortar, weighing them down. I walk down the barren hall, undressing as I go. This is a routine, one I perform without missing a step. The judges give me perfect tens across the board. Each act brings me closer to bed but when I finally crawl into it, I don't even feel tired anymore.

     Maybe it's not silence I enjoy but consistency.

SINCLAIR

     It is the strangest thing to be real, to fully exist, to know that I once lived a life, and am now fully dead. Crueler, I think, than just being plain dead. Even crueler, I think, that the only person who can see me isn't even someone I knew in my last life.

     It seems like the longer I exist in this in-between state, the stronger my hold on humanity becomes. At first, I was nothing but wraith, drifting through walls, and objects, and people without creating a soft breeze. I was a phantom. I didn't even have a reflection.

     Then I figured out how to touch things. With that new development came the ability to project my body through some time-space deal. I was more there then I wasn't but still not there enough to be seen or heard or touched.

     But now I could be seen and heard and touched. By one man for some inexplicable reason.

     Except most things are explicable. I died. That's a fact. For thirteen months, I have wandered through the world seamlessly. Suddenly, I am catapulting into a person. Careening into their life. Visible and touchable. That can't be for no reason.

     So then I think maybe I'm not really a ghost but a guardian angel. Maybe I'm supposed to save this guy's life.

     And so yeah, I follow the guy home because the last thing I want to do is lose track of the one person I'm supposed to keep alive. That'd be a Hiroshima-sized mistake.

     It takes a certain energy to interact with the world and when I pull it back, I'm nothing again but vapor, even to this guy. I'm not trying to be invisible in a creepy way, more of like a Catholic way. In a I'm looking out for you way. Which may still be creepy.

     This isn't the first time I've gone into someone's home. I do this sometimes. It's nice to see the way other families function. It's not something I like to do with people who live alone. It gets depressing pretty fast, which isn't what you want to be when you're a one man ghost show in a world of people who can't see you.

     This guy's got a nice place, granted kind of anal retentively tidy. He doesn't turn on any lights when he walks in, just heads down the narrow entry and turns into a bedroom. The blinds are shut at an angle so the street lights seep in, casting lines across the ceiling.

     I watch with strange fascination as he methodically goes about undressing, first with his tie, which he rolls and puts away in one of the smaller drawers of his dresser. He unbuttons his trousers, stepping out of them one leg at a time, revealing black briefs and legs that glow like two candles. He's pale in a way that doesn't feel genetic, but purposeful, like he all and out avoids the sun.

     He hangs his pants up on a clothing rack where there's a row of neatly lined pants, and starchy shirts hanging. His fingers move down the buttons of his shirt like needles weaving thread. He crosses the room as he does and passes through the only other doorway.

     I follow because it's certainly not the most respectful thing to do but it's what I'm going to do, anyway. He tosses the shirt into his laundry basket, and pulls the teeshirt he was wearing underneath over his head so it can follow the latter into the basket. He's got moles littering his chest, dark and prominent. For half a second, half of half really, I think about running my finger across them like I'm playing connect the dots.

     He turns the tap on, and wets his face before applying a foamy cleanser. His head remains bowed over the sink as he scrubs and then rinses his face. Doesn't even take a glimpse of himself as he dries his face on a hand towel, then applies toothpaste to the only brush at the sink.

     He brushes long and hard, the way I imagine only dentists and compulsive people do. When he's finished, he finally looks up into the mirror and meets my gaze, except not really because he can't see me. He squints at himself like he doesn't recognize the reflection. Then he opens the medicine cabinet and reaches for one of the three prescription bottles inside.

     I get as close as I can without touching him, afraid that I may accidentally end up actually touching him, and read Ambien. Sounds mostly harmless. He swallows them dry. It's a savage thing to watch someone do and I feel my own throat tighten like I've got several pills lodged in it.

     I follow him back out of the bathroom, watch as he slinks towards his bed, pulls the covers back, and climbs in so he's facing the wall. I wait till his breath evens before I leave his bedroom to do some snooping.

     I find his wallet in the pocket of the jacket he hung up by the front door. He's got some cash on him but not enough for me to suspect something's up like drug dealing or connections to the mafia. That would've been cool though. His name is Alexei. He's twenty-six. He's an organ donor.

     I put the wallet back, and walk down the hall past his bedroom into the open living room, and kitchen. If I didn't know any better, I'd say he was renting the bedroom, and wasn't allowed in this portion of the apartment. Untouched is an understatement. There's no loose mail, no loose anything. Everything's seemingly got it's place.

    There's a bookshelf. Not all that surprising. He looks like the kind of guy who reads. I walk over, fingering some Russian titles. He has a potted plant in the corner of the shelf, obscuring the author's name to a book titled Demons.

    I pick up the cactus, roll my eyes at the Dostoyevsky, muttering a pretentious fuck under my breath.

    There's a noise behind me.

    I shouldn't spook so easily. I'm a ghost for christ's sake. But I do and while I make a mad scramble to catch his succulent, it lands with a crash.

ALEXEI

     I'm holding my phone, ready to dial 9-1-1 when he drops my plant. My eyes track it to the ground, his hands doing some clownish attempt at juggling. He squeezes the glochids but doesn't even flinch.

     "All that and you still managed not to catch it," I say dryly.

     It's supposed to be an observation I keep in my head. I'm supposed to be calling the police. But when the man whips around and it's not a man but Sinclair, the person I imagined, I decide that this night is more than likely going to end with an involuntary admit. Maybe voluntary. Who knows.

     "Thought you were sleeping," Sinclair says grinning sheepishly. I don't know what to say to that. To this. Why does this conversation feel so normal when he is not real?

     "Sorry, I know I shouldn't have busted in your house like this, I was just curious. And I — I kind of think I'm supposed to, like, save your life or something."

     "Save my life from what?"

     "Well, you know, the big guy didn't give me many instructions here."

     "So you're saying you're a guardian angel? My guardian angel?"

     "I mean, not directly. You know not with the wings and powers. But. It's the only thing that makes sense to me."

     "None of this makes sense."

     "No, well, yeah, fair. I can understand how this might be freaking you out a bit."

    I shake my head. I'm talking to my imagination, a projection of my imagination. Maybe my subconscious. So perhaps there's a message here that I want to get through to me. "So what is it then? What's the lesson you'd like to impart."

     He looks at me confused. "Uhm, probably don't keep plants on bookshelves. Hard to see the titles."

     "Funny," I respond even though I know I'm going to wake up and my plants going to be perfectly fine.

     "So are you a medium or something? Cause this doesn't seem to be phasing you much."

     Huh. So maybe that's it. My subconscious wants me to care more, be scared apparently of that tenuous film between life and death.

     "I get it," I say finally.

     Sinclair stares, lips parted like he's ready to say something but doesn't know what. He waits instead and when I don't elaborate, he asks, "Get what exactly?"

     "This. Why I'm imagining you. It's a warning."

     Sinclair lets out a barking laugh. "Dude, you are not imagining me."

     I could believe him, simply off the fact my imagination would never call me dude, but then what's the alternative here?

     "Ah, see, there's the reaction of oh shit there's a dead person in my living room."

    "You're not real."

     "Define real, exactly? I'm not really alive but I'm definitely really here. I've been here for months. I mean, not in your apartment cause that's — uh, I've been stuck for months, in between. But no one's ever been able to see me before."

     "You're going to have me believe you're a ghost?"

     "It's either that or you're a schizophrenic."

     "I guess I'm schizophrenic," I say plainly. There are worse things to be. Like someone who can see and communicate with ghosts.

     "Look," he says, exasperated. "I can prove it to you."