I think I started noticing when my couch exploded.

Sure, there was the occasional thing. The fire that had been blazing in my fireplace went cold  after I came back from getting a snack. Said snack had been swiped, despite the fact that I'd gone to buy some just the other day. When I tried turning my fire back on, I found I didn't have any more kindling.

Yeah, that wasn't my most productive day, come to think of it.

But, I think the spirit, eventually decided to drop the incognito act and go all out.

I woke in the darkness. It was a cold, winter night, and the heaters were going full blast, which I knew was going to be heavy on my wallet once the electricity bill came in.

I rolled over with a sigh. The curtains of my window fluttered. But, wait, it was winter, the window was closed.

I sat bolt upright, another chill went down my spine. That ghostly, unpleasant, other-worldliness that made my hair stand on end, as if I was in the presence of a ghost.

The door to my room opened slowly with a loud creak. It opened on the darkness of the hallway.

Something rushed past and I heard the sound of a child giggling. My closet seemed to shudder slightly. The curtains ruffled again. The door to my room closed with a creak, then opened again.

I was starting to go from frightened to annoyed.

Suddenly, a loud BANG! rang from downstairs, as if someone had set off a firework down there. I leapt up, grabbed a pair of pants, and ran for the door, which was creaking open again anyway. I dashed down as fast as my legs would take me and swung around once I'd reached the bottom.

There, in the middle of my living room, my poor couch, which cost almost as much as the house alone, lay on it's side dejectedly. A hole was pierced through the bottom and the stuffing was seeping out. The hole was smoking lightly.

At that point, I was just plain mad. "Hey!" I yelled. "I don't care who's haunting me, but you are really, really bad at it! Like, seriously. You used at least nine cheesy ghost tropes back there, all in one go, and you just blew up my couch! You'd better cover the cost! Show yourself, already!"

My door blew open with a snap, the lock having been turned and the wind buffeting the frigid air into the living room.

"Stop that!" I yelled. "I swear to god, I can exorcise you if I want, you better stop!"

A lamp wobbled on it's hold, then began to fall but I managed to catch it right at the nick of time.

"I'm serious! I can! I will!"

A fire flared in my fireplace, filling the room with warmth.

"Oh? Trying to appease me now? Too late!" I raised my arms and began a chant. "Regna terrae, cantata Deo, psallite Cernunnos..."

"Wait!" A voice screamed. "What the hell are you doing?! Are you some kind of megalomaniac?! Stop it! You would exorcise someone for real?!"

A figure appeared before me. A young lady, looking to be about eighteen in age, her black hair flowed over her shoulders, held up by a pin in the shape of an oak leaf. She wore pure white clothing from neck to ankle and an angry, challenging expression on her face. Besides that, she looked like any other girl you would meet at the mall.

"I... I mean, please stop doing that." She amended, clearing her throat.

I cleared my throat too, not used to talking to people I'd just threatened to exorcise.

"Um... yeah. You'd better stop, like, right now. Because otherwise... I'll... I'll make you disappear!"

She paused at that, looking up at me, suspicion written all over her face. Her blue eyes narrowed. "You will? What are you going to do if I do stop? Let me go free?"

I paused for a second. What should I do? I hadn't really thought that far ahead. "Uh..." I stammered. "I can... I can keep you imprisoned here! I know a spell!"

She cocked an eyebrow. "A spell? You really believe in spells?"

"Well... no one believes in ghosts either, do they?" I mumbled. The truth was, I really didn't know any spell. My dad taught me how to exorcise, but that's really all you can do with holy powers. There's no holy spirit blast or sacred blade of Yata or whatever, just fancy words and chanting.

"Well, if you're not going to exorcise me, I guess I'll just go and find someone else to haunt. You really were a stroke of misfortune. Seriously, the one person I stumble across first is an exorcist."

Someone else? Go through what I just did without the exorcism threat? Lose their 200 dollar couch? Endure one cliche haunt after another? No way!

"Wait!" I yelled. "You shouldn't go!"

"I really see no reason to stay." The ghost answers, rising from the ground, as in floating up. Her hair bobbed around her like a cloud and she turned. "Bye, Mr. Exorcist, thanks for not exorcising me."

"No! Wait! You really should stay!" I called grabbing for her wrist and immediately feeling like I'd just plunged my hands into a bucket of ice cold water.

"Why?" She demanded, looking down at me. She was surprisingly good at that.

"You suck, as a ghost."

There was a deathly silence, not a breeze whistled outside, the heaters were off.

"Wh... what?" The spirit sunk to the ground in an utterly defeated heap. Her shoulders were hunched and her expression was of one that had just had their puppy crushed by a car. A huge contrast to her previous personality. She looked so utterly depressed that I felt genuinely sorry for her.

"See, literally every spook you'd tried giving me earlier on were cliche." I started. "The fluttering curtains? Way overdone. The chill down my spine? Sure, once works, but twice? No way. The opening door? Yeah, that's creepy. But don't close it again afterwards! The running child and the giggling was good, but you need to do the giggling first, then the running child or vice-versa. Not all at the same time! And why the hell did you blow up my couch?! Do you have any idea how much it cost me?! I liked that couch!"

A sniffling noise came from below and I looked down in disbelief. Tears were streaming down her face and dropping through the floor.

"But, um... I guess altogether it was pretty scary." I added sheepishly.

"I've, hic, always been bad at everything I, sniff, tried..." She said thickly. "I... sniff, always mess up!"

"Look, it... it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be, okay?"

"Even... even in dodgeball, I... hic... was always chosen last. A... and then, I would always be the first to be out. Sniff... and... and I died one day. I... I can't even remember how?! I'm so useless!!"

She dissolved into tears and I spent the next half hour trying to comfort the person I'd just threatened to exorcise.

By the time she was done, I'd told her every funny, embarrassing story from my childhood I could remember, taught her how to play chess, whist and shogi and used up my entire repertoire of clever jokes.

She wiped her face and sniffled some more. "Y...yeah." She hiccuped. "Why did you throw your lunch onto..."

"Oh!" I jumped in, doing my utter best to block out those memories forever again. Have to add something, what can I add, something to make her cheer up... "You're... uh... well... you're very pretty, too."

Oh, ok. Or you could do that, dipshit.

I seriously didn't mean to say that. I mean, she hadn't exactly given me much material to work up a compliment of my own. She'd really just complained about how bad she was at everything and cried. That really only left her looks which, granted, weren't really bad.

She seemed taken aback and her smoky, see through face turned a shade of silver in what I assumed to be a blush.

"W... well... I... um... d...! Alright, fine!" She snapped, switching immediately back to her original persona. I took that as to mean I had cheered her up. Brilliant.

"Uh... okay. Anyway, you shouldn't leave, people will just make fun of you because they think you're bad at ghosting. Which you're not, okay?" I added hastily, because she had serious self-esteem issues. "You're good, you're very good at ghosting. You're the best at ghosting!"

"O... okay." She seemed to straighten a little which I took as a good sign. "Alright. I... I guess I'll stay, since I don't really have anywhere else to go, anyway."

"R... right. Well, I guess you don't sleep, right?"

"No! I do. If I want to. I mean, I don't need to, but I can sleep for several years on end if I want to." She slumped a little. "That's really all I'm good at."

"N... no!" I countered. "Not... oh, forget it. Look, you're good at... life after death, yeah? Life after death and that's good enough for now, okay? Now come and sleep."

She drifted along behind me, her fluttering dress reminding me of the curtain in my room.

I flopped down in my bed, relieved. It had been a long night, I wanted sleep.

The spirit curled up in midair and went to sleep.