Today's #flashfiction #TheSchoolGhost

“Remember to look both ways before crossing the street.”

Confucius* #quote

         Today I went to my card game tournament. Didn't do good, but I had fun, and I learned how to improve the deck I'm using and in general. Anyway onto the flash fiction.

The School Ghost

       I wish I could complete school. I think I'm thirty now technically. But I died in the sixth grade. I've been wandering the school halls ever since I died in a fire. Over time I figured out I can't get more than a certain distance away from the desk that once had my name tag on it, “Hanna Graygrass”.

       My school is a joint grade to high school. I've watched enough classes as a ghost to graduate I think, and I mentally take tests. I wish the ethereal body I have could touch things. But at least it's a body. It looks like a marionette made of fog with my head on top. I still have my blue eyes, and blonde hair, but they're as foggy as the rest of my body, along with all my other features. Unless I look close it mostly just looks white.

      I've seen people come and go, teachers and staff. Seen some stay as long as I've been there. I know all the gossip. But it's become maddening to be unable to talk to anyone. I even try to simulate talking to people by reading out people's tests as they take them so its like they're answering me, or copying the teacher so its like the students are talking to me. I would do anything for some company.

It did all give me the ability to make snide remarks during a teacher's class. I could even shout it out as obnoxiously as I want. With all the stress I would get from the loneliness I would do this more often then I should.

      Sarcasm, snide remarks, years and years went by. My ghostly body would be the same, and the same face. Eventually though, something surprising happened. One tired teacher, who seemed to be running on just coffee said to the crowd of students, “Who said that?” At that time I was the only that talked. The students looked at him oddly. “Well?” He continued.

It took me a second to realize that he heard me.

        I replied, “None of your students are talking. It's me a ghost!” I shouted even louder than before.

The coffee ran science teacher, a man of doubt, and probably a serious temper did not like that response. I knew him well as I did all the teachers. He was Mr. Redburg, and I'd never seen him drink coffee before so something really stressful must have kept him up last night.

He looked like he was about to shout but he looked at all his students again and did see that none of them were talking. I knew many teachers watched all their students like they had eyes all over their head. He turned around and wrote something on the board where none of the students could see and continued his lecture. I floated around next to him and saw what it said.

       “Prove it, say 'white knight castle'.”

         A test. Since none of the students could see it that means if I could then I would prove my existence.

“White knight castle!” I yelled.

        The teacher looked shocked. He looked to where my voice had come from and said, “Speak to me after class.”

         I waited eagerly, time nearly coming to a stand still from my perspective, and I spoke to him. After class I started to tell him a bit about me, but he cut me off. He immediately wanted to know why he could hear me and no one else. I didn't know. We discussed various things, starting in spirituality, but then we went more scientific. He discussed how he took a tour in Iraq and almost got killed from an explosion and they had to put a metal plate into his head along with him having him getting his ears a little damaged from the explosion. This was the only major hearing difference between him and the other people on campus.

We talked more throughout the day, I wondered why this was the first day he could hear me. But then we gave up talking about that I just wanted to talk normally and about myself to relieve my loneliness. The next day though he couldn't hear me, and the next, and the next, and the next, and the next. I became depressed very quickly.

          But on the Friday of that week he brought a cup of coffee and drank it he could hear me again.

          “Amazing what a little cup can do,” He said to me. “I wonder if I can talk to because of the plate in the brain I got, or if the fact that the coffee shop I get this from is a little ma and pop shop with a very peculiar family running it.”