Today's #flashfiction #TheGhostAndFears

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        I don't understand why people use aluminum foil hats to try and stop aliens from controlling their minds. Folded paper hats work much better. Anyway onto the flash fiction!

The Ghost And Fears

        “No, no.” I mutter to myself in the ethereal tongue only the dead can hear as I float through the walls of the house. “Nothing is working!” My body is a ball of white fog with long purple tentacles coming from it and multiple eyes covering the sides. I wish I could be seen as that would allow at least my visage to scare them.

         I grow more powerful and closer to moving on by scaring the humans. Yet what I does not affect them. The children are older, the adults are more jaded. Without superstition all the floor creaking, whispering in the wind, slight moving of objects and everything else is attributed to something mundane. Even the few times I carefully manipulate light and try as hard as I can to become slightly visible the brief flash of my terrifying form is dismissed as their eyes playing tricks on them. Without convincing them of my presence how else will I scare them?

        I brainstorm for years. Watch the family and try to figure them out. How can I do this? I grow weaker as the days go by. I've already died. My original objective was to ascend, but now it's just getting enough energy from their fear to keep existing. What happens when a ghost dies? The end after the end? Is it like deletion of a computer program? Thinking of this erasure depressed me but gave me an idea.

       The daughter in the family left her cellphone next to the sink. I knew the girl cared for it greatly, I used what little power I had and nudged the cellphone into the sink and turned the water on. A great task for a ghost with a large presence. An incredible task for a weak one.

I heard a huge, terrified scream and I filled with so much energy I felt myself rising up.

        “My phone! Who left the water running? I'll kill them!” The daughter yelled as she cloaked her fear in anger. She still felt incredible fear as she pulled the phone from the water and frantically dried it off. I didn't get to see the end of incident as that massive rush of fear for the precious object gave me the energy to move on.