Song Shot #1: Ghosting

I've been ghosting, I've been ghosting along

Ghost in the world, ghost with no home

I've been ghosting. That's the only way I can think to describe this feeling, this...nothingness. Not quite a ghost, not quite a human. I don't know how long I've been like this, just lingering. Heck, I'm not even sure who I am anymore, although I know that the only thing that keeps me together, keeps me from fading, is this house.

Or, at least, I think it's this house.

I spent the day wandering this little town, trying to figure out why I'm here. I saw people walking by, people continuing on with their lives, but I didn't really recognize them. I saw buildings and trees, too, and the further I got from this house the more I felt...empty. Less like I was exploring and more like I wandering away. The sun is high and warm, it seems, but sunlight passes through me and I can't feel a thing. Somehow that isn't very surprising, either.

We're dead, something says, deep down.

Oh. I wonder if this house has anything to do with it?

I pass silently through the front door—I guess that's one perk of being dead, closed doors don't mean anything—and take in my surroundings. I'm in a room lined with couches and a small coffee table. Despite the shining sun outside, this room is pitch black. The blinds are pulled, the lights are off. No one's here, but if I listen closely I can hear something. Well, maybe not hear exactly since I don't have ears, but I know it's a sound I've heard before...when I was alive maybe? It pulls at me, drawing me up the stairs just down the hall and towards another room. This one has a name tacked on it, and it sounds like whatever I sensed before is just beyond it.

I pass through this door, too, a little surprised to find a single person. She's hunched over, softly thumbing through a book filled with pictures and newspaper clippings—all of the same person, it looks like. She's speaking softly, her voice thick with tears and causing her long red, hair to sway slightly in time with her words.

"...you always had to be the hero, the one who protected everyone else..." She sniffs, wiping at red, bloodshot eyes. "And now...now..." She buries her face in her hands in a sob, and the action has me feeling I should give her some privacy. I touch her shoulder lightly, and she shivers. Her eyes widen only a fraction.

I pass back through the door, wandering towards another closed door. There are two people here, both looking just as somber as the last one I saw, if not more so. They're both just sitting on a bed, staring anywhere but each other. Something inside me doesn't want to stay and intrude on their grief, too. I touch each of them lightly, trying to will all of my calm, untroubled thoughts to them before I leave.

The last door is deathly silent when I pass through. No one is here, and I feel guilty relief at the sight. I feel so many things in this house, but especially in this room. Memories I can't make sense of swirl around my existence. I'm dizzy in their wake, but I sadly admire the white shirt draped over the bed, the messy, rumpled sheets, and the way this room looks like it hasn't been touched in ages.

I try to smooth the sheets, amazed to find they follow my feather-light touch. I try to fold the shirt, and it works, too. For half a second, some sort of hope curls in my core...but then it remembers that no one can see me. That I'm—we're—dead.

Three sets of footsteps sound down the hall, towards this room, and I watch with some amusement as the three people I'd touched come barreling through the door. They're all frantically searching the room with their eyes—and looking somewhat more alive than they had just moments ago, I note with satisfaction.

No reason to waste away in your rooms. I think to myself, more than a little surprised when all three eyes focus in on where mine should be.

I just wanted to say goodbye, I find myself saying—though maybe it wasn't really me—before I can even wonder how they can hear me or why I know exactly what to say. Be safe.

And just like that, we're gone, swirling towards something endless and empty.

That can't be it, I find myself protesting, arguing with no one in particular in the closing darkness. Did you see the look on their faces? They need us!

They don't, that same deep-down thing says, albeit more weakly than before, they don't need us haunting them, it's our time to go.

I shake my non-existent head. No, I say firmly, no no no. I muster up what's left of me, reach deep down in my core and pull that fading, falling thing out, shaking it for good measure. You don't get to make that choice.

Before it can try to weasel its way out of my grip, I'm sending what's left of me through it, willing it back into existence. It tries to squirm away, pulling me towards the void, but I stubbornly hang on. I'm feeling more than I felt even in that room, maybe even ever, and memories rush past me as I force the thing to cling to whatever life we have left.

Memories of me, flying high above the same buildings I'd passed by moments ago, blasting ghosts out of the sky and getting shot at by ghost hunters... then someone who wasn't but was me—attending school, eating at the Nasty Burger, hugging the three people from the room, laughing with friends...

With a start, I realize that only one of us is gonna make it out of this.

And it sure as hell couldn't be me.

I shove the thing above me, willing it to feel what I feel, to see what I see, and it shudders. What are you doing? It cries in dismay.

You were right, I say, straining to keep between it and the nothingness below us. I give it a soft push up with the last of my strength. I smile as it begins to take a familiar form, no longer a fast fading light within me. They don't need us.

He calls to me, but I'm already fading. I can see him floating up, back towards the something we fell out of, the something not at all like the nothing we're in now. I think of his friends, his family, the people who love and adore him. I think of the ghosts, the hunters, the people who hated and feared me.

And that's why I've decided, I say, my voice probably too faint for anyone to hear, now. I close my eyes, fully aware that I probably won't open them again. You don't need me.

._._._.

Danny Fenton's eyes fluttered open, tubes filling his nose and mouth. His ears detected the soft, slow beep of a heart monitor. He'd had the strangest dream that he'd died.

I won't put white into your hair

I won't make noises in your stairs

And this is why I have decided

To leave your house and home un-haunted

You don't need poltergeists for sidekicks

You don't need treats, you don't need tricks

And you don't need

Me