Hank sadly looked at the photograph in his hand. He remembered that day well. Hank and his family had gone to the beach. Marie had worn her new swimsuit and her favourite green sunhat. She looked so beautiful with her tanned skin glowing and the wind gently teasing her blond curls. Their two-year-old son Andrew was a spitting image of her. He was often found two steps behind Marie. Hank helped him build a sandcastle while Marie had gotten them all ice-creams. That was the last day he saw them alive. On that night, Marie had gone to her mother's house with Andrew. A truck had lost control and collided with her car. Reluctantly, Hank placed the precious memory in a box and put it in a hall closet for safe keeping.


The years went by and Hank thought less and less about the picture. After one particularly bad day at work, he needed to see it. He looked in the closet but it wasn't there. 'Maybe I put it in a different box,' he thought. Hank looked in all the boxes in the closet but the photograph wasn't in any of them. Most of them were empty or full of junk. He checked all the closets in the house but it wasn't there. Hank was beginning to panic. 'Maybe I put it in the attic'. He searched but to no avail. 'I couldn't have thrown it out...' Hank checked the dumpster by his house but couldn't find what he was looking for. He then began looking in the dumpsters throughout his neighbourhood, not finding what he was looking for.


For months Hank searched in every box he found. It had been so long since he had begun, he had forgotten what he was looking for; just that he had put it in a box. Hank's mind was beginning to slip. One cold winter's night he wandered into a place with lots of boxes. His trembling hands reached for a box. 'Did I leave it in here? What am I looking for again?'

"Sir?" a voice interrupted Hank's thoughts. "Sir this is a private facility. I'm going to ask you to leave."

"B-but I have to find it," Hank croaked.

"Find what sir?" the watch-guard question.

"I- I don't... I don't know," he faulted. The guard ushered the bleary-eyed man out of the facility and walked away. Hank stumbled down the alley. The only sounds he could hear were the crunch of the snow under his feet and a dog barking somewhere in the distance. Hank's breath formed puffs of clouds before him. He was shivering violently and his lips had turned blue. The cold was beginning to get to him.

"Maybe..." he uttered, "If I could just see it... just one more time... I would know what I'm looking for." Hank slumped down against the wall. "Then I could give up this search." Hank was so tired of searching. He closed his eyes and went to sleep; unaware his body was slowly shutting itself down.


"Hank Jenkins," The exhausted man forced his eyes open. He noticed that his skin had turned blue. Hank turned around to see a figure hunched next to the wall.

"But that's me. How-"

"You froze to death," the spectre replied.

"Who are you?" Hank asked the well dressed ghost.

"I am the Keeper of the Ghost Zone. I have noticed your obsession and I am a giving you a chance to continue as a ghost. I will have to erase all your memories of your human life. Do you want to become a ghost?" Hank bit his lip nervously as he thought. Continue obsessing as a ghost over boxes or die a broken man?

"I-I do."


They found Hank's frozen body the next morning. Most people thought he was just a crazy homeless guy. His neighbours hadn't seen him in weeks. They knew he was looking for something but they didn't know what. Nobody knew except Hank. Even then the memory of what he was desperately searching for had slipped in the delicate fragments of his broken mind. Those closest to him thought he could be at least reunited with Marie and Andrew but they didn't know the sad truth.


"I AM THE BOX GHOST!" he roared, chucking another cardboard box at Danny's head. The young halfa easily dodged it and sucked him into the Fenton Thermos.

"How did this guy become such a pathetic loser anyway?" Danny said to no one in particular.


The Keeper remembered that night. He had taken in Hank's wife and child and gave them a new afterlife in the Ghost Zone. The mother and son were bound to each other like every other pair that had departed together. They wouldn't remember Hank even if they saw him and he wouldn't remember them. They would feel a twinge of remembrance towards each other but never fully recognise them. The ghostification process wouldn't allow it. The Keeper almost felt sad that he couldn't reunite the family, but that was the way it had to be.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are always welcome~