Sarah Bolt has been dead for nineteen years. She's lonely, she's bored, and she'd give anything to have one more conversation with the living. She should have been more specific.
Dead Air
Sarah Bolt was tired of being dead.
No, not just tired. Bored to death with it. Which would be ironic if the living were able to appreciate that clever quip.
Problem was, the living rarely appreciated anything.
Sarah watched them, drolling about in a blind trance, living by the all-important silliness they demanded of themselves, while squandering everything their eyes touched. Scurrying like rats from one complexity to the next, and not a single thing they did mattered.
Not that Sarah could blame them for their follies. She had enjoyed the silliness too when she still lived. But now she drifted invisibly around them, finding the whole joke of life quite bleak.
Nothing carries over into death.
It was a movie. One big film playing out. There was nothing for Sarah to do but watch the broadcast with no ending.
But what she wouldn't give just to talk again. Just to engage in a conversation where someone returned a response.
It was maddening and it was lonely.
It's why she frequented the old house on the hill. Nobody ever visited the abandoned wooden box. It was perfectly serene, and just the vacation a restless ghost needed from her already crippling solitude.
That is, until today.
Today that peace shatters because there's a woman in the house, with a handful of trinkets Sarah has seen before on fraud fortune-teller stalls and metaphysical storefronts.
A crystal ball, tarot deck, a set of bells in all different sizes and metals, and an Ouija Board surrounded by more candles than Sarah has the patience to count.
This woman has the audacity to sit at the center of it all, with her legs crossed and her eyes closed, humming some off-key tune like she's channeling.
There isn't much that gets under Sarah's ghostly skin.
But today she considers punching a hole straight through the woman's head.
It won't have any impact, of course.
But Sarah will feel better for it.
Before she can move, the intruder's eyes pop open.
“Hullo.”
Sarah stares.
The woman repeats herself.
“Me?” Sarah points to her chest like the room is full of potential conversationalists.
“Yes, you.”
Sarah doesn't reply.
Doesn't know what to say.
If she could throw up, she might have.
In the end, she simply blinks.
“What's your name?”
It really was happening.
A conversation was really happening.
“Sarah Bolt.”
The woman looks thoughtful.
“Hi Sarah. I'm Kandace.”
For a split second, there's a new sensation blooming in Sarah's core.
Hope.
Kandace pulls a paper from the pocket of her jacket, and Sarah cranes her neck, the apparition of her heart threatening to pound.
Kandace clears her throat.
“Sarah, I've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty.”
