He had always known he would die young. He had been raised in a bubble, Mom terrified running too fast or inhaling the wrong product might damage his frail lungs, but he survived childhood. His childhood was punctuated by hospital visits, like commas in the sentence of his life, prolonging it past what nature would have him live to. But live he did, until... until...
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡU855vCMHXx
He didn't believe in ghosts when he was alive. Honestly, few people in his life did, most believing at most dead relatives visited by sending blue jays or cardinals as messengers since they were his great aunt's favorite birds, but a ghost was insane. Ridiculous. A sign of a mental health issue, and yet...
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGzLAxdEFEO
He was dead, but still here. Still wandering the streets of Boston like he was alive, still grabbing chocolate from 7/11 just because he could even though he couldn't even eat now. His life was boring. Empty. He had never fallen in love when he was alive, and now he had no chance of ever meeting anyone to even befriend unless other ghosts existed, but he hadn't found any.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7qcG57rdet
He had hoped death would be the final end, but instead he just watched strangers' lives due to the fact he no longer had one of his own to live. Which was depressing, but less depressing than when he had spent his time watching people he knew from his old life.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ9IRjjANHb4
No, anonymously observing the lives of strangers was easier than watching his friends and family mourn him. And he began recognizing certain strangers through time, simply by hanging around the same haunts (yes that was a ghost pun). One girl worked at a law firm, and our protagonist would follow her on her way to the office from the train station and vice versa.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvVZDbyVPXT
Maybe, he thought one bored day, he should re-name himself. He could still read, if someone else was reading, and at the public library one day, an expectant couple were reading through books on name meanings. He discovered Alastor meant avenging spirit in Greek, and decided that might be a decent name for him. He wasn’t sure what he was avenging, but he had to have some reason to still stay on the planet postmortem. Some form of unfinished business. What, he didn't know.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡNu0rE7iawg
One evening, he was doing what he often did, following this women to her destination, when his afterlife changed forevermore.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUuJnTjW71o
"Hey, creep, who've you following me?" At first, Alastor didn't recognize he was even being addressed - after all, it had been months, almost a year since he had left the land of the living. A year of being entirely invisible makes being seen hard to differentiate from mistaking oneself for being seen, which happened constantly. But the woman stopped walking and Alastor didn't, floating through her. "What the fuck?!"
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVXkxobAX12
Alastor stopped short, bewildered by the woman who seemed to be talking to herself. Obviously, she had to be talking to herself. Only...
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡct9XpIXLZH
"Are you a ghost or something? Why have you been following me to the train but never getting on? It's been months, I thought you worked at the office, but nobody's heard of you, and you just walked right through me."
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡY3sVkUGpkA
"You - you can see me? I've been dead almost a year and nobody has seen me, had tried - i didn't know anyone could, I can stop following you, I don't want to be a creep just because I'm a monster."
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6XuCPL74Ms
"Monster? So you are a ghost?" Alastor nodded, unused to talking to someone who could hear him. Unused to being heard, being looked at intentionally. The woman's eye contact was such that Alastor felt the opposite of invisible in that moment.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQn67Yi9p3F
"I go by Alastor, which means avenging spirit. What exactly I'm avenging, I don't even know. I don't have unfinished business, I don't know why I'm a ghost at all."
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMR3ygt008b
"That's awful. The universe works in mysterious ways sometimes. Would you want to come home with me? Like on the train? It's late enough now there will be empty seats I can glare people away from sitting on."
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUgeJSVYqGF
"Sure, yeah, it beats eavesdropping on the homeless encampment for the millionth time."
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡD1Eff3or57
"I bet. You ever hear interesting gossip in the city?" The woman pretended to be on her phone so strangers wouldn't assume she was talking to herself.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlv3IyeN7iU
Alastor felt relieved by the attention no longer being so all encompassing, both auditory and visual. "Yeah, all the time!" Alastor then took great joy in finally having someone who wanted to listen to his many tidbits of strangers' lives he had stashed away in his sentience. What was a ghost if not knowledge? He couldn't be anything physically. But he had a captive audience, a woman who wanted to hear whatever came to his head, however hollow that head may be. So Alastor spoke and the woman, whose name he had yet to ask for, listened, relieved she didn't have to continue pretending to be on the phone. They walked to the woman's apartment, at which point Alastor was embarrassed to realize he had yet to ask for her name.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeU33rfe1dK
"Margalit. It's Hebrew, means pearl, so not quite as symbolic as vengeful spirit, but..." But Alastor laughed at that statement. Margalit hadn't had much experience with, well, anyone laughing at her in genuine enjoyment - there was a reason Alastor was able to follow her around the city for months before Margalit caught on.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7TTUW1znYs
The two talked and laughed through the night and into the following morning, wherein Alastor took Margalit out to his usual haunts (pun intended). He watched her enjoy food he no longer could, and then had her describe what it tasted like to him. He then tried something, with her permission. He floated through her as she was eating and could taste the breakfast as she ate it. Ghosts could possess people? Margalit and Alastor were simultaneously thrilled and scared by this discovery. Margalit happily agreed Alastor could take control over her body if that meant he would work instead of her having to pretend to be doing her job during her shift.
25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1MXJuvYrNJ
Alastor was dead, but he was now living the adulthood he had never been able to when alive. Margalit was alive, but found comfort in ceding pieces of her life to a ghost who had more interest in taking on the parts she hated. If souls existed, which Alastor was under the impression they must in order for him to exist, perhaps the two of them were soulmates. Time would tell, and time was the one aspect of life Alastor had nothing but.
ns216.73.216.151da2
and then Add to home screen.