by Mileva Anastasiadou
The ghost of the crying lady fed on our laughter. She cried harder each time we laughed, when we were happy. No one warned us about her. We moved in and she was there, like this was her home, like we were the intruders. We moved in right after our wedding, he carried me in his arms, he sang an old song, and we thought it was the song at first, he stopped singing and we remained silent, the lady stopped crying. He said, we won’t sing this song ever again, we’re safe, and I laughed, and he laughed too, the lady wept and wept.
We shrugged, it wasn’t the song. We felt relieved because that was our song and Unchained Melody wasn’t the Ghost movie song yet, it was only romantic without being spooky at all. We felt relieved but also concerned, it was our laughter.
We didn’t mind much at first. We even bragged about it to friends, about living with a ghost. The thing is it got worse. The crying got louder each time we laughed. It’s kind of annoying if someone cries when you laugh. We grew tired of it. We grew sick. The crying lady poisoned us and we stopped laughing, and we blamed her, we blamed her for our misery, only it wasn’t her, it was the bills, or it was life, and she disappeared, like she moved out and we forgot about her. But then we laughed again and she came back.
Like all couples, we had our ups and downs and we realized that our ghost only appeared when we were up. She hibernated during our worst times, only to start crying again when we felt happy. We came to terms with it. Why fear ghosts when we all may end up as one? he asked, I don’t want to be a ghost, I told him and wrapped my arms around him, as if he kept me from evaporating, grounded, alive. Maybe you’re already one, he said and he tickled me and I laughed, then he pinched me, pretending he wanted to check if I was real, and I was real, because I laughed harder.
Only when we laughed harder, the lady cried harder, like she couldn’t stand our happiness. He said he felt a connection with her, like she felt familiar, like he somehow knew her, like he somehow knew, and that I found strange, because I didn’t know then how the past mingles with the future, how time doesn’t exist in Ghost-land, how wonderful and scary and haunting love can be, until she disappeared a few years ago, the moment he died and another ghost came to haunt me.
Years pass by and time flies, my hair goes gray, my skin is wrinkled. I sit alone in that same house. I sit and reminisce about the good old days, those blissful days of ignorance when nothing went wrong and disasters were only a distant possibility we would ignore forever, for the past is a gorgeous place where only good things happen and misery is left out, forgotten, erased.
Only I’m not alone, my granddaughter nudging me, she wants a story, and I tell her the tale of the crying lady, but I stop right before the end because she seems frightened, scared, she looks over her shoulder, afraid of ghosts, of supernatural creatures, coming from distant and evil realms to haunt the living.
Only I’m not alone, for there comes the ghost of us, that unbearable deafening laughter of happiness starting the engine of sadness in my mind, our shared life playing like a movie ahead of me, the movie on my eyelids, Unchained Melody playing on the repeat in my head, and the girl can’t hear it, but she comes near me. She hugs me when I start to sob, and I want to tell her about how sometimes we haunt each other, sometimes we haunt ourselves, but as I stare at her, I see her innocence. The future laughs and I don’t speak.
Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of “We Fade With Time” by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Citron Review, trampset and others.
