Interview with the Garden Ghost

Interview with the Garden Ghost



         I wander the garden a lot.  It was my favorite spot here when I was alive.  I use to walk among the roses and lilies smelling the smells and listening to the animals moving nearby.  I’m not dead by choice.  They use to tell me I was too young to even think about death, and now I am a twenty three year old ghost, wandering the ruins of what use to be my home. 

         I didn’t go because of a sickness or something like a heart attack or going in your sleep.  It wasn’t something exciting either like a murder or a freak accident.  I did it to myself.  I was too dumb to know what I was doing. 

         I use to stress myself about everything; getting the best grades in class, getting the next promotion at my job, looking my best twenty four seven.  By the time I was sixteen my hair was completely grey and super thin.  I was tired all the time but kept being stressed anyway.  It was the only way I knew how to live.  It was the only thing causing my soul to fade out of existence. 

         Then, one day, I was cutting cucumbers for a salad.  I missed the damn fruit or veggie or whatever it is and cut my finger.  I felt a rush come over me as I saw the blood dripping out of the cut.  I liked watching the blood rush out.  From that day on, I would make small cuts on my finger or wherever I could reach to make the blood rush out.  I should’ve stopped but I didn’t. 

         I knew it was going too far when all my thoughts were consumed with more bloodletting, but I tried to play it off as something minor.  I didn’t tell anyone; all my goals vanished and I would spend all my day in the garden letting my blood touch the flowers.  My mom didn’t notice anything; she was too busy trying to find a new lover every night. 

         I would cry by the pear tree over there praying for help, praying for the strength to get over this.  It seemed like nobody up there cared so I just stopped praying, thinking there was no need to waste my time and theirs. 

My name is Janet by the way, Janet Zorr.  By the time I died nobody knew who I was; not even me.

Every time I cut myself I took a little more blood out each time.  You might think I was crazy; I probably was; but I think I was more lost than crazy.  I tried to stop lots of times but it always pulled me back in.  The blood dripping down my arm felt as good as or better than an orgasm.  There was no way I was going to ever get over it; I know that now.

The day I died was like any other day; the sun was shining the flowers were swaying in the wind.  I sat in the garden and heard the laughter of my mom being chased by her one day lover.  He was younger than me, but who am I to judge?  I was lost and cold.  It was around seventy degrees but I was wearing short shorts and a tube top.  The more skin that showed, I had more of a canvas to color with my blood.

I looked at my inner left thigh and decided that was where I was going to get my blood that day.  I took the small pocket knife I always had on me and cute a five inch cut into my skin and watched the blood roll down my leg.  It felt amazing.  I wanted more blood to fall so I decided to cute another five inch cut into the space between my breasts.  The blood spilling all over my stomach was just turning me on so much.  The final cut was by far the deepest, and I did it just above the collar bone.  The blood cascaded in wave after wave of red pleasure all over my body.

Soon I began to feel really weak, and I could barely hold the blade.  I was getting wave after wave of pleasure that the grass around me soon became a reddish brown color from all the blood.  After feeling the most intense pleasure of my life, I looked to the side, and saw the roses closest to the ground a few inches from my face were covered in blood.  It scared me a little bit.

         Then the pleasure started to morph from intense pleasure to intense pain engulfing my entire body.  IT hurt so bad my eyes were watering from no longer pleasure but pain.  I was scared out of my mind by then.  I was trying to scream for help but I was so weak I couldn’t even open my mouth.  My body felt like it was on fire.  I didn’t want to die that way; I kept thing to myself, “If I can just move my finger I can get help.”

Those fingers never moved.  I started to hallucinate that the roses and lilies and forget-me-knots were covered in my blood laughing at me telling me, “For such a high achiever you’re never going to do anything.”

In my head I was screaming and crying and moving every inch of my body everywhere.  I don’t know how long I was like that, but for a split second my body didn’t feel any pain.  I closed my eyes happy for the relief.

Then my body felt like it exploded into a million pieces.  I opened my eyes, expecting with a sliver of hope that I was safe in a hospital room recovering. 

Instead of seeing white walls when I opened my eyes; I saw my body beneath me, dead in the grass with a blood carpet beneath me.

“GOD!  GOD!  LET ME LIVE!  I WANT TO LIVE!”

         I screamed and cried and pounded the air and just had a total mental breakdown.  I was still having a fit when my mom found my bodying.  I saw her cry and collapse on top of me…  Sorry for the tears it’s just really the worst thing I remember about dying.  I don’t want to talk about it.  She held onto the stretcher as they took by body away.

I kept crying to God to help me, to let me live; but he wouldn’t listen to me.

My funeral only had me and my mom.  She was the only one standing there as my body was lowered into the ground.  She hung herself shortly after that…  Right over there, in this garden; I watched and screamed and cried. 

She got to move on.  She got to see the pearly white gates and see God.  All she did was smile at me as she left.  I’m stuck here forever to relive what has happened and what could have happened.  I’m desperately lonely.  I still talk to the same flowers, even though their dried up and dead, like me, for answers from them but they never talk back.  I wish someone would buy this house.  No one has been here for years.  Why are you here?  You going to write a book about me and my mom?  You the one selling the house?  Make sure nice people get it.

I haven’t had any friends in a while.  You want to be my friend.  People don’t usually see me; they’ve never seen me.  You want to be my friend?  Don’t walk away I’m talking to you. Don’t you want to talk?

Turn around.

Turn around!

TURN AROUND!