Bathroom Ghost (a flash fiction story)

 

There’s a ghost in my house, and I’ve seen it.

I have always had an open mind about that kind of thing and I’ve never really leaned one way or the other on it; I’ve seen television programs that made it look like ghosts are real and I’ve seen other things that are blatantly fake (Google isn’t always your friend). But something happened to change all that.

I saw it one morning when I went to the bathroom. I had finished brushing my teeth and I was standing there, looking at myself in the square mirror on the cabinet. I live alone in my house, so you can imagine my surprise when, right there in the reflection, the bathroom door slowly opened behind me.

Shocked – and more than a little bit scared – I immediately spun around to see a naked woman enter the bathroom and walk over to the bath. I could see right through her, and I knew right then what I was seeing.

However, she didn’t look like a ghost to me – I always thought ghosts would be scary-looking, with death embedded in their faces and a blank stare that came from dead eyes that no longer blinked. Instead, I was looking at a really beautiful young woman.She was slim, with an almost perfect hour-glass figure and long black hair that framed her wonderful face. Her eyes were bright blue and her skin was smooth - nothing like I expected from a ghost.

I stood perfectly still and watched her sit on the edge of the bath and put the plug in the plughole. She then proceeded to turn on the taps; I was surprised and a little angry that a ghost would walk into my bathroom and run herself a bath.

“Hello,” I whispered, making some kind of strange attempt to contact the entity.

She did look over towards me, but it lasted only a moment and she turned her attention back to the bath. She grabbed a bottle of bubble bath and poured it into the running water, which soon formed a layer of sweet smelling foam on the water’s surface.

I wondered then where the bubble bath came from, as I certainly didn’t keep anything that smelled like that. And was the bath actually running or was it all part of a spectral replay that I was witnessing? Would it all return to normal in a few moments, to leave me wondering what I had just seen? I spoke again, but she didn’t turn around, so I reached towards her with my hand. I was still a little scared, but I was intrigued by this spirit that had manifested itself in front of me and I wondered if it was possible to touch her. I leaned forward to place my hand on her shoulder, and that’s when it all turned really weird.

Her body became solid – not transparent, as it was just an instant before – and it was my own hand that became see-through. I expected to feel cold air as I touched her, like they say in the movies, but her skin was warm under my fingers. She turned around and rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself up; it was my skin that was cold, not hers.

A thought instantly ran through my mind and I turned back to look in the mirror to see my own face again; I looked gaunt and there were dark rings around my eyes, which I didn’t notice before. Looking at myself then, I realised that I knew the truth.

There’s a ghost in my house.

And I think it’s me.