[WP] You’re a ghost, but your body isn’t dead. It’s undead, and Zombie-You is an absolute moron without you at the wheel.

I shot up in bed.

I’m not sure if I even screamed. But Jesus, fuck that nightmare. It’s always the same one, where you’re falling and you wake up the second you hit the ground. I hate that dream so much!

I grabbed for the covers to settle back into bed. My eyes were heavy enough and my brain still foggy, meaning I could fall asleep again pretty easily. Except I didn’t grab anything. I wasn’t exactly looking the first time I reached for the covers. In my stupor, I probably grasped at nothing but air. So this time, I watched my hands as they attempted to pull the covers over me. That’s when I realized that they were see-through.

I definitely screamed the following:

“What the fuck?!”

I would say that I fell out of bed, yet I never hit the floor. I floated to my feet and recognized that I wasn’t using them to stand up. I was actually levitating. My feet were slightly above the ground.

I held up my hands, using the light coming through the bedroom window to confirm that they were indeed transparent and also shaking. I yelled as I looked all over my body, only to find the same thing: every part of me was see-through. I yelled until my throat hurt, and I was finally reduced to panting. My eyes widened so much that my face throbbed. I shut them tight, shaking my head.

“Still a nightmare…” I said. “Gotta be the nightmare. I just haven’t really woken up yet. Yup.”

I glanced over at my body, which was still lying in bed. The covers were around my ankles.

“Oh Jesus Christ,” I squeaked. “This is the fucking worst! Wake up already!”

It’s not like I could’ve slapped myself silly to end this. I don’t think I could’ve gotten a cup of water or anything and splashed it on myself. I couldn’t even touch the covers.

I could only hover there, staring at my body in disbelief.

And it was on closer inspection of said body that I noticed a huge problem.

… I was dead.

You’d think I would’ve come to that conclusion sooner, given that I was a now ghost.

“Oh, FUCK this!” I screamed once more. “Fuck me, fuck this, fucking fuck!”

I flew around the room, doing anything to expel this absolute panic. So far, in this dream, I apparently went BASE jumping without a parachute and died, only to “wake up” from that, yet still have the dream continue. Nightmare or not, this was a literal out-of-body experience that I didn’t want to have anymore.

I inhaled and exhaled deeply.

“Okay, think this through,” I said. “Ideas? C’mon, anything! Uh… Oh!”

I glided across the room slowly and approached the closed door. If I couldn’t physically open it, then I figured the only thing left to do was… phase through it? Like in the movies?

It still felt like I was about to walk headlong into a solid door and get knocked back on my ass. However, I couldn’t stay here any longer. I held my breath and just went for it. Sure enough, a fuzzy feeling spread through me, and I was on the other side, floating in the hallway. I gasped and shivered.

“Well… that was unsettling,” I said.

I had to find someone. Since my phasing theory surprisingly worked out, I guessed that, even if I did come across a person, they most likely wouldn’t hear or see me. I wouldn’t be able to knock anything off of a counter or bookshelf to get attention either. Regardless, I thought that I needed to find anyone — it could be a burglar in my house, for all I cared — and distract myself long enough to wake up from what had officially become the worst nightmare of my life.

I flew down the stairs and around the corner into the living room. My roommate, Alicia, and her dog, Roman, might’ve been hanging out down there somewhere. They weren’t, though.

“Maybe the backyard?” I asked.

Suddenly, I heard a crash from back upstairs.

“Oh my God!” I said. “Oh thank you, sweet Jesus!”

I zipped up the stairs, expecting to find Alicia maybe coming out of her bedroom or Roman zooming up and down the hallway, ready to go outside. I came across neither.

I’d take that burglar, with crowbar in hand, breaking the toilet and stealing all of my stuff, rather than what actually greeted me.

It was my corpse, upright and walking toward me.

And everything went black.

***

Much to my chagrin, I hadn’t woken up from this hellscape.

Is it possible for ghosts to pass out? Because upon seeing Zombie-Me, I think that’s exactly what happened.

I “came to,” I guess, right in the same spot in the center of the hallway. It was sort of like falling asleep standing up. My body had wandered off somewhere by then, and I took a moment to just be where I was, alone.

I was past freaking out and not even very irritated anymore. I might have started moving into a quiet, sad acceptance.

“This could be real,” I whispered.

I heard more commotion, this time from downstairs.

So… this was my life now? I was dead with no clue as to the whereabouts of anyone I cared about, and all I had at the moment was my corpse for company?

I almost laughed at the absurd thought of a ghost haunting her own zombie. I was sure I was delirious at this point.

I supposed, like the restless spirit I currently was, I could at least pass some amount of time by observing the shell of my former self. Talk about the world’s weirdest nature program. I drifted out of the hallway and down the stairs again to track down my hapless body. Honestly, between the two, I was glad to be a ghost and not a zombie. I grasped to that little bit of solace while I still had it.

More noise came from the kitchen. I hovered across the living room and entered the kitchen to find my corpse, pulling on one of the many drawers. Other drawers were already completely removed and strewn about on the floor, along with various kitchen items.

“Oh, you idiot!” I shouted. “What are you doing?!”

Instinctively, I descended on my body and tried swatting her hands away. But almost immediately, I stopped. Who was the real idiot between the two of us? Zombie-Me didn’t acknowledge… well, anything, much less my presence. And like I discovered before, I couldn’t interact with any earthly item, and no human was going to recognize me. So my corpse certainly wouldn’t.

“Jesus Christ,” I said. “This is torture already. I get to watch you make a fucking mess, and I can’t do anything about it. I truly wish both of us were dead.”

She ripped out another drawer right after the word “dead” came out of my mouth. Every bit of its contents clattered to the floor.

“Holy shit,” I scoffed.

She proceeded to work on yet another drawer. I sighed and scanned the room.

“Well, this is gonna be a long afterlife,” I said.

The refrigerator caught my eye. I knew I couldn’t open the door. Hell, could ghosts even eat anything? If I still had shoulders, I would’ve shrugged them. I extended my hand to see if it would phase into the fridge, and sure enough, it did.

Could I remove anything? Of course not. But if I was going to follow Zombie-Me around and not lose my mind, I thought I’d find out more about my ghostly being while I was at it.