Ghosts Next Door

Ghosts Next Door
by Lopaka Kapanui

Oct 27, 2018

100 Ghost Stories Counting Down To Halloween 2018 #4

GIRL

I met her coming out of a bar in Wahiawa near Kemo'o farms; well, really, I almost ran her over, but I stopped at the last second, and there we were literally faced to face.
It must have been raining before I came out of the bar because she was soaking wet. She looked up at me from beneath her expertly cut bangs and smiled. I thought nothing of it and smiled back. I apologized for my mistake, and I asked if she would like to join me for a late-night dinner. She agreed, and we went to Zippy's, where we had two heaping bowls of Saimin. After, I asked her if she'd liked to be dropped off at home, to which she answered that she wanted to come home with me. At the time, I had no idea I'd be making the biggest mistake of my life. Yes, the sex was amazing, and yes, it was athletic, and yes, it went on all night long. In the morning, I was exhausted because I felt like I'd worked every single muscle in my body. I sat up to find her sitting on the corner of my bed, crying. I scooted over to her and rubbed her shoulders and asked her what the matter might be? She said she was sorry for leading me on and that she should have resolved her own issues before coming home with me. She was sweet and demure, so I couldn't imagine what kind of pressing issues she might have, but it turned out she was a widow and that she was still grieving over the death of her late husband.

"So, this was mercy sex?" I asked her, not really wanting to know the answer.

"No," she replied. "I really like you, which is why I'm so conflicted. I feel like I just cheated on my husband even though he's been gone for a while."

"How long of a while has it been?" I should have kept my compassionate thoughts to myself but the idiot that I am I had to care for.

She said that she belonged to a group of widows who often met to console and encourage one another through the transition of their husband's passing. It was what helped her get through it. Maybe she didn't hear my question, so I asked her again, "How long of a while has it been?"

"Thirty years," she replied in a soft voice.

Thirty years? She looked to be all of twenty-five herself, the numbers didn't match up. In fact, I told her so. That's when the unexpected happened. She got up off the bed and walked directly to my window with her back facing me. I walked up behind her and held her naked body to mine, it was beautiful because she melted into me and let out a deep sigh. "The last man who smiled at me the way you did tonight? I devoted myself to him and stayed with him for thirty years until he finally took his own life."

Still ignoring the fact that her numbers were askew, I asked her gently if she would mind sharing just how her ex-husband took his own life? She turned around and looked me in the eye, and with astonishing blinding speed, she punched me in my sternum. I dropped to my knees immediately, and in between trying to catch my breath, I threw up everything from the night before all over my carpet. She stood there and watched me suffer and heave, then she got down on all fours and crawled over to where the bile lay warm and putrid. She began to lick it up and eat it. The sight of it made me even more nauseous, I had to run to the toilet and throw up, but she grabbed me by my hair, and at the same time, she inserted the point of her knee into the small of my back.

"You smiled at me, and now I'm yours," she was like a mother who gave you no options to your punishment.

Suddenly my bedroom was filled with the vile odor of mildew and swamp water. When she let me go, and I looked up at her, she was soaking wet and covered with green moss and clumps of blackened mildew. I could never get rid of her after that, I was stuck with no way out. The Japanese refer to something like this as 'Nure Onago.' It's supposed to be ghosts who are widows of lost sailors at sea. Their desire for attention becomes corrupted with their longing to see their dead husbands again. The mistake a man makes is when he sees a beautiful girl who is soaking wet and appears to have just come out of a rainstorm? He smiles at her, and she smiles at him, and he smiles back. He's stuck with her for all eternity after that. Either he puts up with it, or he kills himself. Guess what I've decided?




No comments:

Post a Comment