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The Pet Ghost: Part 1

  • Updated: June 28, 2021

By Nandy Ekle
Part 1
Nearly five years ago, I was involved in a serious car wreck. I spent time in the head injury unit of the hospital, but healed pretty quickly. When I got back to my house, I discovered a new talent. I had developed telekinesis. I was able to gather energy from the space surrounding me, blink my eyes, and send the energy to do whatever I wished. I even gave it a name: Alfred, after Batman’s butler. Of course, I wanted to keep this new talent a secret to avoid rumors, attention, tests, studies, etc… However, sometimes things become so natural that keeping them hidden becomes harder than letting them be seen.

About six months ago I invited my brother, David, for dinner since his wife and children were out of town visiting her mom. After our homemade lasagna, cheesy garlic bread, and salad, we settled into the living room, each with a glass of red wine, and exchanged funny stories about our kids. He told me about his four-year-old daughter, Callie, running through the house covered in mud. The mental picture of my little niece dripping gooey mud on her mother’s sterile floor made a hilarious video in my head.
As we laughed, his knee bumped the coffee table, jiggling his glass, which still held a bit of wine. The glass fell, the wine spilled out and raced to the edge of the table determined to land on my carpet.
Before I realized what I was doing, my secret talent reacted to the escaping red drop and I mentally gathered a little ball of energy from the air. I aimed it at the drop as it dove into thin air from the table’s edge. As I blinked the energy ball toward the escaped drop, the liquid gathered into a ball and plopped itself back in the glass.
“Did you see that?”
I looked at my brother and blinked to clear my vision which gets slightly blurry after using my talent. Oh Lord! I was in for it now. “Oh, that?”
“I know you had to see that.” David’s face looked like it came out of a coloring book before the colors were added.
“Um, yeah, I saw it.” My mind raced for a plausible answer.
“Dora, what’s going on?”
Sighing, I looked him in the eyes. “David, I have a ghost.” I made it up, just off the top of my head. This knee-jerk reaction happened automatically like inhaling oxygen to my lungs as I pictured the blood-red liquid staining my carpet. I had exposed Alfred to the biggest news spreader on the planet.
“You’ve seen other things happen?”
“ Um, from time to time, just little stuff.” I was not going to be able to blow this off as nothing, so I figured I might as well make it good. “Normally, just helpful little things like stopping a falling glass or picking up the laundry. I just say, ‘Thank you, ghost.’ Nothing sinister has ever happened.”
“Wow! Why didn’t you tell me? When was the first time you saw something?”
“Now how can I know that? It’s not like I marked on the calendar, ‘Today an apparition appeared,’ you know? You’re way more interested than I am.” I began to flounder, but he would not let it rest.
“I would have remembered the first time, Dora. I mean, a ball of wine reversing itself from a mid-air tumble and jumping back into the glass? That’s pretty freakin’ memorable.”
“Well it’s not something I took the time to write down; it just happened one day. I told it ‘thank you’ and went on with my business.”
He walked toward the door rattling his keys. “I can’t believe you never said anything about it! Holy cow! This is BIG!”
“See how you’re acting? Why would I want you to know if you’re going to freak out like this?”
He put his hand on the doorknob and his eyes looked into the air behind my right shoulder. “I think the temperature in here dropped.” I rolled my eyes at him. “I have to go.” And he drove away before I could think of anything else to say. I turned to the empty room and giggled a little. My giggle turned into a full-out laugh and I sat on the couch in front of the wine glasses. My brother, the scaredy cat, always nervous of things that are a little out of the ordinary. Exactly why I felt the need to keep Alfred a secret.
But I know David. Before long his wife, his best friend, his coworkers, the priest, the entire world would know about “my little pet ghost.” And in this town with a population of around 30,000, news was so scarce that a stumped toe was a headline. This piece of gossip would have no boundaries. I had blurted out that story, but I needed something substantial to back it up.

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