Mild Hauntings
The house I rent is only mildly haunted, which keeps the price manageable. The ghost of a woman from two centuries ago disapproves of my sitting & sleeping posture. She occasionally turns the lamp off telepathically. Or telekinetically. Or whatever. Good thing the realtor was upfront about the whole thing. “Level two haunting,” he’d said on the phone. I swear I could hear him nodding. “Ideal for remote work.” He said the ghost’s name is Lorraine or Lorrie or something old to that effect. Apparently, ghosts do not rattle chains these days. Our resident ghost dusts the curtains, instead. She tidies the corners. I leave a mug in the sink and wake up to find it shelved alphabetically among other glasses. I throw a sweater over a chair and it appears folded into a shape that reminds me of my mother. My friends say I should sage the place. I say no, my ghost lives a better life than I do in her death. Once I bring home a man and Lorraine shakes the house as if shaking her head. She puts a question mark on the steamy bathroom mirror in the morning. Over time she and I develop a routine. One knock from the radiator means no. Two means absolutely not. Three means the guy called and she duly put him to voicemail. Last week I cried in the hallway for reasons too bleak to explain here. Lorraine turned on every light in the house. She broke the pipes so the house could also cry. So I could feel less alone
Sarp Sozdinler is a writer from Philadelphia and Amsterdam. His work has been published in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Shenandoah, Wigleaf, and Pithead Chapel, among other journals. He edits the literary journal The Bulb Region. https://sarpsozdinler.com