Huh, interesting, new people moving in. I really wasn’t expecting that this soon. Of course the realtor forgot to mention the history of the house. Bet the dad is happy they got the place for so cheap. The mom looks ecstatic about the garden, which to be fair it is a sizeable garden, raised flower beds with brick edges, not inch of lawn in sight. I hoped they wouldn’t sign into the Homeowners Association, especially since the previous residents had threatened to install a HAM radio tower to get the HOA off their ass. Such a shame what happened to them.
The one individual who stood out to me from the family was the teenaged son. Ripped jeans, band t-shirt, and a jacket covered in patches. But not band patches, no, a ton of spooky patches. Ghosts, bats, horror creatures of all shapes and sizes and teeth. Bags under his eyes so dark you could use them to disappear someone. And a head of greasy shoulder length black hair that was obviously dyed, you could see the blonde of his mom’s hair at the roots. He definitely didn’t give off the vibe he was enjoying the move. His hand was glued to his phone, typing away like mad, rolling his eyes or smiling slightly from time to time.
Losing contact with your friends definitely sucks. I can confirm that from experience. So I figured, why not leave him a little housewarming gift. If he didn’t like it, it’d at least be way more valuable than what he could buy at Walmart, sell it for a quick buck on Ebay.
His stuff was still in boxes when he reached his new room, a sizeable one in the attic, bordering on being an apartment. It even had its own little kitchen counter and bathroom. And the exposed wood did look quite pretty. Of course, that meant I’d be stuck with a roommate. Not that he’d know I was there.
Oh, did I forget to mention? I’m dead. Murder victim. I won’t go into the grizzly details, but let’s just say it was related to my unfinished business, and why I absolutely refused to move on. I could if I wanted to, dying granted me my wish in a way, but I didn’t want to sit on a cloud and strum a harp. And according to dear old dad, I was set for hell anyways.
So, there I was, chilling in MY attic room, my new roommate unpacking his stuff, when I just happened to drop my housewarming gift for him on the bed. A ouija board. Summoning them out of thin air was probably the weirdest ghost power I had. I think the violent murder that was my end is what caused it. So that I could curse people and hunt them down or something. Maybe. Turning into a ghost wasn’t an exact science, as far as I knew. One moment I’m alive and hiding, the next I’m floating in the air in my room, two years have passed, the place has been renovated and is up for sale. Anyways, the soft whump of the ouija board dropping on the bed caught roomie’s attention, as he turned and approached it, scratching his head in confusion.
Then he snorted. “Okay, yeah, this place is haunted, right. As if. It’s not like something violent happened here.” Oh come on, you could have some belief you horror fan dork. “I looked it up, no news report of anything, so if you’re here ghost, what brought you here?” What did he mean, no news report? I flew up behind him, looking over his shoulder at his phone screen. He had the address in Google, along with a few keywords. Nothing. The bastards didn’t report on it. Of course they wouldn’t, they all knew why my dad did what he did. And all of them were too scared to stop it. Had to keep the neighborhood civil. Mom was the one who threatened the radio, as dad was usually away on business. So they turned the other way and ignored it. Fuckers. “Well, it’s not like any of my friends are in range to play with me. And what’s the worst that could happen, I die? It’s not like I didn’t consider it.” He spoke up, as he moved the board to the table and sat down. At his admission, I peeked into his mind. Vengeful spirit powers, if I needed to find a fitting poetic end for someone, this let me do it. Turns out, we had more in common than I had at first assumed.
With his hand on the little table, he spoke up again. “Spirits, are you here?” He jokingly began moving the table to no, but that’s when I grabbed hold of his hand on it. He visibly shivered from the cold, and I inched it over to ‘Yes’. “Okay, okay. In that case, what is your name?” Oh that one was easy, the best part was he couldn’t tell me it wasn’t. M-A-R-Y is what I spelled out, a satisfied smirk on my face. “What, like Bloody Mary? Should I go to the bathroom and say your name in the mirror three times?” I rolled my eyes at his question. D-O-R-K. He gulped. Some droplets of sweat appeared on his forehead. W-H-A-T-I-S-Y-O-U-R-N-A-M-E. “M-Martin. It’s Martin.” That’s not what I had seen, roomie, try again. ‘No’. “What do you mean, no? It’s my name, I know my name.” He was right in that, he did know his name. He just didn’t want to admit it. Y-O-U-H-A-V-E-A-S-P-E-C-I-F-I-C-Q-U-E-S-T-I-O-N. Pause for dramatic effect. A-S-K-I-T. “G-Goodbye.” He tried to get up, but I was holding his hand in place. His eyes darted around the place, as he sighed. “Am I a girl?”
There it was. The question that I saw, that was eating out my poor dear roomie. I really only had one option. ‘Yes’. Roomie shook their head. “Am I a girl?” ‘Yes’. Their breathing got heavy. Their hand was sweaty. “Am. I. A. Guy?” ‘No’.
I could see in their body movement they wanted to toss the board off the table, and so that’s when I decided to strike. Possession is one of the weirdest sensations, I have to say. As you enter the body of your chosen host, you get two signals crossing over, the bits of body you’ve entered, your body outside, and the crossing of the two. It would have probably short circuited my brain, had I been alive. Luckily, I wasn’t. Okay being dead isn’t exactly lucky per say, but that’s details.
I can tell you one thing for sure. I wasn’t happy to be in an assigned male at birth body again. “Okay roomie, let’s not get rash here.” At least I had my voice.
“What? How? Who are you? How are you doing this?!” Roomie was panicking, no surprise there, what they were experiencing was pretty much an advanced form of sleep paralysis.
“Mary O’Borrough, this used to be my room. My home. My dad murdered me because I’m trans. So I have vengeful spirit powers. Let’s talk in front of the mirror.” I stood the body up, and moved us to the bathroom, making us face the mirror. Roomie wasn’t seeing their reflection in it though. They were seeing me. I still had control of the body, but I could make the reflection move instead, to make the conversation flow a bit better. Why hadn’t I done this sooner? Because I like being dramatic. “There we go, that’s better. You’re really enjoying seeing a girl in the mirror, don’t you?” I smirked. I didn’t need them to answer out loud, I was literally in their head, but teasing eggs is fun, especially if it leads to them hatching.
“Sh-shut up. Get out! I’m not, I can’t, it won’t…” Oh dear oh dear, they were on the verge of tears, the poor thing. I knew my coming out wasn’t a cakewalk, I mean hello, I’m dead! But roomie? They had just moved away from their friends to a new foreign place and they were going to start going to a new school in a month. Having them figure out they’re trans would be another huge bomb to drop on them in this fragile moment. Their sense of identity was already on the verge of collapsing. I got out of their body and enveloped them in a hug. As far as I knew, I had marked them, so now they’d see ghosts and spirits and be able to interact with them directly.
“Hey, hey, roomie, it’s okay, it’s okay, breathe, it’ll be fine. You’re going to be fine. Hurting you is the last thing I want to do.” I let go of the hug, floated through them to be in front of them now. “Listen, I’ve gone through this before, and I did it all alone, and it sucked. It sucked a lot. So I’ll summarise it: You’re allowed to be a girl, you can be a girl, wanting to be a girl is a sign of being a girl, no you’re not a pervert for wanting it, yes there are people who will see you for you, there are many ways to be a girl which you define, you don’t have to be into guys to be a girl. That one was personally a doozy to get through.” I rubbed my roomie’s cheek. “I asked you what your name was, but you didn’t answer right. So come on roomie, what’s your name?”
They hesitated, I could see it in them, they were processing all I said. The barrage of affirmation and confirmation pretty much shot down anything they could go for. Okay, they could shoot back with worries over HRT and passing and such, with dysphoria over their appearance, but like, I’m a fucking ghost, if I wanted to I had the power to mold their body to my needs to get my vengeance. I could haunt their dreams and help them through stuff. I could be a poltergeist in the house if their parents didn’t accept them. They ended up whispering. “Sasha. My… my name is Sasha. Can, can I really be girl?” I smiled at her, ruffled her hair and nodded.
“One second.” I dove straight down into the basement, into a spot I knew for certain the renovation crew hadn’t found or touched. And I was right. My suitcase full of girl clothes was still there. But I had to haul it all the way up the proper route. So with a sigh, I started flying. Of course that meant both of the parents noticed the ominously flying suitcase that was making its way towards their child’s room. They chased after me, and walked into the room right as I put the briefcase on the bed.
“Martin, what’s going on, can you explain this?” The mom gestured to the briefcase as she asked. Sasha coughed.
“Hey mom, dad. So, turns out? This house is haunted. By the spirit of the girl who used to live here and was murdered.” She was visibly nervous revealing this, so I just grabbed the ouija board, the little table for it, hovered it near Sasha and spelled out H-I-I-M-M-A-R-Y. “Also, uhm, I’m a girl too? On the inside, I mean. I feel like I’m one. Or should be one. That I want to be one. A girl named Sasha. Please don’t hate me.”
The silence was deafening. So I did what any responsible ghost should do in such a situation. I-F-Y-O-U-H-U-R-T-H-E-R-I-W-I-L-L-F-R-E-D-D-Y-Y-O-U. I hoped the knew what I meant by that. Just to make sure, I continued spelling. A-S-I-N-H-A-U-N-T-E-D-N-I-G-H-T-M-A-R-E-S. There, that should do it.
“Does this mean you’ll stop with this silly goth phase of yours?” The dad asked. Sasha rolled her eyes at him.
“Dad, I have a ghost for a roommate and I can see and hear her now, I don’t think I could even if I wanted to.” Plus goth girls are very cute. Wait, shit, there was an issue. I opened the briefcase and dumped all my clothes on the bed. It was a bunch of flowing hippie bog witch aesthetic clothes, nothing really goth. Well, except the little black dress, but those are always good to have. “Oh. Uhm. I guess I have a month to sort that out before school starts, if I want to start there as a girl?”
“I hope that ghost of yours can leave this house to watch your back, Mar- Sasha. It’s a dangerous world out there for people who are different. Now come down, we’re testing the local pizza places so I want you to choose what you want.” The dad looked in where I guess he thought was my general direction, which meant towards the bed with the pile of clothes. “Do you… eat?” I picked up the board. ‘No’. That seemed to relieve him somewhat, but he still looked nervous and tense. I mean, no wonder, a ghost lived in his house and he couldn’t see her. So I went and poked his and the mom’s eyes, hoping that would be enough to mark them to see me.
“I was expecting some horrifying creature from the fifties, all torn up and stretched out and such, but she just looks like a regular twenty something.” The mom said out loud when she caught a glimpse of me at last.
“I can still turn into that, like the librarian from Ghostbusters, so seriously, do not harm Sasha, you will regret it.” I pointed to the both of them, and they nodded, as the whole family went downstairs to the kitchen. I stayed in the attic, and got to helping out my roomie by putting away her stuff. Books in shelves, clothes in the dresser, both her old stuff and what I generously donated. Oh hey, she had a skirt stashed away, I’d have to get her to wear it soon. After dinner sounded fine.
Having a roommate I’d help grow into herself was going to be fun.
What a solid roomy
Awwww! Mary is a good gal... A spirit of vengeance towards transphobic f*ckwads! Also I headcanon her dad is dead and in the worst place he could be... f*cker deserves it.
This was cute, thanks.
Aaaaaaaaaa! So cute! Ansjdnfhislal! Thanks for the story!
I loved the wholesomeness of this story.
daahhhhh cuuute!!!