~~David~~
Dying sucked. Being a ghost, on the other hand, didn’t suck all that much.
The weird gold glowing doors stuck around. When David walked around them, the outside of the building looked perfectly normal, and instead, the gold glowing portal appeared in other places, as well. Always normal, natural looking, minus the gold glow, always obvious, always in a way David couldn’t accidentally walk through it. One of the doors into the Comp Sci building. One of the doors into the Arts building. One of the doors into the nearby Tim Hortons. One of the shower stalls back in the dorms. Whatever it was, wherever it’d go, it was asking them to come, but not forcing them.
It took a few hours of wandering around before Mia and David felt comfortable splitting up. Whatever the afterlife was, it was making it clear David and Mia could leave it whenever they wanted. If it ever came to a point where they obviously had to choose between remaining as ghosts or going into the afterlife, whatever was putting the gold doors everywhere would do something more… loud, hopefully. A giant vortex in the sky, maybe? Whatever it’d be, it’d be obvious, so David and Mia decided to go wandering around on their own for a while.
David found an empty dorm room to sit in for a while, and cried. He was dead. Life was over. Poof, gone, game over. His ghost body produced tears, for some reason, but he didn’t mind. They helped him process the emotions better, so he let them flow for a good twenty minutes. It was enough, for now at least, and he turned off the waterworks, recovered, and got back to exploring.
David checked out various faculty rooms, listened to staff talk about shit, and he checked out security as well. No one mentioned the two dead students. No one knew yet. David should have been disappointed, but he wasn’t. Once he got past the initial panic and depression, being a ghost was fun. Walking around campus naked was strangely thrilling, and so was spying on people. He’d never spy on people if he was alive, but fuck it, he was dead. Why not?
He spent a few days trying to move things with his mind, or ghost body, but couldn’t make it happen. He couldn’t make people feel cold. He couldn’t so much as stir up a breeze or push a curtain. Frustrating.
He spotted Mia on the campus a couple times, wandering around randomly, and sometimes not so randomly. More than once he saw her either going into or out of the gym, conveniently before or after the basketball team and swim team came and went. Pervert.
He, on the other hand, went back to the dorms and spied on a few women taking showers again. And then checked out some of them in their bedrooms, excited to watch some sexy fun time. Maybe catch them masturbating, or catch some uni student sex?
And he did. And he watched. Because, yeah, ghost. Morality, right out the window. He’d died a virgin, so the least he could do was taint his soul with some harmless voyeurism before ‘crossing over’. He deserved it! Right?
Well, either way, the voyeurism was exciting the first couple days. He was even able to get hard and masturbate, which was a surprise, like the tears had been. Unfortunately, the voyeurism, the freedom to be able to see whoever he wanted, whenever, quickly became uninteresting. By day three he just felt sad, and guilty. Sad, because he was dead and he’d never get to indulge in any of the things he was spying on. Guilty, because even as a ghost, he was still spying on people and their private lives, and for some reason his conscience persisted after death. By day four he stopped spying on people all together, except to check if anyone knew about their dead bodies.
He didn’t have to ask Mia, it written on her face. She went through the same phases. Super excited by the freedom, morals out the window, overwhelmed like a kid in a candy store. By day four, she was sitting with him on the floor in their dorm, just as sad, just as guilty. And, just as bored.
“I stuck my head in the pool today,” she said. “I could breathe just fine.”
“Makes sense.” He looked to her, and her head sticking up out of the couch cushion, just like his. Sitting inside their couch had become their new routine. “I’m guessing whatever it is that’s making our bodies still need to breathe and sleep only cares about other ghostly things.” To demonstrate, he covered his mouth and nose with his hand and tried to breathe. He couldn’t, and his body wanted to. It still wanted oxygen, for some reason. Except, if they couldn’t interact with physical stuff, it couldn’t have been the oxygen his lungs wanted.
“Could you stop trying to solve the afterlife like it’s some kind of puzzle for a second, Dave?”
“You’re the one sticking your head in pools!”
She threw up her hands. “I was curious!”
“So am I!”
“Yeah but you always go too far and turn everything into a spreadsheet.”
“Spreadsheets are amazing, and you can’t convince me otherwise.”
She got up and gestured around them. “Dave. We’re dead. The fuck is even the point in trying to solve how any of it works or whatever?”
“I have to know,” he said. She couldn’t understand. She never did. He had to find out, fit the pieces together, get things to click. Doubly so for figuring out how they died.
“Yeah well, the more you sit here hoping to figure things out, the more we literally rot.” She walked back over to the table with their bodies and gestured at their faces. “Look at this! It’s gross.”
“Yeap.”
“And you’re cool just sitting here, watching us rot?”
“It’s been pretty hot and humid weather lately, right? We’re starting to smell. The bodies, I mean. Someone will come check on us soon.” He hoped. Horrible smells weren’t uncommon in a university dorm.
“Alright,” she said, groaning as she sat down beside him again, disappearing into the couch until only her head was visible. “What will it take for you to be satisfied?”
“An autopsy.”
“Why would they do an autopsy?”
“We died in a super unusual way. They’ll think public health issue, and order an immediate autopsy. You know, when they eventually discover us.”
She groaned, but nodded and pat his shoulder. “Alright. And when the doc says we died of natural causes?”
“Then… yeah, we can… crossover.” The phrase was a thousand times scarier when it applied to him.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It took nine days before someone finally came to check on them, mostly because of the smell. It was horrific. Not the smell, they couldn’t smell it. But they could see their bodies get worse and worse, and it was the worst nightmare fuel he could ever imagine. Thankfully, despite their new ghost bodies needing to breathe and sleep, they didn’t get hungry or thirsty, or dream. Any dreams right now would have been searingly horrific anyway.
As much as David was a bit curious how the school would react to discovering their bodies, how much the news would spread, would any of his school ‘friends’ care, Mia and David didn’t stick around to find out. They stuck with the bodies. Thankfully their feet were able to stand inside the ambulance that took their corpses to the morgue.
Neither David or Mia looked back at the school as they drove off. They didn’t like talking about it very much, but they both knew they wouldn’t be missed, by the university or anyone. They didn’t have any close friends, and no family. A couple orphans with no one to mourn them.
That was fine. They had each other.