Beyond the Cube, Part 1.

This is a story I wrote recently.  I'm trying to break it up into a few coherent parts that create intrigue and suspense about the next part.

I'm still new at blogging so I hope everyone enjoys this method of presentation.

Let me know where you think the story is going, or what you would do if you were the main character/narrator.   I'd love to see some crazy new angles to this, and then show you where I take the story with each new part.

Hi, how are ya?  Me?  I'm thirty-four years old, and I found out last week that I've been haunting people for a while now.  Here in the office where I spend almost every minute of every day, I sometimes wondered why I never saw ghosts.

Late at night I would walk the halls to printers and break-rooms, and never once even got a chill or felt like I was being watched.  My tiny apartment feels more haunted than an entire skyscraper.

There are plenty of people here, where I work, but the faces are always changing.  I tried to keep track for a while.  I tried to keep them all three-dimensional with families and interests, but that just made it hard when they disappeared.  So now everyone is a 2D cutout with a name and a face, in my mind.

Some of the people who work here have died on the job, or after they go somewhere else you might hear that so-and-so died in such-and-such a way.  It always kind of hit me like a great big "oh."   As in: What if they hadn't, would my day be so much different?  Was their day much different?

So I would commute home, late at night, and every day fewer people noticed me.  At first outside the office, then inside too.   Every day, one more "hello, how are you?" went unanswered.  I couldn't figure out why.

Then it dawned on me.  I am dead.  I am a ghost.  Worse, I had become a ghost without even realizing it.  I can try to remember it all I want - I'm trying now in fact - but nothing is there.  The days blur together, you know?  A bus?  My heart?

Funny thing is I feel fine, so I decided to test it a little. I generally don't run into people, but I gave that a try.  When I passed right through their bodies, they gave me the same look as when I used to say "hi, how are ya?"

It turns out no one was being rude to me.  I was haunting them and I can see how it might be hard to be polite to a ghost.  I used to sort of get sad about that, but when I learned the reason I perked right up.  Being dead is exactly the same as how my life has been for the last ten years, except fewer people talk to me now.  Well that's not entirely true either.  My schedule didn't leave much time for close friends you know.

With my spirits hitched up like a new pair of tailored pants, I decided to test some deeper waters.   Literally.  I dove into the bay here, the cold, icy, choppy bay. I swam under boats, then right down to the bottom.  I found some dead bodies, but none of them were me.

It doesn't really matter how you died, I realized, once dead the rules go out the window.  Pretty exciting, actually.  I'm just glad I'm not a zombie or a ghoul, or some other nasty thing.  Just a ghost,  a ghost that can go anywhere.

Did you just hear someone laughing? That was me.  I've learned a lot in a week.  I learned what it feels like to swim inside the sun.  It feels, and this is strictly speaking as a ghost of a man without much experience, better than sex.  I flew up there after whizzing around the moon, and diving through it to see what's inside.  Not much.  I've been to all the planets now, which is funny to think about.  The last time I even thought of the planets as real things was third grade.  My favorite is Neptune.  You can't get a better blue than Neptune.

(To be continued in Part 2...)