A translucent, pearly ghost leers close to the cliff edge, looking down at the rusty rocks and frothing waves below. She squeezes her lifeless eyes shut. Even if it were years ago, she can still remember.

The feel of fingertips pressing against her back. The chilling wind whipping through her hair. The echoing scream, which she soon realised belonged to her, followed her all the way down to the bottom.

She doesn’t know why it happened. Perhaps she never will. All she knows is that it must have been a simple joke, a joke that soon turned to catastrophe.

Unlike the afterlife she was expecting, all she felt was an easing, floating sensation soon after she was swallowed by the water. Had she survived? Surely her head would soon burst through and gasp for air?

Thrashing wildly, she found she continued to float as soon as she escaped the lake. Except her body stayed below her, floating idly in the blue. Somebody was screaming, but she could scarcely hear them. She was in nothing short of shock, but neither a wild heartbeat or a gasp for air could accompany her.

These short, rapid memories stay tumbled in her head. She can’t remember anything more. Not even her own name.
Yet she needs answers. She needs to know who has done this to her. She needs to know how to get out of her state. All she wants is to stop being a lost soul, to turn back into pure flesh and blood.

But how?
A face flashes in her mind. A name, a raucous voice. If she had a heart, it would skip a beat. She knew where she was going.
The ghost makes her move. Drifting eerily along the lake, across the treetops and lush green hills, she effortlessly glides through the clear blue sky. She somehow knows where she is going.

Soon after, she reaches a city, rife with people and busy cars. They scuttle along like beetles down on the far away roads. The houses stare grimly with their sad glass eyes as she drifts past. The humans can’t see her. She becomes clear as she slips along. Only the city pigeons can see her, glaring chillingly with blood-orange eyes.

The lonely ghost lets out a sigh as she nears the house. She knows this path now, as if she had stalked it many times before. With her head a little clearer, she stops outside of the house. Her eyes close again. She can hear something… laughter, high-pitched and childish. A little girl who looks strangely like her, squealing with delight as she’s pushed on a swing. A man pushes her. An unsmiling woman watches from a window, with an over-filled wine glass clutched in her hand.

Now the lonely ghost peers through the same window, the sun glaring down so brightly she has to squint to see.
The same woman in her memory can be spied through the window. It isn’t any woman.

It’s her mother.

Vidhi Chanyal