Being a Ghost Sucks (Pt. 2)

“What in the hell…?” Trish stopped trying to pat off the dust that had settled on her head and shoulders like gray snow and kneeled in front of the ruined vacuum cleaner. Two words had just appeared in the pile of dirt at her feet, as if they were being traced by some invisible finger.

“‘Help me’? Help you what? Stop being a shitty exploding vacuum cleaner?”

She ignored the way the temperature in the room suddenly dropped several degrees.

“You have to be kidding me,” she said, rubbing at the goosebumps popping up on her arms as the air continued to chill. “Really? The house is haunted? And by a nut-job vacuum cleaner?”

Fuck this, she thought, and she stood up. Clearly, this whole thing was brought on by the stress of having to switch high schools in the middle of her junior year. Really, who’d blame her for cracking a bit? All she needed to do was go take a shower and pretend she didn’t see anything. Otherwise, she was going to end up in a mental hospital explaining to the good doctors that the ghosts were leaving her messages in her alphabet Spagetti-os.

But before she could put this plan into action, the words in the dirt were swept away and new ones were being written in their place.

“‘Don’t go’? Oh, come on!” she yelled. She couldn’t believe this. A fucking haunted vacuum cleaner? She briefly toyed with the idea of kicking the dust around and chucking the vacuum out the window. That would teach it to ruin ordinary people’s lives by talking at them. It was a tempting idea, at least until her conscience decided to pipe up. What if there really was someone stuck in the vacuum cleaner or something? What if breaking the vacuum left them in Limbo or unable to pass on or something? She knelt back down.

“Ooookay, Mister Vacuum Cleaner –”

Robert.

“You’re a vacuum cleaner named Robert?”

No!

“So you’re really some guy stuck in a vacuum cleaner?” She propped her chin against her palm and chewed over that piece of information for a minute. “Guess that means I should top hoping for shirtless Patrick Swayze to show up. So what happened? Did you like, kill a kitten and get stuck with this as a punishment?”

The temperature sank again.

“Oh, don’t get pissy at me! You’re the one who literally exploded at me, and now I’m covered in whatever-the-hell all is and …”

“Honey, who are you yelling at?”

At the door, her mother looked down at her with a mixture of concern and curiosity.

“I’ve heard yelling…oh, good lord!” Her mother bustled over to her, all but lifting Trish bodily to her feet. Her mother gingerly picked up a chunk of her currently-gray hair, looking for all the world as if someone had just died. “What happened? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine, Mom,” Trish said, rescuing her hair from her mother’s grip. “It’s just, um, I turned on the vacuum and, um, the back just exploded! Can you believe it?” 

Trish briefly wondered if she should tell her mother the truth, but decided trying to explain to her mother that the vacuum cleaner was haunted and exploded to get her attention was a little beyond her abilities at this point.

“That’s just awful,” her mother said. She backed up a pace and gave Trish a once-over. “Well, you seem fine. Why don’t you head into the shower, and I’ll get rid of this thing?”

“No!”

“No?”

“No! I mean, you don’t know that for sure. That’s it’s not going to work, I mean.” Trish grabbed the handle and began dragging it back to the closet. “Don’t waste and all that, right?” 

She opened the closet door and shoved it – him – unceremoniously inside, wincing as the vacuum landed on its -his – side. She turned to face her mother but kept her hand on the doorknob.

Her mom stared at her, half uncertain and half bewildered. “Are you sure you’re alright, honey?”
Trish nodded. “Yep. Definitely. It was just a bunch of dust and stuff. Gross, but it’s not going to kill me.” She still didn’t move away from the door.

“Well, if you’re sure…”

“It was probably just a fluke, like an electrical surge or something.”

“Alright, alright. If you say you’re fine, I believe you. Make sure to clean up. You look like you just stumbled out of a disaster area.” Finally, finally, her mother turned and left, closing the door behind her.

Trish let out the breath she was holding. She cracked open the door to her room and peaked inside. The vacuum cleaner was where she left it, though it somehow managed to right itself, which was kind of creepy. But then, if it could explode, how hard would standing up be?

Trish decided to save that pertinent question for later and pulled out the vacuum and placed it in the middle of her room. She sat crossed-legged in front of it and cleared her throat. “Okay, Robert,” she said, making sure to enunciate clearly despite feeling like an idiot. Who knew how good or bad reception on the Other Side might be? “I’m listening. So um, say something. Or write something. You know what I mean.”