Out of body experience

My heart stopped in the middle of the operation.

I woke up and found myself floating upwards, towards a great light. I could see my body below me, rough red rip where the surgeon had been hacking away, but otherwise peaceful, an anaesthetised smile on my face.

The surgeon wasn’t helping, just yelping, barking insults and orders. A junior doctor was juggling with the defibrillator. A machine was beeping, which added to the general air of panic. I was the only one with any sense of perspective.

Looking down I could also see the messages that had been left on the top of the columns near the ceiling. There were two words, ‘dodo’ and ‘Latin’. I’d heard about the experiment, it was to test if out of body experiences were real or just caused by the imagination.

‘This is great’, I remember thinking, ‘I’m going to be famous, I’ve proved once and for all that these experiences are real’.

I died about a minute later, 23 April 2010. Almost a year ago. I watched the flatline and heard the ghastly shriek of the machine yelling out to the world that I was dead.

Above me was a light, drawing me towards it, I felt like a moth being lured by a bedside lamp. But I resisted.

I wanted to see Karen before I left, you know, to make sure she was all right.

I followed my body to the mortuary. Bleeding cold in the mortuary, I wouldn’t wanna work in there. Karen came a few hours later, I think, I lose track of time sometimes since, well, the dying thing. She stared blankly at my body for a while and then just nodded and turned away.

She was in floods of tears, poor thing. I tried to hug her, but I passed right through.

She drove home like that, in a real state, it’s amazing she didn’t have an accident, she was all over the road.

I didn’t want to leave her after that, seeing what she’d be like without me. I decided to stick around, for a bit at least.

No sooner had she got home than she lit up. Silly cow, after what they did to me, didn’t she stop to think for a minute? I decided to hide the ciggies, stop her smoking, so I picked them up and threw them in the bin. It wasn’t ‘til afterwards that I realised how amazing it was, lifting a solid object. Not bad for a new ghost, eh!

I seem to fade in and out of existence. I’d look at the bedroom clock and it would say 3.10 then suddenly it would be 5.35, like I‘d just jumped through time.

I think Karen was off work for a while, she certainly seemed to spend a lot of time just sitting in bed, doing nothing, crying. I tried to help, if she hadn’t eaten I’d try and remind her by banging saucepans together. I even tried boiling some eggs for her, about the only thing I’ve ever cooked, but though I could lift them out of the fridge, I could only hold onto them momentarily, and halfway to the cooker they just passed through me and made an eggy mess all over the floor. The mess stayed there for over a week.

A few of her friends came round to see her, I left her alone with them, well, I never did like her friends. Could bore for England they could. Cheryl helped her tidy the kitchen and made sure she ate some soup, Lucy sorted out an online order from Tescos. It was all Karen could do to answer the door to the Tesco van, the milk took all day to find its way into the fridge.

It must have been a couple of weeks later she finally got out of bed and started to sort herself out. I think she went back to work, though I never followed her there, she’s a women’s hair dresser. It’s not the sort of place I hang out, not even when I’m dead.

Things started to change at home as well. She finally started to tidy the mess, do the washing up. She even started going through my things, putting my clothes into bags for the charity shop. It took her an entire weekend. We both cried throughout, I didn’t even know ghosts could tcry.

Some things though, she shouldn’t have thrown out. My spanner set! The girl’s crazy, I thought, how’s she going to survive without a full set of spanners? You need a different spanner for every situation. I took the spanners out of the bin and put them back in my work area. I was getting better at lifting solid objects as well, I only dropped them twice.

Three times she tried to throw the spanners out. She gave up eventually.

Things went well for a while after that. She was crying less, going out sometimes, seemed to be managing work. Though most of my things had gone there was still enough of me to remind her of me. I was still very much the man of the house.

Then, about six months after ‘the day’, she started to change things again. I did one of my disappearing acts for a while and when I returned all the furniture had been moved around. My armchair was nowhere to be seen and she’d bought a new set of chairs for the lounge. She’d even moved the desk and things in my work area, which I moved back. I may be dead, but it’s MY work area.

Then a few months later I found her online, looking at a dating site. I must admit I got into a bit of a state at this. I unplugged the computer and turned the lights on and off a few times (I can do the whole house at once, it’s a great trick). She burst into tears again, but what could I do?

It didn’t stop her though. She got all dressed up one time and I followed her out, to that restaurant in the High Street, the flashy one. Turns out she was meeting some bloke there, a scraggly little nerd in a suit and tie. I listened in for a bit, she was saying how “It‘s time for me to move on, it‘s been nearly a year.” Yeah, a year since I died, where am I in all this?

The bloke was a complete nerd, a vegetarian. I got fed up with him in record time, he was moaning that the only veggie soup option was tomato and he didn’t like tomato. Whine, whine, whine: I ended up throwing her soup in his face, forcing him to swallow a mouthful of lamb. I loved that. I went a bit wild after that, tore the whole restaurant apart, knocking over tables, throwing round handbags and chickens and whole trifles. The bloke went running out the door. He won’t be getting in touch with her again, I can tell you that.

I never used to listen to her conversations, she and her friends always used to have these moaning-about-nothing chats that bored me. But after the dating thing I started to listen in. I heard her talking to Cheryl one time. “I wish he’d leave me,“ she said, “I wish he’d just go wherever you’re supposed to go.” This annoyed me too, I ended up ripping the phone out of the wall.

I heard her talking again, earlier today, when Lucy came round. “I’m going to call a priest,” she said, “an exorcist. I need to be rid of him.” She looked around the room, knowingly, as if daring me to challenge her.

But she’s right I guess, time for me to be moving on. I mean, heaven’s gonna be a right lark. The light’s still there above me, I can’t see it exactly, but I can feel it. Compelling me to go.

But she should’ve asked me first. I mean, a Catholic priest! I’ve got a mate who’s totally Church of England who’d do a much better job.