I SAW A GHOST

I’ve never understood why ghosts come out at night and very rarely during daylight. Maybe they don’t like it, maybe they are busy, maybe they don’t want to get burned. Maybe, though, it is just us. I mean, during the day we keep ourselves busy. We run like aunts everywhere, small and always in a great hurry. We always have something to do and even when we don’t really have anything to do we are busy doin’ nothing. While there is light outside the window we don’t really stop for a second. We are frenetic, lazy, busy, tired, walking, running, jumpin’ on and off the bus, the tube, the car. If there are ghosts around us we are just too busy to recognize them. We can get to the point that we are so absent minded to grasp our ghosts hand, shake it and say “Nice to see you again” – thinking we are talking to somebody we have not seen in a while.

When daylight ends something changes and it is not just the colour of the sky.

I am personally unable to sleep. My head is always on as a radar. Maybe if you have an antenna on the top of your head like I do, then you really can understand what I am talking about: I attract ghosts. In the Ghostbusters movie the brave ghost-fighters attracted their enemies with some kind of electricity, sucked them into their backpack and set everybody’s life free from easy fears. Now, it comes I have a kind of antenna on the top of my head: I’m always awake, attentive, thinking. My antenna attracts ghosts with its electrical outputs… but unfortunately it happens that I have no backpack. I hate backpacks, I prefer bags, better if big and soft, but bags are not shaped to contain ghosts. I have never seen a Ghostbuster with a Dior bag under his arm. Now that I think of it, I have never even seen a female Ghostbuster. By the way, I attract ghosts and then I don’t know what to do with them: I have no way to suck them out my head. They keep on flying, they come and go constantly. They just hunt and haunt me. “Well, it is their job: if you are a ghost you hunt and haunt people…” you might say. I agree with you. Poor ghosts: they have to hunt and haunt me. They have to. Problem: call me a bitch if you wish, but I could not care less about ghosts needs. I think to what happens to me an my little head when they do what they have to do. I have tried, I swear. I have tried so hard to trick and then get rid of them. It just did not work.

I saw another ghost last night. I have to be honest, I tried to fight this one harder than ever. I had a strength in my body, a special trust in my capacities I never felt before. I pulled up my pyjama’s sleeves and said to myself I could make it: “Just don’t be afraid, Kiki”. So, I saw a ghost last night and I recognized it. It was a ghost I had seen many times before. It is the only ghost that potentially could suck me in its backpack, lock me in and set everybody’s life free from their enemy, namely me. That ghost is a freaky Kiki-buster. It is powerful and scary…and we all know ghosts power derives from their capacity to scare us. It was my plague coming and visiting me.

I wish I could tell you an happy ending. I wish I could tell you I fought my ghost and I won over it. I wish I could tell you I did not surrender to tears. I wish I could tell you I did not shake, not even for a second. I wish I could tell you I stood brave and proud in my pyjama in front of my worst enemy. Bullshit. I cried, I screamed, I shacked, I fell on the floor and I start to sail a sea of tears. Coward. I swam to the coast and I put my clothes on, run out of my house and took a train. I tried to run as fast as I could and went away. I wonder how I can be so stupid: when I run out of my house I forgot to take off the antenna from the top of my head. Tonight -even though I will be over a national boundary, I’ll be speaking French and walking on a lake side- the ghost will come back and find me. Look: here it is already… reflected in this little mirror I carry on my hands.