The Moving Chair

It's been a couple days since weird things have started to happen. I didn't really notice it at first. I saw shadows in my peripheral vision, which I blamed on me being tired, and the small banging noises may have well been coming from my housemate. Although, sometimes she had been sitting in the same room as me and we heard the banging together. Still, we thought nothing of it. And I hadn't given it another thought since, until last night. That was the first night something actually moved. 

I was doing the dishes when I heard a chair scrape across the floor behind me. I shrieked and whipped around, thinking maybe my housemate had entered the kitchen, but there was no one. The space was completely empty and the chair was unoccupied. I heard faint laughter and I let out a shaky breath. My housemate must have her girlfriend over, and I was tired. I was sure the laughter had come from this room, but that would be silly. I was alone. I shaked my head, grabbed my book and made my way to the bedroom, calling it a night.

•

That night I had the strangest of dreams. I walked in my house, but it wasn't my house. Photo frames lined the walls in the hallway, showing smiling family members at various locations through different years. The faint sound of happy voices came from the living room. Laughter filled my ears, which sounded vaguely familiair. 

I woke up feeling disoriented. I rarely dreamed, let alone so vividly. When I walked into the hallway, shaking away the images of photo frames and seeing our own black painted walls, I started feeling more awake. I smelled coffee and followed it into the kitchen.

"Morning Quinn! You look well tired. Coffee?" I smiled at my housemate Rachel and greedily took the mug from her outstretched hand.

"You're up early! Did you have fun last night? I still want to meet Izzy, you know." I say, recalling the laughter.

Rachel looked at me confused. "No? I was just grading stupid papers all night." She put her mug down. "I thought I told you about that deadline." She took a sip of her own coffee. Now that I looked at her, dark rings under her pale green eyes and ink stains on her hands, I remembered her mentioning something about having to grade a pile of tests before morning.

"And you know I'm introducing Izzy the second she's over again. She's just as excited to meet you too, dude. I just thought you were the one having people over though?" She turned round, grabbing an apple from the counter.

When I didn't say anything she looked at me and patted my shoulder. "I see you need that coffee a lot more than I thought." She waved a lazy hand over her shoulder, threw me a 'good luck today' and disappeared from the apartment.

•

My day passed by like a blur. The coffee house was just as busy, but I didn't notice. Where I would normally play a private game of bingo, trying to tick off all the coffees on the menu, I was now functioning on auto pilot.

I didn't even notice it when a cute girl smiled at me, until it was too late and she was long gone.

That night, as I was sitting at the kitchen table, I saw a shadow approaching again, but it disappeared just as I tried looking at it. Not a minute later a chair scraped across the floor by itself again and I jumped in my seat. Bloody hell, I'm really losing it - I thought to myself. Then another chair moved and I peaced out of the kitchen, into my bedroom.

That night I dreamed of the same house, hearing the same laughter again and the living room was filled with sounds of domestic banter. Someone from the kitchen yelled "Dinner is ready!" and I saw people step into the hall, moving towards the food. I walked towards the kitchen as well and saw the family I had observed through the photo frames. They looked so happy and carefree, ready to dig into the stack of pancakes in front of them. I was so focused on the happy scene that I hadn't seen the vase on a nearby shelf, until I crashed into it and it fell onto the floor, shattering into a million pieces.

The family at the table looked up, startled by the sound. "Now do you see?!" One of the kids yelled and squinted at where I was standing. I backed away, hitting into a wall, which made me cry out in pain. "Who's there?" One of the parents asked. The kid looked at his parent with a half-panicked, half-knowing look. "I told you there's a ghost! I don't know why it's taking you all so long to realize. Things just don't move on their own, no way. The coffee machine has been acting weird all week! And all those scribbling sounds from my bedroom?" His eyes were wide and his arms were animatedly moving while he spoke. "That shit has been making me crazy! I hope you believe me now, can I please, please switch bedrooms with Bella now? You know she sleeps through everything." I stood there in disbelief. It was almost as if they were as haunted as I-. No, no. I ran from the room, which made someone yell about shadows and I begged myself to wake up.

I woke up and practically launched myself at Rachel's room. "you won't believe the things I've been dreaming lately-" I started but stopped in my tracks as I saw her still grading papers. The sounds of her scribbling on the paper made everything click in place. The laughter, the chairs, the family who didn't seem to perceive me. And then that kid who was whining about the coffee machine and Rachel's scribbling.

It all made sense now.

"You know what? Never mind. I'll make you a coffee." I told Rachel, as I closed her door behind me. "Make that, like, three. I'm tired as shit." I heard her grumble, still scribbling.

As I was dropping the beans into the machine, I heard a chair move behind me. But I knew it wasn't Rachel. The family from my dreams were real and very much here.

We were their ghosts and they were ours. The veil between worlds must have started thinning, allowing our lives to blend into each other. And as I stood there making the morning coffee, I silently accepted our fate.

☕