The phantom in love

It was a cold November night and Dorian was upset again. He had to watch as his best friend, Elise, went out with yet another wannabe actor. It was hard for Dorian. Though he knew Elise would never feel the same about him that he does for her. To be fair, what normal girl would fall in love with the ghost that is forever trapped in her apartment?

Dorian had been killed twenty three years ago. Dorian and his mother had moved in the previous year in 1981. When Dorian was twenty one in 1982, he told his mother that he was going to move to college. His mother took this extremely badly. Unfortunately for Dorian, he told his mother when she was building a separation wall between the kitchen and lounge. His mother knocked him out with the grouting trowel her anger bubbling up inside.

When Dorian came to, the wall had been built around him. He was trapped and unable to move. The last brick was put into place just as Dorian realised what had happened. He was plunged into complete darkness.

Two days passed and Dorian final died of suffocation. There was a surprising amount of air in the small space. His tortured soul was let out of its physical body. However, he was unable to leave the apartment. He was trapped inside, destined to haunt the place and keep it safe. All because of his brutal murder by his very own mother.

He haunted his mother for just over a month. He followed her through the house seeing what she did and where she went. He did little things to scare her at first. Tapped on the window when she was sleeping, moved her car keys, opened windows, just simple things.

As time went on and he realised what he could do to scare his mother, he did so much more to torment her. He had been doing more major things; moving the couch, turning off the lights and putting all the dining room chairs on the table. The thing that knocked his mother off the fence and into the field of suicide was moving the bed while she was on it. She jumped off and screamed "I've had enough Dorian, leave me alone". She reached into her dresser, pulled out a small revolver and shot herself through the temple.

Dorian went into shock. Even though he was just a spirit, he still had feelings. He couldn't get away from the sight of his mother’s body, it drove him to insanity.

His mother’s body wasn't found for two weeks. A neighbour reported a bad smell coming from the apartment. Dorian was left alone once the body was taken. He was mad. He was dead and he saw his own mother commit suicide.

Over the next twenty two years he had made the owners of the apartment kill themselves, or helped them along if they where too strong to be scared into doing it by Dorian's 'parlour games'. A couple of residents escaped before Dorian got to them, but that was only the very smart.

It all changed in February 2005. Dorian heard the voices outside, the usual estate agent that had been trying to sell the apartment for the past two years and the voice of a new buyer. Dorian was going to have fun with this one.

The door opened. If Dorian had a physical jaw, it would have dropped. It was a strange coincidence that the sun shone behind the woman willing to buy the house, giving her a golden aura. It made her hair shine a luxurious auburn in the late winter air, perched on top of the hair was a pair of big sunglasses. Although it was still pretty cold outside, she wore a dark green, short sleeve top that showed off her perfect cleavage and her belly button. She wore a pair of tight black jeans that flowed out at the ankles with a brown belt with a golden buckle. She wore a pair of strappy, golden stilettos, complimenting the belt buckle and framing her slinky ankles. Her look was completed with a clutch handbag that matched the colour of the top and had a complicated, bronze floral pattern on the front that harmonized with the stitching in the jeans.

"So why is it so cheap?" she asked the estate agent, beaming at him with perfect white teeth. She had a sweet high pitched voice that echoed endlessly around the room.

"There is quite a good fairytale behind that..." the agent answered. Dorian had heard the story a hundred times before, just a sugared up version of the truth in Dorian's eyes.

Dorian was ecstatic. He didn't feel like killing this one. He knew that he would let her live here in peace and maybe be romantically linked somehow. For the first time in twenty one years, Dorian wished he was human again.

"...It’s all completely false of course" the agent ended with a weak smile.

"It is truly a wonderful place" the woman said, looking around in awe.

"It really is Ms. Harker" the agent said, his smile strengthening.

"Oh please, call me Elise" she said to the man, still beaming.

Elise. What a beautiful name, Dorian thought to himself, although it could never match the beauty of her physical form. Dorian knew the reason he felt this way. He remembered something his mother had told him when he was a child; 'It's not the physical form that loves, it’s the spiritual'. Dorian had remembered this for the whole time he had been a spirit. One day it may have become a reality. Finally after twenty two years it had.

Elise and the agent had finished looking round. "I'll take it!" Elise beamed at the agent.

"That's brilliant!" the man said sounding awfully shocked. "You just need to sign some paperwork, make the transaction of the money and the place is yours" he finished his eyes wider than they should be.

"Excellent!" Elise exclaimed opening the door and gesturing for the agent to go through first. She left afterwards looking at her new buy one last time and closed the door behind her. Dorian knew his insanity was passing. He was going to be living with the woman of his dreams, although they were in completely different plains. Dorian did have to admit; for a physical being, Elise did have a butt that wouldn't quit.

Elise had been living in the apartment for a month now and Dorian had been going unnoticed for the whole time. It was on a stormy night that Dorian could resist no longer.

Elise was in the bath, struggling to wash her back with the loofah. She did this every night and Dorian longed to help but didn't have the guts (quite literally) to do it. Tonight he plucked up the courage to do it. He took the loofah out of her hand and started exfoliating her back. Elise jumped out the bath screaming. She wrapped herself in a towel and started making a cross with her fingers trying to ward off whatever took the loofah out of her hand. All the colour had drained from her face, leaving her green eyes shining like beacons.

Dorian wrote on the mirror using the condensation 'Don't be alarmed. I am friendly and only want to help. I am called Dorian'.

Elise slowly put down her fingers. She walked into the kitchen, got out a pen and paper and put it on the table. "Write who you are, why your here and if your going to kill me while I dry off and get changed!" Elise shouted into mid-air. She backed into her bedroom as the pen drifted above the paper and began to write.

Elise came out of her bedroom, picked up the paper and began to read. She believed what was written on the paper. She had also calmed down remembering her first home was haunted with a small girl. She insisted the girl existed, but her parents just told her that it was just an imaginary friend and that they didn't believe her. The day they left the house to move to New York, a simple message was on the window in lipstick 'I'll miss you' with an unhappy face next to it, this made her parents believe in ghosts.

"So your friendly?!" Elise shouted back into her present place of residence. The salt shaker glided into the air, turned upside down and shot around the table writing something on the candy pink table cloth; 'YES'.

"And are you going to clean that up?!" she shouted, pointing at the salt on the table. The word was underlined.

"Alright then. I believe you." Elise said her tone softening.

Dorian was relieved to hear that. He had told Elise the complete truth. He just left out the small fact that he was in love with her.

The months past and Dorian and Elise became good friends, well as much as a phantom and a woman could. Dorian was happy to help Elise; he did the dishes, wash her clothes, the usual household stuff. He left little messages for Elise for when she got in from work, tucked her in at night and sent a small blast of icy cold wind at her cheek at night. Elise soon learnt that the wind was a phantoms kiss and welcomed it after a hard day of work.

Elise went out with a lot of guys since she moved in, but Dorian drove some of them away, some drove themselves away and some just never called back. Each time this happened, Dorian comforted Elise with tissues and tubs of Ben & Jerry’s.

Back to the November night and Dorian was patiently waiting for Elise. Hopefully she would come back alone.

He heard talking and the door opened. Elise never locked it; she knew that Dorian would ward off any burglars. Elise and the man walked in. By Elise's orders, Dorian had set up wine and two glasses on the lounge table. The two got to talking.

"Do you want to move this into the bedroom?" the man asked with an impish smile after an hour or two of friendly conversation.

"No. I'm alright. Not until the third date," Elise said in a humorous manor, even though what she said was true.

"I always get what I ask for" the man said forcefully losing his smile and becoming angry instantaneously, pinning Elise to the couch with force using his hands then sitting on her pelvis and moving his knees onto her hands to stop them moving. Her legs were left free to flail but couldn’t harm him. He began to un-zip his fly.

Dorian acted almost immediately. He picked up the wine bottle and smashed it over the mans head. Wine went all over Elise as the man tumbled to the ground. Elise grasped for the phone and called the police. Within an hour the man was being driven off in the back of a police car still groggy after the blow to the head.

"Thank you so much Dorian" Elise said into the air, smiling. "But couldn't you have used something other than the wine bottle. It's gonna stain my dress" Elise said with a slight laugh.

Dorian wrote on one of the small pads littered around the place for him 'Sorry about the dress. I would do anything for you xxx'. Elise knew this was true and continued trusting him. Although she couldn’t help but notice how intimate the note seemed.

***

Two years later Elise was married and still living in the apartment which she vowed never to leave due to her spiritual friend. Dorian knew she loved the man and became very upset at the thought of the two together. He wished that he could just die, again.

The man Elise married went by the name of Trip. He learnt of Dorian's existence when the two got engaged. He took it surprisingly well.

However, this was the time that Dorian realised that he would never get Elise and that she would never fall in love with him. He knew that she belonged to Trip. He began thinking about Elise's true existence. It wasn't so that Dorian fell in love. She was there to stop Dorian from killing, to end the terror of the apartment. He understood now, but it still hurt beyond belief that he knew he could never have Elise.