Ghost Trail

After getting the glass cleaned up Joel got ready and went to work. Josephine explored the little apartment to see what she could mess with.

”Whats this? ” She mumbled while looking at a piece of paper on the tiny table that was supposed to be used as the dining table. She was sure that Joseph just ate on his mattress though.

Josephine looked at the paper and saw it was a bill. She looked at all the papers and saw they were all late bills. Josephine grumbled and began organizing them by date. From someone elses point of view it would look like the pages moved by themselves. A red ink pen slid off the table as one of the pages bumped it. It lightly clattered to the floor which caught Josephines attention.

Another idea came to her as she grinned and picked up the pen. She scribbled out a message onto each if the papers, not caring if she ruined them. Once she was done she took out the ink cartridge and snapped it, splattering red ink onto the already dirty carpet and table.

Josephine then dipped her see through hands into the red ink and began pressing her ghostly palms to the olive green wall. To her surprise that left drippy red handprints on the walls which made her happy. She smeared some more handprints on the wall then called it good. Now it was time to wait for her brother to come home.

After a long day of laboring work Joel came home exhausted. He shambled through the dark corridor to his room, leaning his head against the door while he fished through his pockets for his key. Joel slowly opened the door and stepped in, dropping his bag and collapsing onto the spring mattress that laid in his living room. Joel hadn even bothered with any lights since he was fast asleep mere moments later.

{The Next Morning}

As the bright sun of the morning trickled through the window and covered the ruined apartment with a warm glow, Joel toss and turned to avoid waking up yet. He buried his face into his pillow to hide from the light but realized he was no longer tired enough to sleep. He groaned and sat up, soreness aching all throughout his thin body. After sitting there for moments longer he noticed a broken pen lay between his feet.

Splotches of red covered his blanket and Joel shot to his feet. He scanned himself to see if he was bleeding but then noticed the broken pen had red ink. He breathed a sign of relief and picked it up to go toss it in the trash when he noticed the disaster by the table.

His heart felt like it froze when he saw all the red ink splattered on the walls, carpet, and the table. All the unpaid bills were soaked in fresh red ink with a messaged scribbled on them. Joel dropped the broken pen and rushed over, ignoring the fact that he stepped on carpet where the ink was still fresh and his feet were now red.

”PAY YOUR BILLS DIMWIT ” was the note that was scribbled on the bills. The handwriting was scarily familiar but he couldn pin where he had seen it before. His groggy mind couldn think of what to do except stand and stare at the message. It dawned on him that only one person ever called him dimwit and he sprinted to the box of pictures that he spilled onto the floor the day before.

He rummaged through the mess of letters and pictures to finally find one from his sister, Josephine Sauveterre. He snatched it up and opened it to see the same scribbled handwriting as he did on his bills moments before.

”How… ” he muttered looking back to the red handprints on the wall. They were drippy but he could tell they were small hands with long, thin fingers. Those were his sisters hands without a doubt but how? She was found mutilated just yesterday. He had made sure she was dead. Joel couldn believe what thoughts raced to his mind. He quickly grabbed his old phone and searching what paranormal activities looked like before he just froze.

”How the hell could this be her? I don believe in ghost. Someone mustve just broken in and so happened to have the same handwriting. ” He told himself out loud as he deleted the initial search and just called his landlord instead to tell them that his apartment room has been vandalized.

After he got off the phone he began wandering around to see if he had left any windows unlocked. He lived on the ground floor so it was a possibility that someone came through a window. Joel checked every thing that could be an entryway but it was all locked.

”How the hell? My door was locked last night wasn it? ” He mumbled to himself as he walked to the front door.

”Ah shit. ” He grumbled as he opened the door with ease, not having to flip the lock. He had left it unlocked when he got home so now the possibility of somebody coming in while he slept was there.

”Those little **ers. ” He groaned as he shut the door again, almost slamming it. There was a group of kids that ranged from ages 12-15 that loved to destroy things. No one managed to catch it so the landlord would tell everybody that it couldn have been them.

”They
e just kids. ” Joel mocked his landlords high pitch voice while heavily sighing afterward. Now all he had to do was wait for someone to come by and inspect the damage.

”Hopefully I get at least some money out of this so I can pay for food. ” He muttered to himself and plopped back down on his mattress to wait.