A one-shot about a ghost. I don't know why I wrote this, other than that I am having a bit of a writer's block with my other stories (it had to happen sometime, but I doubt it will last long).This story's not bad, really. Somehow, I just felt that it deserved to be in both humor and angst...maybe I'm crazy, but whatever. Hope you enjoy.

I hadn't wanted to die. At the time, I had had so much to live for: perhaps that is why I tell you this now. I had friends, family who loved me...a great life, if an average one. Perhaps I could have avoided it if I had been more careful, but then perhaps not. It was an accident, I swear it: I never meant to hurt anyone, never meant to leave what I knew...but perhaps I am getting ahead of myself.

It had been a simple spring-break cleaning mishap, my friends would say. We, the three of us, had been moving my room around, putting in the new dresser I had gotten. It wasn't an easy task: the dresser was bigger than the three of us, three boys who thought they were big, tough men. It required the moving of any number of things, which, being the strong men we were, we made a great show of lifting with one hand. Once we had moved the dresser into place, we put everything back: a shelf, a iron antique chair, and, finally and fatally, a large television which was, at the time, my baby. I suppose it was only fitting that something I loved would finally kill me: my mother said I watched too much television, after all. It happened to quickly to do much about it.

It wasn't really a complex death: I had bent over till just below waist level, reaching for the outlet with plug in hand, and the shelf that held my baby upright collapsed. I should have seen it coming: the shelf wasn't very sturdy but, as a teenager, I was, of course, invincible. The expensively large television fell right on top of me, hitting my skull and bouncing off with enough momentum that it still managed to fracture my spine in three different places, not in a pazalyzing way, however. Had I lived, I would have been fine, perfectly fine.

I don't remember much after that, don't remember an ambulance or hospital: apparently I had had a concusion. I remember, however, a strong voice saying that the top of my skull had disappeared, literally crushed into a thousand pieces: I hadn't inherited my dad's thick skull after all. I remember attending my own funeral, seeing myself for the last time. There are no mirrors that can see ghosts, no matter what movies want you to believe. Yep, that's right, I'm a ghost: don't look so surprised: I doubt you regularily hear voices telling you about their death that don't come from ghosts...but if you do, you need some serious help.

Like I said, I'm a ghost. Not by choice...I don't have any unfinished business to take care of that I know of, and I didn't die in a brutal, unjust murder or anything. I've met some people who have: other ghosts, and what-not. Just not me.

I spend a lot of my after-life being confused. Being dead...it sort of distorts reality to us ghosts. I can't hear the words of living people anymore, and they can't hear me, except when they sleep. You no doubt have realized this, just like you realized that I now haunt your house. My family, friends...they are all dead now, from one cuase or another, but none of them are ghosts. It is funny, really...my sister was killed at the hands of a serial killer, but she didn't have enough injustice in her life to become a ghost. Me, however, the guy who died at the hands (not literally) of his favorite toy in life...yep, I get to be the spirit. Life really isn't fair sometimes.

And neither is the afterlife.