[#] Haunted

[Reinhardt (DELETED 8503)]

Haunted: You are haunted by the ghost or a wraith of a dead human or vampire, who appears almost constantly, or speaks as a voice in your head. As a result, you are most likely insane.

She hates him for it.
Hates him for what he’s done to himself.

Days pass before she shows herself again. Jack catches her out the corner of his eye, and for a fraction of a second he swears it’s all been a bad dream and she’s truly there. His stomach twists uncomfortably as he remembers it all happened. Everything. He doesn’t touch his morning coffee after that, abandoning it on the kitchen countertop. When he returns from work that evening, the mug is no longer there. Instead, it’s spread across the hardwood floor in a dozen pieces. The coffee stain is permanent.

It was his favourite mug, and she had only allowed him to keep it because she knew how much it meant to him. As he picks up the pieces and throws them into the trash, he speaks to the wall: “Is this how it’s going to be now?”

There’s no answer.

The next morning, Jack grabs a cup of joe from the coffee shop across from work.


Within the days that follow the incident, he’s earned a loyalty card from the shop. Soon enough, getting his morning fix from the café across the street is no longer an act of rebellion, but a genuine high point of his day. The baristas now know him by name, and with a little trouble he starts to learn their names too. He is socialising again.

Throughout these passing weeks she taunts him with her absence. There’s no way to explain how he knows this, but he knows she’s come and gone whenever he steps through the door. The air is colder than it should be somehow. Perhaps the magical power imparted to him by the branded runes at his back explain his heightened perception. Jack doesn’t talk to the walls, nor does he seek to summon her with magic gadgetry.

[Reinhardt (DELETED 8503)]

Her death caused him immeasurable guilt at first, for he felt he had only partially loved her; and in that partiality had lost the battle. Perhaps if he had loved her more, then things would have been different. Perhaps if he had accepted all of her faults without exception or excuse, and never once resented the spitefulness that threatened their relationship time and time again, he’d have been a better husband. A better person.

Jack Reinhardt had loved his wife. He had loved her as best he could, but it was undeniable that there were elements of her character which he had solely embraced as parts of the whole. The ghost knew this much, or so it would seem. Through it’s actions, it reflected every facet of his wife that he’d ever secretly or openly disliked: her capriciousness, manipulativeness, and propensity for mind games.

The ghost’s actions were what made it stand apart from her. Yes, his wife had her flaws and had pushed his buttons back in the day, but this flickering shell that demanded his attention or sought to otherwise inconvenience him was as far from who she’d been as anything could get. Spitefulness had never been a trait she’d possessed.

Though wife and ghost shared a close-enough physical appearance, enough so that a moment of inattention made him believe she was still very much alive, the two were night and day. In time it became easier to disassociate the vision of her with the memory he kept.

Jack strained to pay the spirit no mind when it chose to show itself, which after a few weeks it did nightly without fail. For the most part, he managed. It was not so surprising that it did, for his worst trait was and always would be his bullheadedness. Still, in moments of half-sleep and inattention, it was inevitable he confuse the whispering wind for her voice. Soon enough, his own response would wake him in the middle of the night, and he would find himself all alone in their bedroom, hand reaching for the gun he’d once kept along the bed frame.