Hair Raising

The fun thing about being dead is the haunting. Revenge. It's Payback Time Whoo Hoo. I'm updating my Visiting Book, adding some, crossing off a few in case my memory's not immortal. It's quite a long list, though I try to be as fair as one can inhumanly be: I've always been the target of con-men of all ages and oh yes con-dames too. It took me a while to get wise: they all think they're smarter than they are... though by then it's usually too late. Moving on to those who've bullied me; who assumed (and alas, oh so did I) that I was cut out to be a victim; and all those who I let push me around for their own promotion, empire, glory, satisfaction... well now I don't want to bore you but you get my drift. However, perhaps you didn't know that the old-fashioned loose white robe or ectoplasm, cold air, that stuff - out; like pandemics and computer viruses, we keep up with the times - it's easy when there's no time to keep up with. Photography was a giant step for ghostkind; when it was still blacknwhite we were those outafocus blurs that walked along where the wall wasn 't any more, through the doors that were not there, in the life you did not lead, a bit like Eliot's garden... but when colour came into your holiday snaps - there you are, Caribbean-hormoned, honeymooning with your third young wife, Viagra-ed, Cialis-ed, sunkissed, gin-blissed, and hello! we never snapped that family group...with those two blurry familiar faces in the background... out in Concorde, back in discord... Then came computers...you really do make our task more fun for us; we're the cyber-virus or ghost in the machine that affects, ha, only yours; and who picked up your digi-cam that night and photographed your dreams? or slipped that sexy message under the office address? the bit I haven't yet worked out in all this (well-deserved) fun is that most of the worst offenders in my visiting-book have - you know - passed on - and will be there to (greet?) me. That thought rather haunts me.