#cod mw2 ghost

You were sent home on mandatory leave, the empty house feeling colder than when you left it the first time. It felt like you were always on edge, waiting for a lecture. Even though your parents are long gone now and you're thirty now. You go to leave a few times. Though, you liked it better when you avoided having to go back home. Preferring back to back missions than facing the thought of going back home. The doctor forced you to, shaking his head and hands on his hips as he told you it was good for your long term health. Tapping into your fear of failure.

You anticipate your mother coming to the front door, but you know she never will, never again. The clock still at 3 o'clock in the morning when your mother passed from a heart attack in her sleep. You remember your father waking to her lifeless form, a form that used to be so full of love for life. Gone. Long before she reached fifty years old. Your father went on without her, turning to alcohol for comfort of the loss. It was to no one's surprise, he had passed from a broken heart two weeks after.

You sat on your old bed, dust flicking upwards as your legs pressed into the covers. In a twisted sense you still loved them, cared for them and wish they were there. Even though they were toxic parents. You loved them. The neglect, the threats of abandonment, everything about it. You know you shouldn't. Yet you still do.

It wasn't your fault you looked so much like your mother, her hair, her eyes, her smile and her mannerisms. They were hers, just as much as they were yours. The older you grew, the uncannier it became and the uncannier it became. The more your father seemed to hold disdain towards you.  

You were a constant reminder of the woman he lost. You often wondered if he blamed you for her death. If he thought, you were the reason she had a heart attack. You had been sixteen at the time, a rebellious teenager who had been out past curfew. Your father had found you drunk, stumbling home, and had yelled at you, your mother trying to intervene. The next morning, she was gone.

A stupid thought, you know. A thought you can't hope to let go of, no matter how much you push forward. The guilt had gnawed at you for years, and it had only worsened when your father had died. You had felt like a failure, a burden, a constant reminder of the pain they had endured.

It was like most of it never changed from when you were young. Frozen. In stasis. Paused during a time. A moment in your life when things in your life started, spiralling into something so wrong. As you cleaned out the home, windows open, airing the entire house out. Like it was holding its breath for the past few years or more.

It was after the furniture was taken out, after the walls and floors were sanded, that the house felt emptier and less like a home. More of a tomb of what was. You were hand painting images your parent's wouldn't have let you do. Though, they weren't here anymore to tell you off.

Starting off small with small birds, flowers and animals in corners, after a one-night stand you found out you were pregnant. You debated telling them for a while, you knew you couldn't put it off forever. You called your mother's phone just to hear her voicemail message. As the days marched forward like sand dripping inside an hourglass.

The phone snatched from your fingers, a cold hand closing around your wrist. You pulled your hand away from the stranger, or at least you tried to. "Let go of me." you shouted. "Whoever you're looking for isn't alive anymore. My mother and my father are dead. If you're here for them. Then you are fourteen years too late. They have been cremated, and their ashes are buried with the redwood trees."

You assumed he was there to rob you. "I have nothing of value. Nothing." you told him.

The man laughed, a low, guttural sound that sent chills down your spine. "I'm not here for your parents," he said, his voice thick with a foreign accent. "I'm here for you."

In any other circumstance, those words would be a delight to hear. Given the situation now. It just sent chills up your spine and made your palms sweaty. Fear gnawed at you, gripped your throat and stolen the breath from your lungs.

He learned over, whispered into your ear, his hot breath against your neck and face, “Welcome home, Maus.”

‘People stay with you because they want something from you. Don’t trust any of them to actually be there when you need it.’ Simon thought as he gazed at the rest of his team. As much as he trusted them. He knew they would eventually leave, much like the other people in his life.

My father showed me that as well as my mother.

‘They pretend to understand. When in reality they just don’t care. They pretend to care because they want to be seen as good people in the eyes of bystanders. They want to be seen as good people. The good guy helping out someone who’s suffering. A total and complete ego boost.’

‘I don’t trust them.’

‘But I trust them enough to do their job.’

‘You haven’t seen half the shit I’ve seen.’

‘You seek out comfort from the one who you would rather see six feet below you. I know that look. I’ve seen that look. Stop looking at me. Stop looking at me.’

‘Work as a butcher is much simpler than dealing with the emotional highs belonging to others. I will outlast them all. I will be the one in the military still because my life without it is shallow. Hollow. A senseless, deprived thing I don’t deserve to keep to myself.’

‘You don’t deserve to see any part of me.’

‘You don’t deserve to know why I am the way I am.’

I stare at him. “You didn’t listen to what I said.” I reminded him. “I know where I’m headin. I don’t need you fucks tellin me what I already know.”

‘Stop talking.’

‘You’re talking to fill silence at this point.’

Eventually, most of the team gets hitched with someone. Everyone but me. Fate deemed it the right thing. A killer belonging in military until his grave comes calling. Like a wind chime bugging the neighbour. Whining about the so-called noise pollution.

Filling a pathetic excuse of a noise complaint to the police. Listening to a man drone on and on about how I was wasting my time by just working all the time. ‘Not like I have someone to go back home to. Why the fuck do you care?’

I took the photos they wanted to take. I didn’t want to be in them. They won’t miss me when I’m gone. I refuse to be in them. No matter what happens to me.

‘Stop mithering me.’

‘Just stop it. I don’t care. Let me die inside in peace for fucks sake. You mingin fucks.’

‘You're Soap’s girlfriend, stop looking at me like you know who I am.’

Note:

Mither means to 'bother' or 'annoy'.