Alone

George Dupont had his fill of sanity. He personally wouldn't mind some whisper voices in the walls, or strange faces outside the window, or a creaky attic midnight moan. George was tired of being so alone. How bad could a ghost be? Staring into his Earl Gray, he felt more the tea bag than the man.

The knock on the door seemed to snap him to another realm. He absently walked over and opened it. No one there. He peered up and down the quiet street. No one. Suddenly, a voice is heard, coming from nowhere. "May I enter, or not?" George nearly jumped out of his slippers. Looking around again, he saw nothing. What was going on, he frantically wondered. "I'll take your dumbfounded silence as yes, then. Stand aside, please." 

George watched in frozen horror as the door opened wider on its own- for some reason, he stepped back inside, as if folllowing the disembodied voice. Closing his door, George spanned his living room, left to right. This is crazy, he thought. But he also sensed he wasn't alone. Not anymore. He sat down in a heap in his favorite lounge chair, interlacing his fingers in his lap.

Then, the voice again, seemingly from the air itself, "Yeah, that's always misunderstood. The idea that we can just pass right thru anything. Not so, or obviously I wouldn't have knocked!" The voice was lilting, animated, while George wondered if he really heard it, or was he losing his grasp on reality? "You think being alone is a curse? Try not dying, yet not existing either. You think that's time for some counseling?"

George's thoughts were racing. What if he jumped up and ran out the door? Would the voice follow, and then what if it did? Would anyone else hear it? 

It seemed like a vaporous cloud of tangled fragments blurred George's vision, then startled, he realized he wasn't sitting in his lounge chair at all. He was still at his table. His thoughts finally cleared to a calm, blank slate. How long had he been staring into his Earl Gray, he wondered, alone again.