“Yeah love, I’ll be careful,” Geoff said as he turned to leave the bedroom. He would too, because if his wife found out he hadn’t been listening she’d tear his bloody head off.

It was probably about work, he thought. She was always nagging him about how the stress of his sixty-hour weeks was getting him down. And then her down. And how if he dragged one of his interns over his shoulder like some sort of crazy wrestler and crashed them through the supplies cupboard door again next time one of them tapped him on the back, he’d probably be sacked. And then they’d have financial issues too like not being able to pay the rent and downgrading to the super platinum cable package.

She didn’t see how important he was. He puffed his chest out a little as he straightened his tie in the mirror and walked on. He was absolutely vital to the firm’s operations. Indispensable, the CEO had said. And if he were to miss just one critical email, just one emergency phone call, then the whole thing would come crashing down around his-

“Watch the salt!” the dragon he had married twenty years ago bellowed amid her nest of quilts. Geoff heard that one. He even processed it correctly in his frazzled brain and lifted his gleaming shoes carefully above the little white line on the threshold. His heart sank. She’d probably been on about the bloody ghosts again.

Geoff was the only member of the household who didn’t think of the ghosts as soon as he opened his eyes. Or closed them. It was because he didn’t believe in that sort of tosh even when pans were ringing around the kitchen and bright red splotches darkened and faded on the living room carpet. Geoff was a practical man, took pride in it, and everything had a solution because everything made sense once you dug into it. Ghosts didn’t make sense so they couldn’t be the cause of all the freakshow stuff that went on under his roof. He had a good idea of what was causing all these frights, and he also had that other vital thing - motivation to succeed. His motivation was getting some bloody peace and quiet. Also, his birthday was just around the corner and if things calmed down he might get a blowjob from the dragon.

He checked the date on his watch. Only a week to his birthday, in fact. Time to hurry up. He might skip the third coffee this morning and spend a while actually solving things. He shuffled across the landing, down the stairs, and narrowed his eyes as one of his daughter’s old school cartoons tore itself in two and flapped down from the hall wall. “String,” he muttered. “Invisible thread.” It was a solution that made sense, and the timing was perfect for a call for attention.

He went into the kitchen and poured carefully measured quantities of cornflakes and skimmed milk. A vein throbbed in his temple. He’d just recalled that dreary health and safety meeting he had to go to at ten. It had been called because Richard had tripped over a chair leg on his way to the toilet yesterday, bruised a shin, and the board was to assess whether or not a budget could be found for those trendy hipster stools with one central pillar to minimise future shin-bruising potential. Geoff gritted his teeth. All well and good for all the lazy societal media-surfing layabouts in the other offices, but for the important people, the vital links with no time....

He made a point of ignoring the tree branches that were waving at him from the tiles.

He moved on stubbornly, the morning ritual fully underway. With one hand he took out his phone and opened the browser to check the company bulletin board. There was a scary capped face where his usual lock-screen was, so he deleted it. Solutions were his forte. He’d had the phone charging by his bedside all night just in case the night shift desperately needed his expertise (it had happened once, seven years ago, he thought proudly) but he supposed Emily could have snuck in to do it.

But there was an old office saying, wasn’t there, that he’d been avoiding since the activity started last month. Some solutions were short-term.

What you really had to do was get to the root of the problem.

He smiled nervously. He was fond of saying these things to his underlings, but it wasn’t so easy when you were dealing with a woman. And not just any woman - his own daughter.

The house was strange not just in the howls in the night and smashed glasses and scrawled messages on the sink telling them to get out in naughty words, but in its layout. He had his private study, as was befitting of a businessman of his reputation, where he would usually take his breakfast and prepare his morning reports. To get to it, though, he had to cross the living room in all its sensible minimalist design suggestive of a family that wasn’t dysfunctional, but just functioned better when it wasn’t together.

If Emily wasn’t there, why, then he couldn’t be blamed for not digging out any roots today, and he could just trot off to his study and start digging through the conference notes instead and -

Emily was in the living room. He sighed and sat down next to her on the couch with an almost-back-breaking crash. He looked at his daughter. The good news was that she was absorbed in her notebook, and that meant soon she would be off to university and then he would have someone who he could boast about at work and one less person to interact with afterwards. Then he saw that she was pale and tear-stained again and then he knew he couldn’t get out of it this time. It was long overdue that he fulfil his sacred duty as a father and blame everything on boys.

“How are you this morning, Emily?” he tried, and then he crunched down some of his cereal to gain a little more time.

“They were shouting again,” she said, her voice barely more than a choked whisper. She looked up, as white as a ghost herself. “Calling to me in the night. Clutching at me when I came down to revise. Leaving these...” She pulled up a sleeve around one stick-thin arm. There were bruises there, bloody big purple things, and Geoff was happy that she was fighting them off at least.

“That’s my girl,” he muttered.

“What?”

“I mean,” he boomed in his Father Voice, “I’m concerned, Emily. Very concerned. You’re getting to the age where you need to worry about boyfriends.”

“I’m eighteen,” she replied, and she even flashed him a smile. He chose, as with so many things, to ignore it.

“You’re a pretty girl, Emily.” It was true enough, anyone could see. “And at this age, you may start to have... feelings about boys. I think all this ghost gibberish is a cry for attention. You’ve been... approached, and you’ve said no, and now you’re conjuring up all this nonsense to explain it away.” He waved his hands at the bruises and a floating teacup as it passed out into the hall. Geoff was perceptive enough to appreciate another boardroom gem, that there was an element of truth in everything. All those wacky mediums on TV might just be acting, but they always brought Great Great Grandfather Isambard’s disruption back to a nice quiet girl that had to be channelling his mystic energies or some bloody tosh like that. It didn’t take a genius to simply cut out the dead invisible man, did it?

Emily put down her book angrily. “I’m not making this up,” she insisted. Her eyes bore into his. Direct contact. “I think I can handle a bit of male attention by now without, you know, messing up my family home.”

Geoff stood up quickly. Milk splattered on that thankfully minimalist low-pile carpet that would easily clean up once the dragon bothered to get out of bed. She’d have to soon, because there was only one way forward from the unspeakable thing that Emily had possibly hinted at.

“Speak to your mother about all that.”

Emily was smiling again. It was awful. Geoff wished she’d go back that sad concentration. “You brought it up, Dad.”

“I’m going to my study,” said Geoff.

“Fine,” said Emily. “Just be careful with the trap. Janice was putting something big up last night. Actually, she said not to go in there until she came back because it could kill someone.”

Geoff, to his credit, listened up to the word trap. Then he seized on that because it would be something to turn over in his mind and moan about to himself in his calm, safe study and forget the horrifying prospect that his little Emily might be dating. Yes, yes, forget all that and think of the bloody fortune that the missus was spending on that crazy old witch. Because one of those wacky mediums had ceased to be some laughable 2D character and had actually crawled out the TV. Now, after his wife’s whiny calls, Janice had become a 3D character in his own home, but now she was less laughable because every time he checked his bank there was another bloody payment for some psychic vacuum unit for under the stairs or some positive energiser for over Emily’s bed that may or may not be an egg carton with a cat bell glued inside. Even the salt across their bedroom doors cost fifty bloody quid. Yes, fifty quid! Spiritually purified and blessed my arse, Geoff blustered inside. Purified in a Tesco sweatshop in China probably, or at least some of the crap was maybe removed before the saner shoppers poured two pence worth over their chips.

He turned to go, and Emily tried again, so he cut her off with one last that’s-final patriarchal blow before storming out and letting her Think About What She Had Done before bedtime. He pointed the sausage finger of one who had too many of those chips with too much of that salt. “It’s not all cat-calls, Emily. God, give in and go down that route and that’s where babies come from!” His vein was doing the worm now.

Emily, despite her hour’s sleep and her bruises and her father’s clueless ranting, laughed bitterly. “Dad, come on, I don’t want a baby.” She looked at him slyly, watchfully, the spite at his ignorance about to boil over. “But practising making them’s pretty fun.”

Geoff fled the room. It was too late to take back. She blamed herself for years to come, but of course she never meant to kill her father.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

As he burst into the study, wild with nope, he felt the tripwire give way and heard the click and something heavy wooshing high above. And, as he turned to regard the enormous axe rushing down towards his shiny, vein-threaded pate, he even had time to note the gleaming silver-edged head and wondered just as it sliced through his skull, How much did that bloody thing cost?

He was still thinking it when all thought should have been quite impossible, given that his head now looked like a smashed watermelon. There was blood all over the bloody carpet and his mahogany desk. Then he realised that the laws of life as he knew them dictated that he shouldn’t be able to look down at his crumpled body with its gushing head and, even worse now that he saw it, the black ink spot on the underside of his shirt pocket. Then he understood that he was dead and he screamed.

Emily came rushing in then, her mouth open in a scream of her own. Now you’re showing solidarity, he tried to yell, but it was clear it didn’t get through. His daughter was looking down at the beached whale juddering weakly against the carpet, because that was the him that made sense. She didn’t look at the new him because the new him did not obey common sense and so didn’t exist. He looked at his blubbery mass now settling into silence by the base of the dripping axe, and thought that even a top-thousand company like his employer could excuse his absence from a health and safety meeting in that state. He felt a little shudder of relief at that. Then he looked back at the blob that was and frowned. It was no wonder Sue rationed out the blowjobs when he looked like that, was there? Minus the whole watermelon impression, of course. He’d have to lose a bit, he thought, and then he remembered he’d already lost some off the noggin, and his was a pretty decent size. That was enough for now.

He turned round and gasped. There were two women screaming by the door now. Jesus McGeesus, Geoff thought dreamily, even the dragon’s up before noon for this. He’d never felt more important. He looked at Sue in wonder as she completed a circuit of the room in the form of chicken dance. Those bingo wings hadn’t had so much exercise since their second honeymoon, when she’d spent the whole week winning the bingo. Then he lost his temper. He usually saved that for afternoons, but this was an emergency. You stupid woman! he tried. Can’t you see the blood? I’m hurt. He’d suddenly concluded that if he should now not exist in his current form, then he might soon stop doing so. He’d heard of these out of body experiences before, because that’s all it was, surely, and he had to get himself to hospital right now so he could wake back up to the pain. He didn’t agree with out of body experiences, but now he thought about it, they were less ridiculous than ghosts. Can’t you try, you know, some mouth to mouth or something? He watched in grim fascination as Sue’s cinder block of a foot caught his ear and the whole left side of his face, from temple to chin, squelched off onto his ruined carpet. Get to the bathroom, Emily! he roared, pointing with a hand he felt but did not see. Get a towel. Make a tourniquet. Tie me back up. He looked at the ghastly, enormous, shining bulk of the axe shaft hanging above his body, and his anger grew. And someone call a bloody ambulance! He really should have gone on that first aid course he wangled his way out of last summer.

A sudden shout brought his attention away from the shambles. It was coming from out by the stairs. Had someone else rang the paramedics? He took one last look at the bloody mess, satisfied himself that there was a bit of colour in his remaining cheek, and marched out to take matters into his own astral hands.

The living room was quiet. The splotches of milk he had left were soaking in nicely. What a stench it would leave! He took a few more steps to better inspect the damage, and then he forgot about it altogether. He felt light, airy, like a balloon set free from its string. It wasn’t quiet, it was silent, and the silence pressed against him like a weight he did not feel so much as fear. Silence. He realised that he couldn’t hear Emily and Sue in the study. Realised that even as he had stood taking in his broken shell, cracked across the floor like a fumbled egg, their screams had been fading. Had he heard them at all before he left? They hadn’t heard him.

He was alone.

A black knowing was coming upon him. He tried to shrug it off, but it was too strong. He was severed, untied, cut off -

There was a sound. From the landing. A repetitive creaking, like something rocking, then a crash. He struggled on through the lightness.

A ripple of laughter. Several voices. If it was paramedics, then they were bloody unprofessional.

He was already framing the letter of complaint as he ascended the stairs. Keeping his mind ticking over, even as his body lay still. Or trying to. The understanding was coming back. With every free, easy step he took, it came closer.

It was another business favourite. What else? It came out whenever someone found themselves confused by a problem. Something they didn’t understand.

As he crested the staircase and beheld the three figures that awaited him, the acceptance too came fully into view. Occam’s Razor. The simplest solution was usually correct. When everyone else sees ghosts, and you’re somehow looking at yourself mashed and bleeding on the floor while your family does everything but ring a bloody ambulance, perhaps ghosts are real.

He was dead.

There was also the fact that he’d thought that too at first. That was another office saying, to trust your instincts, but that’s only said by smug bastards who manage to pick something that works out of a bloody hat while you’re sat patiently sifting through your years of experience to construct a solution probability matrix and present a range of options in a neat double-spaced report through the right channels, and then it’s that complacent bastard who gets all the promotions and who’s now your technical support line manager who sits idly picking the best course every bloody time while waiting to scoff at your flawless matrix with that stupid grin on his fat face with his stupid triple mocha-latte-frappe-double-hipsterchino cup in his stupid fat hand. Gary. So we’ll ignore that tosh.

But that didn’t matter, did it? He was dead. Reality forced its way into his mind and left him emotionless. But then the rocking creaking sound brought him back out of it, and suddenly there was a vital anger instead.

Geoff was angry because the three scallywags on the landing, the scruffs that kept appearing on his phone and that had just now led him to Occam’s Razor because they were quite clearly ghosts, were up to no good. They were gathered around a shelf that he had begrudgingly installed in his twenty minutes’ free time one week for the dragon’s salt and pepper pot collection (because nothing embodies professional chic for his serious dinner parties than seeing a pair of cartoon pirate cats and dogs on the way up to the loo, does it, Sue?), and they were doing their best to swipe said rogue pets from their pedestals. They were having a hard time of it, maybe because their semi-transparent hands seemed to have no strength against something more material or maybe because they came from parents that had never done a damned day of work in their bloody lives, judging by their tracksuits and caps and foul language. Thank goodness Emily couldn’t hear them.

Yes, Geoff was angry, but he was also an Englishman. That meant he couldn’t risk the embarrassment of a false accusation until he was entirely sure the uninvited chavs trying to bring down a shelf in his own house were attempting to commit an act of vandalism. He watched until they finally edged off a pot, silently congratulated them on doing what he could only dream of doing to that awful mouse, and cut into their jeers and cheers.

“Oi! What you doing?” Maybe a bit too strong. “Mate.”

“Bloody hell!” The scallywags spun and jostled as they stared at the stairs. They might all have had heart attacks if they hadn’t already perished in a drug-fuelled plunge off the local motorway at 2AM some time in 1995. “Where the hell did you come from?”

They were obviously ruffled by the fact he could so easily see and hear them. The one whose ugly mug had appeared on his phone just half an hour ago even shuffled away from the shards of mouse. The other two looked nervous. One shoved his hands down into his hideous pants. Careful, Geoff cautioned himself. He’s probably got a knife down there. Then he realised what he’d been thinking and laughed. Death was so confusing.

“What you laughing at mate?” tried the first. His voice cracked. It was meant to be a threat, but now all Geoff could see was a weedy, dirty little shit.

He stepped fully onto the landing. The three intruders shrank back. Vaguely, as if from a thousand miles away, Geoff heard soft sobbing downstairs. “None of your business. What are you doing up here?”

The shortest boy fingered his pound-shop chain. “Whatever we like. We’re stuck here.”

“Just having a laugh mate,” said another.

Geoff’s finger came out then. Things were getting serious. “Not in my house you don’t.” That went for his family too. “I’ll, I’ll get ASBOs on the lot of yer.”

“What’s an ASBO?” the tallest asked. Geoff, who had just been wondering if they even still existed and if he had made a fool of himself, relaxed. But the chav’s cocky, yellow-toothed grin was returning. “Is it some magic spell shit that fat cow’s gonna come and do to get rid of us?”

Geoff considered. “Yes.”

The trio of ragamuffins barked out ugly heaves of laughter. “Bring it on!” one shrieked, and returned to the shelf. The weediest gave him the finger. “We only come ‘ere anyway ‘cos your daughter’s so fit.”

Geoff opened his mouth.

It wasn’t just the the throwaway besmirching of Emily. It was the reminder of the horrors they’d put her through, put all of them through, this past month.

The mouth opened wider.

It was the realisation that for one whole month there’d been filthy layabouts scrounging off his hard-earned breakables for their own depraved pleasure.

Wider.

It was all the pent-up frustration of all these wasted years of work-eat-sleep-work-eat-sleep. The focus on the wrong things in life. He could see so freely now.

A hippopotamus would be proud of such a jaw.

It was because it was almost his birthday and his chances of that blowjob were utterly done for.

A ghostly vein throbbed in his temple. He could feel the culmination of all that frustration coming up. A naughty word was going to release it all.

He glared at the boys and raised his fists like a baby. “Just, just.... FUCK OFF!”

In a flash, they were past him, jumping the stairs three at a time. Down into the hall. Through the closed front door.

Away. Out. Done.

He watched the retreat, astonished and pleased. Well, that was easy, he thought. Then he remembered the whole beheading thing. He groaned.

There were flashing lights outside, glinting from the remaining pepper pots. Wearily, he crossed to the landing window. And sighed. Police. So they’d really given up on him. There was no going back.

Well, there was. In a situation like this, he supposed it could be excused if he went back to bed.

He’d have to check on the missus and Emily soon, not to mention his death in service records, but now that the body was fully detached, it made him a bit queasy. He’d do it later. Bed it was. There was a lot to think about right now. Perhaps he’d take the day off.

For the third time that eventful morning, he crossed the landing, back towards the dragon’s den. She was currently opening the door to the officers, sobbing and fretting with Emily in her immense wake. Poor Emily. At least he’d find time to watch over her from now on. He could even haunt her pathetically unworthy boyfriends. Starting tomorrow.

He cried out in pain. A searing, blinding heat erupted from his feet. He staggered backwards, looked down, and cursed. “You can’t be serious!”

At least he hadn’t overpaid for the salt.