The man stood before the unpainted wall of his apartment with a cigarette in his mouth and a confident grin painted on his face.

Before him stood the corkboard with no less than two dozen photographs, notes and sketches, each one linked by a worn thread of a different colour.

A house with the lights on, a crime scene, a traffic collision, a name and some personal details and several images edited to look like they showed a ghost around the now derelict house.

He wore an unbuttoned blazer over a white shirt, both his trousers and blazer were a dark navy colour. 

The bit of stubble on his well-defined chin matched the colour of his fairly short blond hair.

As the smoke from Terry's vice filled the room he turned around and approached the bed which stood against the only window in his cramped living space.

The bed wasn't made, in fact, the entire room was a mess of dirty plastic plates and dishes as well as piles of clothes.

"This time..." he muttered to himself.

"This time it'll definitely work out!" he told himself as he grabbed the briefcase from his bed and began heading towards the door.

Later that day, Terry arrived outside the decrepit home which was located between more abandoned homes; the entire neighbourhood was abandoned.

It was like a small fraction of a true necropolis.

He tossed his cigarette aside, it landed on a patch of dry grass as he made his way through the overgrown garden of the one-story detached home. 

Seeing that the door was locked, Terry simply kicked it open sending chunks of wood and a detached handle inside the home.

He stepped inside and sniffed the stale air.

"It smells like mould..." he thought.

Thanks to the vines coating the window the light was limited, Terry pulled his phone out and enabled the flashlight feature.

"Hello?" he called out.

"Is there a..."

He glanced down at his phone and scrolled through the names before looking up.

"Is there a Jill here?" he questioned.

There was no reply at first but just as he was about to give up a woman stepped out from the darkness of one of the rooms.

Terry's mouth grew into a smile he couldn't control.

"Hi..." she replied uncertainly, this were quite possibly the first word she spoke to a human in many years.

Terry looked the woman up and down.

"Let's see... looks above eighteen..."

"No weird ghost artefacts..." a ghost artefact referred to something like a caved-in skull or a bullet hole in the head.

"Hello, I'm Terry - I see ghosts and I'm trying to smash," he explained matter-of-factly.

The room grew uncomfortable as the ghost remained silent for several seconds.

"What...?" she finally blurted out.

"You're a ghost..." he began.

She nodded.

"And I'm a human..." the whole time he was making several elaborate hand gestures.

She nodded again.

"And I'm into that shit..."

Slowly the unexpressive face of the ghost grew redder and more flustered the realization of what he was truly saying sank in.

"W-WH-WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING!?"

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU!?"

Terry wasn't phased by the insults as he offered an uninterested shrug.

"Hey, I'm the ghost-fucker, not the ghost-rapist; if you're not cool with this then-"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"OF COURSE I'M NOT COOL WITH THIS!" she erupted.

He nodded.

"Gotcha."

He looked down at his phone and began typing something out in a journal application.

"Jill Doe: Rejected."

This was entry number seventy-three.

He put his phone away and turned towards the door.

"Well, best of luck in your future endeavours, Jill Doe," he said giving her a disinterested wave.

Just as he was about to cross the broken doorway Terry heard Jill's irate voice.

"Wait, you can't just leave! Who are you?! Why can you see me?!" 

"Why... am I still here?!" the last message sounded almost sad. 

Terry's face grew wry.

He spun around on his heel.

"Look, chief. I don't know why I can see ghosts and I don't really care."

"I have a graveyard, abandoned garage and a burned-down restaurant left to check today..." he continued.

He switched to the GPS app on his phone.

"And if I don't hurry up I'll miss the last bus going to the graveyard."

He sighed.

"I can't afford to keep paying for taxis to take me random places..."

"Fine!" she finally exclaimed.

"Leave! I'm not nearly desperate enough to talk to the likes of you!"

He shot her a thumbs up.

"Kay."

Later that night Terry stepped into his apartment soaked from head to toe after getting caught in the rain. 

"The graveyard ghost was a man - I don't swing that way..."

"The garage ghost already went feral... too bad..."

"And the restaurant one was too burnt to tell whether it was a he or a she..."

He breathed a disheartened sigh.

He hung up his clothes to dry above the bathtub in his bathroom and changed into grey sweatpants and a white shirt.

With a towel to dry off his hair, Terry walked into his room which was bathed in the orange light of his lamp.

He grabbed his laptop and sat down on his bed and began to type in the following.

"Jill Doe death"

Nothing new popped up in the search results.

Terry did some research on the ghosts he attempted to seduce, how they died, where and if there were any people claiming to see their ghost somewhere.

Typically a person who dies doesn't leave a ghost, even a violent death rarely results in a spirit.

A ghost is formed when one's need to do something is so great that the soul couldn't move on.

The ironic element of this equation is that they rarely remember what it is they need to do.

"This is why you don't get to fuck ghosts, Terry..."

"Because you waste your time on this kind of stuff..." he told himself as he opened another article about the death.

"Jill doe was one of several cancer-related deaths in the area..."

"Previously to her death she was reportedly suffering from troubles breathing and general listlessness."

Terry sighed.

"I should really focus on finding more ghosts..." he told himself as he pinched the bridge of his nose.

Still, he continued to search for another hour before turning off the laptop and going to sleep.

Early the next day he left his home in his sweatpants, he saw no need to dress up for a lost cause.

After picking up a sandwich at the local supermarket as well as a bottle of iced coffee, Terry began heading back towards the abandoned home where he was rejected yesterday.

As he stepped into the home with the brandless plastic bag carrying a wrapped-up chicken sandwich and a plastic bottle of coffee he was met with the uninviting stare of Jill from yesterday.

He stood in the doorway, glaring at the ghost for a while

"What...?"

"I didn't change my mind if that's what you're t-"

He nodded to himself.

"Looks like you died from cancer..." he remarked, taking out his breakfast and biting into his sandwich.

He squatted down in her garden while he ate.

The grass in the garden was speckled with white dust not unlike dry paint or cement power. 

"I don't know if that makes you feel any better but it looks like you weren't murdered." he clarified through a mouthful of crispy chicken and mayonnaise.

He washed the sandwich down with some of his coffee.

"So, um, I guess you wanted to start an anti-smoking campaign or something..." he replied half-jokingly.

Despite being offered some fairly substantial clues about her death, Jill's attention was temporarily glued to the man before her.

"What the fuck happened to him!? He went from douchebag to midlife crisis in less than twenty-four hours."

"A-are you... feeling alright?"

He took another bite of his sandwich.

"Well, I didn't have any luck finding any ghosts to charm so I decided to take the day off,"

"Anyway; do you have any idea why you haven't disappeared yet?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"No..."

"But cancer...?" she questioned.

"Of all things... It's not like I smoked when I was alive..."

"I didn't even drink..."

"Pfft, you missed out..." Terry sneered. 

Ignoring his remark, Jill continued to unravel the situation.

"I don't think my family had a history of-"

She went silent.

"My family..." she began, her face looked as if she just uncovered something that was in plain sight.

Whatever her last train of thought was it was already too far gone.

It was as if the whole cancer thing was forgotten instantly.

"How are my family? Are they alright?" 

Terry took another sip of his coffee.

"Dunno."

She frowned.

"What's the last thing you remember before dying?" he asked.

"I mean, besides the hospital..." he clarified.

She scratched her chin.

"The last thing..."

She closed her eyes and vaguely recalled her attic.

"I was cleaning up the attic..." she explained.

Terry nodded, balling up the plastic that wrapped his sandwich.

The sound of crumpled plastic unlocked more of Jill's memories.

"I bumped into the wall - there was a layer of black plastic covering it... and I think..."

"I broke the roof?" 

"I remember snow pouring in..."

Terry's eyes narrowed.

"Snow...?"

She nodded.

"Yeah..."

"You died in the summer..." he replied, tossing the plastic aside, further littering her already dirty garden.

He stood up and stepped into her house.

"Which way is your attic?"

Terry ascended the rickety old stepladder into Jill's attic.

When he opened the door up to the attic a giant plume of dust flew up into the air.

That's when Terry was met with piles of white powder which seeped out from black plastic covering the inside of the roof.

His phone's flashlight was quite possibly the only light the attic has seen in years, it illuminated a constant snowstorm of small falling particles.

"You either have a very cold attic or a generous supply of cocaine..." he remarked.

Jill looked around the attic in shock.

"What... is this?" she asked.

Terry shrugged, pulling his shirt over his mouth and nose.

"My guess is asbestos..."

"Asbestos?!" she demanded as Terry picked a handful of it up and tossed it her way.

"Abestos fight!" he exclaimed as his improvised snowball flew straight through the unimpressed ghost.

"Oh come on, a little asbestos never-" he stopped himself.

"Anyway."

"I guess we found the culprit... " he explained.

"Granted, typically asbestos poisoning won't kick in for about twenty years but if you were born here... and you died at twenty-four years old..." he shrugged.

"It all adds up..." he nodded to himself.

Jill walked through the asbestos wonderland with a look of worry on her face.

"Anyway, I don't know about you - but I think I'll head downstairs..." he said pulling the shirt down from his face and placing a cigarette in his mouth.

"I don't want any cancer after all..." he laughed.

Jill sent him a dirty look.

"Too soon?" he asked seeing the flame of his lighter die almost instantly.

"Oh god, there is a lot of asbestos in the air..." he said, hurrying down the stepladder and towards the front door.

He wiped the white residue off his face and proceeded to pat his clothes clean.