John’s left hand itched.
He awoke, eyes sleep-crusted and head groggy from cold medicine he’d taken to knock himself out only hours ago. He felt a gentle touch that left tingles in the center of his left palm and crawled up the surrounding fingers. His right hand, ever protective of its twin, instinctively crossed his body to scratch them away.
Only when it hit soft sheets did John remember: he didn’t have a left hand.
It’d been amputated ten years prior, along with the rest of his arm, following an entirely avoidable accident at the local saw mill. He’d been working overtime to cover tuition for tech school. He’d wanted to get into diesel mechanics; machines mesmerized him. So when John started adjusting the settings of a saw and leaned in a bit too close, fascinated by its smooth whirring and intentional assemblage, he failed to catch his shirt sleeve snared on a redundant cog until it was too late to grasp the emergency stop button. Most of that moment remained caught in a PTSD-laced haze—his brain’s attempt to protect itself by keeping the details deliberately murky. All that remained was the split second just before, when the machine tugged him toward the blade, its high-pitched shriek drowning out his own screams. For a glimmer of a second, it reminded him of a magic show he’d seen as a kid: a play-actor dressed in a wizard’s robe, cackling as he placed a woman in a box and feigned sawing her in half. John turned his head, searching for the magician who would reveal this to be an illusion, a trick that would leave him unscathed.
But when he looked back, he found a tangled mass of flesh and sinew in place of his arm, spurting blood flooding his vision until it faded entirely to black.
“I’ve touched base with our lawyer,” the union leader sitting next to his hospital bed affirmed the next day, when John awoke and saw the tangled mass had been replaced by a stump covered in neat bandages. “She’ll file a claim on your behalf. Get you a settlement. Here’s her contact information—you should call once your strength is up.”
That was how John got Ellen’s number.
Their first call felt formal. He’d clocked how comforting her voice sounded over the phone as she listened to him recount the accident, her tones low and melodic, providing soft assurances. Performative empathy, he assumed, was part of her job.
When they met in a local cafe to go over the details of his case, he discovered the voice belonged to a woman in her mid-to-late twenties who smelled faintly of vanilla. She greeted him with a firm handshake and a kind smile, which faded to a stern line as she expounded upon workplace safety regulations and the carelessness of the site manager to have not ensured the removal of all redundant cogs before one of them inevitably ensnared an employee.
To John, this was the worst part. He couldn’t fault the machine for taking his arm; it had assumed he was a log, and it was specifically designed to chop logs. What bothered John was the redundancy of the cog that caught his shirt. He would’ve forgiven the cog if it was serving its purpose, but it didn’t have one. It was useless.
And, as if lashing out with frustration, it had rendered John useless too.
“You’re not useless.” Ellen challenged when he said this out loud, her sharp eyes meeting his with such intensity he looked away, focusing instead on the steam rising from his coffee mug. She’d been inquiring about his present circumstances, getting an estimate on how significantly the accident had impacted his quality of life. He obviously couldn’t work at the mill anymore. Fortunately, the union had arranged for medical leave to cover all basic expenses until the owners agreed to a larger payout. He remained confined to his shoebox apartment, rewatching old sitcoms, taking pain pills to dull aches and sleeping pills to dull nightmares. He’d stopped attending classes.
“No use trying to be a mechanic now,” he told her, keeping his voice deliberately low, still fixated on his drink. “That’s physical work. A one-armed mechanic? More useless than a screen door on a submarine.” John had intended for the comment to come off as somewhat airy, a resolute acceptance of his new disability. Not self-pity, but simple fact.
However, Ellen’s empathy wasn’t performative, as it turned out, and she latched on to his obviously oozing emotional wound like a tick.
“You’re not useless,” she insisted again. This time she reached across the table to gently touch his right forearm. The shock of contact made him start, but he forced himself not to jump, not to breathe, not to make any sudden movement that might suggest she should stop.
So fixated was he on the feeling of her fingers, he barely heard her continue with the confidence only young, self-righteous lawyers have: “We are going to win this case, and once we do, you’ll have the funds to study, invest, do whatever you want. You can take matters into your own hands.”
“Hand.” John replied quietly, coming back to himself.
“What?” Ellen paused, tilting her head, caught off-guard.
“Take matters into my own hand.” He glanced up at her, the corners of his mouth playing at a smile. They twitched a bit at first, his muscles unaccustomed to the upturned motion after lack of use—then relaxed into a grin as Ellen broke into a full-bodied laugh. Her uproarious cackle drew some attention from the cafe’s other patrons, but John neither noticed nor cared. As she took notes on the case, John took note of the way her bouncy hair fell just over her shoulders and shook with each subsequent, tinkling giggle.
Ellen was proven right. John would learn she almost always was. She forced the saw mill owners to read the writing on the wall, and they choked up a sufficient amount to keep John comfortable for the next fifty years or so.
“What’s the first thing you’ll spend it on?” They sat in Ellen’s office, her filing the final papers of his case into a cabinet behind her desk. John’s remaining palm grew sweaty, but he had his answer ready.
“Well, I was thinking that might be dinner with you.”
There was a beat, then two. John’s face grew hot, the bright embers of his embarrassment catching light, fanned by his stream of cruel consciousness: She never liked you, idiot. She was just doing her job. A woman shows you a bit of kindness and you take it way too far, have to go and make her uncomfortable, have to fucking ruin it. Why would you think somebody like her would ever want to date a man with a missing –
“I’d love to.”
So John spent his settlement money on their date, then a degree in engineering, then an intimate elopement, then a house decorated with his-and-her hand towels, then a prosthetic arm. Ellen insisted the prosthetic wasn’t necessary, that she didn’t mind either way, but John disagreed. He wanted a left hand. He wanted it to wear his wedding ring.
A decade after losing his arm, John wore that prosthetic, and his ring, to Ellen’s funeral.
He wore it mostly to avoid the curious, sympathetic glances of distant acquaintances. He could already barely tolerate the pity that accompanied having a dead wife. The attendees thought covered mouths would hide whispers, as though sound couldn’t travel through fingers. John didn’t have all his fingers, but he did have both ears.
“It’s such a shame, isn’t it? So young, and they didn’t even have any children–”
“Maybe that’s for the best, though. It’d be a lot, single parenting with…well, you know–”
“I can’t even imagine. Oh, god–”
“A car crash? Jesus. Is that why it’s closed casket?”
“Apparently. Slid on black ice after that storm last week. When they pulled her from the wreckage, she wasn’t even recognizable. They only figured out it was her from the car’s registration.”
“Who identified the body?”
“He did.”
“He…doesn’t look so good.”
“His wife died, dipshit.”
“Yeah I know. But he looks, like, sick. Like, nauseous or something.”
“Oh, and wouldn’t you be, if you saw your wife’s body pulled out of a fucking hunk of metal after getting t-boned? It was jaws-of-life-type shit.”
“Do you think he’ll vomit during the service?”
Ya know, kid, I just might. John actually appreciated the last pair, two teenagers who’d clearly been dragged to the funeral of a woman they’d never met. If nothing else, teens were perceptive. The circles under John’s eyes were so dark he seemed bruised, and he perspirated under his too-tight suit despite the frigid weather. He hadn’t slept. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw flashing red and blue lights at his window, heard knocks on his door, felt himself slip from reality. He couldn’t recall the officer’s face, but could hear the reverberations of “likely dead upon impact” and “I’m so sorry” bouncing around his skull, clanging loud enough to give him migraines.
“Can we call anyone for you?” came next, but he didn’t reply. His emergency contact was Ellen, and Ellen was dead.
Only a few days into his new life as husband to a dead wife, he could feel his body wearing down—as it turned out, barely sleeping and eating only the minimum required to survive (mostly takeout, at that) didn’t do wonders for the immune system.
So John wasn’t surprised when he felt a sore throat developing later that evening, sitting alone in the house decorated with his-and-her hand towels that were now only his. Probably picked something up at the funeral, he surmised, thinking of all the sniffling well-wishers who’d gone in for too-familiar hugs, their hot breath coating his neck as everyone huddled together to watch dirt shoveled onto Ellen’s coffin. John had remained long after they all left, staring at her grave. He would’ve slept there, shoveled down through the earth, crawled right into the hole, pried the nails out of the casket, and wrapped himself around her corpse—if some considerate cousin hadn’t eventually thought to come back and ferry him home.
So no, John wasn’t surprised by his illness. But now, lying flat on his back, eyes attempting to adjust to the black space in the darkness of his bedroom, he was surprised to feel something caressing his nonexistent hand.
Doctors had told him this was common in amputees. “Phantom limb syndrome,” they called it. The brain occasionally thinks the nerves from the severed limb are still there, still connected, and sends signals accordingly. But he hadn’t ever experienced it before. Once his arm was gone, it was gone, and his mind didn’t delude itself. Maybe it’s only brought on by intense stress or something.
He lumbered to the bathroom, ignoring the odd sensation of a weight clinging to his left side as he walked. Maybe I have a fever. Maybe it’s hit my brain.
He relieved himself, not quite able to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that someone was watching. Glancing at the window confirmed no curious neighbors lingered outside—come one, come all, gaze in wonder at the one-armed widower taking a piss!—but he pulled the blinds closed anyway and ambled back to bed. The cold medicine hadn’t worn off yet, and it left him with a numbness he felt grateful for.
Before allowing it to overtake him, his eyes darted to his left one more time. It was certainly a trick of the light, darkness playing games with shadows, but, for just a moment, a small part of him thought there might’ve been a slight indent where Ellen used to sleep.
Morning came, although he’d asked it not to.
His cold had predictably worsened while he slept. He remained under the covers, willing himself back to sleep before the combination of his sore throat, sweat-soaked sheets, and the vague threat of unmedicated nightmares compelled him to get up. He rummaged through the bathroom cupboard, searching for the strongest possible sedative, and attempted to steady himself with a deep breath only to find he couldn’t inhale properly through his nose.
It was then John noticed the faint scent of vanilla in the air.
He couldn’t smell a thing, but he could smell vanilla.
Damn it. He felt heat rush behind his eyes, tears clouding his vision. Ellen’s perfume. Is it somewhere in the cabinet? Did I spill it?
His nonexistent left arm twitched again, as though something had tugged on it.
John stood, leaning slightly on the sink for stability, and felt a dull ache building in the back of his head, accompanied by a familiar high-pitched whine. Great. Doctors had also told him that the years of working at the saw mill without protective ear equipment made him prone to tinnitus, an incurable ringing in his ears that worsened with loud noises and—occasionally—sinus congestion.
Rubbing at his temples in an attempt to alleviate his headache, he heard a word pierce through the ringing.
“John.”
He whirled around, stumbling slightly, losing his balance. The ringing became a roaring as blood rushed to his head. Okay. Maybe no more cold medicine, John thought, slamming the cabinet shut and staggering back to his room.
He collapsed on the bed before the tears began falling in earnest, mixing miserably with the snot dribbling out of his nose. The ringing continued, drowning out his sobs, before an almost imperceptible whisper penetrated the din.
“John?”
He would’ve been able to pick out Ellen’s sweet, comforting alto in a chorus. It sounded exactly like she did driving home that night. Before the crash. She’d tried calling him on her way home. Cell reception had been awful, every other sentence had been punctuated with “John?” and “Ellen? Are you there?”
A deliriously hopeful thought tickled in the back of his mind. Ellen?
John shook his head, disgusted with himself. No. I’m feverish. I’m fucking insane. This is a hallucination, a fever dream. This is looking for the magician at the saw mill all over again. I’m asleep. I’m sick. I’m sick in the head. She’s dead. She’s dead she’s dead–
But to his left, he felt a hand slide into the one he was missing, fingers delicately interlacing with those he didn’t have. Something wrapped around his phantom forearm. The way Ellen had that day in the cafe.
He whimpered. If this was a delusion, a stroke, or a dream, he would relish it. He took another deep inhale, wiped his face with a blanket, his stuffy nostrils blocking out everything except the faintest hint of vanilla.
A giggle broke through the ringing, a tinkling of chimes that almost matched it in pitch. “Got your nose.”
John went to bed that evening, more than content to breathe through his mouth.
A week passed with John reveling in his illness—refusing medicine, fasting from any nutritious food, avoiding sleep for as long as possible to ensure his cold worsened.
“You should take care. You need to get better.” He heard Ellen’s barely-there whisper during another flare of tinnitus, then welled up at the joy of being nagged.
“I’m better with you. And maybe if I die, we’ll–”
“That’s not how it works.”
He didn’t know how it worked, and he didn’t care. He vaguely understood that every part of him that malfunctioned in this world seemed to better access hers. He’d heard that people with blindness sometimes develop extraordinary hearing, their brains rewiring to overcompensate for their missing sense. Perhaps, in losing parts of his sense of touch, sense of hearing, sense of smell—he’d developed a sixth one.
So the morning John woke and could once again breathe normally, he nearly suffocated.
No. He inhaled sharply, desperately. Instead of vanilla, his nostrils filled with the revolting mixture of his own body odor and the stale air of the house he hadn’t properly cleaned since he’d had a wife to clean it for. The direct oxygen hit his bloodstream like ice, dousing him with cold realization.
I can smell.
And I can’t smell her.
His musty duvet crumpled to the floor as he leapt up, pacing frantically, raking his right hand through his hair. With a cry of frustration he ran it down his face, clawing at his features until his fingers found purchase with his nose and pinched, hard, yanking, spots dotting his vision as he attempted to tear the cartilage from bone.
A searing minute into attempted mutilation, John’s self-preservation instincts reluctantly kicked in. His strength faded, hand loosening to cradle his throbbing face as he sank to his knees. A moan of despair curdled from somewhere deep in his chest. How did that old saying go? “Cut off my nose just to spite my face,” John murmured. In an instant, his moaning shifted to snorting, then weeping—tears punctuated by almost manic laughter. Ellen would’ve cracked up too, her tinkling giggles rising high then tumbling down before pealing back up again—his favorite roller coaster ride. He could almost hear it.
Except he couldn’t.
“Ellen?” John’s voice bounced around the empty room, the volume shocking his fully-functioning ear drums. “ELLEN?” Her name echoed as he barreled through the narrow hallway. His feet gave way at the top of their staircase, sliding down the first two steps. He reached out to catch himself, but realized too late that he’d reached with his missing arm. His shoulder slammed against the wall, whole body smashing into a series of framed photographs as he clumsily toppled down to the ground floor. Wood splintered as the pictures fell alongside him, glass shattering over snapshots of Ellen’s smile. John landed at the bottom with a thud, surrounded by fragments of his memories.
He laid still for a moment, wishing he’d been knocked out, put into a coma, provided with a brief respite. Then he felt his left arm twinge and relief flooded into every corner of his battered body.
She’s still here. John lifted his head up, a delirious smile on his scratched up face.
It was then he noticed the shards of glass. And John got an idea.
Tenderly, he swept one of the larger pieces into his right hand and stared at it.
An eye for an eye, right?
He felt another twinge of his left arm—a harsher touch, firmer, as if giving him an order. He couldn’t hear, but could sense Ellen crying out to him, making futile attempts to be heard, begging him to stop, to call his cousin, call anyone, anyone alive.
“Look away,” he growled, voice shaking only slightly, the shard slicing through his palm as he gripped it tighter. Its sting sweetened as he pressed the edges deeper into his flesh, which only hardened his resolve.
Ignoring the feeling of fingernails now clawing at his left side, he took a deep breath, and plunged the glass straight into his left eye.
The excruciating pain blinded him before the actual loss of his eye did. Blood spurted from the open wound, trickling down into his face and flooding his mouth, which opened involuntarily in a silent scream. The fluid from his punctured organ slid down his cheek and he collapsed to the floor again, wheezing, gasping, waiting for shock to kick in. He dry-heaved, making every attempt to anchor himself, blinking through the torment with his remaining good eye, pulling himself up with the railing and fixating on the space to his left.
Please, Ellen.
Another moment passed. Despair gripped his throat, tightening as his breath became shallow and frantic. Oh. Oh god. I’ve lost my mind I’ve lost my eye oh god oh god what have I done chorusing against the thudding of his heart, each beat pounding with another Ellen, Please, Ellen, Please, Ellen, Ellen, Ellen as though the force of her name kept his blood pumping, less the calling card of a dead woman and more a prayer.
Ellen.
Please.
A figure shimmered into view, a half-hazy trick of the light, just barely more visible than spectacles of dust floating across a ray of sunshine streaming through the window. She wore the simple jeans and sweatshirt she’d died in. Bouncy hair cascaded down her shoulders, matting slightly where blood crusted around the back of her head. Her neck tilted forward at an unnatural angle; her spine appeared to have collapsed and twisted her torso permanently to the right. A bone fragment peeked out from one shoulder. Her skin was charred black from burn marks in some places, mottled blue from decay in others. Her eyes, bloodshot and somewhat sunken into her skull but otherwise unchanged, widened as they met John’s gaze.
To John, Ellen was as beautiful as ever.
Jamie Sheasley (she/her) has never seen a ghost—not one she can recall, anyway—but she loves writing about them. When she’s not writing, Jamie can be found hiking, swimming in the sea, or exploring her beloved homes of Philadelphia, PA and Dublin, Ireland.
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