Reality hit Lina hard. It had taken her almost half an hour to cool down, which was progress. Joe, impressively insensitive and impassive, was still busy complaining about the customer service in his room.

​

Lina sat on the sofa, massaging her temples. On her lap were old, moldy books with yellowed pages. The organic paper was fragile, succumbing easily to the passage of time. The remnants of an antique tradition called "photo albums" had not been well preserved.

Lina and the sepia man were in the middle of an argument.

​

“Stop calling me a ‘hobo,’ woman! I don’t even know what that word meaneth! What art thou mumbling about?”

​

“Oh, hold your horses! I’ve been calling you ‘holo,’ not ‘hobo!’” In a rush, Lina flipped through the photo album. She took a picture and looked at it, then glanced at the sepia man across from her. Lina narrowed an eye and raised an eyebrow. The resemblance was uncanny. Yet it wasn’t just a resemblance, it was the same person.

​

The sepia man looked cool and confident in the centuries-old photograph. He wore the same two-piece suit in the picture and the oil painting on the wall. He still had it on as he sat in front of her. Either he didn’t have any other attire when he was alive, or the painting, photograph, and his death all happened on the same day.

​

So, yeah… He was, well, kind of dead.

​

“So you're not a hologram, but… you know.”

​

“A haunt?”

​

“Sure, let’s go with that one.” Lina shrugged and raised her thumb.

​

“Aye, I reckon I’ve been reduced to the state of a haunt.”

​

“Umm!” Lina stared at the haunt’s face until she realized glaring was rude. She rose to her feet and walked to the kitchen for a change of air and some coffee.

​

The haunt was alone in the living room. His weekend trip to earth wasn’t going as planned. His only solace was sitting on the couch as though he were tangible. He was inexperienced in ghost stuff and had a lot to learn about the connection between the living and the dead. He speculated that his butt and feet were exempt from phasing through objects… Then his butt passed through the couch and touched the floor. Ruminating on phasing through objects could lead to terrible results. His head and neck were above the cushion he’d sat on just moments ago, but the rest of his spectral body was inside the couch, sitting cross-legged. He didn’t feel an itch, nor was he uncomfortable, yet it was an embarrassing nuisance.

​

To preoccupy himself, the sepia man turned his attention to the oil paintings on the walls. “Ah, yond one is mine own fader, more handsome than any man in the neighbored… The gent next to him is mine uncle, paid his debt to nature due to either tuberculosis or a calculosis… He was not a smart man, remindeth me of thy son… Oh, and there’s mine own son. Hath he perished as well, I wonder.”

​

“No one should ever wonder about their offspring's chances of survival. It’s just sad,” Lina said grimly as she made her way back to the living room. She let out another “Eeek!” right after. Anyone would react the same after finding a bodiless head talking to itself on a couch. Fortunately, she didn’t drop the tray or spill the coffee.

​

Lina should have been sipping her morning delight coffee, but instead, she was about to have a morning terror coffee with her dread's reasoning. Without taking her eyes off the head in a fez, Lina walked toward the sofa with slow, trembling steps and placed the tray on the coffee table.

​

As she treated her guest, the haunt tried to climb onto the couch to get his act together. He succeeded, though his hand passed right through the cup, unable to grab its handle. The haunt grunted, folded his arms, and rested his back, disappearing into the backrest.

​

“Oh, sorry!” Lina’s lips touched her cup’s brim as her hands shook. The coffee dripped on her chin and burned her mouth. She put the cup on the table while questioning herself about life, death, and coffee. “Guess I was in a quandary. I serve coffee every time a guest arrives. Not a tea person. Habits, you know. Couldn’t foresee you wouldn’t be able to drink! Gosh, so nervous. How could I expect you to be thirsty with no living body, right?” Lina paused and laughed, as though to herself. “Haha, oh dear mister haunt. You’re a handful, even though you can’t actually be, you know, physically handled! Hahaha… Ugh, someone kill me.”

​

“Thy words are fair, fair mistress. So far, I alswa fail to befon mine own condition.”

​

Lina was beating her brain about what alswa and befon meant. She made do with shaking her head in agreement with an ignorant smile.

​

The haunt broke the silence. “You see, I wasn’t sent here with a book of instructions in mine hands. I have no notion of where to wend, what to do, and how to, well, sit.” He paused and looked around. “Speaking of books, I don’t see any in thy house.”

​

“Oh! Well, the manufacturing of printed reading materials was halted many years ago due to a global, well, tree shortage.” Lina gulped.

​

“Tree shortage? Not sure if I want to know the history behind that.” The sepia man puffed and blew. “Back in my day, less than five percent of the population could read and write. Now everyone’s literate, it seemeth, but there’s nothing left to read.”

Lina shrugged. “Um, yes, of course. So, why on earth are you on, well, the earth?”