In front of the door in the stairwell, Emily twisted her fingers nervously, her toes drumming lightly. Eventually, her palm reluctantly held the knob, only to realize it was locked. After an awkward sigh and chuckle, she reached for the doorbell.
The door buzzed open for her to meet me, whom she greeted with a smile I could tell was forced.
"Good evening," I started.
"Good evening, Mr. Chen."
"You're slightly late," I commented, eyes on my watch.
"Yeah um..." She twisted her fingers again, more hesitant today than ever. "Sorry..." She wiped a bead of sweat off her cheek, apparent signs of unease.
"Well." I got up and pushed open the door to our therapy session this week. "Shall we?"
She nodded and walked on past me at the doorway.
The way she sat today also reflected apprehension; she sat on the edge of the couch, the soft cushion barely even curved.
Me, on the other hand, I dealt with this too often to reciprocate. I sank myself into my couch across the table from her, palms on the armrest above the level of my chest.
"So," I said, "Wanna tell me what's up?"
"Meditation has been helping a lot, really," she said while playing with her hair. This was an attempt to mask what she was really feeling beneath.
"Right? Overthinking is a real devil for people going through loss. Didn't you say the funeral's this Monday?"
She nodded weakly with a faint smile. "It was."
"How was it?"
"Um... The speech was quite difficult to get out..."
"Did you finish it?"
"The majority of it. Though... I think I went off-script halfway through..." She's strong, still keeping up her feigned smile, but her eyes said everything else.
"Tell me more."
"Uh... His family was there... A couple of mine were too: just my sister and her husband."
"Good sister."
"She is." She nodded more firmly this time, fully agreeing. "And I... I saw how many loved James, as they should... really..." She chuckled.
"You met any of his family?" I'm suspecting that's probably the problem here.
"I have."
"Good people?"
"... Such an amazing... and kind person can only be raised in a wonderful household." A weak nod again, that wasn't sincere.
So I shook my head. "Not really." I sipped on my coffee before continuing. "Who someone grows up to be can sometimes be entirely up to themselves. It's not common, but I'd like to consider myself one of them."
"How so?"
"I didn't grow up in the most loving home. My father left me at a young age, and, my mother always saw me as an inferior rather than a son."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm mostly angry because my mother disagreed with me on a girl I used to really like." I laughed softly; she followed suit.
"... His parents didn't exactly like me either." There it is. I found it.
"Is it because of your history with substance?"
"I think so. That's what they emptied their lungs at me." Her head was lower and lower, gloomier and gloomier over time.
I sat up straighter, not because my emotions prompted me to, but just to show her my attention. "You know being transparent in therapy really helps it move, right?"
"I... I..." She squeezed her eyes tight before answering. "They blamed me for his passing. They said... They said I was the one who got him into the... nightlife and all... drinking..."
"Do you agree?"
"... I don't want to..." She shook her head, her body tense and trembling.
"It doesn't matter whether it was your fault. If you didn't want it to happen, then your heart's in the right place, and he can never blame you for it."
She finally lifted her head, her face now thinly streaked with tears, eyes red, expression sorrowful. "But I just can't shake the thought that I... I am accountable for what had happened."
"Guilt doesn't change anything, Emily. Beating yourself up won't make the situation any easier."
"But then... What should I do? I can't get this off my head..." She buried her face in her palms, so I reached out, lending warmth with a firm grip on her shaky forearm.
"It wasn't your fault. And you need more people to tell you that."
After a bit more reasoning and comforting, she left the session half an hour later than scheduled. That's fine; she's my last client of the week anyway. It's now time to enjoy my Friday night.
Really wished to go meet Matthew for a drink or two, but then my phone rang.
"What?" I picked up.
"Address has already been sent to you." This dreadful feminine voice that sounded like it's from an ASMR video echoed through my phone, followed by beeps. I was the one who hung up the phone. I'm too tired for another job, man...
But a job is a job. I went back to my austere apartment first to change from my therapist outfit to my therapist outfit, albeit for ghosts this time, right before I exterminate them.
If I hadn't said that I was going to exorcise a ghost, people would think I'm going to attend James' funeral for my outfit: white shirt, black blazer, black pants, tie.
I sheathed my dagger, then armed myself with a stack of yellow talisman paper before heading out the door, leaving my dark, moonlit apartment, which walls were adorned with hundreds of pencil sketches of her, varying in sizes and details.
———
In another dark, cramped apartment, curtains wavered by the night's breeze invading through the open window.
A man slept calmly in his bed, every inch of his body below the blanket, when the door creaked open, nothing behind it, until the knob thudded against the wall.
Footprints etched into the carpet beneath, but nothing was above it. The footprints trailed until the bed; the wavering curtain seemed to have hit an invisible wall.
Two edges of the blanket wrinkled, and it levitated; someone was pulling it down, someone that couldn't be seen.
The blanket was slowly, deliberately removed until the dummy decoy revealed itself to the ghost.
"Evening."
Tsk...
I flicked open my incredibly ostentatious lighter to reveal the invisible man, who could only be seen under firelight.
His face was already distorted, so were his limbs. He's been working hard molding himself into his target. Just as the majority of ghosts, his face looked like I molded it with Play-Doh when I was eleven.
Him, the ghost, startled by me, the exorcist here to take his rights to exist, gasped and staggered back until hitting an invisible wall.
The three yellow talisman papers I had planted lit up in flames, revealing a triangular cage sealing the ghost. On each talisman paper, the character '封' was written in thick black ink.
He dragged his back down against the invisible wall, face tense and legs writhing frantically in panic. His head whipped left, right, 180 degrees, it didn't matter, he was sealed tight
While I wasn't, I was on the living side. I was able to bypass the barrier, grab a chair from outside, and bring it in for myself.
"My name is Chen Mo." I smiled at the panicking ghost on the ground. "What's yours?"
"Just..." He gritted his deformed teeth hard. "Just kill me already... man..."
"No, I'd like to get to know you first." I plopped down on the chair lazily.
"Why? Why bother?" He held his arms out. "I'm all yours, damn it, I'M ALL YOURS!"
I wasn't so bothered. I've been through this hundreds of times. I pulled out my canteen for a drink.
"KILL ME ALREADY!"
"Can't kill ghosts. The correct word is exorcise."
"Then do it... Do it..." He leaned in, towering over me, trying to intimidate me with a bloodlusted smile. My master's degree in psychology told me that smile there is cope.
"Like I said, I wanna get to know you first."
"Sadist..."
"Therapist." I took another calm sip from my canteen while he continued the act.
"Why? Just exorcise me. That's your job, isn't it?"
I had to swallow a mouthful first, then also inhale a long one before explaining,
"Everyone will die one day, but not everyone is capable of resting in peace. Some leave this world physically but dwell on in what could've been. And it is those regrets, that stubbornness that lead to the birth of ghosts, travelers floating between the living and the dead, battling fate to reenter humanity. But the universe placed a price tag: a life for a life. A ghost can only reenter the living by replacing an already existing member. Thus began the cycle of killing, which people like me, the exorcists, fight against. All this violence stemmed from ghosts wanting to live so badly that they'd kill for it. It could've all been prevented if you had just accepted Death's extended hand."
That eerie smile of his faded halfway through my explanation. He stepped back until he couldn't, dragging his back down against the invisible wall yet again until he sat on the ground with a gloomy head hung.
"So," I continued with a faint grin, "Wanna tell me what's up?"