Ganz didn’t realize he’d died until he found himself looking down at his own body lit by the early morning light which streamed through his bedroom window. Their bedroom window.
As he hovered up by the ceiling where he’d found himself suddenly returned to consciousness, the bed below seemed impossibly far away, and he immediately understood: at some point during the night, his life had ended.
That wasn’t at all what he’d expected would follow the previous day’s near-perfect evening. He’d dined on a bloody yet blackened steak accompanied by a superior bottle of red while Turandot spun on the turntable and he paused now and then to gaze toward the hanging row of Matisse lithographs he loved. His every sense in the then burst with the life beyond him in the now.
The only reason his night had been nearly perfect rather than completely so was because Kevin hadn’t been at the table across from him sharing the fruits of the life they’d built, for his husband had left just that morning on a weeklong business trip.
Even with that one flaw, he’d still assumed a lovely dream, inspired by the carefully curated tastes and sounds and images with which he’d surrounded himself — with which they’d surrounded themselves — would follow. Instead, what filled his field of vision wasn’t lovely, and he knew in his heart — did ghosts still have hearts? — it was no dream.
His first emotion, to his surprise, wasn’t regret his life had ended, or relief Kevin’s travels meant the man he loved hadn’t been there to wake and find Ganz beside him that way — but instead a sense of the unfairness at having been cheated out of experiencing his own passing. But he quickly decided — no, skipping over the instant he’d crossed made him one of the lucky ones. There were worse things to miss out on than the end of one’s own existence. For even if it had been a painless death, to consciously live through (or die through, he corrected himself) the theft of the years he’d thought he had left during the exact moment of their loss would have been an existential agony all by itself. Better not to have borne witness to them slipping away.
He — the he below, the he that was — seemed peaceful stretched on his back, no evidence of a final pain etched on his face. He — the he that came to be — hoped that meant he’d drifted off in a dream, perhaps even the pleasant one he’d not that long before hoped for, prior to his final unchosen step. But of that space between, he remembered nothing.
He wondered how long it would be before someone discovered him there. He was a freelancer with no office job where his absence would be noted, was on no immediate deadlines which if missed would cause alarms, had no friends expecting a meetup any time soon, and if he failed to respond to the first few of Kevin’s texts from the coast, Ganz doubted his lover would worry enough to rush home and be that one. So he imagined his body wouldn’t be found until mail began to overflow at their lobby box and his carrier called in for a wellness check.
At least … he hoped that would be the reason. He dreaded the idea it would be due to the smell of his decay passing through the walls alerting one of his neighbors, even though he supposed … it probably would be. It would have to be, wouldn’t it? Just please, he prayed, let the task not fall to Kevin.
Ganz dropped down from the ceiling and prepared to wait for that moment of discovery to come, knowing—without knowing how he knew—that he’d already walked out his front door for the last time, and there was no point in trying to do so again. There was no world beyond those familiar walls left for him any longer. This apartment was his only future, until …
Until exactly when or what, he did not know. There had to be something next … didn’t there?
He left his body behind — with which he no longer felt any connection — and walked the rooms of his apartment, surprised his feet still weighted him down to the floor, surveying all the possessions he and Kevin had accumulated over a life. The kitchen, filled with cookbooks. The stereo system which had so often serenaded the two of them off to sleep. The prints which had brought them pleasure. The wine rack with that special bottle they were saving for their 10th anniversary. All no longer a part of whatever this thing was he was doing now.
He missed them more than he missed his physical shell. For after all, those things were him. The smells, the sounds, the visions, the tastes … now that he was cut off from them, what was left? What was the point of it all?
He tried to interact with the things he’d left behind, but the things he’d left behind would not have it.
His hand passed through the refrigerator door as if both were made of mist.
The buttons on the stereo system apparently knew he should be gone and would not respond.
The art on the walls would never be rotated again, at least not by his hand, since, after all, he was supposed to be on his way out.
As for the rest of that bottle of wine he’d begun the night before, he knew better than to even try.
And the world was silent. No music filled the space he and Kevin had constructed. He could occasionally still sense a vibration through the walls from the next apartment, but nothing more, and so that sound which had once irritated him when he lived, now only teased, bringing on a hunger for melody he’d never expected would accompany whatever came next after the moment of death.
Of all the things he’d thought might be part of an afterlife — not that he’d ever spent much time thinking of such a thing, for he’d believed it more useful to spend his time actually living — what he’d never expected was how boring it would be. With all the things he’d loved beyond him, he could do nothing but wait.
Eventually, a key jiggled at the front door and in came the landlord, without Ganz having been aware of anything more than the vague passage of time. Had it been hours? Days? Perhaps Ganz no longer had the ability to parse such things … yet another loss.
The bearded man walked right by him — Ganz had instinctively stepped aside so his path wouldn’t lead through him, though that probably hadn’t been necessary, considering his own apparent evanescence — then paused at the bedroom door. He unfolded his handkerchief and placed it over his mouth and nose before entering, but only managed one step into the room before retreating.
Ganz felt the need to apologize for that, and so spoke a few words in an attempt to express his guilt over what the man was being forced to experience, but got no reaction, and found that even he himself couldn’t hear them.
Moving to the center of the living room, the landlord pulled out his phone and pressed three numbers with his thumb. The police got there quickly, and not that long after, others followed to carry his remains away.
Then he was alone, without even his own body for company.
He waited for the only thing he was certain his uncertain afterlife would deliver, until — his trip shortened by an urgent call, Ganz assumed from their landlord, whom he hoped had broken the news as gently as possible — yes, at last, in came Kevin.
His lover went first to the bedroom, where the mattress had been stripped and the bed remade. Kevin surprised him by sitting down not on what had come to be his own side, but on Ganz’s.
He patted the pillow, then lay where Ganz had lain, placing his head where Ganz had last laid his own, and looked up toward the ceiling where Ganz had been reborn.
But Ganz was not up by the ceiling just then. He was right beside Kevin, wishing to be seen, but knowing he was now forever invisible.
“I wish I had been here,” Kevin said.
“I’m grateful you weren’t,” said Ganz.
After a deep sigh, Kevin added, “Maybe I could have saved you.”
“You already did save me,” replied Ganz, ignoring what he knew: that not a word he uttered was being heard. Even though Kevin was speaking only to himself, Ganz pretended the two of them were having a conversation anyway, talking as they once had, not so long ago time and time again early each morning and late into the nights. He waited for what he was willing to allow himself to think of as a response, but none came.
There was silence in the space for a long while, lasting until after a tear fell down the side of Kevin’s face and was fully absorbed by the pillow. Only then did his husband speak again.
“I’m sorry,” he then whispered, closing his eyes as if only by doing so he could utter what needed to be said. “I can’t. I just can’t.”
Ganz didn’t understand at first what Kevin meant, but then his husband rose and slowly walked toward the front door of their apartment. It wasn’t until Kevin gazed with wet eyes at everything around him and allowed his fingers to graze slowly, lovingly, across the items between, that Ganz realized Kevin’s intention.
“No,” Ganz called, as Kevin neared the front door to their apartment. “Stay. Please. Stay.”
Ganz imagined he’d have felt the same way about continuing to live on in what had been their shared space if Kevin had been the one to die. But Kevin hadn’t died. And Ganz was still there.
“I’m still here,” he said, as Kevin opened the door and began to step out into the hall.
Ganz rushed after, wishing there was something he could do or say to stop Kevin, all the while knowing everything he did or said was meaningless. But he wasn’t fast enough, though he had no body to hold him back, and so couldn’t even try.
And then there was a closed door between them.
As Kevin’s footsteps echoed down the stairs, the sound diminishing, Ganz reached out, even though he knew the attempt was pointless, and his hand bounced off the door, telling him it was useless to deny the truth. Where Kevin had gone, he could not follow. There was no way out, and no way after.
Ganz scurried to the front window and peered down to see Kevin standing by the building’s entrance and looking off into the distance. They waited together until a car came and carried Kevin away. In that moment, Ganz learned … ghosts could also cry.
Over the next few days, the things Ganz and Kevin had gathered over their lifetimes were carried away as well — which Ganz found bothered him more than had seeing his body leave. He’d hoped it would be Kevin to return and oversee the removal himself so Ganz could have one final glimpse, but no, the landlord and a team of movers took care of emptying the apartment.
Ganz understood why Kevin had decided it should be that way, that his pain would have been too great to bear had he returned.
And then, the boxes gone, Ganz was alone in a larger box, an an empty box, one which had once contained a life.
Two lives.
He had no idea how long he remained that way. He supposed the smell left behind by his passing — one of which he was unaware but knew had to be there — needed to dissipate before any new renter could be enticed to move in.
He walked the empty rooms, remembering what once had been and could never be again. The tastes, the smells, the sounds, never more to be experienced, never to be shared. He didn’t know whether such an absence could be endured. And yet — what was the alternative? He was already dead, and where’s the escape from that?
But then the day finally came — however long that day took — when a new tenant arrived, and he was relieved his boredom would soon die as well.
The man who entered was not that much older than Ganz had been when he’d still had an age, and wearing a striped jacket he wouldn’t have rejected. Both of those attributes had him hoping his small corner of the universe would soon seem less alien. Perhaps the two of them had lived through the same timeline and shared some of the same tastes. Perhaps the apartment would soon be filled with the familiar. Perhaps …
Two movers followed, struggling with a dining room table, giving Ganz the promise of a new social life. Better to be a voyeur for the entertaining of others than to experience no entertaining at all. The new tenant waved them to where it should be placed, and the workmen, once they’d set it up, made multiple additional trips to return with the rest of the new occupant’s possessions.
Ganz unexpectedly found himself growing uncomfortable as the apartment filled once again. The environment he and Kevin had built was perfect for the space, and anything else was something less. And so everything seemed … off. Even if he’d merely moved out, he’d never have wanted to revisit the apartment to see what another had made of it, but to be dead and see what was done was an even worse insult.
When they were alone, Ganz spread his arms wide and welcomed the newcomer, who of course heard no welcome.
The man moved past Ganz to nod at the empty walls and study the empty bookcases. Ganz found himself doing the same, imagining how the man would fill the space and hoping what was to come would be worthy of his eternity and relieve the boredom of the afterlife. For those walls were all he had left as he …
Haunted this space? Is that what he was doing? Was that the right word?
He supposed it was.
The man moved to the kitchen and opened one of his carefully labeled boxes — which Ganz appreciated, for that’s the way he would have made the move, not that he would ever again have that chance. The man knew exactly what he was looking for, and when a frying pan appeared, then other cooking utensils, plus a bag from the mostly bare refrigerator, Ganz knew what was next, and he welcomed it, for he was hungry, even though he knew it could not be assuaged. Not in the old way, anyway.
He stood by the newcomer’s side, riveted as the man set water to boil, then began frying up meatballs and heating up some marinara. After so many days — weeks — but surely not months, not in this housing market — of nothingness, witnessing the man’s moves, he felt as privileged as if he were in a box seat at the opera, though he longed to be the one making those moves himself.
When the man dragged a large wooden spoon through the red sauce, then lifted it to his lips for a taste, Ganz’d desire to feel something, anything, overcame him, and he stepped forward without thought, stepping through him, stepping into him, desperate to savor what he’d been missing. And though he tasted nothing, felt not a sensation on his tongue, not the warmth, not the spice, not the weight, the man did feel … something …
For he dropped the spoon and backed away.
The man slapped out frantically to shut the burners, left the pots and pans on the stovetop, left the spoon on the floor in a smear of red, left the apartment, and that was the last Ganz ever saw of him.
Soon, according to Ganz’s accounting of soon, movers returned to take away what they’d earlier brought, and the apartment was empty again, leaving Ganz to consider what he had done. He wasn’t sure exactly what had happened to scare away the one he hoped would be his distraction, but whatever it was that occurred during their moment of intersection, he swore he wouldn’t do it again. Even though it was a boring and lonely thing to be a ghost, he’d resist temptation. It was far better to witness life from a distance than to drive it away with his attempts to engage. No, it wouldn’t be the same as life itself, but it was better than the nothingness of solitude. He promised himself he would tamp down his urges. He would settle.
Eventually, a young man entered, hair buzzed short, a tattoo of a pterodactyl flying across one forearm. He carried a cardboard box and looked slowly around the empty room, seeming somewhat stunned. Ganz stepped closer to look at him, facing him in a way which would have blocked the man’s view had Ganz been alive, but careful not to step too close. As the man’s eyes flickered, Ganz could tell he saw, not him, but the dream of what the space could be.
As they stood there, face to invisible face, others followed. Not workers, it seemed, but friends, and after multiple trips, the room filled with boxes. And some heavy ones, too, which made Ganz hope they contained vinyl. It was making a comeback, wasn’t it? He could use some real music. The neighbor’s thumping bleeding through was not enough.
There was random furniture as well, but not much of it, and most of it unmatched and dented. So — a first apartment, Ganz surmised. The older couple who arrived not that long after the friends who’d moved him in left proved by their conversation to be parents and verified that.
And then all the visitors left and the two of them were left alone, only one of them knowing he wasn’t alone.
The man began rummaging through his boxes, muttering while he searched, obviously not as organized as that first following tenant. He eventually lifted out a microwave and set it on the kitchen counter. He then continued his hunting until he yanked out a paper cup, peeled off the top, filled it with water, and set it to heat. As the timer ticked down the seconds until the ramen would be ready, he slid a poster from a cardboard tube and made Ganz cringe by attaching it to the living room wall with thumbtacks. It depicted a dragon — or was it a demon? — and though the words across the top should have told him which it was, the letters were so ornate Ganz could not decipher them.
Ganz watched, and waited, and winced, as the man stood over the sink shoveling noodles into his mouth. His meal quickly completed, if it could be called a meal — and Ganz was realizing he had to let go of any possible culinary pleasures in the future — he thumbed in earbuds and began to unpack in earnest. Ganz could tell by the way the man’s movements changed, how he gained a sudden fluidity, that he was responding to the music only he could hear.
Ganz was envious, and though he’d heard no music since his own on that final night, and though he had sworn to hang back, his boredom, as familiar in death as it had been unfamiliar in life, caused his envy to become desire, his desire an insatiable hunger, and he felt compelled to come upon the man from behind and step forward until their ears overlapped. For a brief, beautiful moment, the silence was gone, and he could almost hear the music, caring not that it was music he’d never have chosen, but then —
The earbuds skittered across the floor, and the man was gone.
Eventually, all the other possessions followed, and for awhile, he was alone and lifeless in the living room.
But not for long.
A young family was next, their baby still sleeping in a crib. Well … not sleeping much. It spent most of its little life crying, and nothing either parent could do would make it stop. Ganz looked down on the poor creature the way he’d once looked down on himself and thought about the thing he’d done before and whether he could do it again, only this time deliberately and toward a different end. Perhaps he could do what the parents could not.
He leaned forward, their noses just shy of touching, but before he could lean in any further, the mother swooped in to grab the baby, and for a brief moment their bodies intersected. She gasped and fell back. Ganz fell back, too. As the husband shouted from the next room to ask whether everything was all right, the woman grabbed the child and ran from the apartment. Second later, he, too, was gone.
In the silence that followed, it occurred to Ganz how odd those three tenants were, leaving so quickly. He and Kevin had held on to the apartment for years, while those who’d come after were there and gone in weeks. Yes, further tenants would follow, surely. How could they not? Space was at a premium in the city these days. But perhaps …
Perhaps that turnover was so wrong, so unusual … it could be right. For if those cancelled leases seemed odd to him, what if more followed? What if those repeated escapes could be made to seem equally strange to others?
And more importantly — to one particular other.
What had happened up until then as the result of his craving to end his boredom was unintentional, but he suddenly knew what was required of him with those who followed — make sure none stayed for long. Only that might end his boredom, and give him back —
Give him back his everything.
He needed to send a message only he could send.
And so when the next tenant was kneading bread, he slipped into their hands.
And as the gamer after that battled with friends, his thumbs reached out to also crush the buttons.
And when another bit into a burger, it was his teeth, too, which met the bun.
All played out as planned, for they — and the others who came after — were soon gone. Most lasted only a few days, some only one.
Occasionally, between tenants, the landlord would enter the apartment and gaze about. Had the tenants shared their truths with him? From the way the man seemed to be looking for something, searching for something more than whether the place was in shape for the next tenant, Ganz supposed they had … and Ganz knew he could show him that supernatural something. But he hesitated, for somehow, unlike with the others, it felt wrong, wrong to inhabit someone he already knew.
Until it was the right someone he already knew.
After a wait which, as with all the others, was uncountable, and this time interminable, the door opened, and in walked Kevin.
He looked older than when Ganz had last seen him, an age not entirely put there by time. Ganz would have held his breath had he had breath to hold. Kevin moved through the space as if their possessions were still there, avoiding the invisible. He walked around the dining room table that was, avoided a space once filled by a loveseat, paused where the bed had been.
“Are you really here, Ganz?” he asked, reaching toward a nonexistent pillow which did not cradle Ganz’s head.
Ganz answered the only way in which he knew he’d be perceived. He stepped up to Kevin, stepped into him, allowed himself to overlap his lover wholly … only this time, unlike with all the others, he lingered there.
“Ganz,” sighed Kevin, with no flinching, no fear, no thoughts of escape.
“Kevin,” sighed Ganz, and from the way their heads then tilted, he knew that sigh had been heard.
Within days, all the possessions which had been carried away were back, as if the intervening months had never occurred. And that night, for their first meal together, truly together, they dined on a seared tuna steak accompanied by a superior bottle of white while Aida spun on the turntable and they paused now and then to gaze toward the hanging row of Chagall lithographs they loved.
And unlike Ganz’s last meal, this one was perfect. As were all the others which followed.
Scott Edelman has published 135+ short stories, many of which have been collected in These Words Are Haunted, What Will Come After, Tell Me Like You Done Before, Things That Never Happened, and 101 Things to Do Before You’re Downloaded. He has been a Stoker Award finalist eight times. Additionally, he has hosted the 2026 Hugo Awards finalist Eating the Fantastic interview podcast since February 2016.
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