"Why, oh, why, didn't I take the blue pill?"  I said to myself.
"Would you stop watching the Matrix!"  Billy said from the

other room. "But I like it," I said and leaned back into the chair. My best friend, the TV, was replying the Matrix -- the first Matrix, not those mediocre special effects sequels they pumped out years later. "It's relatable," I yelled back. Billy glided in, a purple glow around him lit up the dark hallway, and even though I've been dead for 50 years and living in the Ghost World I'm still sometimes surprised to see the transparent people I call friends wandering and passing and Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 8 flying around. The Ghost World, as they call it, which is the most unoriginal thing I've ever heard (but in their defense they came up with it a few hundred years back, before the silver screen soaked every genre and story dry). I often imagine the first ghosts to coin the phrase. How proud they must of felt with themselves. It probably went something like: "Yeah. Yeah, we're on to something here, John." "I think so. World for Ghosts sounds great to me, Jim" "It's close, but not quiet right." "I think it fits -- " "Wait, wait! What if -- " and he would flip the floating smoke words he'd drawn with his own trail. "Ghost of World," John would say, confused. He's the dumber of the two in this fictional daydream of ghost best friends I'm having. Jim scribbled out "of." The two would then stand for minutes in the silence that surrounds mediocre ideas that people think are great. It's an amazing feeling when you're in that circle, but from the outside, you're shocked at how mediocre it all is. Anyway, I day dream. Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 9 That's the best I can do in this new life. "How many times you seen this?" Billy asked me. "I never counted," I said. Billy sat in his chair by the window. I heard the garage door close, the family is home. We both mechanically stood up and reset the room to look unlived. I could hear their voices from the laundry room. It was the house of my great-grandson and his family. Their photos lined the walls. Happy. "How long you think you want to hang out here?" Billy asked, always eager for anything. He was a good friend. He died without a family, so he had nobody to watch over in this middle life. See that's the thing about being dead and stuck in the Ghost World. The only thing you can really do is watch. Watch your family. Watch nature. Watch movies. Watch people. Sure, you can haunt, but every ghost knows haunting and intervening too much goes agains the grain of existence, and each act chips away at your soul. That's how demons are born. Not from hell. But from spirits roaming Earth for so long that they go insane or just stop caring and just start fucking with people, torturing and killing until their soul is black and their form changes to match what they have become. Cruel and Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 10 malevolent creatures. But, truth be told, God should give us more information on the Offer when we die. Go to the afterlife, or live on Earth until your last blood line relative passes on (not just fathers and sons and mothers and daughters, but second, third, fifth cousins -- anyone with a blood connection to you is someone you owe your allegiance to, so you can't pass on until the watching is over, for all time). It's like asking, truly, if you want to enjoy your afterlife, or be a guardian for you family. Most people want to be a guardian, but if you do a good job and your family survives the ages, your world becomes a static hell so there's can be better. That's true selflessness. "What are you thinking?" Billy broke my self-cognizant thought. "Nothing," The voices were gone. My grandsons voice, his wife, and his son -- they had gone quiet. "Where'd they go?" I glided through the wall into the laundry room and found them dead. All three of them. No blood. No signs of human violence. Billy came through behind me. And then my eyes saw it. Their necks, white and icy. Their eyes dissolving to a black, Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 11 encircled by pure gold. "Azrael," Billy said. "Sonofabitch." If I was alive, I would have shed tears. But the dead cannot morn in such ways. We have nothing but time to dwell on mistakes with the sole purpose of preventing them in future. "Why would he come after your family?" Billy said. "He must have tracked it to his bloodline," I said. We were both stunned. It didn't make sense. "How did he --" I looked back to Billy. "I didn't even hear him." "He's had over two thousand years to master this." "He's getting stronger. Better," I said. "That's why the Trackers --" "They can't control him," I interrupted. "And even if they could, what would they do when they caught him?" I asked. "Contain him for a few years before he gets out again." "Yep," I said. "And how many times has that already happened? Angel of death my ass. It's just a circle. The only way it'll end is when Azrael gets to pass on." "So what, you want to fight him, again?" "No," I rose up. "I want to help him pass." "You're going to help him kill the living?" That's the only time in 50 years that I've heard Billy sound disgusted -- Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 12 and we've seen some shit in the last 50 years. "Maybe," I said. "Either way, we need to report this to the Trackers," I said. "You okay," Billy asked. I looked down at my slain decedents. "I am," I said. "But I don't want to be. I want to feel bad about this, but I don't. I feel numb." "I get that." "No," I looked away. "It's wrong. I'm here to guide and protect them. And I've just been going through the motions, because I stopped caring." We stood without speaking. Billy always has something to say, the right response, even if it's a joke, but in that moment he had nothing. He related to my pain of emptiness more than anything else we've ever shared. He always pulled me out of it. And I could see in his drifting eyes he was just sad. Thinking about his failed life, and failed after life. I wanted to brood and be depressed. I wanted to be numb and loath my own self pity and feed into the circle, but what I did next, I did for my friend. "Let's mix it up," I said. Billy's chin lifted. "Let's start giving a fuck again." Aurilia / A PROMPT A DAY / 13

 My thoughts:  I liked where I started, and I like some of

the ideas, but I feel like I kind of wrote myself into a corner. With some work and changes it could grow into a good story. Not sure how / why / what their motivation really is. Thoughts and feedback welcomed!