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You died exactly 1660 days ago.
Overall – a completely unremarkable death.
Your neighbor always reminded you of the danger that is carbon monoxide and human neglect, and you always nodded along, never paying it too much mind.
You hated that old hag, and the fact that she was (and still is) right is one of the few things you're bitter about, even now.
That, and the fact that she got to outlive you. Not by much, let it be known, but seeing the ambulance outside her home two months after you passed filled you with exceptional envy.
At least she got to feel the first summer breeze that year.
You can't feel much of anything anymore, not like that, not like you used to. You miss it.
But there aren't that many other things you miss, not in the grand scheme of things. You don't miss your old job, that's for one. You don't miss the harsh blue light hurting your eyes deep into the night or your sore back in the morning.
The commute to work. The morning traffic. The distinct and sour smell of the city, a vast contrast to your quiet suburbs. Your neighbor. The way your chair used to creak under your weight. Existential dread.
Your family.
In all of it, that last part has been a true blessing in disguise.
Your only family, being your two brothers and nobody else that matters, has been dead for exactly 1660 days.
You wonder sometimes how this would feel without them.
If that night it was only you in the home – your older brother finishing his shitty, overpriced meal at some roadside diner, a small break in his night shift – your twin resting his neck on a park bench, plagued with insomnia and a tendency for late-night walks – how would this feel?
If you took your last breath that night, asleep in your bed, with unfinished projects piling up on your desk, unanswered e-mails in your inbox – never to wake up again – and there would be no one to meet you on the other side.
Lonely. That's probably the answer.
You wonder if that's how your neighbor feels. You wonder if she would visit you if she could.
(You hope she wouldn't.)
She can't, at least as long as she's bound by the same rules as you are.
This is your house. This is where your family spent the last five years of your lives, this is your love and dedication, hours spent on renovations, Ikea trips, and finishing touches. This is now your cage.
You're a dog on a leash, bound forever to the only home you've ever known, and you're as content as a mutt, pacing over its square territory.
You can never leave.
You never really wanted to.
Leo wanted to. At the start. He'd stand on the front porch, hands placed on the railing, staring ahead.
He never said so, not precisely, but you always knew. There aren't many parts of him you wouldn't recognize in the dark, especially now, when keeping secrets feels as useless as ever.
(You told him you were the one who broke his favorite childhood toy plane. He wasn't too happy about that one.)
Leo has a wandering mind and restless limbs, always did, and he still spends most days on that porch, sat in an old rocking chair – one of the few things you took out of your childhood house, besides some painful memories.
Time doesn't flow as it used to.
You can sit in one place, mind blank and empty, blink, and days have passed. Months, sometimes.
It's the same for Leo but that doesn't mean he isn't bored out of his mind most days.
Usually, he sticks to bothering your older brother, a habit he picked up in childhood and never quite let go of. Maybe he'd stop if Raph would stop indulging him, which seems highly unlikely, given his track record.
Even now, he's as doting as ever – strong arms, ready to shelter both of you from the world.
You wonder if he feels guilty for all of this. He shouldn't. But he always had a tendency to take the blame – for other people, for you, for the whole world.
Nothing can hurt you anymore, not like that. You secretly hope that knowledge gives him a peace of mind.
Especially nowadays.
People have been coming into your house recently.
An unkind-looking lot, in black suits and ties, stomping around the rooms, all wandering eyes and dismissing hands.
Then – men in work clothes, covered with soot and stains, armed with paint, drills, hammers, spending hours digging their cruel tools and uncaring hands into the flesh of your home.
You watch them work – wipe away dust, refresh the kitchen cabinets, put down a carpet in the prettiest shade of purple – and you seethe.
This is your home.
This is your mess – the kitchen you never got the opportunity to finish, the bedrooms with some rather questionable holes in the walls, the living room with cracked walls and fragile window frames.
Your brothers certainly don't seem to share your anger. Not past the noise complaints, at least.
Raph watches those strangers put up a new wallpaper, an absurd shade of yellow you would've never picked yourself, and he tilts his head.
“It's coming along rather nicely,” he says.
You give him a look.
Leo, sitting on the counter – running his hands through the man working around the sink, watching with amusement as his skin covers with goosebumps – snickers.
There isn't much you can do. In general, but certainly not with this.
You slam doors and shake windows; you throw a painting onto the ground, making sure to stomp on it for good measure, even if your forever bare feet only pass through it, meeting no resistance.
The workers joke about it.
That the house is haunted, that a ghost will follow them home, dooming them for eternity. They joke about you, your home, your cage.
(You wonder if they even know you died here. Probably not.)
Leo jokes about it, too. There was a precise and short list of things he took seriously while he was still alive, and it feels like not much has changed since then.
He snickers at you, watching you slam the window shut.
Raph only gives you a look.
They don't tell you to stop, though, which is good, because you're not planning on doing that.
***
Your struggle accomplishes nothing.
There's a week where the work ends and the house, gutted and covered with a fresh coat of paint, falls into the blessed silence you're so used to.
A week. That's all the time you get to say goodbye.
(Maybe it's a little ironic in a funny way. You never got to say goodbye to your old life, either.)
New people start showing up. Every day, almost at the same hour, like clockwork.
(You can tell the time, now. They fixed the old clock. (You're mad about that, too.))
Families with obnoxious kids, young couples with thinly veiled relationship struggles that will not survive the first year into their fresh marriage, older couples with strong distaste for everything that is shown to them.
They're putting your home up for sale, you realize quickly.
You hate every person that walks through your threshold. You hate their clean and stained clothes, you hate their fake smiles and you hate the unpleasant looks on their faces, you hate when they're young and you hate when they are old.
At least now Leo seems a little more enthusiastic about your efforts.
The two of you were always like this – a little chaotic, a little out of control, with a strong urge to make other people's lives just a little harder.
A few times, you even forget what you're really doing. It's just you and your twin, running up and down the stairs, letting doors slam into their frames, leaving dirty fingerprints on the mirror, with loud giggles at the back of your throats and old, familiar giddiness.
Raph doesn't try to stop you anymore.
(You will forever be only twenty-two, but in those moments, you feel just a little younger.)
***
And then – the boy shows up.
It's a gloomy, rainy Monday, one of those you always felt a particular fondness for while you were still alive. Fewer people, just a little more air to breathe with.
You can't feel the pleasant coolness of it, the soothing smell of fresh rain, but you stand on the porch anyway, watching them file out of the car. It's a new, shiny thing, and you hate it instantly.
It's just the two of them, a man and a boy – father and son, probably. You watch as they run over to the front door, covering the tops of their heads with hooded coats.
The man laughs.
“Here we go,” he says, reaching to ring the bell.
You know the real estate agent is already inside, waiting, so you don't bother messing with the bell. She would notice them either way.
The boy, reaching for his father's hand, looks left, at your old neighbor's house.
And then right – straight at you.
He's a small thing, thin and short, bundled up into his coat so that he seems to be almost sinking into it.
And he's looking right at you.
You turn, just to see if there's something particularly eye-catching behind you. When you turn back, the agent is already opening the door, giving a polite greeting, and nobody is paying you any attention.
You're watching as they walk around the house, taking the same paths you used to take – that you're still taking. The boy clings to his father's side, his gaze stuck ahead.
You do your worst.
You slam the door behind them, you rattle the windows. You watch the father's startled face as you make the lights flicker.
And then – there's a moment.
When they're in the kitchen, the boy's eyes scan over the room and linger, stutter and stop for just a second – over the chair Leo sits in.
You exchange a look.
They leave.
You sink back into the house; spend the next hours, days, inside your old room, sitting in a new, soft armchair that was never yours. Your brothers linger in and out of the room, but mostly leave you to it.
You snap out of it a few days later, when Raph walks into the room, staring out the window, hands behind his back.
“They're moving in,” he tells you, watching a truck pull into the driveway.
Your fingers tighten on the armrest so hard they sink right through it.
You want to ask if he met the boy, if he also got that feeling, but you don't. It doesn't matter now.
Your home has been laid down on the chopping block, sliced open, and left for picking. It's awful, and it's the worst thing that has ever happened to you.
The world should be seething with you. You're angry it's not.
***
The boy takes over Leo's old room.
You watch as the walls line with posters, shelves fill with figurines, ground litters with toys.
Leo doesn't seem particularly upset. That bothers you.
Now, when they're in the house more often than not, you feel your anger take the front seat again.
You didn't used to be a very angry person. You suppose there's still room for change.
***
You watch the father. He laughs a lot, but there are some dark shadows under his eyes. He watches a lot of TV. Sometimes, you spot his face in commercials, movies, on magazine covers.
It must be why he picked this area, this house.
It's a rather unassuming neighborhood, but it's quiet, certainly far away from camera flashes and city buzz.
You know that.
That's why you liked living here, too.
... You hate the man.
His name is Lou (which you find out from commercials he stars in, interviews, movie credits), or Yoshi (as you find out from one very angry phone call he shares with an unknown woman, who seems to overuse made-up words, and the phrase ''visitation schedule'').
You don't particularly care.
Nothing would spare him from your petty, quiet rage. You make his life harder, one misplaced cup, broken light-bulb or clogged sink at a time.
You discover you can do more things now.
“Probably 'cause you're so angry all the damn time. All that energy has to go somewhere,” Leo jokes when you mention it.
It doesn't quite feel like the truth. But he probably knows that, too.
You watch the TV turn to static as you walk closer, watch the mirrors fog up from nonexistent steam, watch the dishes slide across the table, slamming to the ground.
Good, you think. They deserve this.
Your brothers don't seem to share the sentiment.
At first they're withdrawn, distant, and just slightly upset, unused to the new change. But with time, they sink back into their routines as if nothing happened.
Their disgruntled stares shift slowly into something new and curious, quietly fascinated.
They look over as the boy plays, as he runs around in the garden, a wide smile on his face. You watch with them, for the lack of anything better to do.
And even with everything, with the sorrow spilling from your soul, flooding the house with your grief and bitterness – you can't bring yourself to hate the boy.
He's a loud thing, all young energy and innocence.
You learn his name – 'Mikey'.
You can't confidently say you liked kids back then (back when your opinions still seemed to matter), certainly not enough to ever consider having your own. But you never hated them. As obnoxious as they tended to be, there was always this unshaken happiness to them – young minds, unscarred, ready to mold into something greater.
And Mikey in particular is a warm ray of sun.
He's made of easy smiles, never-ending ramblings, creativity, and a wandering mind.
You catch Raph gushing over him sometimes, looking at him with this particular type of fondness. You know Leo stands behind him as he draws, watching him fill empty pages with warm colors.
And there's another thing about Mikey, something you and your brothers are all aware of but don't mention.
You all see the way his eyes seem to fall everywhere except for the precise corner of the room you occupy, how he tenses when one of you walks past, how he pauses sometimes when you're talking, like he's listening in.
It feels absurd.
It feels unsettling.
Your mind buzzes with questions and theories, with all the things you should do, try.
But a child as young as Mikey is a delicate thing, easy to ruin, easy to hurt. You don't know your own strength anymore.
So you leave the boy alone.
***
You still hate the father.
You still want them both gone.
And Raph seems annoyed with you more days than he's not.
“Can you stop?” He snaps, finally.
You're all in the living room, the father busy in the kitchen, the boy sitting on the carpeted floor, a plastic toy in his hand.
You kick the door leading to the kitchen again, just for good measure, and it bounces against the wall. Mikey shudders but doesn't look up.
He seems upset, and so do your brothers, and that's almost enough to make you feel just a little guilty.
Almost.
“Why?” You spread your arms.
“Donnie,” Leo says. “This won't do anything. They're here to stay.”
You can't look in mirrors anymore, so staring at your twin's face is a good way to make sure you'll never forget what you looked like. Even now, with his eyebrows knitted, mouth pulled into a thin line.
You feel something inside you boil.
You don't – can't understand why they're so calm about this. Why they were always so calm about this.
There are strangers inside your home – one of them makes your days just a little brighter, and the other seems to give every bit of himself away, to keep the smile on his young face – but they are strangers still.
“Don.” Raph stands, his arms reaching but you push them away.
“This is our house!” You scream. “This is my home! They have no right to it!”
You're a dog on a leash, snapping its teeth around empty air.
Mikey puts his arms up, like he's trying to hide his face behind them. The TV flickers.
Raph pulls back. He and Leo share a look.
You hold your hands up, shaky and unstable, cover your face – and you cry.
It's been a while since you last done so, since you had a real reason to.
You cry now because you are helpless, because you can't help it, because you are dead, and nothing you say will matter ever again.
You died 1826 days ago, and you give yourself just this one moment to feel the weight of all of them.
Raph holds you, and Leo rubs his hand over your back.
As long as they are here – this is your home.
***
That evening, you walk into Mikey's room.
He's sat at his desk, something that is probably his homework overtaken by a vast array of drawings, each more colorful than the last. You watch him work for a few minutes until suddenly, he stops. His hand hovers in the air, face drawn, like he's considering something deeply.
“You know,” he speaks finally, out loud, “I can see you.”
For a moment, you only stand there, quiet. You stay silent until he turns in his seat, his gaze fixed right on you.
Nobody, besides your brothers, has looked at you in years.
You feel awkward for a second, almost self–conscious, shuffling your feet, flexing your fingers. Then you snap out of it.
And slowly, you nod.
“I know,” you say.
Because really, you did.
It seemed quite obvious from the start. Too many coincidences for you to brush off, too many unspoken conversations between your brothers. Maybe you didn't expect him to speak to you this directly, not like this, but it was certain there was something off about Mikey from the start.
Death seems to cling to him an awful lot for someone who's still alive.
“Why are you telling me this now?” You ask.
Mikey clicks his tongue, tilting his head, like a little bird.
“You were sad. Earlier.”
“I was,” you answer honestly.
It's been a long day, and uncharacteristically, you can feel every hour of it. You don't get tired, not like you used to, but you can still feel the emotions sit, heavy inside your bones.
“Are you still sad?” Mikey asks.
He runs a hand over his dark curls, messing up his already chaotic, overgrown haircut.
“No,” you say.
You are.
Mikey pulls a face.
“You're lying to me,” he says. “Grown-ups always lie to me.”
“How come?”
“Like Dad. He said that if I don't eat my vegetables, I'll never grow up. I know that's a lie, your brother laughed when he said that,” he huffs. And then, with the same childish annoyance, he adds: “And he lied about the Tooth Fairy. And why we don't live with Mom anymore.”
You don't know what to say to that last bit.
So instead, you kneel down, your face just a little below Mikey's.
“Do you know what we are?” You ask.
This is very important to you.
If the boy ever speaks of it, it'll be written off as an act of overactive imagination, a child's mind wandering too far from reality. You need him to know this is real.
(You want to feel like a real person again.)
“Ghosts,” he says.
You and your brothers never called it by its name, never spoke it out loud, so the word sinks heavy into your stomach, hard to swallow.
You nod either way, hoping none of it shows on your face.
“Do you see a lot of them?”
“Yeah,” Mikey answers. He turns back to his desk, starting to color again. “I try ignoring them, though. A lot of them are weird.”
He says the last word with a grimace.
You look over his shoulder.
And suddenly, you recognize the figures on the drawing, bathed in purple, red, and blue. You rub the hem of your purple t-shirt between your fingers.
“I like your drawing,” you say.
Mikey grins, not looking up from the paper.
“Thank you!”
“Does your dad know?” You ask after a moment.
“About the drawing?”
“About us.”
Mikey stops coloring for a moment, turning to look at you. His eyes are big and dark.
“I don't know. I tried telling him we can't buy the house because someone is already living here, but he didn't listen.” His face shifts into something apologetic, painfully honest on such a young face. “Sorry.”
For a moment, you only look at him.
It settles over you – the easy acknowledgment of your existence, the honest care. Simple kindness.
And suddenly, something you've been holding back – clicks inside your chest.
It doesn't matter that this is your home, that it's been butchered and sold for parts, it doesn't matter that you hate the yellow wallpaper and the car parked next to the front porch.
Because you never hated this boy.
For the first time in 1826 days – you matter.
***
You died 1947 days ago.
This is your home.
This is your home, not because of the color of the walls or the furniture, but because everyone you have ever cared about is here, too.
You watch your small family expand, make room for just one, very small person.
Mikey is bright and young. He lights up every room he's in, smiles wider than anyone you've ever met. He is more alive than you ever were.
You and your brothers watch him play, move, and run, you watch him grow and change, listen to him talk, feel his small hands tucked into your own.
You feel stronger next to him, physically and metaphorically.
Sometimes, when his father gets caught up at work, when you're standing behind him in the bathroom, waiting for him to finish brushing his teeth so you can tuck him in, you can almost see your own reflection in the mirror.
He makes you feel more alive than you ever were before.
You might love him, you think.
Love didn't use to come easily for you. You suppose there's still room for change.
***
Mikey takes your hand in his, standing by the front door.
It still feels weird – warm and soft, unlike your brothers' vague, cold, but comforting touch.
“Come on,” he whines, pulling on your arm.
“Mikey, I can't,” you remind him again. “I'm sure your dad will play with you later.”
Mikey huffs.
“Dad hates snow, though.”
(You might hate Yoshi still. You're not sure. But Mikey loves him, so you've stopped knocking over all of his favorite mugs.)
“Well, I can't go outside,” you say, trying to mask your own bitterness over that fact.
It snowed last night, but today it's sunny, making the whole world twinkle in white. You loved weather like this.
You still might.
Mikey pulls another face.
“Sure you can! Come on!”
He pulls on your arm again.
You breathe out, deciding to humor him.
He walks you outside, onto the porch. Then down the stairs, the cobblestone patch to the house.
You wait for it, for that familiar pull to stop you, hold back into place.
You wait.
And it doesn't come.
Your exasperated smile melts from your face.
You walk to the end of the path, up to the sidewalk lining all the houses. You hesitate.
Mikey smiles at you, too young to be aware of how he looks to strangers passing by.
You raise one foot, moving it forward.
Then, hesitating for only a moment, you step onto the sidewalk.
And with that – your leash snaps.
You gasp, blink, turn around.
You look back at the house.
And suddenly, it's once again just that. Your home.
Not a cage.
You are a person.
Mikey laughs, saying something happy that you don't quite catch.
You look up.
And it's almost like you can feel the sun on your skin.