Ozzie stood in front of her body. Her pale-peach skin wrinkled on the tips of her fingers. Her physical body had stilled moments ago, but the water around her rippled and crashed against the walls of the tub. She watched her body slide down the porcelain, head lolled to the side, eyes barely alive. Her hands slid from her stomach, not conscious enough to keep their place on her stomach and plopped into the mildly soapy water. She knelt next to her coffin-tub and plunged her hands into the water. She wrapped her arms around her body.
Her body, still warm thanks to the water, felt heavy in her arms. She wondered if she was a ghost from a spooky story, or that she was doomed to be a poltergeist haunting the apartment complex that knocked over glasses and knocked on doors in the middle of the night. If Ozzie’s guardian angel decided this was her time to die after the tenth time of popping pills for a high, then who was she to argue with that level of divine power? Twenty-six and somewhat proud to die at this age; she looked at her body and whistled at the sight of her perky breasts and her slender body. She tried to lift herself into a position that was much more flattering than what she passed. The water shifted with every motion.
Ozzie pulled her arms out of the water and folded them across the edge of the bathtub. Her body moved right back to its original position. She let out a long and gurgled sigh. She rolled her eyes at the sound of her distorted voice; no ghost man or woman would want to try and decipher her mermaid talk.
“God, Oz.” She mumbled to her body or ghostly self. “No one’s gonna come and save you. You’re gonna rot here for two days, then you’ll get slumlord Frank bangin’ on the door and, ‘Ay, Oz! Your downstairs neighbor is complainin’ ‘bout some water damage from ya’ bath!’” She laughed into her hand. Maybe ghosts had comedians, and she could get paid in boatman currency and free trips down the Styx if she kept up the impressions. “Frankie’s gonna come in and find you dead in your bath. You and your perfectly naked body. Maybe he’ll take a picture while the cops do, too.” Ozzie fully laughed.
She groaned after her fit of chuckles and slammed her head against the tub, no sting of pain to follow. For being a woman full of water, Ozzie’s desperate attempts at crying ended up with her dry-heaving and whining too loud. At least she could get into character for her role as a haunted young adult. The next tenants might think she’s an old woman, though, and the offense she’d have with that would end up with those tenants dead under mysterious circumstances a la The Conjuring.
Ozzie looked at her body again. She admired her own sculpting and how it took years for her to get to where she was happy. Deity be damned, she spent too long on her body to not appreciate the pay-off. A different experience to see herself from the outside as if she were a man or woman she took to bed. She ran two fingers along her collarbone, then down her sternum, to the underside of her left breast.
She traced the thin lines of heart-shaped ink. “You spent so much money on this, and nobody got to see it.” She pursed her lips. “Well, now I got to. That should be worth something, right, Oz?”
Her body barely twitched in response. She groaned. “Yeah, I know.” She continued her voyage along her body. Was this an act of self-voyeurism? And was that even a real thing? Was it a morally OK thing to find herself sexy post-death? Ozzie studied 20th-century literature, not philosophy; her commentary meant nothing on the matter, but it was hilarious to think about.
She moved to the right side of her body and jumped with glee at the feeling of the textured skin. A large pink lily drawn right over her hip; the petals extended well past the area she requested, but the upcharge was well worth the payoff. She reminisced over the trips to the beach with her friends and the countless compliments she received when her thong-like bikini straps revealed so much of the artwork to strangers in Ocean City. Ozzie closed her eyes and smiled. Her fingers trailed along the inked skin. One of said strangers was a man twice her age, which she joked to her friends that meant he was probably twice divorced.
He gave her hip an unsolicited squeeze and commented on her, “petite body”. She threw sand in his eyes and said she liked her men toned and muscular. “Oh, and those swim trunks are doing nothing for your thighs. Makes you look like you have sticks for legs.”
Ozzie gave her body a reassuring squeeze on the hip. She moved her hand between her legs and stopped right at the top of her cervix. She wondered about how the paramedics, or the morticians might lift her out of the bathtub.
“I wonder if any of them are hot.” She pulled her hand out of the tub and braced herself to stand. “Maybe one of them would attend the viewing.” She pushed herself up to her feet and walked to the mirror, unsurprised when she didn’t see herself in the glass. “One of them might go, ‘Sorry for your loss, Mrs. Doom, but Ozalyn was a total babe.’” She laughed at her giddiness reflected at her: the slight shimmy to her ghost-body, her hands squished together in front of her, the day-dreamy look in her white eyes. “I’d kick my feet as I sat in that open casket. Maybe my mother might think I’m alive and call the priest to sage my body.”
Ozzie looked back at her body in the bathtub. “What do you think, Oz? Don’t you like that?” Her still body looked back at her. Ozzie sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
~~
Ashleigh Earyes (she/her) is currently a graduate student at Marywood University. She was raised in Northeastern Pennsylvania and focuses on earning a secondary education certification. She is a former BA/MA student from Pennsylvania State University.
