Technically Not Illegal If You're Dead

20261026

Prompt from DailyPrompt.com

I do wish I’d died indoors. Haunting the side of a house is so isolating. The only time anyone passes by is while taking the wheelie bins around. You’d think whatever force keeps me from leaving the property line would allow me inside the property, but apparently not!
The one bright spot is that I can peep in next-door’s upstairs window. Which is the sort of thing I’d never have even considered before being stabbed to death in a slanderous rhododendron dispute, but when you have only one option for entertainment it’s voyeurism or going mad.
Maybe if old man Donald hadn’t been taken away I’d be able to haunt him. At least that’d be more interesting! Ah well. I suppose I should be grateful justice was served. Even if it left me stuck in a barren brick and concrete trench between our houses.
Currently illuminated by the upstairs window. I float up to peer in.
Oh, how I wish I could hear! But being dead already makes everything sound distant and wavy, as if echoing down a long hallway, and the double glazing adds another level of muffling. All I can do is watch.
So I do.
Not because he’s doing much interesting; he spends most of his time sitting across the bed, using a folding table as a laptop desk. Sadly I can’t make out what’s on the screen from here. It’s just a bunch of tables and stuff. I’d rather be watching his face, though I doubt there’s much interesting going on there either.
As it is I just… guess. Imagine might be a better word for it. Think up exciting things he could be doing, and it just looks boring from back here.
Like, maybe he’s a secret agent from a foreign government! Hiding in plain sight in an uninteresting semi-rural modern development. Those documents he’s working on have super important information hidden in them. Encoded into the presentation. That’s why he spends so much time fussing about with the formatting.
I go back and forth on whether it’d be more exciting for the other people who live in the house to be in on the conspiracy, or oblivious. I basically never get to see them, so it’s hard to judge. But I’m pretty sure there’s two cars that get parked out front, and I hear people driving off and coming back, so clearly most of the household goes out more than this guy.
On the one hand, I suppose I got lucky with him being in the end bedroom, since it means there’s reliably something to watch. But I do wonder if the others might be interesting enough to watch when they’re home to make up for not being here all the time.
Ah well.
Another one I like to imagine is he’s a paranormal researcher, crunching data that the others bring back from their investigations, and if only any of them bothered to look close to home they could communicate with me. It’s sort of funny to imagine him sitting there, wishing and wishing for a verifiable ghost sighting, and meanwhile I’m squashed against his window.
And it’s really nice to imagine getting to talk to someone. I’ve drafted entire conversations about all sorts.
I wonder if these people know what happened? Why this house was put up for rent so cheap, and fully furnished. Are you required to disclose that sort of thing? If so, what did their version sound like?
“Oh, well, the old man who lived here, he was losing his grip on things, and before his family got him proper help he had a racist wobbler at a neighbour and stabbed them with garden shears for ‘killing his prize rhododendron’. He got taken away to prison and the victim’s girlfriend moved out soon after. Poor dear.”
If they do know, I have to wonder what kind of people they are, to be willing to take the house. Maybe just desperate, four young people renting a house together like this. I mean, this guy never seems to talk to the others, or hang out with them, so I assume they’re not a friend group. Or one of those poly queues.
Maybe they’re interested in that “true crime” stuff. That’s the sort of people who’d be happy to rent a place where there’d been a recent murder.
Or manslaughter? I’m not clear on the difference, and sadly nobody thought to loudly read the court results anywhere I could overhear. Nor did I get a chance to ask old man Donald if he meant to jab me in the neck while waving those shears in my face or if it was an accident. I’m pretty sure he at least wasn’t expecting me to bleed out that fast. But I don’t know if there was any regret along with the shock.
Wish I could pass on, and ask.
Well, either way, if they are that sort, it’d be crime statistics and gory stories he’s got on the laptop. Tables of horrific happenings, documents full of death and destruction and violent drama. All being chopped up and massaged for… whatever it is people do with true crime stuff. Are blogs still a thing?
God, what I’d suffer to be able to read blogs! Read anything. Cereal boxes would be riveting right now.
What time is it? This guy really ought to have a clock. An alarm clock would be ideal, I can see the bedside table pretty well if I squash against the very side of the window. But no. He uses his phone. Which is fair. It’s just very inconsiderate to the person he doesn’t know exists and is spying on him. Some people. Tsk.
Definitely pretty late, though. Yet he’s still at it. Still typing away, flicking between tables and paragraphs. Pity there’s no photographs. Which there would be, for true crime, wouldn’t there? So that’s one story ruined.
Ah well. I’ll think of another.
I have all the time in the world.

Prompt was “Write a story about looking through somebody’s window, and making up a life for them based on what you see.”