The ghost is red. Flushed with embarrassment, its emotional state plain to see, and their world is the better for it I think. The dead can lie, but we know when they do. Predictably, the living only ask questions about themselves. Even when they ask; what is the next place like? Is there pain? Can you return at will? Even these questions are about the living, though only the dead can answer. Why they answer, is hard to say. What business do they have with us, when their own world requires so much attention? The dead, when asked, don’t seek out the ones they knew in life. Why? Well, why would they? A lifetime of tension; love, spite, bitterness, envy, lust, violence, rage, fear and insatiable allure of joy. Too tempting to let it all go, given the chance. Some of the dead, the older ones, can not name a single person they knew in life. They are free to start over, with all they know. Freedom, minus the secrecy of their feelings. The living keep that trick. The dead make do with turning green when they are envious, black when they are angry, yellow when they are scared. I do not yet know what colour they turn when they are happiest. Perhaps they are careful to express that in the presence of the living. By use of a colour chart, they risk showing us the antithesis of joy. And that would make a gold rush the likes of history has never seen.
Paddy Dobson
10th February 2021