He was bent down by the fjällbo, checking scratch marks on the linoleum, when the haphazardly constructed shelf gave away, releasing David’s amp on a perfect trajectory with his skull. He blossomed across the floor and we all just sort of stood there in shock. The coroner determined freak accident, not to worry. Only the amp was taken away. David wasn’t brave enough to ask for it back. He made a pivot to acoustic, the sort of soft, anodyne sound that can’t cave a head in. We all waited for the estate to get in touch, to demand the unpaid rent, to reduce the house to rubble, but nothing happened. Huh, we thought.

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A month later the landlord returned. Unfinished business tethering him to the material plane and all that. He rose from the stain, his last mark upon the world, and continued his meticulous path through the house. Where he’d find a mark on the wall, of which there were numerous, he would stop and begin wailing. Even worse is we’d recently dared put a painting up, nail and all. He made it everyone’s problem, pointing and screaming, foaming at the mouth, teeth gnashing. Study became impossible. David was struggling through a marketing degree. I was working from home by then. Team meetings were a fraught affair. Ah, it’s the landlord, I’d say, and people generally seemed to get it. We learnt his inspection times and worked together to stand in front of the damage. We’d distract him, guiding his dented and bowed ghost away from our scratches and towards the structural problems, the water bloated wood, the cracks running cavernous across the roof. He’d see these and degenerate immediately into ectoplasm. And so we added goo mopping to the chores roster and we all got used to it.

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Leo Alder is an emerging writer living on Ngunnawal land, Canberra. He writes best while falling asleep at his desk, letting thoughts blur into dream slurry that spills across the page. His stories can be found in the anthologies Strangely Enough and Slinkies 2023. He’s on Instagram @leoalderwriter.

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