Ghosts of the Past

The silence was the loudest damn thing I’d ever heard. Back in Jersey, even when you were alone, there was always *something*. The hum of the city, the distant wail of a siren, the creak of Mrs. DeLuca’s porch swing next door. Here, in this pristine, sterile box they called ‘safe,’ the silence was a gaping maw, ready to swallow me whole. And at night, when the fluorescent lights of the hallway outside flickered off, leaving only a sliver of pale moonlight to creep through the blinds, the real monsters came out. Not the ones with tommy guns and fedoras, but the ones that lived in my head.

They were a motley crew, these ghosts. First up, there was Frankie ‘Fingers’ Bellini, his eyes wide and unseeing, staring at the spot where his life used to be. I could still hear him begging, the sound muffled by the rag I’d shoved in his mouth. “Joey, please, man, it ain’t worth it.” Yeah, Frankie, it wasn’t. Not for you, anyway. I saw him most nights, slumped against the cheap wallpaper, a dark stain spreading across his chest. Always the same scene, playing on repeat. I’d wake up in a cold sweat, my own chest tight, smelling phantom gunpowder.

Then came the faces of the women. Not Maria, thank God. Maria was too good for this mess, too pure. These were the others, the ones who’d been collateral damage, the ones who’d gotten too close, who’d seen too much. The bartender’s daughter who’d accidentally overheard a crucial detail about a shipment. Her smile, so innocent when she’d served me that last beer, was twisted into a silent scream in my nightmares. And the accountant, a nervous little guy with a stutter, who’d tried to double-cross me. His wife, her face etched with worry, waiting for him to come home from work, never knowing he’d already met his maker in a dark alley behind a laundromat. I’d see them, their eyes accusing, their silence a deafening roar.