#rotating ghost!stede in my mind like a rotisserie chicken

[bookshelfdreams]

a haunting is so romantic when you think about it

[bookshelfdreams]

📒

I say this flattered and with nothing but affection but I have never had that many ideas in my life 😅🙈

But okay. You'll get the one that is more than just a vague concept, in that I have actually written some words for it (even though it'll never be finished). Contains: Ghosts and blackbonnet. Also cw for mention of suicide.

So imagine this: Ed is a world-famous author of horror novels. He's a gothic icon, got famous as more of a storyteller (he used to do live events that were half readings, half theatre performances; used to pull all sorts of tricks to make it seem like the venue was actually haunted. To this day, people who are into parascience cite his shows as evidence that ghosts are real). But lately - well, he's not been feeling it. His readings are boring now; he still does them sometimes, big live events, but he's no longer allowed to genuinely scare the shit out of his audiences. And he hasn't done one in years anyway. He sold movie rights a couple of times, and what Hollywood produced made his skin crawl but not in the fun way.

His manager is always on his ass about doing shows, doing more pr (Izzy keeps scheduling interviews for him where he just knows he'll be asked idiotic questions about his "heritage", and "There sure are a lot of queer characters in you novels, Mr Teach", and honestly just thinking about those makes him want to hang himself in front of Izzy. A little.), about how his writing needs to be "more mass compatible". All Ed wants to do is write weird, avantgarde, creepy bullshit. But he can't even do that because he's been having writer's block for months.

Sometimes it feels like he never knew how to write at all.

And then there's footsteps in his attic.

Ed spent the last few hours laying on his couch, staring at the TV; he'd turned the sound off at a commercial block and didn't bother to turn it back on.

Which is how he's able to hear the steps, slow, deliberate, heavy, like the world's most inconsiderate upstairs neighbours is testing their new wooden clogs at 11:30 at night.

Problem: Ed lives alone in his house, the attic is his workspace and there's no one in there.

This one incident could have been chalked up to Ed being mostly asleep, but things keep happening. His half-full glass of really nice brandy spilled with no one in the room. The laces of his boots tied together for some reason. Cabinets left open when he knows he closed them. Etc. Honestly not the most imaginative stuff.

And then there's the dreams.

Ed keeps having vivid, detailed dreams. In them he's in a body that's not his and that he has never seen, and keeps living out scenarios from a life entirely foreign to him, but everything feels so real. It gets to a point where his waking hours sometimes feel like they're the dreams.

In short: Ed is definitely being haunted. By ghost!Stede, of course.

Now Stede, in this scenario, owns a used bookstore. Or well, it's more of an antiquity store that has some books too. Or, if we're being completely honest: Mary threatened divorce if Stede kept cluttering up their house with his "collections", and this is becoming a serious problem, Stede, and where do you even find all this stuff? What on earth makes you think a fucking - chicken skeleton is appropriate kitchen decor?? (It's a pheasant, actually, and it's from 1875!)

Long story short, it got a bit heated (Mary did most of the shouting, and also the word hoarder was used which Stede thinks, is entirely unfair), and Stede agreed to put things into storage.

Mary divorced him anyway.

Which, all things considered, was probably for the best.

And now that he had all his books and little oddities inventoried and neatly packed away, it occurred to him that it really was a shame to keep all this fascinating stuff in a storage unit to collect dust. Wouldn't it be fun to be a shop owner? That way there'd be some turnover and he could keep collecting stuff without it ever running out of space!

He ended up renting out a little store in the old town, called it "Revenge: Books and Antiquities" even though it's more his own personal Wunderkammer. And also, he doesn't know the forst thing about running a store, but that's what employees are for, right? Haha.

(a/n: if I were the kind of person who makes pinterest boards there would be so many for Stede's shop. I see it before me and it's the coolest.)

But the Something Happens. I'm not sure what - a robbery gone wrong. An accident. The horrible part of me says, botched suicide. And Stede ends up in a coma.

So that's the setup. Half is Ed trying to answer questions like: a) Are ghosts real? b) If yes, how do I get him to stop haunting my ass c) Or maybe, I should find out who the ghost is. The ghost never leaves me, always has my back. I can rely on the ghost. This relationship is getting intimate. The ghost has seen me cry. I can tell the ghost things I have never told to anyone, and trust that I won't be judged or that my secrets will be held against me. Maybe the ghost is the best friend I ever had. d) Is the ghost single?

While Stede is trapped in an inbetween-state, not quite alive, not yet dead, slowly forgetting everything: his parents voices, his children's faces. Forgetting what it was like to be alive, to have a body, to move through the world a physical entity. The longer he stays like this, the less he becomes, and maybe that's better, maybe if he waits long enough he can just disappear.

Maybe if he forgets he ever was a person at all, that won't be so bad.

But there's Ed, who speaks to him like he is real, and Stede isn't sure anyone ever has, not even when he was fully alive.

So. It's all very aesthetic, very vibes-based, with little actual substance and I'm probably never gonna write it but I like thinking about it :)