Selling a few Ghost Stories

Being a sales executive sucks. They lie when they hire you; they lie when they tell you about the salary; they lie when they tell you the timings; they even lie when they say they'll teach you how to lie! I had never wanted to be in this field, but things seldom turn out the way you want them to. For six months, I was unemployed; then the bills that were chasing me finally caught hold of me, and I had no choice but to accept my fate. It doesn't matter where I work, all sales jobs are the same. You lie.

Still, something is better than nothing, and certainly, some money is better than no money at the end of the month. That's how I ended up taking up this job; and now, I have a bunch of little white cards that no one but me seems to care about. I'd have given anything to have those little white cards read something like 'Nischal Parakh, Business Analyst', but I wasn't that lucky. Instead, those little white cards read 'Nischal Parakh, Business Development Manager'. That's a lie. I'm no Manager, and I certainly don't know how to Develop Business. I sell things that my company makes. It doesn't even matter what they make, I just have to sell them. End of story.

Today was an exceptionally bad day. Almost all days for a sales executive are bad, except pay day; still, today was exceptionally bad. It's lucky I have the little graveyard near my house to escape to every time something like this happens. It's been even better for me since the time I met Dr. Alan there. You might not have heard about Dr. Alan, but he was a very revered man during the time he served at the local hospital. I keep forgetting the name of that hospital, and the Doctor never talks about that place. The graveyard, however, is one place I love to haunt.

The first time I met the Doctor, however, was not a pleasant moment for me. It's not a nice thing, meeting ghosts; the air around you grows cold, the kind of cold that seeps down to your very bones. You start feeling that it's never going to get warm, and when the last little thread of hope is left that all is not lost, they pop right in front of you. At that moment, most people start screaming and running like mad, and the Doctor told me that is the reason he doesn't pop out in front of many people. The shrill screaming hurts his ears a little bit, and he doesn't like it.

I was luckier, having lost the ability to scream due to fear. I didn't scream, which gave the Doctor courage to pop out of his grave; he smiled broadly and said, "Good Evening, my dear fellow! Wonderful night, isn't it?"

It indeed was a wonderful night. I hardly found people who agreed with me so readily, so it was inevitable that I and the Doctor (or his ghost, whichever you prefer) would become friends easily. The Doctor thanked me that night for not screaming, and in turn I thanked the Doctor for not saying 'Boo!' from behind the tree to scare me. He said he hadn't done that in his life, but he did that the second time we met. He would tell you that it worked, and that I got scared, but it isn't true. I was just playing along with him.

I've often wondered how the Doctor gets to know when I'll be coming over to visit him at night. Maybe he haunts me during the daytime, follows me around and sees what's going on with my life. I don't think too much about it anymore; I've just started accepting the fact that he's a ghost, and he knows things that I will never be able to understand.

"Ah, good evening!" he said, the moment I stepped into the graveyard. He was sitting, like always, propped up against the pillow shaped tombstone, looking as though he's lying down and waiting for his grandson to get his favorite book for him. "I was waiting for you, dear fellow. Do come, and sit down!"

I sat down next to him, the leaves rustling merrily underneath as I settled down in the little pile. The moon shone above us, casting shadows as the light fell filtered through the leaves. Finally, after a long time, I was feeling happy to be here.

The Doctor kept looking at me, almost without blinking his eyes. Being a ghost, he didn't need to blink anymore. Still, the sight of two unblinking black eyes staring from a white face is unsettling, so I had told the Doctor to keep blinking every time I came. Time to time, I had to keep reminding him to do that.

"Doctor, uhh, you're not blinking," I said for the umpteenth time.

"Oh, right! Sorry," he said, immediately blinking apologetically.

"How've you been?" I asked.

"Bored! It's not very exciting, lying in a rotting wooden box six feet under the earth doing nothing all day. The sun was a bit too bright today, couldn't even get out all day long!"

"You should have tried some sunscreen then," I said with a chuckle.

"Good boy there!" he said, guffawing like an old man, "Finally, you said that out loud! Been two days since you thought that one up hasn't it?"

I nodded, smiling sheepishly at the Doctor. There are few things that escape this ghost, that's for sure.

The night dragged on, the sky turning purple as it went on. The many lights twinkled provocatively underneath the sky. I sighed, hoping that the next day would be better than this.

"I hope so too," said the Doctor. I hate it when he does that; reading minds, I mean. He keeps insisting that ghosts cannot read minds, though. He told me that my face makes it very easy for others to figure out what I'm thinking. I still have trouble believing that; that's what a sales job does to you. You end up thinking that everybody lies; even ghosts.

"You know, Doc," I began. "When I was growing up, I used to think money was everything. That's how I ended up going for a sales job. Now that I'm living this life, I feel differently. I mean, look at me – I'm 20 something, living alone in this godforsaken city; I have a fat paycheck at the end of the month, but the sort of work that I do all through the month leaves me with nobody to share that paycheck with. I have no friends, and the only faces I see regularly are those of my colleagues. Sheesh, some life I dreamt for myself!"

I guess Doc could sense a change in my mood, and foresee the sulking that would have followed after that rant. So, he said in the calmest of voices possible, sounding almost like Morgan Freeman, "It's your job. It's the one thing that you're supposed to be doing, the one thing that gives you your livelihood. Respect it, that's the most important thing. Plus, it's just a few more years that you have to work like this. I know how the corporate ladder goes these days. I've seen it happen…"

He wanted to go on in this vein for a while, but I cut him short. I didn't want to hear any of that, even though I knew whatever he said was true. Still, hearing someone else makes it so much more concrete. Hearing him tell me to hold on for a few more years was almost unbearable.

"You mean to say that I've got to keep doing this for the next few years?" I said, fighting to keep my voice down. "You mean, I have to continue being just ok getting screamed at, abused, and almost thrown out of other people's offices, for another year?"

"No job on this planet is easy, my boy. Remember that."

"Easy for you to say man," I said defiantly. "You don't get thrown out of a posh office every other day, by a two-bit peon! You don't have to suffer such anguishes; being on the receiving end of verbal abuses and physical threats every other day!"

I thought Doc would be a little offended by what I said, but he wasn't. Wisdom, in my opinion, comes a lot faster once you're dead; so does patience. That comes from my shrewd observation of Doc. He was smiling through all this, patiently waiting for me to be done. I went on.

"I have to keep shuttling back and forth from the city, every day of my life; and you know what, I've started to hate it! I hate having to lie, to cheat all those people into believing that my company is the only one that cares about them. They don't, and I have to do their bidding for them. Every day. Sure, they pay me well for it, but half of that is just to keep me shut. The other half is to put up with the intense humiliation that comes with the job. A kid spit on the back of my head today! He spit on me! Can you believe that?"

"He did? Hmm, well, why didn't you try to stop him and teach him a few manners? You could have done that, couldn't you? Made a better man out of him, eh?"

That response stumped me. I expected Doc to have defended the child, but this was not really expected. I changed tack at the speed of light. Really, is it my job now, to teach these ignorant fools manners?

"That's not all. I let the kid go, he didn't deserve a lesson of manners anyway," I said as a small justification for my inability to teach the child what his parents and his school (if he attended one, that is) failed to teach him. "This gentleman cut the line in order to get a ticket before I did. That slimy bastard, he tried to get my ticket! Started a fight, this mad man, right there in the train station."

"And what did you do?"

"I tried to stop him. He kept yelling at me, how he had to urgently get to his home for some emergency. Lies, I tell you. The man was reeking of lies."

Doc listened attentively, while twiddling his thumbs. I went on.

"He started a fistfight, can you believe that? A fistfight! A grown man as he, lying that he has an emergency at home just to get a ticket! Then, he actually has the audacity to punch me!"

"He punched you?"

"Well, he tried. He missed though – I was a champion boxer myself during those days. Still, my reflexes aren't as strong as they used to be. I swerved sideways, and my hand caught the railings. I got cut in the hand, look!"

I showed him the half-inch long gash on my forearm. The bit of blood that had seeped out was still glistening, and if I concentrated, I could still feel that throbbing pain on my hand.

Doc looked at the wound in horror. I told you, it was a really bad wound. It hurt me a lot when I clenched my fists hard; Doc could understand just how bad it was. The shock of seeing the blood and the wound caused him to jump half a foot in the air, and his decapitated head fell off from his neck. It's a funny sight, when that happens.

"Oh God, turn that wound away!" said the Doc's head from the ground. "That wound, my God! How did you make it through the day? That must have been so bad, my boy. So, so much worse than my own botched up beheading! This wound, it must have hurt you a lot! Oh, you poor, poor boy…"

He went on like that for a while, but I don't remember much of what he said after that point. The sarcasm of his words hit me hard, and I shut up.