The woman woke up from a troubled sleep and rose from her bed. She felt thirsty so she walked to her small refrigerator beside her kitchen door. She tried to open it but her hand passed through the side of the fridge. She was startled and turned around slowly, saw herself lying on the bed, and screamed. She recovered and remembered what she had seen in the movies about bodies rising when ghosts entered them. So she tried to enter her body and wake it up but this did not work either. At that point, she realized that she was dead and nothing was going to change that. She began to weep and think about her life.

—

She was a clerk in a big corporation in town so she always began her day trying to avoid traffic on her work commute. Her work place was in the business district of the city and she lived on the outskirts of town. She lived in a flat and it was the only place she could afford on her measly salary. 

She lived alone and did not have many friends. She rarely had a life outside of work. Her weekdays were for work and her weekends were for sleeping and preparing for work. Now she wishes she lived and loved like other people did. She wished she had girlfriends she could have partied and gone shopping with. She wished she had visited the places on her wish list and not just written them on her wish list. She thought about all the food she had wanted to try and how she would never get to try them. And she wept. She thought about her poor mother. Ah, she had planned to spoil her mother when she got the promotion she had worked her ass off for. Now her mother was only going to be in pain because she was dead. 

—

When she was done reminiscing, she realized it was dawn. She got up to prepare for work but realized she was dead began to weep again. In the middle of crying, a beautiful idea crossed her mind. With how one-track her life had been, she wondered if she would be missed by anyone. She decided to go to work and find out if anyone would notice her absence. While she worked, she never took a day off so she must definitely be missed. Even if they don’t miss her, her daily output sheet would raise alarm if it’s not submitted by the end of the day. 

By 8am, she got up and started to walk to the office. Then she realized she might not be able to make it to the office if she walked. She started to wonder if ghosts had a system for moving long distances. Maybe if she thought about the office hard enough, she could appear there. So she closed her eyes and concentrated hard on the office. When she opened her eyes, she found herself in the office. Yay! It worked!

—

She watched as her coworkers came in one after the other. Everyone settled at their desks and began to work. She began to reminisce about her first day at work. She got the job after three years of unemployment after graduating from university, and she was very excited to resume. This was five years ago. She had moved to this city because of the job and the calm of the city eventually made her love it. She grew up in Eko, the rowdiest city in the county. She had a little bit of trouble settling in when she relocated. The only semblance to Eko that gave her balance, was working in a fast paced environment like her office. She worked as a clerk and she came in every morning, took calls, filed documents and did a lot of typing for her bosses. The work was endless but she had learned to love it. 

She had been looking forward to a promotion for years. She was finally going to get it because the administrative manager was going to be transferred. She had hoped the promotion would change her life. She would finally have the opportunity to travel, gain new hobbies, and shop for new clothes and shoes. The salary for the position was ten times what she currently earned and the work was considerably less than what she did as a clerk. But now she was dead and she would never have these things.

—

The day was over and nobody had looked for her. She worked from a tiny corner office and she remembered that her bosses she usually typed for began their leave that day. Heartbroken, she decided to leave the office and go visit her best friend Michael. Michael lived several states away. She still remembered his house because she had spent a weekend last Christmas at his house. She closed her eyes and imagined the front of his house where they had sat on wicker chairs and drank beers. It was the only time she had let herself indulge in alcohol. 

She and Michael had been friends for twelve years. Michael was the only friend she had kept in touch with from university and he had supported her through the years post university until now. Their friendship was a little odd. Michael was her best friend and he also acted like her father. She found it odd because she loved him and not like one loves a father, more like one would love a husband. She had told him several times that it would make sense for them to be married but he kept telling her he was not attracted to her like that. Now she was twenty eight and Michael was thirty but they had both never been in any serious relationships. She had planned to wait for him no matter how long it took for him to see her as she saw him. Now she did not need to wait anymore. She only hoped he would finally find someone who would love him like she loved him.

She stood in front of his door staring when she heard the gate open behind her and Michael walked in. She watched him walk through her and open the door she had been staring at. She followed him inside the house and watched as he took off his shoes, walked to the fridge, and picked up a bottle of beer. She hoped he would drop the drinking habit but that did not seem likely. He took out his phone and she went close to him to see what he was about to do. He dialed her number and when she did not pick up her sent a text “Pick up before I call your mother and tell her you’re dead.” She chuckled. If he only knew. 

—

She could not watch anymore. She needed to see her mother. She imagined her mother’s house - a three-bedroom apartment in the middle-class part of Eko. Her mother had grown up the only child of a Balogun from a former old money family in Eko. She had married a teacher but her husband had died when their child was just two years old. Her mother had done her best to raise her alone and her best was very good. The woman had graduated from a prestigious university in the next state and gotten the job three years after graduating. 

She appeared at her mother’s doorstep and watched through the window as her mother began her evening routine after returning from work. Her mother carried a bowl of fried yam (against doctor’s orders) and settled in front of the TV to watch WWE. She thought about her mother’s job in the civil service that paid the bills and her school fees through the years. Her mother was not exactly the best but she had done her best and managed to keep the both of them fed and content. 

She had heard of mothers feeling pain when their children died. She wondered if her mother had felt anything when she passed. But then she remembered her mother had regular ulcer pangs so she must have felt it was nothing even if she had felt it. 

—

She watched as her mother fell asleep in front of the TV. It was time to go but she did not know where else to go so she thought about her bedroom and closed her eyes. When she opened it, she was in front of her bed. Her body was still the same way she left it. Her phone beeped on the bedside table and she looked at it as it lit up and saw two missed calls; one from Michael and the other from her mother. There were also several unread messages from Michael and nothing else.

She spent the rest of the night trying to pick up objects in the house. By the time she was finally able to pick up a jar of scented candles, it was dawn. After using so much effort to pick up the candle, she dropped it and it broke. She wondered if her neighbors heard the candle break. Well even if they did, they probably would not care to check on her. There were eight studio apartments in the compound and the occupants only spoke to each other when they needed to pay collective repair fees. 

—

She decided to go to the office and see if people would talk about her today. She imagined her desk and appeared in front of it. She walked out of her corner office and watched as her colleagues walked into the office one after the other like robots. Susan and Alice from marketing walked in together giggling together like gossip mongers. They were well known in the office for spreading gossip. They suddenly stopped and Alice looked through her at her corner office door 

“Did you see Nanret yesterday?” She suddenly asked Susan.

“Why are you asking about that irrelevant babe? Even if she came, there’s nothing interesting about her for me to be concerned about.”

“Be nice, joor. Do you know what she has going on in her life? She might be going through something that makes her reclusive like that.”

“Abeg jare. Let’s go” Susan said, dragging Alice to their office cubicle. 

Nanret was surprised at Alice’s concern for her. She had not expected it. She thought about following the two women to their office. As she was about to do that, she saw Tola from human resources walk to her office door and open it, look inside and close it. Then she took out her phone and dialed Nanret's phone when it rang without a reply, she left and walked to her office. Nanret followed her.

Tola went to her office and took out Nanret’s file to look for her emergency contact. Nanret’s emergency contacts were her mother and Michael. She watched as Tola called both of them and informed them she had not been seen at the office in twenty four hours and she wasn’t picking up her phone either. They both told Tola that they had not been able to reach her either. Tola told them to call her if they heard anything. Then she noted Nanret’s address on her phone and went to work.

—

When the day ended, Nanret followed Tola as she left the office. Tola took out her phone and looked at the address on her phone. Then she called Nanret again and did not get a reply. She hailed a cab and called out Nanret’s address and got in after negotiating the fare with the driver. Nanret watched the cab leave and appeared in front of her house to wait for Tola. She hoped her body had started to decompose and smell. She wondered why her neighbors weren’t smelling it yet. As she wondered, she watched her neighbors walk into the compound, walk into their houses, and shut their doors.

Tola arrived a little while later and knocked at the gate. The security man opened the gate and when she asked for Nanret, the security man pointed at her flat. She had the flat directly opposite the gate so Tola walked straight to her flat and knocked. When she did not hear anything, she peeped into the window, saw the body, perceived the smell and gagged. Then she screamed. Nanret’s neighbors heard the scream and ran out of their houses. Tola couldn’t speak and kept pointing at the window. Some of her neighbors looked into the window and saw her body. They immediately went into action, trying to break down the door. 

Nanret stood in the corner watching them. She started to cry again. While her male neighbors were trying to break her door, the female neighbors cried. One of them was in the corner crying. The commotion had started to attract a crowd outside their gate. The security man had the good sense to keep the gate shut to prevent the crowd from trooping into the compound. Someone had called an ambulance and when they arrived, the men had succeeded in breaking open Nanret’s door. The paramedics walked into the compound with a stretcher and were directed to Nanret’s flat. They carried her body onto the stretcher, covered it, and carried it into the ambulance. Nanret imagined they were going to take her body to the morgue and embalm her until her mother came to carry her body for burial. 

—

She watched as Tola took out her phone and called her mother and Michael and informed them. Nanret wanted to know their reactions to the news so she appeared at her mother’s apartment first and watched as she cried herself hoarse over the news. Then she called her cousin Big Daddy and told him the news. She heard Big Daddy tell her to keep calm and wait for him. 

Then Nanret appeared at Michael’s apartment and watched as he packed a bag and booked an early morning flight to her city. When he was done, he walked to the refrigerator and picked up a bottle of beer. He took it outside, sat in the reclining chair in his veranda and took a gulp. Nanret wondered why he reacted like that to the news of her death.

She couldn’t watch him be stoic about the news so she appeared back at her mother’s apartment and watched as Big Daddy’s wife held her as she cried. Big Daddy was on the phone talking to Tola. He noted the address of the morgue where Nanret’s body was taken. Then he told his wife to help Nanret’s mother pack a bag. She was going to live with them for a while. Then Big Daddy booked flight tickets for himself and Nanret’s mother to Nanret’s city. He held her mother and tried to comfort her while his wife packed the bag. When she came out of the bedroom with the packed bag, they went out to the car. Nanret watched as they put her mother inside the car and they both got in and drove off. 

—

Nanret appeared back at her apartment and sat thinking about the time she first moved in. It was a small space but it was her space nonetheless. It had her small kitchen that had a view of the houses downhill. She loved cooking there because of the view. Then she looked into the bathroom. It was her least favorite part of the house because of how small it was. She then looked at the bookshelf she loved so much. It held all the books she had bought for herself as a reward for her hard work all these years. 

There was nothing wrong with living with her mother but her mother was overbearing because she was her only child. She had spent the last five years living alone. Visiting her mother only when work closed for the year during the holidays. Five years of living alone and she had barely managed to decorate this small space to her taste. Her only pieces of furniture were the bed, her bookshelf and her work table. She still had not gotten the settee she had her eyes on. Nanret wondered what she had truly achieved with her life. How many lives she had impacted. She wondered why she was a ghost and what was holding her back from going to the great beyond. She wondered if tomorrow would bring answers to her questions.

—

The next morning, Nanret appeared at the office just as Tola arrived. She informed their bosses of what happened and told them she was going to the morgue to meet with Nanret’s people. Their bosses wanted to ask Tola to stay back and look for Nanret’s replacement. Tola told them she had dropped her phone number as Nanret’s contact person with the paramedics so she had to go to make sure Nanret’s people were able to pick up the body. Tola was given an hour to do that and get back to the office. Work doesn’t end because of one person’s death apparently. 

Nanret followed Tola to the morgue this time. They got there just as Nanret’s mother, uncle and best friend arrived. Michael walked up to Nanret’s mother and hugged her. Nanret watched as tears rolled down Michael’s face as he held her mother, both of them weeping while her uncle watched. 

—

Tola took them to the paramedics and they were shown Nanret’s body. At this point, her mother screamed and rolled on the floor of the morgue while Michael and her uncle tried to hold her. It was such a sad sight. Tola stood in the corner of the morgue crying until her phone rang. She took the call and excused herself. Nanret could not bear to see her loved ones cry over her. She wept with them and wished they would not be sad for too long.

Tola got to the office and was met with angry looks from her bosses. She apologized and pleaded for the office to have a small service for Nanret. After much pleading her bosses agreed. Tola went to her office and sent a company-wide announcement about Nanret’s loss. Then she announced that there was going to be a small service that evening after work hours and people could come and pay their respects. 

—

Nanret walked through the company and observed reactions to her passing. Some people were shocked and most people did not know who she was and were indifferent. When work was over, everyone that cared even a little bit about Nanret gathered in the breakroom. Including Tola, there were only seven people. One of them was the cleaner, then Alice and Susan from marketing, the security man and the creepy guy whose office was opposite Nanret’s office. Tola led the service asking everyone to observe a minute of silence for Nanret.

Everyone took turns to talk about Nanret. The cleaner said the most touching thing about Nanret. She said Nanret always left her change whenever she sent her to get her food and this change usually augmented her transport home. This helped her use her monthly transportation budget on other essentials. The security man said Nanret was the only person who said hello to him every morning and made him feel seen. Alice and Susan said they were only there because they felt pity for Nanret. Creepy Guy said he liked Nanret but never knew how to tell her so he just smiled whenever she said hi because he was too shy to start a conversation with her. 

Tola nodded and asked them to share funny moments they had all had with Nanret. Nanret watched as they spoke and laughed and the weight on her chest disappeared. She realized did not want anyone to be sad for her. She wanted them to continue to live, and not just live ordinary lives. She hoped they would do extraordinary things and live life to the fullest, enjoying all the moments - small and big, good or bad. A small ball of white light appeared in front of her and she knew it was time to go. With the realization that life would go on without her and everyone who mourned her would be fine eventually, she walked into the light.