Day 326 - Life Advice From the Dead

life advice from the dead

Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

After three days of being in the house, Kim began to get the distinct feeling she was being watched. It had happened before. Some clients left cameras placed strategically to make sure she was doing her job and being honest about it. This feeling was not that. This feeling was more broad, more vague, more nebulous. She hesitated to think it was supernatural, but it certainly made her feel superstitious.

Kim had been working in estate sales for nearly twenty years. Not always the most lucrative, not always fun, but it was consistent. She had worked in real-estate at the turn of the century but after a housing bubble was followed by a war driven recession, she thought it was time to make a switch. People didn’t always want to buy or sell a house, but someone was always going to die and the families rarely knew what to do with all their stuff. Morbid, perhaps, but a steady line of work it was.

She was accustomed to handling the materials of the dead. Some people had better collections than other. Some antiques were beautiful and exquisite. Some costume jewelry was more beautiful than authentic precious metals. But that was all rare and uncommon to the job. Most jobs dealt with sorting passable clothing and trying to find furniture without damage. The internet became a tool to sell or give away large swaths of items before the estate sales ever technically began. If customers were coming to the house, you wanted them to have the space required to see what was actually worth selling and not be distracted by clutter or chaos. One book in a hundred might have value. One vinyl record in a thousand. There was no reason to waste a true buyers time on the rest.

Kim was mostly unaccustomed to having emotions about other people’s things. There were of course exceptions, but usually it was just a job. One painting might connect with her and she would purchase it if it made it past the sale. But all that was rare. She had seen millions of coffee mugs, toasters and lazy-boy chairs. Few collections were going to cause her to feel pangs of loss or tragedy. A person had to stay cold to a certain extent. Otherwise, the job could drive someone mad with the sadness of waste and human loss.

This house was different. This house seemed to have more special feelings that then last dozen homes combined. This house made her want to quit and find a new career and she wasn’t quite sure why.

The money was good, but the ghosts were finally catching up to her.