The alarm was set to PM instead of AM.

"Shit. Shit. Shit." She quickly jumped into the shower and rushed through her morning routine blindingly, and in the process had stubbed her toe. "Ow!"

To top it all off, the faucet was still dripping. Frustrated beyond measure, she pushed a pail under the faucet and continued to dress herself.

"Of all the days..." muttering under her breath, she shoved some essentials into a large bag, combing her hair in one swift sweep, not giving a care that it dampened the shirt underneath.

Her feet thudded angrily against the steps and she spotted her open laptop on the counter. "James? James! I need this, sorry." She slapped it shut and slid it into her bag.

She gave the room one quick sweep stepping towards the door.

"Oh! Fuck, my phone!" Arabella ran back to her bedroom and took the phone off the nightstand. She eyed her laptop charger and took it with her.

She hadn't been having a good day, and as she stared at the building's façade, she took a deep breath and walked in. She was greeted by Macy, the receptionist with a lovely British accent. Macy had been assigned by Human Resources to give her a tour.

Although she was actually late, the tour could potentially be her excuse. Gaily, she allowed Macy to lead her around. Macy gave her information about the people she would be working with on that floor. Most of the information however, sounded suspiciously like office gossip.

"Hello!" Macy waved impatiently at a petite woman and rapped on the table to get her attention.

Startled, the woman removed her headphones and glanced from Macy to Arabella, surprise and embarrassment coloring her face. "Sorry," she waved to the both of them. "How may I help you?"

"This is Arabella, she is to be your workspace mate." Macy introduced her graciously. "This is Claudine."

Arabella extended a hand, "I'm the new assistant copywriter,"

Claudine extended a closed fist. "Hello Arabella, assistant to the copywriter." She smiled warmly, and Arabella closed her hand, and met her with a fist bump.

Between making her first friend and meeting her sparring bosses, daunting Karen and sleazy Bob, the rest of the day went by in a blur.

Arabella found herself dozing off on the MTA, exhausted. She had spent the whole day rattled as she tried to keep up with the frantic pace. Thankfully, however, she was told that her job could be done from home, and only needed to report in for work as needed. She was glad to know that luck was still on her side.

But it turned out that luck was a fickle friend.

As soon as she had stepped out of the station nearest her home, a car drove into a puddle, soaking her coat and socks in filthy street gunk. She hadn't even noticed that it had rained.

Only small-town girls get splashed in city streets, and she wasn't a small-town girl. Her hometown had lots of modern shops, the streets were wide and blackened in asphalt, and everyone didn't exactly know everyone. Granted, the people in her hometown were not small-town nice, but they weren't big-city rude.

Her barefoot patter left moist feet marks on the cool tiles, and she threw her shoes in an empty pail under the sink, shivering as a cool wind softly blew through her hair. She checked her watch, and found that it was still early, but not early enough to have a conversation with her invisible roommate. James was probably off to god-knows-where and would be back at six in the evening as he usually was.

After she was done scrubbing the grime and dirt from her shoes, she hung them upside down and treated herself to a hot shower.

Twisting the knob, she noticed that there might have been a silver lining to her bad day. The faucet that had been leaking for days had incredibly stopped dripping.

Somewhere in the late afternoon, as Arabella lounged about and tinkered with her laptop, she noticed a minimized document on her taskbar.

"Oh!" A smile crept to her face upon realizing that it was the practice document that James used the night before. Curious, she opened the document to check if he had been doing his drills and—

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw, for what she read.

Blood draining from her face, she might have turned into a ghost herself.

"Mary has been working the street since 1802," it read.

Her eyes widened and she wanted to scream. WHAT DO YOU MEAN—

She blinked so rapidly that her lashes might have come off, as she struggled to understand the sentence and its implications. That couldn't be right! She needed some answers and she needed them now!

Arabella spent the remaining hour pacing in her room, biting her nails, and rereading the sentence on her laptop screen.

At exactly 6 in the evening, the doorbell rang. She wrenched the door open and found a note on the floor.

Hello.

"James!" Arabella slammed the door harder than she intended.

"I read your... your..." her brows scrunched together as she tried to ask her question. Taking a deep breath to soothe herself, she asked, "Mary? The one I saw in the grocery is a ghost?"

The keyboard started clicking at an improved speed, a pace that was acceptable enough for conversation.

Yes.

"What do you mean, how can I see her and not see you?" She wasn't even done with her sentence yet, but James was already typing away, as fast as he was able.

It all depends on what we must do to pass on.

Arabella stared at the screen and at the empty couch. He didn't even make a dent on the couch. How could it be that different? She was sure that she would have felt human flesh if she reached out to touch Mary that afternoon.

Arabella was about to protest, but James was busy typing another response.

Mary is an exception. Most of us don't have bodies, but she needs hers.

Arabella was positive that she was blinking too much, but the details were quite unbelievable. Why did she need her body? Do I still have lashes? Am I high? There were just too many questions.

"Don't you need your body to cook?" She paced again and stared out the window, half-expecting to see Mary 'working the streets' as he called it.

She needs to converse with clients.

Arabella glanced at the screen and in that moment had a deeper understanding of what James had meant with 'it depends.'

She gasped. No, could it be possible? "Do you mean she died while she was..."

In the middle of a client. Details are blurry.

"How do you know this? Do you go to a meeting when you leave this place? Do you go to some ghosts anonymous to discuss your struggles in the living world?"

Arabella had meant it as a weird joke, so she certainly did not expect James to agree with her.

Something like that. We meet the ones nearby. Most are friendly, some keep to themselves.

Arabella laughed, nothing ever changes, even in the afterlife. Some people can still be introverts. "How does that work? You need the exact dish and you need to remake it so that you can go. Does she have to be with the same client, because that's very impossible now." He would probably be very dead, if not a ghost himself.

Doing the same activities with a client similar to the one she was originally with.

Arabella needed to sit for this. She sat in front of the screen, yelped after realizing that she must have sat on James. "Sorry, I didn't see you."

Haha

She chuckled at that and moved to the side as James clarified the limbo situation between life and eternal death. From his explanation, it seemed as though Mary had finally found someone who fit the description of her previous client and was going to try this one out.

"Do you mean one of the boys? Oh, they'll be so happy!" She chewed on a nail as she thought about it some more. "Won't they be harmed?"

No, and I don't know who she is pining for.

They sat in companionable silence for a while. Arabella watched the cursor blink on the screen as she thought about the best way to help James pass on.

It's not fun to be Mary. She's been here for more than double the time that James had been here, and her problem wasn't exactly easy to solve.

Maybe Arabella could make a career of this if she was successful with James. She could probably even help Mary after him and help more of their friends if they would be as kind as James had been.

In her reverie, she hadn't noticed a blanket floating down from her room. The screen blinked with a concerned message, "What happened this morning?" it said.

The blanket enveloped her in a warm hug, startling her from her thoughts.

"Thank you," she murmured.

I saw you soaked this morning as I left.

Arabella grinned to herself. This was better than having a roommate. "A car splashed a puddle over me. Don't worry it was unintentional." She looked back up at the steps and quickly realized that James had been upstairs to her room.

Surprised by this revelation, she was already thinking about how he might have come up while she had been asleep or in the bath! Perv! "You went upstairs? I thought you could only stay in the kitchen."

The typing was frantic even before she finished her sentence.

I can move around the apartment, but I don't come up when you're up.

Her face must have registered shock because James continued to explain.

I was raised a gentleman. I get bored at times, so I wander.

There was a quick noticeable pause, and then he added,

But I fixed your faucet.

Arabella's eyes widened. That settled it. Nothing was every magically fixed. James fixed her leaky faucet. A roommate and a handyman! Gosh, she might get too used to him.

She swallowed uncomfortably and decided that maybe she could trust him. "Thank you, James. That's really nice of you."

You're my guest, I want you to be comfortable. :)

He had even learned how to insert a smiley.

Arabella laughed and stood to make dinner. She ordered James to Google recipes from his era to help jog his memory. The laptop was strategically placed facing her direction so that she could peek at what he was doing as she busied herself in the kitchen. It came to a point that she could not read the fine text, so she applied the text-to-speak function to aid them both.

"That's better!" Arabella went back to her dishes as if she hadn't discovered anything legendary.

And then it finally clicked.

"Oh my god!" She went back to the document and clicked on the text-to-speak button, and it read James's dialogue without fault. "Oh my god! James!"

"Wonderful." James's dialogue was read in a feminine lilt that made Arabella choke up a laugh.

"We have to do something about that." Arabella tweaked the text-to-speak and found that it could be changed to man's electronic voice, aptly named James, who read in an American English accent.

"Say something, James."

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog." It was beautiful, it sounded like a robotic man.

Arabella chuckled and tried to look for other voices in the application. "Let's try this. This is a Daniel," she said as she clicked on a British English accent named Daniel

"Is this part of America's obsession with Harry Potter?"

She snickered. He sounded like a Pride and Prejudice movie narrator. "Did you mean Daniel Radcliffe? Look at you, dead, but up to date with pop culture!"

She searched for more options and clicked on Mark. "Okay, let's try that again."

"Have I told you my full name," he asked in a Home Shopping Network voice that she half-expected to exclaim, but wait, there's more!

"No, you haven't." Arabella chuckled as she selected an American English voice named Hank. "What is it?"

"James Percy Spencer," he said in a magnificent Southern drawl. "I like this one." His vowels were extended in a rough deep and manly voice. "I sound quite handsome in this."

Arabella shamefully peeked beside her. She very much wanted to see how James looked. He was probably handsome in his time. "You've got a lovely name, but I doubt that you were a country boy. Aren't you a native here?"

"Yes ma'am."

"I've got to change that. From all the voices, I think we should just stick with James since it is your namesake."

After affixing the chosen voice, James immediately typed a question in a slowness that built her anticipation. "Do you want to know..."

Of course, whatever it was, she wanted to know.

"Do you want to know more about me?"

Arabella nodded, and within a second, a book fell from the shelf. She didn't go to it at once, but as she observed what the fallen book revealed, she thought that maybe the apartment held more secrets for her to discover.

It looked like a discolored patch of wallpaper that needed to be pried open to reveal a small compartment. That wasn't there when she moved in, was it?

The faint line around the patch became more distinct as particles of dust were removed from it. The panel dislodged and thick smoke of more dust filled the air. As it cleared, Arabella distinctly saw a wooden box, about the size of a medium shoebox, in the middle of the hollow space.

She took the box, gingerly placed it on her lap, and dusted off the grey particles which revealed carved initials: J.P.S.

Arabella looked up as if to ask for final permission to open the box. She sneezed twice, muttering "sorry," as James opened the box for her.

Gasping with surprise, she looked up once again.

"James, is this you?"

---------

A/N: Hello! Again, I apologize for the long wait. Nobody expected this global pandemic to hit us, and I just hope, fervently praying, that everyone is safe and well.

I'm almost near my 20k word count! Yay! However, I'll probably exceed that to finish this novella!

This chapter is longer than usual. I hope it makes up for the delay in updating!

Kindly let me know what you think in the comments below. What are your theories for the contents of the box? How do you imagine James Percy Spencer to look like? haha, I lay awake sometimes and think about this. 

Again, if you enjoyed the chapter, please consider giving it a vote! Thank you so much!

UPDATE: HEAVILY EDITED May 4, 2020.