It’s been a couple of weeks since Ghost appeared in my life. They adjusted with each passing day but that didn’t mean they didn’t have struggles or confusion along the way. The television is still a stranger to Ghost; they trill and chirp at it as if the television would speak back. They don’t seem to understand that there is a language barrier between the two electronic beings, especially with one being alive and the other being an object.
I’m starting to think that Ghost’s connection with me is music. Any time I have music playing through my speakers or headphones, Ghost’s ears would pulse with color alongside the beat. Sometimes their helmet would glow and show music bars, the occasional humming filling my mind but their humming was not human-like but rather something a synth would mimic. Ghost could not form words but could communicate through certain sounds.

It was a normal morning with the sun shining through my curtains as I got up to start the day. My body was cumbersome, the beginning of the day rituals tiresome. After looking through my many genres of music, I settled on something easy to listen to: vaporwave. As soon as the music filled the corners of my bathroom, in strode Ghost. I still never figured out if they slept or not. Their wild hair flared in all directions, the colorful chords doing the same.
“Good morning,” I murmured, letting one final yawn escape my lips. “Did you sleep well?”
A question mark on their helmet was my answer.
“Do you know what sleep is?”
The quizzical look stayed the same.
“I’ll take that as a no…” Ghost reminded me of a doll, so still and regal looking but also slightly off-putting. They grabbed my phone from the counter and pulled it close to their face. Their ears moved slightly, trying to listen in better. A mechanical whirl emitted.
“Do you like it? It’s vaporwave.”
Ghost tried to mime the word “vaporwave” but what came out instead of broken record scratches and blippy electronics.
“Vaporwave is a type of music that just feels like home.” I explained, brushing my hair. “If you were here in the eighties and nineties, you would hear a lot of sampling of that music to this music.” Ghost was my student and I was the teacher; I wanted to tell them all the beautiful things about music and each genre’s special traits. This was a difficult feat because even though they have lived with me for a bit, verbal communication was null. Ghost continued to thumb my phone with their inky black claws, a part of me nervous that they would somehow damage my phone without realizing it.
Throughout the rest of the day, Ghost wouldn’t let me change the music.