If you were to tell me that I would be spending my Tuesday tending the wounds of an apparition, I would have laughed at you and called you crazy.
Yet, here I am.

The alien-like creature was calm on my couch, the bleeding (or what I assumed was its blood) slowed. Their breathing was a gradual rise and fall. It reminded me of a baby who finally laid to rest. The low droning sound of my television filled the empty space. Their static face that bled binary code and other characters were no more. When I examined them closer, there didn’t seem to be any damage to their helmet-like features. Smooth like glass. While tightening the bandages around this apparition’s slim figure, my peripherals caught sight of their ink-dipped claws pointing at something behind me. My eyes followed their direction. The television was paused on a Sonic the Hedgehog game that I completely forgot about. The creature trilled and chirped like a broken circuit board.
“T-This?” I managed to finally speak. “It’s a video game.” The creature spoke in electronics; I couldn’t understand. It strained itself by propping on its elbows. Their helmet sparked before an image appeared in broken pixels: a single question mark. I couldn’t help but sigh in relief. We finally found some type of common ground in terms of communication.
“A video game is not reality. It’s something fun.” How could I explain such a foreign concept to a creature not from Earth? The apparition was motionless. My guess was it was entranced by the television. The speaker-looking devices in its ears started pulsing in vibrant colors alongside the chiptune music. It rumbled, almost like a purring cat.
“Do you like the music? If you want, I can continue playing for you.” I waited for an image to emerge from the dark glass helmet, but the question mark faded and there was nothing except my reflection staring back at me. The apparition seemed docile, possibly tired. My guard still high, I sat on the floor with my back pressed against the couch and grabbed the controller. My heart rate was still high, yet I felt a strange calming sensation emanating from the apparition.
“What is your name?”
The alien-like creature had no response. There was only the soft lull of their deep breathing.
“Is there anything someone calls you?”
Breathing. Agonizingly slow inhale. An eternal exhale.
“Well, from now on, I’m going to call you Ghost.” The soft clicking of the controller keys filled my ears as I spoke aloud. It felt like a conversation that only included me, but something told me they were listening. “You’re Ghost because you basically came and haunted my house. I don’t know if you are real or not. I don’t even know if I’m just having a hallucination and you’re really made of nothing. So...for my sake, you are Ghost the Apparition.”
The rest of the night was quiet, like the world around me never stopped turning in the first place. As I continued the game, Ghost tried its best to hum along to the Sonic soundtrack.