Assuming She Existed in the First Place

Story Sent in by Jeffrey:

On my first and only date with Cheryl, we were at dinner when she asked me if I had ever had a "ghost experience." I hadn't, but she had.

"It was when I was eight," she began, "There was a ghost in my basement. It's where my playroom was, and for a week straight whenever I would go down there and sit down to play, something would scream at me, like it was right next to my ear. I called it the 'screaming ghost.'"

I said, "That's weird. Maybe someone was playing a trick on you?"

She said, "No. But a few months after it stopped, my little brother was born. And a few years later when he started talking and walking around, he came into my room out of the blue, leaned against my desk, and said, 'I screamed at you downstairs before I was born,' and then he walked out. It was the scariest thing I'd ever heard."

It was a bit freaky. She went on, "He doesn't remember saying that to me, but I remember it."

I asked, "Maybe you dreamed it all?"

She hesitated. "No, he... did he? Wait..." she went quiet, like she was going over the events repeatedly. Had they actually, really happened?

She said, "I'm like 90 percent sure that it actually happened."

"Ninety percent isn't really a sure thing," I told her.

"I'm 100 percent sure you're just some dick asshoIe who's trying to ruin my childhood. Where the hell do you get off telling me that my memories didn't happen? Who the hell are you? Some psycho freak? I was a child!"

"So that makes your 90-percent ghost stories true?"

She said, "Children don't lie! I know it happened! It was a ghost of my future brother! I know it and he confirmed it! Stop telling me it didn't just because you're some rich delta dick!"

I'm not rich, I don't know what she meant by "delta," and as for being a dick, well, if a healthy dose of skepticism makes me a dick then I'm guilty as charged.

I fed the crazy fire: "People who have delusions when they're kids are five times more likely to be schizophrenic as adults."

"That's not true!"

"Just what someone delusional would say," I admonished her. "And your temper proves it."

"I don't even know what I'm still doing here," she said.

"You can always leave."

"I want my free dinner."

"Who said I was paying for your dinner?"

She gave me a final nasty look, then grabbed her purse and left. She sent me some choice texts afterward, but I never replied or saw her again.