I’m Haunting the Bank, Back in a Few Days

Honey, by now you may have noticed that I haven’t been home for a few days. That’s because I’ve been pretending to haunt the local branch of our bank in order to convince them to stop charging me overdraft fees.

I know this sounds overly-elaborate, but I did the math and the sheer volume of penalties I have accrued for our family is now greater than the cost of supplies for my brilliant plan. Please do not worry. This idea is foolproof as long as a group of sleuthing teenagers and their crime-solving dog don’t get in my way. But the odds of that happening are astronomically low—basically impossible.

Stan, the teller, was easy to convince. A few well-timed whispers from the acoustic tiling above his desk, and now he flinches whenever overdraft protection is mentioned. As an added bonus, all the asbestos dust up here has made my skin look extremely pale, just like a ghost. Seriously, the only way this could possibly go wrong is if a vigilante teen accidentally pulls out the book that I rigged to drop the rope ladder leading up to my secret ceiling lair with all my haunting paraphernalia.

The hardest part has been finding enough food and water. I ate all the snacks in the vending machine on night one, and the Chinese restaurant across the street outright refuses to deliver to “the ceiling above the bank,” so I’m down to rationing the free mints they hand out to new customers.

Also, the the cold nozzle on the water cooler is broken, so I only have access to boiling hot water to brush my teeth, which has caused my gums to bleed intermittently. Luckily, this seriously scared Brian, the loan officer, when he walked in on me filling his desk drawers with live worms—to symbolize death and decay, of course. If you can think of any way my scheme could be foiled other than between three and five youths deciding to meddle in my business, which as we’ve already discussed, isn’t going to happen, please let me know.

Christine, the branch manager, has been a tougher nut to crack, but I think I finally got through to her. Last night when she was locking up, I used a fog machine to fill the lobby with a ghostly haze. Next, I turned on my strobe light. Then, I started playing haunted house sound effects on the bluetooth speakers I’ve hidden around the office. I highly doubt anyone will be able to find them, unless the bookish member of the hypothetical mystery-solving gang is looking on the ground for her glasses and hits her head on one of the devices I’ve glued to the bottom of the counter.

If the kids ask where I am, please tell them I’m on a business trip. I understand my job doesn’t require travel, but they don’t know that yet. At their age—mid-twenties—I’m still a hero. I can’t stand the thought of them knowing that their father has been forced to convince a cadre of bank employees that ghosts are real because he keeps forgetting to check for sufficient funds before he buys Faberge egg replicas. That reminds me, please check to see if any especially good Faberge egg replicas have gone on sale.

I’d really appreciate if you could bring me some combination fried rice from the Chinese restaurant. You can leave it outside the building’s air conditioning intake. With some trial and error, I’ve timed it perfectly so I can jump past the big spinning fan in the air vent. The blade hit me pretty hard on the head the first time I tried, but I think the bloody head bandage makes me look even spookier. Don’t worry, I feel fine even though the blade hit me pretty hard on the back of the head the other day. What’s more, I haven’t noticed any memory issues since the incident where the blade hit me pretty hard on the head the first time I tried to get past it.

I miss you, but I have to go. A colorful van just pulled into the parking lot. I gave the creepy old night watchman a hundred bucks to mumble cryptically to anyone who comes by after hours. It seems pretty unlikely they’ll dare to come in here after that, but I still have to fill the ATM with Vampire bats as a precautionary measure.

Back in a few days. Love you!