outlaw ghost stories – Captain Koril

oh god
so last winter(?) I made a duct tape body double of myself for costuming purposes, which is creepy as fuck anyway.
but now
it has sat out in storage, in the heat, for almost a year
and the front of it came apart and is spilling packing peanuts and stuffing guts everywhere and I feel like I’m in Half Life any time I go out there

I’m just lazily flopped on my tiny RV sofa thing waiting for the spasms to slow down enough I can go to bed and just surfing horse blogs, etc…when I hear something-not-my-air-conditioning-or-normal-night-sounds. Breathing. Raspy, slow, sort of quiet breathing coming from somewhere to my left. I freeze and jolt and stare into the darkness toward my bedroom, squinting hard to see if there’s some random boogey monster in there or if I’m just losing my mind.
There’s no monster? So I turn back to the computer screen.
The breathing starts again. Rasp. Wheeze. Rasp.
CAN YOU NOT.
Rassssp. WHEEZE.
At this point, I figure my trailer is haunted by an asthmatic Civil War dude (it’s always got to be a Civil War dude ghost) and I move to investigate/ghostbust/grab my valuables and head to less haunted shores/whatever needs doing.
That’s when I realize that the breathing is actually me. Myself. My own nose. I just couldn’t hear it out of my right ear on account of the seatback I was half smushed into.
SPARK ISTG

so I turned off my light and for a while I forgot that my dressform was right next to my bed.
Imagine my surprise when I turned on the bed light.
it’s a HEADLESS COLONIAL WARRIOR ZOMBIE OH GODS SAVE US oh wait…nope costume I’m good.