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Description
When I was young, I found out that ghosts live in my basement. I don't know how they got there. They were always just there. They just stayed with the house, I guess. They never left.

The house that I live in now is the only one I've ever called home. My family has lived in this house since my birth. Every single memory I have in contained within these white walls.
From the outside, my house looks like two big boxes put together. The first box is the garage, which is only storage-- there's no room for a car. The second, larger cube behind it contains the hallways and corners of my spirits.

Sound travels so well in my corridors. A mouse sneezing on the first floor can be heard in a second story bedroom, through three closed doors, a set of stairs, and around endless corners. Nothing is hidden. A muffled sob is just as audible to an observer far away as it would be to someone standing right beside the source. That's why the ghosts are so easy to hear. They laugh, and I hear each sharp intake of breath as if it was inches away from my ear.

They're not malevolent ghosts, oh no. They would never hurt a fly. They don't even try to get my attention; they just go about their own business, and I happen to hear them. They live in the basement and rarely come out. Why would they? There is nothing for them to take care of within the world of the living. They are entertained enough by one another's company, and the living hold no interest for my gentle ghosts. They don't care about me. I would think that they know I can hear them, but I doubt that it bothers them. They know that I don't care enough about them to go spend time with them, either.

I've heard them for my entire life. Their talking, laughing, whispering, sobbing. They hold their own existences separate from my own family. They have their own problems, their own experiences, their own dynamic. I am just the silent observer to their passage of time. I hear their talking, laughing, whispering and sobbing with icy clarity through the empty halls of my room, sitting above ground. The spirits stay under the dirt, and I stay above. Yet we're as aware to each other as if we were parallel.

They have never scared me. I didn't even realize that most houses don't have ghosts until I learned more about the world, growing up. When I was young, I took them for granted. I would hear their echoes in an otherwise empty house and just think to myself, "oh, there go my ghosts again. I wonder what's on their minds." And then I would just tune it out, because their little dramas with each other are their own business, not mine.

They stayed constant throughout my entire childhood. I was never alone in my own house, because the presence of my ghosts always somehow kept me company, as distant as they were. I was never alone. I was never scared for my parents to leave me solitary within my own walls because I was not lonely. I felt safe, my ghosts' mutterings always in the background letting me know that they're still there.

Even now, I never feel lonely. I take comfort in their odd bangs and crashes and yells and overtaking laughs. It's familiar. At night, when I'm trying to fall asleep, their little echoes help me relax, and their comforting voices find their way into my dreams.