Health situation sorting itself out well. Just tired, so keeping tonight a little short and light.

Edgar rolled over but the banging downstairs kept any semblance of sleep annoyingly away. Then it stopped. Edgar waited for it to start again, but silence descended for five minutes and he was just about to drift into sleep when BANG BANG BANG BANG!

This was too much. Edgar leapt out of bed, stomped across the floor, out of the room and down the stairs to face whatever it was making the noise.

On the first floor he found the source of the noise: half a dozen contractors tearing out the wall between the kitchen and the family room.

“What in the hell are you doing?” he yelled. “Don’t you know someone is trying to sleep upstairs?”

The men kept working, oblivious to the outburst.

“You know they can’t hear you, right?” Izzy said quietly next to him.

“I mean… but they’re being so noisy!”

“And you know you can’t sleep, either, right?”

“Not with this racket!”

“Edgar,” she said gently, “You’ve been dead for ten years. You haven’t slept since you were alive!”

“It’s cruel that saying ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead.’ Turns out you can’t sleep when you’re dead!” He turned to the workers demolishing the wall, “Especially when you lot are raising such a ruckus!”

“Edgar… let’s go back upstairs,” Izzy said and tried to guide his elbow.

“Don’t they know I was up all night trying to scare the new tenants?”

“They don’t. They really don’t,” Izzy consoled as they started back up the stairs.

“No respect for a hardworking ghost these days. I tell you…”

“It’s hard being dead these days, isn’t it?”

Edgar stopped and looked at Izzy. “Can I go back to bed now?”

“Yes, Edgar. You can try,” she smiled.

“And keep the racket down!” he yelled down the stairs. “You’re loud enough to raise the dead!” The lights in the house flickered and the men stopped and looked at each other nervously.

“Oh, that’s good!”

“Thank you,” Edgar started but it ended up as a big yawn. “Good day, Izzy.”

“Good day, Edgar.”