How to Win Friends and Horrify People

1.

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I gazed down at my boss’s lifeless body and was gripped by a queasy feeling. Was it horror? Remorse? Arousal? No. It was something much worse: inadequacy.

This made no sense. I’d worked hard to ascend from middle management to a position of power by tirelessly mimicking my boss’s mannerisms and learning the business’s KPIs.

Then I bludgeoned him to death with a glazed ham.

Watching the blood pool into a vermillion corona around my boss’s head and gnawing on the cured pork that I’d been saving for this occasion since the company Christmas party, I worried I wouldn’t be able to pull off impersonating him to a 500-person company. Surely the employees would realize I’d hammed our boss—and worse, that I was wildly unqualified to replace him.

I realized that I was suffering from impostor syndrome.

I tried giving myself a pep talk about how I’d earned this. I’d put in my ten thousand hours, and I’d taken the initiative to reimagine a holiday entree as a skull-shattering cudgel. I hadn’t even leveraged a connection!

And my cover was airtight. My boss’s factory—ugh, I mean my factory—mass-produces Groucho Marx masks. I pretended I was trying to boost morale by wearing one to the office every day. People totally bought it.

But wearing an impostor costume while praying no one would see the phony masquerading beneath? It was a bit too on the nose. I thought about confessing, but the idea of reciting my accomplishments aloud made me cringe.

My impostor syndrome started getting better after I consulted my Smile File, where I save mementos of my proudest career moments. I found the old article, “Suspect Who Posed as a Security Guard and Stole Blue Whale from the Museum of Natural History Still at Large.” I had to hand it to myself: I was undeniably still at large. I was damn good at what I did. I just needed to get out of my own head.

These days, I don’t have impostor syndrome about being an impostor. I’ve stepped out of my dead boss’s shadow and into the light of my own achievements: first-degree homicide, identity theft, and a blue-whale replica in a storage unit.

2.

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When I first got this gig, I was all about the hustle: haunting the earthly plane for as many hours as I could. Every open door was an opportunity for me to slam it shut, every doll an invitation to make its head turn 360 degrees, every candelabra flame just waiting for me to snuff it out. There was no job too small and no abandoned, crumbling church too big.

But after 534 years, I’m tired. We phantasms don’t literally burn out, but we are at risk of dissipating into a fine, shimmering mist that hovers over a swamp and is never heard from again. I can’t let that happen to me. I’ve got to find ways to spend less time spooking the living—and more time enjoying death.

You might be thinking, “Aren’t ghosts unable to rest because of their unfinished business?” This is a misconception perpetuated by a toxic culture of internalized capitalism that many of us have carried into the afterlife. We’re scared to take time off from scaring people, so naturally everyone thinks we work 24-7. The reality is that ghosts need time off too.

Don’t get me wrong: I love what I do. Seeing the color drain from a child’s face as I jam on the wind chimes on a windless night. Watching a grandmother hide behind the couch as I knock a picture of a young man in a Navy uniform off the mantle. Hearing a teenager’s horny-yet-terrified scream as I strut my pearlescent stuff while the lights flicker on and off. It really is the best job.

But at the end of the night, the mortals I visit horrors upon are just my work family. I need time to gossip with my ghost fam in a susurration of moans. And I have hobbies too—I’m making a series of YouTube tutorials about how to apply makeup for those of us with empty eye sockets. It might seem silly, but it’s how I recharge.

That’s why, starting now, I’m going make sure my death doesn’t pass me by. I’m going to clock in at the witching hour, haunt the shit out of some people, then go into Do Not Disturb mode. And the next time you see me out of the corner of your eye, you’d better believe my eye-socket makeup is going to be fucking amazing.

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I awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find myself transformed in my bed into a giant insect—and ever since then, I’ve been loving life!

I’ll admit, I freaked out at first. Self-care was such a foreign concept to me. I thought of calling in sick, which I’d never done in five years of employment. But I wasn’t sick. I was thriving! I lay on my back, my spindly little legs dancing a celebratory jig in the air, and allowed the relief to wash over me. I couldn’t go in to work, and I couldn’t speak. So this was the “quiet quitting” everyone was talking about! My only regret was that I hadn’t metamorphosed sooner.

It was tricky to explain to my parents that I was on hiatus for good. The family system had come to rely on my labor, so they understandably didn’t love it when I stopped living for them and started living for me-time under the sofa. But eventually, they came around. My mom supported my new hobbies, like doing parkour on the walls and scuttling across the ceiling. My sister brought me rotted food scraps because that’s what my body was telling me I needed, and for once I wanted to listen to it.

It’s amazing how once you use your new extra legs to step into your own power, authority figures start respecting you more. For instance, the office manager who my boss sent to reprimand me took one look at my huge, gleaming carapace and ran screaming out of the house.

Now that I’m on permanent sabbatical, I have time to listen to my sister play the violin, spy on the boarders my parents found to earn passive income, and talk to the new housekeeper by hissing and rubbing my mandibles together. Plus, my love of spoiled leftovers has been a huge help in cutting down on the family’s food waste.

If all of this sounds too Kafkaesque to be true, I’ve got great news: A better existence is out there, just waiting for you to grab it by the antennae! Subscribe to my Bugstack and I’ll send you a preview of my six-week course, The Metamorphosis: How to Unleash Your Inner Cockroach. Get out of the rat race and start living your authentic insect life TODAY!