This is How We Stay Alive Horror Story

Six hundred and thirty days had passed since Jeff became a ghost, and things weren’t going well. Like the other ghosts, he stuck to a routine. He made his coffee black, no sugar, but it always spilled over the cup and dripped onto the floor. Steam faded into the humid morning, and sunlight caught the crystalline leaves of the plants left by the Preservation Society, scattering rainbows across the walls of the government flats.

Mornings were when Jeff missed Pris the most. She had given him some of his best years, and even after the Preservation Society took one percent of the world’s people, they still had each other. They woke up, disembodied and confused, surrounded by the alien crystals that had grown in their bed—ghosts in every sense.

At first, they were trapped by their new condition, learning how to live without bodies. Then, they became prisoners of the alien garden that grew in their bedroom. The garden anchored them, tying them to their home.

If they moved too far away, they started to fade. Leaving was almost impossible. They stumbled through their new lives as the world slowly adjusted to the presence of ghosts.

Jeff and Pris adapted. They found out that ghosts could still use electronic devices and reconnected with others like them. This was before the Government arrived with cleanup crews and pamphlets in four languages, explaining the few rights and many responsibilities of ghosts, along with a short guide called ‘This is how we stay alive’.

Now Pris was gone, and her laptop sat silent after years of use. In crowded Singapore, there was no space for flats just for ghosts. New laws let the Government take over these homes for others to use. Jeff was about to get a new roommate.

This is how we stay alive: We acknowledge that the Preservation Society has taken our bodies, and we will not get them back.

Hao Ming sat among the remains of another person’s life. He knew what to expect in a haunted apartment and what ghosts could do. They were almost impossible to see and could barely touch anything physical, but electronics were a different story.

Ghosts needed to stay close to the alien plants. In some places, panic broke out the morning after the Preservation Society’s visit. People attacked the plants with guns and tools, shattering their glass-like stems and leaves. As the gardens died, the sound of breaking pieces echoed like screams. Only later did people learn that ghosts and the plants depended on each other, and regret followed.

Hao Ming placed three portraits on a display cabinet, creating a miniature ancestral shrine. He hadn’t brought a pot for burning joss sticks yet, and the Preservation Society’s abduction of one percent of the world’s people had taken away the chance for a proper farewell. There were no bodies to bury or cremate—only the slow spread of alien plants and the presence of ghosts.

The Government gave Hao Ming this flat with little information about who lived there before. The bedroom garden was untouched, so the ghosts hadn’t been forced out. Not every garden still had ghosts, though it seemed all gardens began with them. Some ghosts simply faded away for reasons no one understood. Hao Ming wondered if that was what happened to his family.

Still, Hao Ming was sure a ghost remained in the flat. Every day, a steaming cup of coffee appeared under the machine, overflowing and leaving stains on the tiles. Netflix would change channels on its own, and the lights flickered on and off in sync with someone else’s routine.

After a week, Hao Ming still avoided the bedroom, but now he wandered in. The flower patch made soft sounds as it grew new crystal leaves and petals. Even years later, he could see the marks on the bed where the plants first appeared. The plants were the clearest sign of the disaster that changed the world.

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The Preservation Society carried out their abduction in just a few hours. Their technology was so advanced that governments were still analyzing data when the crisis hit, and the Society vanished before anyone understood what had happened. All they left behind were tears and a single message.

Everyone heard the message at least once in the chaotic days after the event. It was a data packet with dense encoding that still puzzled scientists. For a few hours, the message played on every channel, from old radios to isolated networks.

In the message, the Preservation Society announced they would take a sample of every sentient species they found, without asking or apologizing, but would leave a gift behind.

People remembered the message only in pieces, like a fading dream. No one could describe the aliens clearly; memories were vague and conflicting. The only thing everyone agreed on was the message itself. Scientists couldn’t analyze it—images showed only static, and the audio was just white noise.

Whatever the Preservation Society was, their values were nothing like humanity’s. There was no pattern to who was taken—rich and poor disappeared alike. The bed in Hao Ming’s new home reminded him of returning to his own silent apartment the night the Society struck, seeing beds covered in strange, glassy growths. Their beauty did nothing to calm his fear.

Eventually, the news explained that the plants generated a bioelectric field that allowed complex signals to persist for a long time. Commentators simplified the science and added some conspiracy theories, saying the alien gardens were haunted by those who had been taken. The aliens might have been surprised to learn that their gift of immortality was first met with fear, confusion, and, soon after, violence.

Then, the ghosts began to talk. Haltingly, at first, as they relearned how to interact with the world. Each ghost had their own journey back to the world of the living. Some never made it. Hao Ming’s original home remained frustratingly silent, more like a tomb than a home.

He placed offerings for his family, hoping to draw them back to the world. But doubt crept in, and more than once he considered destroying the plants growing where his family had slept. Instead, he moved out, with his only option being another empty flat—another modern tomb.

Now, Hao Ming stood over another person’s bed, once again tempted to act out. Instead, he went to the bedside table, turned the wedding portrait face down, and left the room.

This is how we stay alive: If we are not anchored, we will drift free.

Panic is a physical reaction—a rush of chemicals that tightens muscles, speeds up breathing, and knots the stomach. Ghosts don’t get these responses. Jeff only felt a vague sense of dread as a stranger neared the garden, looking ready to destroy. At the last moment, the stranger turned away and moved Jeff’s wedding photo to the side. Jeff couldn’t even sigh in relief, but he still felt some tension fade.

Jeff followed the new tenant to the living room and stopped with him at the small memorial for the man’s family. Each portrait had a plaque with a year Jeff recognized. At least he and his new roommate had something in common.

It was not possible for Jeff to right his wedding picture, even if he felt his existence solidify the nearer he was to the garden. Once, he could have traced where he and Pris had lain on their last night from the outline of the leaves, in the curl of stems over the bedsheets.

Now the plants had taken over, humming softly, and the last physical reminder of Pris was gone. All Jeff had left was the memory of her gentle smile, telling him she had to go first, and he could follow when he was ready. He couldn’t have stopped her as she left their flat, stepping away from the garden and fading away.

They had argued about it before, watching news reports about disappearing ghosts. They spent time on forums for the newly disembodied and even did some gig work transcribing speech to text until those jobs disappeared.

Ghosts faced three possible fates. The gardens could be destroyed—they were tough but not unbreakable. They didn’t burn easily, but shattered like glass. People said the plants screamed when attacked, and even distant gardens reacted with distress. No one knew exactly what happened to ghosts during these attacks, except that they didn’t survive.

Second, the gardens’ gift wasn’t permanent. Like all living things, they needed care. Careful observation showed which gardens thrived and which withered, along with their ghosts.

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Governments, organizations, and religions everywhere reduced the mysteries to simple rules like the one Jeff and Pris received. The gardens were fed by a ghost’s attachment to the world. Many stories told of ghosts who faded even when close to their gardens, and their gardens soon died too.

A third option was rumored on online ghost forums. A ghost could leave their garden. Nearby gardens might keep them going for a while. Still, eventually they would reach the edge of the gardens’ support, whether just outside their door or far from home.

Beyond that point was dissolution. Many ghosts speculated that leaving the gardens wasn’t the end. Pris fully believed these theories, thinking the Preservation Society gave humanity the gardens as just a first step.

Jeff and Pris argued more and more, sometimes shouting at each other. They couldn’t fight physically—ghosts couldn’t touch anything, not even each other. Words weren’t enough to stop Pris, and Jeff’s last memory of her was watching her fade away as she left their flat, disappearing like dust in the morning air.

After Pris left, Jeff struggled to stay connected to the garden. He threw himself into daily routines just to keep existing. Grief usually has a physical side, but Jeff felt guilty that his mourning didn’t come with a tight throat or tears.

Now, he found himself staring at the sleeping form of the intrusive tenant. He could not be perceived by the other man, but there were ways of making his presence felt, at least on anything electronic his tenant used. Some ghosts became malicious digital tricksters, gaining access to social media accounts and bank accounts, and worse. They were impossible to evict and rendered their homes near uninhabitable.

Jeff could have done any of those things to the new tenant, but he chose not to. Instead, he left Pris’s photograph on the man’s computer, with her birth and death dates below. The death date marked her second passing—the day she left, with the garden singing in the background.

Some days, Hao Ming couldn’t even tell that his new home was haunted. There were terms of the shared rental, fixtures he couldn’t move, and rooms he couldn’t change. He respected the ritual of morning coffee, even emptying and washing the cups after the coffee had grown cold. Industrial bleach returned the kitchen tiles to their previous insipid off-white.

One morning, Hao Ming found a photo of a former occupant on his computer. The date stood out. The previous residents were ghosts, but their deaths were much more recent.

Pricked by his conscience, Hao Ming slunk into the bedroom with the gait of a dog returning to the scene of a stolen treat or mangled cushion. He set the picture upright again by the bedside. The plants seemed to tinkle in appreciation.

Hao Ming knew there were ways to contact ghosts, but his family never learned to communicate through electronics. His mother couldn’t even use WhatsApp when she was alive. His wife and son were comfortable with technology, which made their silence even harder to bear. In this new flat, though, the ghosts made themselves known by constantly updating the photo on his computer.

The flat’s features were slowly changing, showing traces of two lives at once. The bedroom stayed the same. Hao Ming swapped the living room couch for a pullout and used the study as his office. The woman’s date of death was strange—after the Preservation Society’s visit. He remembered the lush garden on the bed and realized the wife had died later. Hao Ming hesitated, then reached out to the ghost through his keyboard.

Your wife, how did she go? Did she fade?

No, she left.

Ghosts can’t leave their gardens.

That’s right. She believed the gardens were just a stepping stone.

What do you believe?

I’m still here, aren’t I? What happened to your family?

I don’t know. They never reached out to me. They could be there, they could be gone.

But you left.

Yes, I did.

Then we have something in common, Hao Ming.

The first leaf fell on a stormy morning, before Jeff finished his daily routine. The garden’s leaves grew in Fibonacci spirals, their see-through surfaces laced with veins that formed unusual patterns. When the leaf landed on the bed sheet, it broke into identical pieces.

Jeff couldn’t touch the broken leaf, but when his finger got close, he felt a faint tingle. The other leaves seemed to sigh. He had read about gardens withering before, but never thought it would happen to him.

The nearby gardens seemed aware; they gave off a low hum that people couldn’t hear, but it bothered pets and made ghosts uneasy, like nails scraping a chalkboard, as if mourning what was coming.

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Before she left, Pris’s research became more and more unusual. She said the gardens were just the beginning of the gift from the Preservation Society, and that the instructions were hidden in the message. This led to another argument. Pris insisted that the world’s most popular piece of media had hidden layers that even top scientists and conspiracy theorists hadn’t figured out.

“Everybody in the world has heard the message,” he’d said to her.

“Only the message they’ve chosen to hear,” she answered.

How long was the message for you, Hao Ming?

Two minutes and fifty-four seconds.

Mine was three minutes and fifteen.

Did Pris ever ask you about the difference?

She would have said I was not ready.

What does it say? The rest of the message?

That the gardens weren’t the true gift. That we have to take the first step.

No ghost has ever come back from leaving a garden.

Pris once told me that the largest living organism on Earth wasn’t a whale or a tree. It was a fungus, growing under a forest, a massive network of mycelial cells, big as a city.

Like the —

Each garden knows what’s happening to the other gardens. All other gardens. Not just here. Everywhere.

Even the ones back in my home?

Even those. The garden is still there, isn’t it? There’s a chance that your family is there.

They were quiet for years, Jeff.

Maybe your home has the same thing Pris was looking for beyond the gardens, what the Preservation Society left in their message.

What’s that?

Faith.

This is how we stay alive: We never leave our gardens.

Hao Ming left that morning because Jeff urged him to go. Hao Ming had a family to return to, if they were still there. Jeff’s words didn’t make it easier. He couldn’t explain how he knew that people he’d never met were still waiting by their garden, or how their own garden had told him so.

That morning, the light in his bedroom was especially bright, as if his garden already understood. Fragments of rainbows moved across the walls and followed him into the living room. Hao Ming had left the front door open. Jeff wanted to look outside, and the sunlight beyond the door seemed brighter than ever.

No one knew what lay beyond the gardens’ safety. The first part of the message taught the world about the Preservation Society’s gift: the gardens gave life beyond the body. But the second part, which only a few heard and even fewer followed, offered something else. It gave a reason and a promise.

The Preservation Society lived up to their name; they preserved. The first chosen ones became ghosts, and even fewer of those ghosts managed to move on. Maybe the message was more than just information that people couldn’t fully understand.

Pris believed the second part of the message was a test of faith. Jeff disagreed. He thought the message itself chose who was ready to hear it all, those prepared to take the next step. Jeff felt his garden’s familiar pull, keeping him tied to the life he had known for so long.

As he got closer to the doorway, he felt himself stretching, pulled tight like a sheet fastened to his garden. He had always feared that the garden was the only thing keeping him alive. But this time, he was drawn by the promise of something more.

So he stepped forward, left the garden, and began the rest of his life.