Get out, get out, get out!

She screamed, wailing until the sound hurt her ears, leaving them ringing. They didn't hear - couldn't hear - and it hurt like a shard of glass in her heart. They were invading her space, taking her possessions and desecrating the only thing she had left. The ghost waved her arms in their faces, spitting and screeching to get their attention, but they didn't see her - couldn't see her. She grabbed at the jewelery box on the dresser they were picking through, trying to move it even an inch, but she only managed to pick up the ghostly after-image of the little red box. Her hand opened of its own will, dropping it in a puff of ethereal smoke.

Why can't you hear me, disgusting creatures? Why can't you see me?

They looked like aliens in their diving suits, masks glowing acid green in her ghostly light. They shone torches into every insignificant corner of the wreckage, tiny pools of light in an underwater graveyard. It sickened her, the careless abandon with which they searched, certain they would come across something worthwhile. This insistence baffled her, for what was there to find in a place such as this? With every passing day there was more rust and decay, aquatic plants and marine life making her broken husk of a home theirs to share.

I died here, it should be mine, all mine.

It was a razor blade of recollection, cutting into her when her back was turned. Even after all these decades she wasn't used to the pain. The ghost lived the last moments of her life in perpetuity - everything reminded her of what happened. The chair, overturned from a particularly vicious wave; the weed-covered earrings she had worn on her last night among the living; the bones on the floor, her flesh long since decomposed. Nothing was safe, no place sacred.

This is my home.

It was a no man's land under constant invasion by curiosity, a never-ending siege that left her weak and frustrated. Nowhere was free from their grabbing hands, not even the deepest, darkest places of the wreckage. Those inky shadows were where she often hid, curled up in a ball just under the planks of the deck. Sometimes she dreamed - as much as a ghost could dream - of when things were clean and dry and noisy. She missed the people, their laughter and conversation. The cigarette smoke, the smells from the galley drifting along the corridor...

Why must I be so alone? Why are there not other ghosts?

In those times she thought she felt a tear drift down her cheek, mixing with the darker water of the ocean, but when she looked for the soft green light, it was gone.