From the corner near the door, I watched them cavorting on the big double bed, the churned-up blanket and sheets forming hills and valleys against their naked bodies. In the small room, full of cluttering furniture, the light was dim, seeping in only from a thin crack in the drawn window curtains, but I could see better than a cat in the pitch of night. I listened carefully to her shrieks and moans, waiting for the precise moment to gain entry. I moved closer, all the while, observing her surrounding aura knowing that any moment now, it would break and peel away slightly from the crown of the head. They thrashed against each other, as though in a frenzy to melt together, to unite. And then it happened: her protective aura broke and I dived quickly into her body.

As always, the first feel of physical flesh is both a rude shock and an electrifying pleasure. I experienced her arousal and shared in her orgasm. But immediately after her excitement died down, her soul noticed an intruder and unceremoniously flung me out for the permanent inhabitant is generally much stronger than an intruder. But I was satisfied, at least for a while. I drifted away, through the walls and toward a large rain tree where I sat at a fork in the trunk, feeling slightly ashamed. Generally, I do not like invading the bodies of the living, but you'll have to understand, sometimes, the need in me is terrible.

My name is Ummi Hafilda Ali. Those of you with long memories may remember me from time when I was still flesh and blood. Those of you with even longer memories may remember me from the turn of the century. It was I who helped bring about the downfall of Deputy Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim with my false accusations of his sexual immorality. I accused him of a secret liaison with the wife of my brother, and I induced a man by the name of Azizan Abu Bakar to manufacture lies claiming that he had been sodomized by Anwar. The poor man was dragged through two kangaroo courts - one for inciting the police to act against us, and another for the crime of sodomy itself. Despite the utter lack of evidence, the puppet judges never gave him a chance. They sentenced him to a long spell in prison.

All this is of course history. I soon faded away from public view but, as the country descended deeper into the cesspool of corruption, injustice and human rights abuses under the unsanitary hands of the lying, hypocritical Mahathir, I became filled with remorse. I had no friends, my own family shunned me. I grew old and fat and ugly, I lived by myself and took holidays on my own.

It's not nice to be lonely in the dark. How I would lie in bed in the deep gloom of my room, thinking of my vanished youth and beauty and the lovely clothes I had once worn. But now? Oh why, why, were there no arms to hold me? I yearned desperately for love and affection but, because of my reputation, men kept their distance and, if they got closer, it was only to spit.

Despite being nominally a Muslim, I took to drink to help me through those lonely, lonely nights. I would drink myself into a stupor and wake up in the bluest of blues, with terrific hangovers. How I wished I were dead. And one desolate afternoon, sitting in my room with nothing to do except to brood, I felt so sad that I thought I might as well be dead! Yes, it seemed so utterly pointless to drag my pain-filled self through a couple more decades, so I decided there and then to take my own fate into my hands.

The decision was an easy one to make since I had already ceased to believe in God. All I wanted was the peace of final oblivion. And if there had to be a God, I was sure that He would be more forgiving than my own family.

First of all, I showered and washed my hair, then put on my favourite dress, a bright red one. I dried my hair under a hair-dryer, brushed it properly, even added a touch of make-up to improve my face. Not that it mattered in the least, but Ah Kow, the Chinaman who kept me supplied with drink had once told me that the souls of the dead wore whatever clothes they last had on. I think there was in me, a tiny irrational seed of "what if?"

Then, noticing how crumpled and messy the bed was, I stopped to tidy it, though there was something ghastly about this useless diligence. Then I left the apartment, as usual, careful to take the key. Not wishing to risk life in a wheelchair or become comatose in bed, I took the lift to the top floor of the high rise block where I lived. The world below was preparing for night and the last rays of the setting sun washed in gold all one side of tall flats standing in a row so that they threw long fuzzy shadows. The trees, the roads and the cars were tiny far below in the watery half-light and there was no one about. Such a quiet world, such a peaceful world, so unlike the turmoil in me. And I must go to meet that peace. I knew I must not hesitate, so curled my body forward and over the parapet.

Ah Kow was only partly correct. While it was true that after dissociating from my body, I found myself looking exactly like my previous self, down to the minutiae of my last worn clothes and accessories - much to my astonishment! - I soon found that these could be changed at will. One only had to think about the attire that one wanted, and it worked as long as the thought held. In the same way, I could change my hair, remove blemishes from my face or lose a few pounds. Indeed, I could construct any body I wished or none at all, simply floating about as pure mind. Usually, however, one assumes one's habitual shape.

But, all in all, death was very much an anti-climax. I still existed in the physical world, among the living, to whom I was of course, invisible. There was none of the oblivion that I had sought, and no other-worldly scenes of heaven or hell either. No one came to meet me, no one appeared to instruct me in this new life and where indeed, were my dead parents, grandparents and all those assorted departed relatives? I wished there was someone who could enlighten me. Anyway, it seemed crazy that I was dead but still alone. I prayed, but after a while, I thought, 'What's the use of praying when there's nobody to hear?' Isn't it strange that you know nothing more about God or the meaning of life after having crossed the great divide than when before?

The only difference was that I no longer had a material body to feed and I could float in the air, go through walls. Dogs would sometimes bark at me for it is true that they can see ghosts, but it seemed that I could not make the least impression on living persons. I still felt fundamentally the same, that is to say, sad and lonely. In fact, I was ten times more lonely after dying than when I was alive for then, you could at least walk up to people, touch them and speak to them. Here, all I could do was watch them - eating, sleeping, quarrelling, playing, making love because there just isn't anything else to do. I became attracted to the bedroom of strangers; I would sit in a corner and enviously watch couples giving each other the love that I so desperately desired but could not have. Often, I would go up to the man and try to embrace him, but my arms would always pass right through him.

I might have existed like this forever, but then I encountered other spirits in the same dimension as I. They looked like ordinary living human beings except that like me, they were not surrounded by the colourful auras that all the living are. They were difficult to communicate with as each seemed to be completely self-absorbed in whatever activity he or she continually engaged in. It was generally a futile sort of business: one woman, for instance, kept close to her living son, tirelessly giving advice which could not possibly reach him; another stuck to her one-time husband, observing his every single move. Others were stranger still. There were some who appeared to be sex maniacs for they followed living women at every opportunity into bathrooms; one ghost who had a penchant for smoking spent all his time vainly trying to snatch real cigarettes from mouths; some who must have been drug addicts once now stayed around living addicts while ex-alcoholics still tried to chased the bottle. It was as if each of us was hungry for something. I understood what Ah Kow had meant when he once told me about hungry ghosts.

It was while watching some thirsty ghosts that I discovered something amazing. For sometimes, when the flesh-and-blood drinker had had too much and was quite intoxicated, his enveloping aura broke and peeled off like an onion skin from the crown of the head. Then, quick as a flash, the waiting spirit charged into the body to sponge a while on alcoholic sensations. I made further observations and learnt that such a rupture in the protective field of the living can also occur at the height of sexual excitement. So I became a sponger, borrowing the bodies of women for a few moments at a time to feel the physical side of love. I really cannot help myself because it is the only thing I can find to ease my great loneliness, even if only for a few fleeting moments.

It is of course, a low class ghost who does this sort of thing and I feel great shame sometimes. I know there must be some other realms that the dead can go to, otherwise, the world would be full of ghosts. But I can't seem to escape the Earth plane. Maybe I'm earth-bound because of my sexual need, I don't know. This is surely a sad and stupid way to exist but the trouble is that you can't commit suicide again when you're already dead. Maybe this is my punishment for all my sins, especially against Anwar Ibrahim. Maybe one day I can find someone to help me but till then, I'll be wandering all over the place as a hungry ghost.