The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly! The Dame Blocking the Farmplace

Previously on The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

My name is Dick Dangerly, I’m a Private Eye in the bloody, beating heart of Los Angeles San Francisco in the 1940s or maybe it’s still 1939 I’m really not sure. What I am sure about: the criminals are dangerous, the dames are leggy, and I am drunk all of the time.

I have finally made it to the San Francisco Chronicle. There’s a lot of newspaper offices in this city – which I’ve apparently lived in my entire life – and I had to crack the case of which one was the right one. The last one was the weirdest. It was filled with people who kept screaming something about ‘not a newspaper’ and ‘this is a restaurant’ and ‘get your hand out of the crab legs.’ I’ll have to subscribe, find out what sort of shady nonsense they’re printing. Probably some commie bullshit. The crab legs were just okay.

I take a sip from my flask – the last sip – as I stare at the sign over the door. Finally, after really squinting and sounding out the words, I ask a passing child if I’m in the right place. And by gum, I am. This is show time. The Big Show. The Big Stage. The Big…Apple? No, that’s Chicago. This is the moment Dick Dangerly was made for. I make my way into the rotating door, and after a few times around, I’m in. My vertigo immediately flares up and the joint is bobbing around me like…uh…like that bird…you know. You know. That bird? The one with the wings? It pecks at feed and shit. You know. Finally, my vertigo subsides and I’m able to pick myself up off the floor with the help of the wall and another wall.

It’s quiet. Too quiet. All I see is an empty lobby and a secretary sitting behind her desk, staring at me. This can’t be right. This is supposed to be a major newspaper! With sudden realization, I gasp. Not only has there been a murder, there’s been a cover up. The whole paper has been dismantled and stolen away in the dead of night! Now more determined than ever, I storm over to the secretary, weaving back and forth through the lobby and only managing to walk into a chair and two tables and another chair and a large load-bearing pillar. If these people think basic construction will stop me, they are dearly mistaken.

“You there!” I yell, grabbing the desk so it doesn’t fly away from me and swallowing down vomit. “There has been a flimflam here, yes, a flimflam!”

Despite my best finger wagging, the secretary doesn’t seem to understand the danger she’s in. She stares at me blankly. My God, is she in on it?

“We can’t allow the homeless in the lobby. If you want a warm place to stay there’s a shelter across the street.”

“Dame, I have a place to sleep, and it’s a lot nicer than this pile of baloney.” I hate to use harsh words with the dame but she can’t insult me like this. Also, I have to cover up the fact that I can’t remember where my office or my apartment is. Wait, do I even have an apartment separate from my office? I can picture sleeping on a couch, but I can picture sleeping on a lot of couches. None of them feel like mine. At least one was definitely in a ladies’ room. Maybe Ramsbottom knows.

“My name is Dick Dangerly. I’m a private eye. All my life, things have been rough. Really rough. My best friend Seth, best friends since we were children all the way back in wherever it was I grew up, he died slipping off the roof of a cannery while he was trying to rob it and falling into a Dumpster filled with discarded electric eel carcasses. That’s how rough my life has been.”

She doesn’t look impressed. It’s entirely possible I’ve slurred my way through the entire speech and she didn’t understand it. I was going to have to try it again.

“Eels!”

“Mrs. Pettiford said you’d be coming by. She also said you’d be…like this. You can take the elevator up to the bullpen.”

That was the final straw. This little lady wasn’t going to obstruct the strong, steel arm of justice for any longer. I bend down over the desk, getting in her face until she can smell the booze off my breath. It smells like justice.

“Listen, little lady! You aren’t going to bobstruct the streel, song arm of justish for noooooo longer. I ain’t here looking to muck around with cows and sheep and goats and pigs and those barking sheep or chickens! Chickens are the ones that bob their head! That’s what I was…anyway. You tell me where I can find where the newspaper people all get together to make those word pies, and you tell me now.”

Not even a little bit intimidated. This woman is strong. Perhaps leggy, I’m not sure, she’s sitting down. Perhaps she would like a job. I am in need of a new secretary.

But now is not the time! I need answers.

“Upstairs. Take the elevator.”

“Thank you,” I say. Was that so hard? How could the common people be so against helping the fight for justice?

It takes a while but I eventually find the elevator, cleverly hidden in the wall. I hit a lot of buttons, and as I wait I pull my backup flask and start drinking that sweet, sweet hooch. The elevator takes so long I finish my backup flash. Shit. Now I’m going into a potential combat zone with only three flasks hidden on my person. It was enough to make a regular person sweat, but I was not a regular person and I knew when I started to sweat it meant I had to drink more.

I get into the elevator and as the doors close I realize the secretary has beaten me again! I have no idea which floor to go to. There are words next to the numbers but reading isn’t my best skill when I’m sober and I haven’t been sober since the Krauts marched into Antietam. Screaming wildly that I will find the secretary someday, and she will face some sort of consequences to be determined, I press all the buttons. It may take a while, but I will find these reporters and make them report on their own faces meeting my fist. I pull out my secondary backup flask. At the rate this is going, I’ll be up to my emergency handle of tequila by the time I find whatever it is I’m looking for. Crab legs, maybe.

Will Dick Dangerly find what he’s looking for? Even if he does, will he remember that’s what he’s looking for? And how does he manage to hide an entire handle of tequila on his person? Tune in next time for more Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly! The Dame With the Thing on Her Face

Previously on The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

My name is Dick Dangerly, I’m a Private Eye in the bloody, beating heart of Los Angeles in the 1940s or maybe it’s still 1939 I’m really not sure. What am I sure about: the criminals are dangerous, the dames are leggy, and I am drunk all of the time.

I’m staring at the phone, trying to decide if it’s ringing or not, when a dame walks in. A leggy dame. Wearing pantyhose, meaning my letters to the mayor haven’t been reaching him.

“Are you the famous private eye Dick Dangerly?” she asks from behind her…I don’t know what the word is for what she is wearing. It’s, like, one of those hats that has a bit of something see through covering her face. A cowl? A shawl? I make a mental note for my secretary to subscribe me to more women’s magazines. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.

“I am, and you’re out of luck, dollface,” I say, waving my hands and only managing to knock over that stupid fucking car that came from nowhere, seriously where did it come from? “I filled the secretary position. Wait. I think I did. Camille!”

“It’s Estelle!” comes through the door.

“Ramsbottom!”

Once I stop snickering, the dame in front of me makes a noise that she wants to speak, which is good because I have completely forgotten she’s there.

“I don’t need a job, Mr. Dangerly, I need a detective. Can I count on you?” She pulls a handkerchief from the purse she must have pulled from thin air. Seriously, where do these women keep these purses? Anyway, she dabs some part of her face under the thingy she’s wearing and I shoot up.

“Are you sick? Are you sick? You have to tell me if you’re sick, I CANNOT get sick, my immune system has been systematically destroyed, so you have to tell me if you’re sick!” I stumble around until I find my chair. Shooting up was a mistake, as my vertigo is now spinning the room around me like some giant thing that spins around a person. What’s that game people play in casinos? I make a mental note for my secretary to subscribe me to more casino magazines. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.

“I’m not sick! I’m grieving,” she says. “Someone killed my husband, Mr. Dangerly, and I need you to find out who.”

I stare at the general area her face should be, and come to a startling conclusion. There’s only one of her, sort of, and my head is starting to pound. Wasn’t there a glass of something on my desk? Oh, shit, I knocked it over along with that stupid toy car. The bottle, too. Well, if this isn’t just the way to start a fucking Tuesday morning. Now, I have to go all the way across the office to where the bottles are and figure out which one is scotch, and-

“Mr. Dangerly?”

“Oh, fuck!” I say, as I clutch my chest and also the bookshelf on the wall to keep from toppling over. “Don’t sneak up on me like that, dame. There could be consequences next time. Brain consequences. I always keep my gun close to my heart.”

I pat my chest but there’s nothing there. Just my shirt and my suspenders. Where the fuck is my jacket? No, wait…where the fuck is my gun?

“I didn’t sneak up on you, we were in the middle of a conversation.”

Is it tucked in my belt? I try looking to see if it’s there and end up chasing my tail for a while. Christ, I need a drink. Where’s my glass of scotch?

“Estelle!”

“Find your own damn scotch!”

“Mr. Dangerly!”

“There’s an awful lot of YELLING,” I yell. Everyone shuts up. There is silence. Except for the phone, which may or may not be ringing. I find the scotch and carefully bring the bottle back to my desk. My heart is still doing that thing where it beats really fucking hard every two or three beats, but usually a bunch of scotch makes that stop.

“Now, Miss Dollface Dame,” I say after I finally have a sip of that sweet, sweet fire water. Also, it turns out I grabbed gin.

“My name is Alice Pettiford.”

She pauses, and I begin to sense that there’s something I should know. The way she’s looking at me, yeah, there’s definitely something I should know.

“Did…we…you know…”

I make a series of hand gestures that may or may not have been obscene. I’m going to be honest with you, if I’m not looking at a particular body part I have no idea what it’s doing at any given moment.

“My husband is Alexander Pettiford.”

Another pause. “Does he know that we…”

Oh, I finally made an obscene one. Her face is aghast, so I guess we weren’t on the same rowing team in college.

“He was the editor in chief of the San Francisco Chronicle!”

I shrug and try to put more scotch in my mouth. “So? We live in Los Angeles.” Fuck, I forgot this was gin.

“Mr. Dangerly…This is San Francisco. Do you…do you not know that you live in San Francisco?”

“Know? Do I know? What do I know? What I know is that this city is violent, and dark, and filled with thugs and mugs and pugs…those are those dogs with the stupid mashed in faces, right? Mental note to get my secretary to subscribe me to more dog magazines. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.”

“Mr. Dangerly?”

“You know what, Mrs. Dollface. I am going to take your case. I’m going to find the man who did you wrong. First, I’m going to find my gun.”

“I think I see it sitting on the back of the toilet in your bathroom there.”

She was right. Too right. I was going to have to keep my eye on Mrs. Newspaper Dollface here. She could be the key to unraveling this whole case. First, though, I was going to take a leak.

Will Dick Dangerly remember to close the door before he unzips his pants? Will he remember to pick up his gun when finishes? Will he find the man who did Mrs. Newspaper Dollface wrong? Tune in next time for more Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

The Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

My name is Dick Dangerly, I’m a Private Eye in the bloody, beating heart of Los Angeles in the 1940s or maybe it’s still 1939 I’m really not sure. What am I sure about: the criminals are dangerous, the dames are leggy, and I am drunk all of the time.

I’m sitting behind my desk with my legs up, trilby hat cocked on my head, the light is coming in from the blinds repeating black and white on my face. It makes me look dark and mysterious but is also destroying my sense of balance and I’m, like, ninety percent sure when I try to bring my legs down I’m just going to tip over. My legs have fallen asleep. Completely numb and cold. I have no idea how long I’ve been like this. I’m staring at the three clock faces spinning around each other and trying to figure out what time it is and when I have gotten two more clocks when she walks in.

She’s a dame, so she’s leggy. Okay, full disclosure, I’ve never actually known what leggy means. Just that someone has legs, right? So aren’t we all leggy? Anyway, this dame has legs. They are in pantyhose, which is the style. After accepting, and then afterwards losing, a bet with an old buddy of mine named Seth who was eventually eaten to death by raccoons, I can tell you first-hand pantyhose are the fucking worst. They’re itchy and they make my leg hair look weird.

Oh, shit, she’s looking at me funny. That’s the same look my wife used to give me when I fell asleep on the can. Dames. They’re all the same. How long has she been here, anyway? I never did figure out what time it is.

“Are you the famous private eye Dick Dangerly?” she asks, her voice as smooth as…as…I’m too drunk for similes. Soap?

I throw her a debonair smile. “That depends-”

I try to get my legs off the desk but I’ve forgotten they’re asleep and that I’m incredibly drunk. The effort to pick up my legs doesn’t move them but does give me insane vertigo. The chair spins beneath me and dumps me on the floor, my legs are still on the desk, and the violent motion makes me start puking, just, fucking everywhere. Jesus, is that corn? When did I eat corn?

When the bile urps finally stop I bounce back up to my feet, to show the leggy dame that I am ready to take on her case no matter how dangerous, no matter-

My legs are still completely numb and I topple over the front of the desk, gashing my head on the little metal car that just showed up on my desk one day, falling over to the floor. I begin puking again. More corn, where is all this corn coming from? Finally I stop puking. I wipe the bile from my face with my sleeve. I should probably stand up, but my legs are still completely numb. Instead, I pick up my right leg and cross it over my left leg, looking very cool doing it. This is how I discover my letter opener is lodged into my left thigh. I leave it, to show how I can face danger. And pain. Oh, God, so much pain.

“I’m Dick Dangerly,” I say, ignoring the fact I bit my tongue. “Private eye. Private dick. Dick for hire. No, scratch that last one. I am a dick, and I am Dick, and I am for hire, but the other way doesn’t sound right. You know what I mean?”

“Yes. My-”

“You picking up what I’m putting down?”

“I said yes, my name-”

“You grooving on this truth juice?”

“Okay, you made that one up.”

“I’m Dick Dangerly! I can coin aphorisms if I want.”

“Those weren’t aphorisms.”

“Who are you, the epherimism police?”

I’ve got her now. No one can escape the wit and word vomit of Dick Dangerly. If I can’t win an argument with a dame, I just wear ‘em down.

“No, I’ve been trying to tell you. My name is Estelle Ramsbottom, and-”

She keeps talking to me, telling me about the case she needs me to work, the bad guys she needs me to brain in the head with the butt of my pistol, the man doing her wrong, who I also plan to brain with the butt of my pistol, but I can’t pay attention to any of it because I’m trying very, very hard not to laugh at Ramsbottom.

“What do you say, Dick Dangerly?”

“Miss…Ramsbottom…” I only let out two or three minor chuckles, a win in my book. “Of course I’m going to take your case. Just point me in the direction of the guy who did you wrong and I’ll make sure he pays consequences. Brain consequences.”

The dame is upset now. I must have scared her with my raging masculinity.

“That’s not what I said at all, Mr. Dangerly. I’m trying to apply for the job.”

I stare at her.

“The job listed in the help wanted ads?”

Nope, nothing.

“The secretary position?”

I point at one of her. “You fool! You’ve given it all away! I already have a secretary! Where is Camille anyway?”

Miss Ramsbottom…

Ah, shit. Okay, don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh, think of something unfunny. Baseball. Nuns. Nuns playing baseball. Shit, that’s hilarious. Okay, I’m going to have to call her Estelle or I’m never going to get anything done. Estelle reaches into a purse I didn’t notice she had until right this second and pulls out a piece of newspaper.

“‘Wanted: New secretary for the famous private eye Dick Dangerly. Last secretary stole a bunch of my Monday – I think you mean money – and ran off with my bitch of a wife. Need new secretary who doesn’t like stealing.’ There’s a lot of spelling errors.”

That’s right! How could I have forgotten! Now it makes sense. All those times I’d called for Camille and gotten no response. I just thought I had forgotten her birthday. Dames hate it when you forget their birthday. Or forget to pay them for weeks on end.

“You’re hired! Wait, you don’t like stealing, right?”

“No.”

“You’re hired! You can start right away. What do you know about flesh wounds?”

The dame Estelle sighs valiantly, ready to start her new daring career as the secretary to the famous private eye Dick Dangerly, a career that will be filled with danger, and guns, and nickel shot nights, and-

My legs start coming back to life with those painful little shocks and I start screaming. All in a day for Dick Dangerly.

Does Estelle actually know how to treat a flesh wound? Will Dick Dangerly ever find a new case? How many nickel shots will Dick Dangerly be able to get before the barman cuts him this time? Tune in next time for more Adventures of…Dick Dangerly!

Sunshine

Colors

There once was a little village in a little valley next to a dark wood. One sunny day a baby was born to a sweet young couple who lived in a thatched house in the middle of the village. The baby was a little girl, mostly normal. She had ten fingers and ten toes and wiggled them all as she cried, distraught about being brought from the nothing place to the something place as all babies are. Mother and Father, all wrapped up in pale yellow sheets stained red, fussed over the baby. Smoothed her corn silk hair. Muttered the things all Mothers and Fathers mutter. Welcome to the world, little one. It’s big but I will teach you. It’s scary but we’ll protect you. We’re so glad to have you.

Until the baby’s cries faded, and the peace brought from the mutterings cooled her temper, and she finally opened her eyes. Father swore like he was back in the navy. Mother fainted away. For the baby was mostly normal, but not entirely.

The baby had yellow eyes.

Mother and Father brought the baby to the priest that night, covering her in that same bloodied yellow sheet and walking quietly, lest they bring attention. The priest in his little church at the edge of the village closest to the valley lit a golden candle and beckoned them in. He looked gravely down at the baby in his hands, now calm and content. After all, she had heard her Mother and Father’s words.

“Yellow eyes are a sign of the devil,” the priest said in a soft voice.

Father licked his lips. “Should we…should we…dispose…of it?” In his mind, they could always make more. Mother only sat, eyes wide, breathing shallow.

The priest shook his head. “That would be a sin, too. It could be a trick of the devil, to get us to kill an innocent. We must watch the child. The color may fade. Or the devil might never lay claim to her. Take her home. Care for her. But watch her.”

So Mother and Father did. They were better at two of the instructions than one. They brought her home. They watched her. But never again did they really care for her.

They named her Sunshine, as though naming her for the brightest thing could keep away the darkness. They dressed her in yellow dresses, as though the dress might distract from the eyes. They moved to the edge of the village and tried to hide her.

The idea of breastfeeding a possible agent of the devil made Mother’s stomach watery, so Sunshine was given cow’s milk and lemons. She would cry. And Mother and Father would say, ‘the child doesn’t like food, she cries just to vex us,’ and would believe it to be the devil.

Mother and Father did have more children, all with blue eyes. They favored these children. They fed them sweets and cream and helped them grow strong. These children grew up and noticed how Sunshine was treated, because children always notice, and they treated her the same way. They never played with her. They sometimes ran from her. And Mother and Father would say, ‘children are gifted with the holy sight, they must know what she is,’ and they would believe it to be the devil.

They sent her to school, as they wanted her to leave their little thatched house, and the children and even Teacher were all afraid. Teacher sat her in the back so she wouldn’t have to look in those yellow eyes, and when the other children all got honey and butter with their biscuits, Sunshine was made to wait and there was none left and she would eat her biscuit plain. And Teacher would say, ‘no child would enjoy a plain biscuit,’ and she would believe it was the devil.

Sunshine grew up into a lonely young woman. The whole village was against her, for something she couldn’t control. When she was alone, she would look at her reflection and think she rather liked the way she looked. It was like the sun burst forth from her, and all Sunshine saw was goodness. But she knew if she said it aloud her Mother and Father would think, ‘proper young women shouldn’t have such vanity, especially with something so ugly,’ and they would believe it was the devil.

One day, when Sunshine was just sixteen, she sat all alone, outside the edge of the village, in a field of daisies and daffodils. She sat in the hot sun and made flower chains and hummed along with the bumblebees. It was here other girls from school found her. They stood over her, so close she couldn’t stand up.

“Our Mothers and Fathers told us yellow eyes are the sign of the devil,” they said.

Sunshine shook her head. “I don’t know the devil, I’ve never met him.”

“Teacher says you do. And Priest. They say if your eyes are still yellow after all this time then you meet him at night, in the wood.”

“I don’t.”

“An agent of the devil would lie.”

They began to pull her flaxen hair, tear her lemon-yellow dress, and every time she tried to stand they would push her back down into the daisies and daffodils. She looked across the field and saw her home, saw Father watching, and then saw Father turn and leave. Soon, the girls tired, and Sunshine was able to get away, to run, and she ran all the way into the dark forest, knowing it was the one place the girls would not follow. She ran until she tripped on an upturned root and then sat in the mud, crying and crying from those yellow eyes.

“Why is such a pretty thing crying in the dark and the mud?” she heard a voice ask.

Sunshine looked up and after a bit of searching found a young man some feet away. His clothes were dark, and blended with the forest behind him.

He had yellow eyes.

Sunshine sniffled. “Are you the devil? Or are you another tormented just for having eyes the color of the sun?”

The young man held out his hands. “I could confess. But an agent of the devil would lie, so how would you know the truth?”

She stood up, brushing the mud off her dress. “I don’t want to play games. I want to be alone.”

“Is that what you really want? To be alone? You’ve been alone all your life, haven’t you? And for what? For yellow eyes? The sign of the devil?”

“But I don’t know him, I swear it!” she cried, pulling on her hair and streaking it with mud.

“Would you like to?”

Sunshine stared at the man, and began to wonder if she was seeing a man at all. It seemed she wasn’t, but it was entirely hard to tell in the darkness of the wood.

“It seems to me,” the man said. “You’re in quite the pickle. These people, they treat you like you’re a witch. They outcast you for it. But you don’t have any actual power to do anything about it.”

“And if I had…power…what would I do with it?” Sunshine asked, her voice low.

“Anything you want with it!” the man raised his hands. “Ignore them. Leave and go somewhere else. Or maybe show them what a real agent of the devil is capable of.”

Sunshine thought about Mother and Father. About Teacher and Priest. About the other children. Had any of them ever helped her? What was she to do when she grew older? It was almost the time when daughters married and left their home, yet there had been no suitors, not even flirts.

“Answer me this one thing: Was I born an agent of the devil?”

The man sighed. “No. You were born with a curious pattern of pigment in the iris of your eyes. You were not born of the devil. Only made.”

Sunshine followed the man, then, knowing it could have been a lie but feeling it wasn’t. They walked deeper into the dark forest, and as they did voices began to mutter to her through the branches.

Welcome to the world, little one. It’s big but we will teach you. It’s scary, but not as scary as you will be.

We’re so glad to have you.

Little Bits of Magic

A House by the Ocean

A soft knock on the door broke Loretta from her reverie, followed by the sound of the doorknob turning. She sniffled, and then relief hit her as the door shook in the frame. She had forgotten she had locked it.

“Loretta?” It was the woman, the one with all the lies. ‘Traveled through time,’ indeed. This was her home, and her time, and the woman was just stark raving mad as evidenced by her clothes.

Except Loretta couldn’t believe it anymore, no matter how much she tried. The room she was sitting in was the same shape as her room, and that’s where the similarities ended. Her bed with the canopy and the curtains were gone, replaced with something much more modest. This was not her bedding either, the blankets that had cradled her to sleep on the hardest nights replaced with something far too blue. A chest of drawers she had never seen before sat against one wall, filled with the kind of clothes the woman had been wearing. Loretta couldn’t find a single dress, or skirt, or bloomer. Nothing in this room was hers.

And then, there were the bits of magic.

She didn’t know how else to describe them. There was the clock on the little table next to the bed. She only recognized it for a clock as the numbers ticked steadily forward. But the clock itself was a little black box, and the numbers on the front of it were blue. And they glowed. Listening to it, Loretta could hear no mechanism turning inside. Next to the magical clock was a magical lamp – it turned on and off with a click, and Loretta could find no oil or candle. The thin glass ball had the tiniest piece of wire in the middle, and somehow that tiny piece of wire gave off light.

Then there was the black mirror sitting on the chest of drawers. Loretta could see herself reflected in it, but not very well. She didn’t think it was a mirror, then, but she couldn’t find another explanation. Next to the magical lamp and clock she had found what could be a magic wand, and written on the top of the wand was the same word on the bottom of the mirror: Panascope. They must be related, but if anyone thought Loretta was going to touch some magic she didn’t understand they were crazier than Ramona.

Of course, if Ramona was right, and she had been thrust into the future, then she wasn’t surrounded by magic. Only things that hadn’t been invented yet.

Another knock. “Loretta? Are you in there?”

Loretta cleared her throat. “Yes. I’m…I will be staying in my room today. I asked your housemaid to bring me my breakfast.”

“That wasn’t my housemaid, that was my daughter,” Ramona called through the door. “And we don’t eat in our rooms in this house. If you want breakfast you have to come down. You must be hungry.”

Loretta’s stomach rumbled and she put a hand over it, as though she could muffle the sound.

“I’m sorry, this is a lot for me. You understand. Please, when your housemaid arrives, have her-”

“Okay, I’m not doing this.”

There was some scuffling from the other side of the door, then the doorknob made a single pop. Ramona turned the knob and entered the room. She was holding a small, thin piece of metal in one hand.

“These locks are really just for show,” Ramona said. She reached up and put the metal back on top of the doorframe. “And the key is up there, you know, if you ever need it.”

The two women stared at each other. Ramona looked younger than she had the night before, but still older than Loretta by ten years at least.

“I don’t like yelling through doors.”

“There was an actual lock on that door, once,” Loretta said. “What year is it?”

“2018.”

“Oh,” Loretta said, putting a hand to her mouth. “Not even the same century, then. I am…I am in a whole new time. One hundred and sixty years in the future. Everyone I know, and everyone who knows me, is dead. I am surrounded by things I do not understand. And you want me to come down for breakfast?”

“Well…yes. You can be sad and overwhelmed in the kitchen just as well as you can up here. Believe me, I know from experience.”

Loretta needled and pulled at the front of her nightgown. Something her mother had scolded her for over and over as a child. But her mother was dead. Long dead. So what did it matter?

“I suppose I would have to agree,” she said with a voice as light as mud. “I have mourned all over this house. Here, in this room. Above, on the walk. The kitchen. Even down in the cellar, on the occasions I didn’t want to be discovered by the servants. Oh, your house maid. What will we tell her?”

Ramona huffed. “Okay, so, first of all, that isn’t my ‘house maid’. That’s my oldest daughter, Angie.”

“I am terribly sorry, and I beg your forgiveness!”

Ramona shrugged. “She thought it was funny.”

“My point still stands. What will you tell your children?”

“Oh. See. That. I, uh, already told them the truth.”

Loretta could feel the blood running out of her face, and was sure her cheeks were of the palest alabaster.

“You told them? The truth?”

“Sweetie, you are too weird for any of my lies to make any kind of sense. Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because I have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“Right. To get you back to 18-whatever.”

“Sixty-eight.”

“Yes. First, you come downstairs and have breakfast because I know you’re hungry, I can hear your stomach from here. Second, we go to the historical society down on Main Street and talk to the woman who runs it. She might know something about your disappearance. Finally, we visit the town witch.”

“There is a witch in town?” Loretta asked.

“She runs a new age shop, so I figure she’s our best bet.”

“I see. I don’t very much like the idea of speaking with an agent of the devil, but if she is my only option then I will have to take a chance and pray God stays with me.”

Loretta stood up and put her hands on her hips. With a plan of action in front of her, the self-pity and wallowing of the morning seemed particularly foolish.

“My dear Ramona, you have inspired me. We are two capable women, and if we just put our minds together we can find a way to get me back to 1868 by nightfall.”

“That’s the spirit!”

“Now, let us have some breakfast, for you are right, my dear, I am very hungry. And then I shall need to borrow one of your gowns.”

“Oh, no.”

Previous Next

Making Friends

He met her at a bar a block away from his new apartment, the apartment where most of his stuff was still in boxes and maybe still was in boxes if not just tossed away or set on fire or sold off, not that he owned anything worth selling. It was a bar a block away from his new apartment, and if he hadn’t gone to that bar that night everything would be different, but he did go to that bar because he was in a big new city and he was surrounded by half-packed boxes and he didn’t know anybody and he just wanted to hear other people’s voices. He didn’t even need anyone to talk to him, he just wanted to sit at a bar with a beer and be surrounded by people and watch whatever game was on the television. He didn’t plan on approaching anyone and he didn’t plan on being approached but then there she was, taking the stool next to him and ordering a vodka cranberry.

“There’s a look people get when they live in this city long, and you don’t have it. So, either I’ve missed my mark, or you’re new in town.”

Christ, had that been all it had taken? No, no, no, don’t do that, if he started blaming himself he’d never stop and none of this was his fault, he couldn’t let himself believe that. He was in a new city with no friends and had left his last city because every relationship had somehow managed to blow up at the same time. Of course when a pretty woman sat next to him and started making effortless conversation he was going to talk back. Tell her that yes, he was new in town, that he hadn’t really met anyone yet, that he hadn’t started his new job and hadn’t even met anyone there, the interview had been over the phone. Told her how things had ended back in Seattle, how ugly the break up had been, how it had turned out all their friends had actually been her friends and it had just felt like a good time for a change. He’d even mentioned his family, or what little was left of it and how little they actually spoke. And not once had he felt like he was oversharing, because this pretty woman, this Nina, with her green eyes and long nails and impeccable make-up, she had just kept asking. She was clearly interested, and not once did she look bored. Nina was just a nice woman who was interested. Was it wrong to believe someone could be interested in him?

They went on an actual date in a restaurant that cost most of what he had left in petty cash and ate an actual meal instead of bar food and had a good conversation and of course now he could look back and see that she’d barely talked about herself but at the time he was just over the moon about his luck and couldn’t see it. After dinner, when she wanted to go somewhere quieter, he was relieved when she suggested her own apartment and not his, because his was still full of unpacked boxes and he didn’t even have a couch set up.

He remembered the wine at her place had tasted weird. But he didn’t drink wine and it hadn’t tasted weird enough for him to say anything. She was drinking from the same bottle and seemed to be enjoying it and he didn’t want to offend her. So he kept drinking it, and she kept filling up her glass, and if he ever realized he had drank much more than she had before he lost consciousness, he didn’t remember.

What he did remember, after the wine, was waking up because he was cold. Not the right kind of cold, either, like where the air conditioning is up too high. This was a damp cold, with a continuous breeze in his hair, and as he woke up more he realized the white noise in his ears was rising and falling and crashing. Waves. And was that sand beneath him? Had they come to the beach?

“Wakey-wakey, Alex,” he heard Nina say as someone shook his foot. Presumably Nina, but when he finally managed to open his eyes he found that it was not just him and Nina on the beach, but him and Nina and two other barrel chested men in suits who towered over Nina and looked like they’d be taller than him, too. They must have come to the beach, he thought, and now they were being attacked by these men. Or had been attacked. If one of them had hit him over the head it would explain why he couldn’t remember getting there.

“Do they want our wallets?” he asked, trying not to mumble but it was hard to move his mouth and he was starting to think he was concussed. He was also noticing that Nina didn’t look scared or even concerned. There was enough light coming from the city that he could tell she looked amused.

“This is my favorite part,” she said, “these exact moments where they realize something is going horribly wrong.”

She wasn’t talking to him, she was talking to the other men. They looked nearly as amused as she did. He put his hands to his head, looking for blood or a bump or at least a sore spot but found nothing. It didn’t even ache. And the longer he laid there in the sand, the better he was feeling. Less like he’d been hit in the head, and more like something was wearing off.

“How are we on the beach?” he asked, sitting up.

She stood up, and it was too fast. Much too fast. She was down, and then she was up there and there hadn’t seemed to be anything in between. She started pacing between the two men, gesturing wildly. “Oh, come on. You’ve got to have more questions than that. Who are these guys? Why are we here? Why did that wine taste weird?”

“I don’t drink wine, I didn’t…did you drug me?”

“I did, sweetie. I put drugs in your wine and brought you out here, and that’s not even half the things I’m going to do to you.”

Whatever had been in the wine was wearing off but things were making less and less sense. She was just a woman he had met at a bar, they were supposed to start talking and dating and even if they didn’t start dating at least he would have a friend. Things were supposed to go better here and they were right up until he had woken up on this beach and now this woman who was supposed to be his new friend was threatening him. She was barely five feet and very thin but she was threatening him and the worst part was he was afraid of her, not of these two men who had shown up, no, he was afraid of her.

“Now, before you run – and you will run – I just want to clear a few things up. Not because I think you deserve it, but because moments like these are the ones I wait for,” she said. “When I saw you at the bar, I just knew you were the one. Did my research and it turns out I was right. You could just up and disappear and there’s not a person who would care. So I began. First, I sold tonight. Your first time, always very special, and I have a particular client with deep pockets who just loves a good chase down the beach. Second, I’ve set aside the next few nights in my schedule for some ‘us’ time. You’re not going to like it. At least, not until I say you can. Then, well, we’ll just see where life takes us. Essentially, my darling, you have just been taken out of circulation.”

Alex was standing now, his eyes getting wider and wider. Nothing she said made any sense but she kept on saying more and with such confidence that by the end he was filled with a back breaking terror he thought might kill him on the spot.

A rustle from somewhere behind her. So small it could have been a bird. It wasn’t. Even without the look on her face he knew it wasn’t.

“It’s time to start running.”

She’s Got Spirit: A Body of Thieves

A Body of Thieves

Vinnie had expected the elevator doors to open to quiet, and potentially darkness. The party was downstairs, in the Grand Ballroom, and the rest of the building was just a sleepy hotel. He thought the top floor would be the most expensive rooms connected by an empty hall and he’d be able to find the men’s room in peace.

Why he thought any of that, Vinnie was struggling to remember, as the elevator chimed and the doors opened to reveal a curvy woman in a green dress and a thin man in a blue suit leaning on her and slurring some song Vinnie had either heard once or twice on the radio or was being made up on the spot. The woman in the green dress took Vinnie’s slapped-fish look as a reaction to the man, and shook her head.

“Can’t hold his liquor worth a damn,” she said, a drawl making the words go up and down.

Vinnie tried to think of something clever to say. Then he tried to think of anything to say at all. Finally, he made a stiff wave and power walked away from the elevator. Thankfully the woman was too busy wrangling the drunk man onto the elevator to notice.

Soft jazz music and cigarette smoke wafted around him, and he turned to find where the woman and the man had come from. The Skyliner Lounge. A door opened down the other end of the hall and another smell met him, this one recognizable but just out of reach. It didn’t belong sixty stories up, and his brain didn’t want to believe it until he heard splashing. A rooftop pool. The sign he had finally discovered, affixed across the wall from the elevators, said there was a twenty-four hour gym in the same direction.

The Resident Hotel was one of the tallest in the city, and he really thought there would be nothing up here?

Vinnie swallowed hard and forced himself to take a breath. There were people, yes, which was worse than the no people situation he had expected. But there weren’t a lot. Definitely not as much as downstairs. Just find the men’s room, hand off the bag to Spirit in whatever stall she was hiding in, and walk away. Once the bag was no longer tucked into his jacket he was sure his heart rate would come down by twenty or thirty beats per minute.

The sound of a door swinging open made him pivot again, back to facing the lounge. A large man was walking back into the lounge, leaving a door to close behind him. A door with a very recognizable stick figure on it. Patting the bag through the jacket to make sure it hadn’t slipped out of reality, he made his way to the door.

The bathroom was small, black and white, and empty. Blissfully empty. Worryingly empty. There were only two stalls, and both doors hung open to reveal nothing more than a toilet and a roll. Besides a couple urinals and a sink there was nothing else. No closet, no cabinet, hell, not even a garbage can large enough for her to hide.

“Spirit?” he stage-whispered. He began contemplating places he had originally thought impossible. Checked the trash can. Looked up at the vent. Checked the stalls again, in case she had somehow hidden herself behind the doors. Nothing. “Spirit?”

A tapping began. Soft, at first, then urgent and aggressive as he spun, trying to find the source. He found it at the last place he looked, because he hadn’t even registered the window when he’d walked in.

The face of the woman called Spirit was on the other side of the window. Vinnie gaped at her, the same fish-face he had given the woman and the drunk man, frozen. She made a face and waved a hand at him, urging him to the window. As if in a dream, Vinnie crossed the bathroom and found the latch.

Despite the balmy weather below, the air that blew in was striking. Spirit was wearing a black beanie and long sleeve shirt, and looked comfortable enough. Vinnie couldn’t see anything below her bust, and with a long breath realized she was standing on an outside deck.

“Took you long enough,” Spirit said. “You got it?”

“Yeah, it’s-”

The sound of a door creaking open behind him made him whip around. A man in swim trunks, his carrot hair plastered to his head, came in and stopped when he saw Vinnie and Spirit.

“Oh!” Vinnie said, trying to think up a reasonable lie for why a woman’s face was in the window. “She’s just-”

Spirit was gone. She must have ducked just in time. All the man saw was Vinnie in a very fine suit casually hanging out in a bathroom with the window open.

“I…uh…”

But the man in the swim trunks, water dripping into small pools below, was already looking at him with a cock to his eyebrows. He knew. He knew everything. Any second he was going to run out and get security. Fist was sixty-eight stories below, and even if he was here did Vinnie want him to do what he would do? Maybe this was for the best. This was all too much, and Vinnie could plead down in court and go back to-

“Too much to drink, right?” the man said. “Needed some cold air on your face? Used to happen to me all the time. You need to just stop drinking altogether, my friend. Once I stopped going to the hotel bar and started going to the gym, my life just got better and better.”

“Oh, uh…yes…I am very drunk,” Vinnie said. He considered trying to slur something else, remembered the atrocious reviews of that time he did Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in college, and settled for putting on sleepy eyes.

The man knowingly tapped his temple before turning to use one of the urinals.

“Think about what I said. It could change your life!”

Vinnie started hyperventilating.

“Weren’t you an actor?”

Vinnie bit back a scream. He’d forgotten about Spirit, now back in the window.

“That wasn’t very good.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“I guess. Give me the bag before someone else comes in.”

He wasted no time, fearful of being caught red handed. Then, finally, the bag of all of their ill-gotten goods was out of his hands and in Spirit’s. He watched as she strapped the bag under her shirt, swaying a little.

“You remember the rest?” she asked.

“Go back downstairs, mingle a little more. Leave alone and meet back at the factory.”

“Bada bing,” she said humorlessly, and then she was gone, climbing up the wall.

Vinnie turned to leave and stopped.

Climbing? Up? Swaying?

Cautiously, he stuck his head out the window and looked down. There was a small edge no larger than six inches and then nothing but air until the street. Whatever deck he had assumed she was standing on was pure imagination. He looked up, and just caught the dark smudge of someone going up and onto the roof.

Previous Next

Sapphire City’s Airyard

They followed the captain out from the dark tunnel and Natch’s heart stumbled.

“It’s even bigger than Sapphire City,” Natch said under this breath.

Ralla tutted. “Very well couldn’t be, now, could it?”

To Natch’s eyes, it was. The thrufare that laid out before them seemed to stretch on and on, until Natch could hardly see the end. Perhaps he would have been able to find it, if not for the scores of people. And none of them milling about, not like in Sapphire City. The people here were mostly men. The women he could see were all tall and muscular and easy to mistake for a man from behind, especially with everyone’s hair tucked under leather caps. They all had somewhere to be. Carrying crates or unidentifiable large metal pieces. Pushing or pulling a cart, loaded down with boxes and bags and scraps. Yelling at one another. Their words – plenty obscene – mixed with the steam and smell of coal in the air. He glanced at Ralla, to see if she was hearing it, too, and caught her looking up and down and everywhere with her mouth hung open. Natch looked away quickly so he didn’t embarrass her. Anyway, he wanted to look up and down and everywhere, too. Mostly up.

Airships lined the thrufare, and their balloons reached to the sky. Twice as tall as any building back in Bay Gardens, that was for certain, and they must have been taller than the buildings in Sapphire City, they just had to be. Perhaps the airyard wasn’t bigger than Sapphire City, but Natch could see with his own two eyes that it was taller.

The balloons themselves were explosions of color atop the metals and woods of the airyard and their ships. The one they were passing now on their left had a canvas made of the most peculiar blue, bright and somehow dark at the same time, and all over an intricate swirling design had been painted. By hand, it looked like, but how long would it take someone to paint a balloon that big? And then there was the one on their right, stripes of every color marching around and up. Some were wide and open, the ship below a swarm of activity. Other balloons hung loose and limp from a mechanical arm that swung out over the ship.

Great nets hung over the balloons, so heavy looking Natch wondered how they didn’t stop the balloons from inflating altogether. They wrapped around the inflated canvas snugly and kept the balloon connected to the middle of the ship. Other ropes came out from the bottom of the balloon to the edges of the ships, and those ropes were so close to the fires he couldn’t believe they didn’t catch. Seeing balloons in the air, from the safety of the ground, was very different than seeing them up close. His excitement was turning to something else, something gritting and sour.

“There doesn’t appear to be any passenger ships here,” Ralla said into his ear. “Or other passengers.”

In a way, Natch had noticed. He’d seen that everyone else on the thrufare was busy with work, anyway. He just hadn’t taken the next logical step. I would have, he thought, drawing himself up, if I hadn’t been so busy myself.

“Quite right!”

Captain Partil said, turning to face them as he walked. Ralla’s cheeks colored just the slightest bit. Clearly she hadn’t thought he’d be able to hear over the din.

“This is the Shipping Thrufare. Nothing but crates and barrels. Passenger airships land over there.” He gestured vaguely. “Nothing but cargo among these lots. No one’s licensed for paying passengers.”

Ralla gripped her skirts and began to look around suspiciously. She never could stomach breaking the rules.

“It’s very generous of you to take us up, Uncle,” Natch said a little too loud. “Mother wants to hear everything once we’ve returned.”

Captain Partil gave him a sly smile from under his walrus mustache and continued walking. While Natch hadn’t noticed that there had been no passengers, he had noticed that everyone around them had been far too busy to glance at them, much less to really look with any sort of suspicion. Still, reminding Ralla of the plan was enough to get her to release the death grip on her skirts and relax her jaw.

“Here we are!” Captain Partil said. He stopped and turned, waving an arm with a flourish that almost knocked the leather cap off a passing engineer. “The Fregata!”

If the Fregata had been the first airship they had seen, Natch would have been impressed. Only it wasn’t. They had passed by a dozen or more airships. Taller airships. Cleaner airships. Younger airships. The Fregata’s balloon was only about half the size as the other ones. It was striped red and white with polka dots. Except the polka dots had no pattern, and all were different shades of red and white and cream, and Natch realized that they weren’t for design but patching up holes. The ropes around the balloon and the ship looked more frayed than any of the other ships they had passed, and after a few seconds he found that these, too, had been patched up. The wooden deck looked dark and dingy, and the woman carved at the front appeared to have lost her nose at some point.

Ralla leaned in closer to Natch, and he hoped she didn’t hear his breath catch.

“It’s quite…well…it’s small. Er. Smaller than the others.”

Captain Partil smiled at her, as though there hadn’t been any sort of hesitation in her voice.

“All the better for speed. That’s what I specialize in, you see? Express delivery.”

“And you’re sure something like this can get us there?” Natch asked.

“My dear nephew and niece, the Fregata could take us to the moon if I asked her nicely enough. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble making it to Seattle. Come along, then, children! The skies are impatient.”

Vibe Check: A Biddies and Broken Hearts Story

The Biddies and Broken Hearts

Birdie kept herself at a jog as she went through the mall, peering into the stores. If she went any faster, if she started to run, the panic would set in. There was no reason to panic. Not yet. He’d be here, somewhere. The good memories the lit-up mall had brought to her were gone. There was only one memory, the same memory her mind retreated to whenever she became stressed.

There were three ways to survive the Blues, and of course Birdie had survived the hard way. Everything, it seemed, happened the hard way, although she wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see some of it was her own damn fault. This memory, the one that haunted her, was not entirely her fault. Only some of it. Specifically, her coming home.

‘Home.’ She only thought of it that way because it was the house she had grown up in. It had barely been a home then, and certainly wasn’t any sort of home by the time she had come back. She hadn’t planned on staying any more than a few weeks. Just long enough to get her feet back under her. Get the car fixed up so it could make it another thousand miles, then keep going east. Birdie never should have done that. She should have found another way. Except, there was no other way.

Her mother couldn’t hide the shock on her face when she opened the door and found Birdie standing on the front porch. Open mouth and high color, like Birdie had slapped her.

“Who is it?” her father called from somewhere inside.

It took a couple seconds for her mother to find her voice, and then she said, “Roberta.”

“Who?”

He hadn’t forgotten her completely, of course. But the idea of his daughter coming home was so ridiculous and broken he hadn’t believed it.

Of course they welcomed her in. Her old room had been turned into a home gym the week after she’d left, but there was still a spare bed in the basement. The one her nephews used when her brother’s family came up from the city. Carl’s room, of course, was just the way it had been when he’d gone to college, and shortly after she arrived Birdie had gone in and walked around. He wondered what his wife must think, sleeping in this room every time they came up. Surrounded by his trophies on their shelves, his certificates and prizes on the walls, the picture of Carl and Emily Strathford all done up for prom still framed and hung up near the window. Birdie ran a finger over the desk and it came up clean. She scurried back to the beat up bed in the basement before her parents could find her.

They all put on a show. A sitcom, one of the many that film the happy family from three different angles. Eating dinner together. Passing the potatoes. News of her brother and nephews every night. Carl had been promoted only recently. They had bought a house in Denver. The boys were going to the best preschool in the city. Her parents didn’t seem to know much about Carl’s wife, and that seemed just about right. It was a very tenuous sort of truce, built through pressure and force of will like a sandcastle bridge. And every time she dodged a question about her life, a few more grains of sand fell away. The bridge would crumble. They all knew it. Birdie hoped the money would come in first. It didn’t, but still the blowout never happened.

It was all over the news by the time she caught it. Cities across the country were plagued. Hospitals full, emergency services overrun, everyone interviewed for the camera flush in the face with bags under their eyes. Birdie watched breathlessly. Her parents seemed more interested in using the news to pry.

“Looks bad in San Diego.”

“Hmm.”

“Most people have it, they say.”

“Mmm.”

“Are you worried about anyone?”

“Why would I be worried about San Diego?”

Repeat for Los Angeles, San Francisco, even Portland and Seattle. Every night Birdie became a little more afraid, but her parents never really seemed to see it. To them, the flu was a big city problem. Not something that could find its way to Broken Hearts. They weren’t paying attention.

A mutation of H5N1, the scientists on TV said. A bad mutation. Superlatives kept getting used. Most contagious. Deadliest. And the thing that scared the scientists the most: the incubation time. Flus were fast. They were supposed to be fast. The last thing she remembered the scientists on TV declaring was how slow it moved. Up to two weeks of incubation! Two weeks of being contagious, of shedding virus like a dog sheds fur at the end of summer, and no symptoms. Then there’d be a week or two of usual flu symptoms, fever and aches and cough and lethargy and enough pressure in the head to make you think it would explode. Then you’d get better.

Then you’d get so much worse.

The end result was everyone walking around dead for weeks.

The end results was Birdie didn’t know where she got it, or even if she got it first. But she was the first to show symptoms, at least in their house. It had been four weeks since the news had started talking about it, so probably two months since it had started. The cities were decimated. They weren’t even trying to keep count anymore. Her parents were finally starting to get concerned. And Birdie had woken up the next morning with a fever of one oh three and a thick rattle in her chest when she breathed.

By the end of the day she was in and out of hallucinations, barely able to breathe. The sounds above her were not in her mind. The sounds of scrambling. Of packing. Of her brother and family arriving. They were leaving. Her parents owned a cabin in Idaho, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, and she knew that’s where they were going. Their daughter had brought this upon them, and now they must flee. It didn’t matter, but they didn’t know that because they never listened.

Two week incubation period. All of them in the same house.

Her mother came down and opened the door, and for a brief second Birdie thought they were coming for her. But she had stayed at the door frame, staring. Her eyes were sharp, and only showed hate. Birdie tried to say something but all energy had left her. She gurgled. Hate was replaced by disgust and then her mother was closing the door. A few more sounds from upstairs. The air-puncturing sound of car doors slamming. And then her family was gone, leaving her to die in her childhood home’s basement.

This was the memory she had come back to these past three years, every time the stress got to her. It was featured in all her nightmares, and even while awake if she let her mind wander she would come back to her mother’s face. Wrinkled, surrounded by hair dyed a natural red, a face she knew was capable of radiant love but never because it had been directed at her. Her mother’s face peering around a door before hurrying away. The unspoken accusation in her eyes. She didn’t think much of her family anymore. Just of that moment.

Her mother’s face peered around every corner and out of every window as she jogged down the mall concourse.

“Birdie, slow down,” Nico called from behind her.

“We have to find him.”

“We will. Will you just….hey, stop. Stop.”

The hand he placed around her arm was gentle. Birdie’s first instinct was to rip her arm away, growl something ugly. She fought it. Nico didn’t deserve that. His eyes were as soft as his grip and Birdie found it infuriating but knew it was irrational.

“Vibe check,” Nico said, and despite herself Birdie let out a breathy laugh. It had meant something else before the Blues, according to Nico, some internet thing Birdie had never come across. Now, for two of them after the Blues, it had become a quicker way to say Step back and calm down, because I think the stress of the situation has made you panicked and clouded your judgment. Which, of course, is what was happening at this exact moment. Nico didn’t know it, but nearly every time he had hit with ‘vibe check’ she had drifted back to the last memory of her mother.

“I don’t want him to be left behind.”

Nico nodded. “Luckily, I’m in charge, and I say we don’t leave until we find him.”

Birdie nodded and patted the braids wrapped over her head. Nico was in charge. His first time, so no matter how proud of him she was, she had just forgotten. The others, Mike especially, might not have been so charitable with their time.

“We can go through this whole mall, store by store, looking down every aisle and in every back room,” Nico said. “Or we can think and do this the smart way. What do we know about him?”

Birdie felt the panic and frustration bubbling up within her and swallowed it down before speaking.

“I don’t know anything. He doesn’t talk.”

As soon as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. The not talking part, yes, that was true, even when he yelled out in his sleep it was always formless vocalizations. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know anything.

“He doesn’t leave me. He seems scared to. He was there when we went down to maintenance. If he didn’t follow, something must have caught his eye down there.”

They turned and went back. This time Birdie let herself run. There was no panic in it. Nico had been right, they had just needed to think about things for a second. She was startled at how far they come across the mall. In her haze she had thought they had only crossed a few stores, but they had to backtrack across most of the mall to get back to the maintenance hallway.

“He was staring at this fountain, last I saw,” Nico said. It was a big ugly thing. Dry and dusty. Whatever pump kept the water going wasn’t hooked up to the generator. Even before the Blues, when so many niceties and vanities were considered essential, this fountain was considered superfluous. “You called for him when we went down the hall. Maybe he looked up at your voice, and saw-”

A bookstore on one side of the hall. A dollar store on the other. Birdie only looked between the two for a second before going for the books. Whatever had drawn him away from them would have been startling, and meaningful, and she doubted cheap Christmas tinsel would have been enough.

They found him in the back, sitting on the floor in front of the science aisle. As soon as Birdie saw him, his head bent over a book, she had to bend with her hands on her knees. The relief was so strong it threatened to knock her over.

“June…what the fuck…you can’t do that.”

Birdie looked up and found the same wide-eyed relief on Nico. Maybe he had only been afraid of losing someone on his first job in charge, but Birdie didn’t think he’d have the same look on his face if it had been Mike.

June looked up, and Birdie was struck by his eyes. He’d been slowly getting better, had been making eye contact and sometimes it could seem like he was understanding you. Birdie realized now he had still been trapped in his own mind, the progress he had been making baby steps compared to whatever had just happened. He was here, now. His green eyes were misty but here. Seeing her. Seeing Nico. The book he was holding was open to the middle and Birdie realized he must have been reading it.

Carefully, with slow, clumsy hands, June closed the book and handed it to her. He was trying to speak, she could see the way his lips worked and quavered, but as she took the book nothing was happening.

“Physics is Fun, You’re Just Not Talking About it Right, by Benjamin Hooper, Jr,” Birdie read.

Next to her, Nico snorted. “I took physics in high school, I’m not sure how you make it fun.”

“Listen to you, subtly bragging about-”

Birdie froze. She had flipped the book over as she spoke. There was a blurb from some critic for some paper that didn’t exist anymore, and a picture of the author. His hair was short. He was heavier, bordering on fat. He looked ten years younger. But the face was the same. She looked up from the picture to where Benjamin Hooper, Jr was sitting on the floor.

“Me,” he finally managed to get out, practically panting with the effort. “Me.”

Previous Next

Ghostbusting? In This Economy?

Paige was sitting at the table, eating her cereal and watching the salt and pepper shakers floating above the table and circling each other, when Riley came hustling through to the door. Still wearing her pajamas and slippers, she looked out the window for a mere second before flinging open the door. Paige cringed against the shock of cold air that blew in. Elaine didn’t like it either, apparently, as the salt and peppers shakers fell back to the table. The one shaped like a sunny side up egg survived the few inches. The one shaped like toast did not, and a small pile of pepper poured out. Paige sighed. She still wasn’t sure why Cameron insisted on replacing these things over and over.

“Hurry up and shut that,” Paige said. Riley was standing in the open doorway, examining the package that had been left on the porch.

“This is it!” Riley said. She shut the door and brought the little box over to the counter. “Where are the scissors?”

All of the drawers in the kitchen flew open at the same time. One of them hit Riley at the hip, making her yelp. She rubbed at the spot as she walked around the kitchen, closing everything.

“Very funny, Elaine,” she said, followed by, “Here they are.”

“What did you get?” Paige asked.

Riley made an evil smile as she said, “Something to help with our g-h-o-s-t problem.”

“Elaine’s a ghost, not a toddler,” Paige said. She glanced down at the table to find that the pepper had been spread out, and an invisible finger was writing GET OUT into the mess. “She can definitely spell.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I can spell too!”

With a flourish, Riley pulled something from the box and held it over her head. Paige squinted at it. It looked like a lot of leaves tied together with twine.

“Get it?” Riley asked. “Spell?”

“That looks like a huge joint.”

Riley rolled her eyes. “I don’t need to order…It’s sage.”

“I’m pretty sure Cameron has a bottle of sage in the pantry with the other spices.”

“Are you being obtuse just to mess with me?”

“What’s obtuse mean?”

Ethereal snickering rolled through the kitchen as all the lights turned themselves on. Riley absent-mindedly began turning everything off again as she explained.

“It’s for burning. Not for smoking. You burn it like an incense and, like, waft it all around the house. It’s supposed to cleanse the house’s energy. Or something. It’s supposed to make Elaine leave.”

Paige stood up, finally interested. She took the sage from Riley and turned it over in her hands. When they had rented the house they had all wondered why it was so cheap. Elaine had given them the answer within a week of moving in. It wasn’t so bad living with a ghost, but if she didn’t get woken up in the middle of the night by her clock radio blaring static anymore she wasn’t going to miss it.

“So, what do we do?” Paige asked. “Do we have to…I don’t know…chant something?”

Riley rifled around in the box. “I don’t know. I was hoping it would come with instructions.”

Air started moving in the kitchen, enough that both Paige and Riley thought maybe the door had blown back open. But the door was closed, and the air still moved. Circling the kitchen, blowing papers off the fridge, getting faster and faster. Riley took the sage back and held it in front of her like a ward. The lights began flashing on and off. The cabinet doors flew open and banged closed, over and over. A buzzing feeling began at Paige’s fingertips, as though she was catching the outside of an electric current. She contemplated going to the backyard until whatever this was stopped.

Then it did.

Standing in front of them was an old woman in a pair of horned-rimmed glasses and a housecoat. She wasn’t see-through, exactly. It was just that Paige could see the old woman and everything that was behind her at the same time. It was making her head hurt, if she was honest.

“You must be Elaine,” Paige said. Riley said nothing, still standing with the sage held out at arm’s length.

Elaine sniffed. “Don’t you have the decency to be afraid of me?”

Paige shrugged. Before moving into this house she’d never believed in ghosts. Now she not only believed, she was a little tired of it.

“I’m dead. And I’m manifesting in front of you. And you just…shrug? Do you know how hard this is for me? It takes a lot of effort, and you…just…shrug.”

“I guess I don’t really know what you want from me.”

“What I want is for you to get out of my house. All of you! This is my house, it will always be my house. I’ve chased off fifteen families before you, and I’ll chase you off, too. Look at you. Faithless. Heathens. Always drinking and smoking. You should all have families by now, instead you’re all living together in sin. And I won’t allow it in my house.”

Riley pushed the sage at the ghostly Elaine, at which Elaine rolled her eyes and waved a hand. She didn’t seem comfortable though. Perhaps once they lit it, it would do something. Sage or no sage, Paige had become increasingly sure of one thing.

“We are not leaving,” she said. She took a step forward, hands on her hips. She was nearly a foot taller than the old dead woman, and even though Paige could see the linoleum through her, she was finding Elaine wasn’t very scary. “This was your house. And now you’re dead. Haven’t you ever heard ‘you can’t take it with you?’”

“I-”

“This is the cheapest house in this part of town. You’ve seen what we do for work, do you think we can afford another place? Do you think we can afford to have families? We can’t even afford to not have roommates and you’re telling us we should have babies? No, we are not leaving, because in this economy we’ll take a house with one stupid ghost. We’d take a house with a gateway to hell in the basement if it meant utilities and internet were included in rent. So you can stay, if you want, but we’re staying, too and you’re just going to have to find a way to deal with that.”

Riley stood up to her full height as she stepped next to Paige.

“Yeah.”

The air began moving again. The cabinets slammed. The lights flickered. Large, booming slams came from behind the walls and the ceiling. Elaine’s face began to stretch and contort until she looked barely human, and she stretched to be as tall as the ceiling. In the most guttural, disgusting voice Paige had ever heard, she groaned and screamed.

“GET…OUT. THIS IS MY HOUSE AND I WILL NOT TOLERATE SUCH INSOLENCE. THIS IS MY HOUSE, MY HOUSE, MY HOUSE!”

Paige stared up at her, then glanced around at apparently the worst the old dead woman was able to muster. She looked at Riley, who still seemed a little uneasy but otherwise had the same lines at her forehead that Paige imagined she had. They weren’t leaving, and if this dead woman refused to listen to why, that was a ‘her’ problem.

“Okay, boomer.”