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My introduction to necroscience
“Have you ever wondered if you share the same nightmare as somebody else or at least something similar to it?” to me asks an attractive brunette babe who is destined for true love, I’m sure of it.
I reply, “yes I have. What a silly thing to ask, no?”
She says to me : “would you like to know my nightmare?”
I reply that I do. She tells me of a strange dream she’s had ever since she was old enough to have visited a library.
In her dream, she sits at a desk, reading from an old book from the archeology section.
The name of the civilization changes from dream to dream but the setting is always identical : sitting in a library at a desk, reading an old book about an old civilization and their idea of what awaited “the evil ones” in the afterlife.
For the evil ones, every arachnid and insect that they had ever killed either accidentally or willingly would have multiplied in hell, waiting for them, all the while, reproducing trillions upon trillions of newly evolved arachnid insect hybrid type creatures bearing eight legs and three abdomens. The female of the species is poisonous. The male of the species has an extra set of pincers.
Their long antennae allow them to hear screams from great distances.
The pictures in the book depict a swarm of imagined arachnid insect hybrids of different sizes and different colours and interesting patterns on what appear to be hard shells.
They are larger than I had expected them to be, in this artist's depiction and I wonder, if given the chance, could insects breed to eventually become larger than the average sized arachnid or insect or even larger so that they become larger than the average human?
Thank goodness for me it is only a painting and not real life. I see a handwritten note in the margin written by a stranger. The message is never the same and I can never read it except for one time that I recall as clear as I see the sky.
She paid for that message to get written on a coffee mug : “no rats in here, Mama.”
I ask the attractive brunette : “and you’ve had more or less that same dream since you were a kid?”
“Yes,” to me says the attractive brunette.
She is excellent, this attractive brunette. She has nice eyes and a nice voice. I like what she is talking about.
The attractive brunette continues : “I’ve obviously looked it up on search engines dozens and dozens of times and I have not once come across a single piece of translation that remotely resembles what it is that I read about in my dreams.”
I say to this attractive brunette : “no, I do not share this nightmare for the moment but it sounds like something fascinating, for sure. My dreams are usually about me running through a forest or a jungle like I’m in a race or sometimes running from cops like in a video game and I get points, and then there’s a party at the end with babes of all hair colours and everybody finishes the dream drinking for free and going for a swim at the beach.”
What I omit in this version of my dream is that while I always flirt with someone who is fucking gorgeous and we get our flirt on real real nice, I wake up before anything good can happen. What a sad ending to such a nice dream. Oh well.
Just like my dream, this conversation concludes with a sad ending.
We had struck up a conversation while she did her job, answering questions and distributing pamphlets regarding a soon-to-be available university program, never before seen in known academia.
“What is the program?” I was inclined to ask.
“Necroscience,” she would explain.
It ended up being a very interesting conversation - not at all what I had anticipated.
The university has not revealed itself yet, as it claims to be in merely the early stages of data analysis for marketing. They did however say that they were located in Europe and that all attendees would need to relocate to Europe. A cost of living price comparison was not disclosed.
\*\*\*\*\* time passes \*\*\*\*\*\*
I used to be a waiter. One of my customers thought I was so good at my job that he offered me an excellent pay raise to work for him instead at his own restaurant.
Having served him his dinner, I overhear what he has planned for some hostages on whom he wants to exact his yearning for vengeance.
They and their offspring will suffer for centuries if my employer decides to go through with his current plan for retribution.
I don’t hate anybody or anything with any degree of sadism to wish upon them and their descendants such a needlessly cruel fate. I must intervene before it is too late. If I do not, I may never again sleep at night, woken by screams that never stop. I must act now and not a moment later.
“Sir,” I intervene. “For important restaurant reasons, I need to speak with you for five minutes. It is fucking important. I wouldn’t be interrupting you if it wasn’t.”
“Fine,” to me says my employer.
My employer is in a good mood today. I wonder what I did differently from my friend who was killed for having done something similar. Perhaps I too will be killed. Let’s see.
We adjourn to a very dignified drinks lounge and receive a complimentary round of drinks. The employer looks me in the eye and tells me : “this had better be so damn important that it either wins a trillion dollars with a winning lottery ticket or that you found a cunning way to guarantee coming on the winning side of World War Three so what is so important that you had to interrupt what was about to become the proudest moment of my entire life.”
For two months, he has been planning this act of retribution. His pride demands it.
I want to tell him : “you will end up destroying the entire restaurant if you go through with this.”
What I end up telling him is : “the police are here,” because the police have just arrived.
The police look like what you expect police to look like because they’re just police doing their job like we’ve all seen.
“Word on the street is you’re about to kill fifty three people,” the cops outright accuse of my employer.
My employer smiles apologetically and says : “who? Me, officer? I’m just a normal guy, doing normal things. Those weirdos are all in the same room because they’re waiting for their taxis to arrive.”
The cops say nothing further, and they leave us again to speak in private.
“If those cop cars aren’t gone in five minutes, I’m calling a tow truck. I don’t have time for this,” my employer muses out loud, and then glares at me, saying : “anyway, you were telling me why I can’t do whatever the fuck I want in my own restaurant that I own. What is it? Out with it. Now.”
My reply is thought-out and swift : “if you do that thing you’re planning to do, you will destroy the entire ventilation system and nobody will be able to breathe fresh air throughout the next year because that’s how long it will take to repair the overdone damage that this would do to the vents.”
“How sure are you?” my employer asks me.
“Very very sure,” is my reply. “Would you like more details?”
The answer is yes, I should add one more important detail.
I write discretely on a notepad, “are you certain that you got rid of all the evidence from the last time?”
The reply is no. With police nearby, and the building’s structural integrity at risk, my employer is sane enough to spare the lives of dozens of people for a moment. However, this isn't a happy outcome considering how much better it would have been to be drinking a cocktail on the beach.
“I still want to fucking humiliate them for what they did and for the reasons that I hate them,” my employer proclaims.
“Well you’ll have to make it quick and fucking snappy or we may never have again, a window of opportunity this long to dispose of the bodies for long enough for us to have gotten an alibi,” is my final say on the matter.
My employer nods his head and says “you make a good point, there. All right…” and he plans their painful but swift murder by private execution two weeks later.
I am reluctantly invited to the affair. It is my karmic punishment for being unable to save them completely, the way I would have preferred to, but at least I spared their children from the fate that otherwise awaited them and their next generation.
There is a cave in a mountain I never knew you could get to but if you manage to find the river accessible by one hard to locate pedestrian walkway, you can get to the cave. If you manage to find it, the walk is enjoyable, but until today, I had never known that entrance to have ever been there.
In we go. It is lit by torches. The ill-fated are stripped naked and body-shamed by drunk and stoned hedonists who delight in inflicting unto others what they dread to have inflicted unto themselves. It is the ultimate perversion. I am going to be sick.
I want to barf all over the place and get all the ill feelings out of my system but I keep my cool and observe the people in attendance.
Many are captivated by what the tragically ill-fated are enduring but others are treating it as a background act to a poker game, which is what my employer, in fact, is doing. His critics would have you know that he plays poker more than he works and he’s actually quite bad at it.
Alas, the screaming is too painful and weepy to be ignored and now I want to cry, feeling a bludgeon of guilt for being alive while others die.
I cannot wait for this moment to end, and then the moment is gone and all the ill-fated have breathed their last despicable putrid agonized gasp of a breath.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
I lie awake at night, never happy with the darkness of my room, never happy with the light of the outside world. I wonder all the while, did I make the right decisions and was there anything I could have done differently to have spared them such an agony?
\*\*\*\*\*\*
For a while, life goes on and then I meet a stranger at a bar.
I am at a bar because the hockey game is on and my team is playing. I am drinking a tasty ginger beer.
The stranger sits next to me with the intent of conversation.
“Hello,” to me says the stranger. “What do you know of necroscience?”
I reply that I know very little on this subject.
Actually, I know a little about necroscience. The attractive brunette gave me a pamphlet on necroscience, and I read it two or three times.
“Where can I talk to you about it in private?” is the question I receive in reply from this stranger.
I reply : “I’m not interested. I’m just here to watch hockey.”
The stranger to me says : “let’s make a bet. If the home team’s #37 scores off the blue line at the 4:04 mark with assists from #21 and #10 , then you agree to listen to what I have to say to you. If a single one of my score details is wrong, including numbers being mixed up in the order in which I said them, then I will fuck off and never talk to you ever again and I’ll even leave you enough money to pay your bill.”
This deal is too good to be true. Is today the day I get cider in my ear?
I restate the conditions : “if at the 4:04 mark, there is no blue line goal from home team player #37 , assisted by #21 and #10 , just like that and only that, you’ll fuck off?”
They say, “I will. However, if I am correct, then you will understand that you would be wise to listen to what I have to tell you.”
The game on the tv is a live broadcast, not a taped broadcast. The clock is at 12:14. There are eight minutes of gameplay to be had.
I say again : this was a live broadcast. The way the stranger was describing the game, though, you’d think it was a rerun.”
“Check this out,” to me says the stranger. “The ref’s gonna call an interference penalty and get cheered by the fans.”
On the tv, the ref has clearly made the interference call but the tv volume is muted. I cannot visually determine whether the televised fans are booing or cheering.
“Excuse me,” the stranger says to the bartender. “Would you please turn up the volume of the hockey game?”
The bartender turns up the volume and we hear the stadium cheering wildly for the ref’s decision to call that penalty. The commentators add : “that was clear interference, and the home team gets a much needed power play that could get them back in this game.”
“Nobody scores during this power play,” says the stranger, “but they get really close.
In spite of an exciting series of speed skating, passing, shooting, rebounding and much more, not a single goal is scored and the score is the same as before.
“Watch this,” says the stranger. “At around the ten minute mark, they’re going to show a highlight from another game where the shorthanded team scores a goal in overtime and they celebrate by doing a funny but badly done version of the Riverdance dance.”
The tv noise carries on over our human silence : “...they’re still reviewing that play, so we’ll show you highlights from the game that just finished in overtime. Check out this goal….”
…. and the shorthanded team scores a shock goal in overtime, and then does a funny but bad version of Riverdance in their skates that ends in them falling over, laughing. The moment goes viral.
Only a few seconds to the 4:04 mark and there’s a face off. There is no way there will be a goal. Shooting from the blue line from this angle is an endeavour fraught with overall distance issues and player interference.
The puck is dropped. Bing bang boom. From #10 to #21 to #37 who shoots from the blue line, the puck travelling just to the left of a defenseman, over the goalie’s shoulder and into the net. The crowd goes wild. The time of the goal is 4:04.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
How? This stranger must be from the future or something. Maybe I would be wise to learn what the stranger has to say. The stranger by the way is cute and female - two my favourite things. Sometimes you know what you like and that’s all there is to it. This is one of those times.
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
We reconvene at a shitty foreign style cuisine restaurant that’s going out of business and they only interrupt to bring exquisite cuisine.
I order the cheapest thing on the menu.
“You are being followed,” to me says this stranger. “I saw you and fell in love with you and I know you could never love me back but I just couldn’t stand the thought of you dying, even if it meant you would fall in love with somebody else.”
I do not want to be followed. Being followed is a scary thing. I do not want to be followed.
I do not want them to follow me and to do unto the humiliations I dare not imagine could ever be so beneath the scope of reality as to never happen to me, the deepest vaults of my nightmares of degradation and pain turning real. I never want this to happen to me. It keeps me awake into the quietest hours of the night. I do not ever want to experience this pain.
Perhaps however, there is nothing to worry about.
I must remain optimistic.
I do not feel as though I am being followed. Perhaps this stranger is crazy. Mental illness is stranger neither to the beautiful nor the ugly. A pinnacle of beauty has the possibility to become mentally ill, same as the most despicable of ugly.
I have been close to death other times too.
“You are being followed by someone who wants to do something dangerous to you and I just wanted you to be prepared. Please fall in love and be happy. I will never ever forget you no matter what happens to me or to you.”
And she vanishes never to be seen ever again.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
Days later, it’s time to get the mail and I receive a very interesting pamphlet. It reads the exact same as the pamphlet I received from the attractive brunette that one night :
“Necroscience, the study of life after death.
According to McKendrick’s rules of dying, a person may be existing in life, post-life or death, but never simultaneously. Post-life is also known as “life after death.”
To be alive after death, one must first have endured an event that caused them to have fully died by medical definition of death - no breathing, no pulse - ever again.
In spite of not breathing and not having a pulse, the person in question continues to participate in the world of motion, either consciously or unconsciously.
\[ For a second, I actually imagine actually having no pulse and never ever breathing and still doing stuff like running or swimming. \]
Necrobiology : life after death at the molecular level. How do living and undead atoms differ from one another? Is there predictability within molecular orbits of undead specimens and does it have medical implications? Some governments and other factions are considering necrobiology in warfare.
Necro Optics : the study of ghost photography. What environment and physical conditions must be achieved for a ghost to appear in a photograph? Why do we see ghosts in photographs more easily than during the moment itself?
Everyday, new techniques are developed that allow unseeable wavelengths to be expressed in photographic format to be comprehensible to human optical limitations.
Necropsychology : are there inherent undead traits that might predict undead method or motivation? If there is no blood flow in the brain due to no pulse, what is creating thought in the undead? By understanding an undead’s hierarchy of needs, we can advance the complexity of communication between life and post-living.
note : in necroscience, undead refers to post life.
….. I didn’t understand a single word of any of that. I wonder what it means.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
Days later, I am at the grocery store, purchasing a small bottle of tasty delicious ginger beer and a voice behind me tells me : “we must speak again in private. At your place.”
“No thank you,” is my reply.
“I have a picture to show you,” is the reply.
I turn around. The person looks like a person in one shape or another - a sort of person whose image I have vaguely encountered. Like a policeman.
The picture is of my bedroom, just as I left it, including the angle of my reading chair. Sitting in my chair is a human coloured completely electric blue like graffiti, just sitting in my chair.
“We also have video,” they say to me. “Unfortunately, you can’t see the ghosts because necro optics can’t do video yet, but you can see shit move around right there and there.”
They have film of my apartment and pictures of my apartment. This is creepy and bad. I am moving. It is creepy and not normal and I am moving and that is that.
“What the fuck were you doing at my place?” I ask.
“Your roommate said it was ok,” is the reply.
“I don’t have a roommate,” I retort.
“Your landlord then. Whatever,” is the next reply. “The photographs I have shown you are ghost photographs. In the name of science, please let me photograph your place again. You have something living there that if not coaxed to leave, will eat your structural foundation as if it was breakfast.”
Speaking of breakfast…
The policemanish person to me says : “speaking of breakfast, let’s go to the diner on the other street. My treat.”
We eat at a table and watch the baseball game. The breakfast is smoked carrot that is supposed to taste like smoked salmon.
“Why don’t you have really smoked salmon?” asks policemanish person.
“We ran out. Last night’s game went into quadruple overtime and people ate like crazy.”
The carrot lox taste a lot better than I had expected it too. Very smoky.
Another set of pictures, this time of my bathroom. The same electric blue human figure is using my toilet, doing goodness-knows-what.
“Do the blue things ever appear on video?” I ask.
The photos are removed from the table. The policemanish person puts them in a jacket pocket that sounds an awful lot like a paper shredder.
“No,” is the reply from the policemanish person. “Necro optics is very young in its photography stage. We’re only able to capture still images. I could show you in person if you’d just let me one more time back into your dwelling to take photographs and then you would never see me ever again.”
I reply : “how about tomorrow?”
They accept my offer for a visit tomorrow and that is that.
I return home, I pack my bag and I leave. I’ll phone my landlord and tell him to rent the place as quickly as he wants to.
For the moment, I have very little money. I sleep in a tent in a slum while I think through my options.
One day, there is craving for a coffee so I go to a place that prepares really good Turkish coffee. A Turkish coffee is exactly what I need to turn my day the right way.
“Hey, good to see you!” says the owner who prepares for me a flavourful brew of Turkish coffee. “Your friend left a message for you. They had to leave early but if they’ll meet you at the next place.”
“Which friend?” I ask.
“I’ll show you a picture,” says the owner. “We took a selfie.”
The photo is of the owner and the person who showed me those photographs of my abode.
“Thank you,” I tell the owner, and I am rattled.
The deliciousness of my coffee is undercut by the dread of the words spoken to me by the owner : “they’ll meet you at the next place.”
Where will the next place be? Can I avoid it or will I be there no matter where I go?
I wonder where I would least likely go. Where would I least likely go? To a country bar.
I don’t like country music. No offence. You can’t change my mind. I have heard more country music than you give me credit for. Other than maybe like one or two good songs, the genre is just not my thing and it will never be my thing.
So I go to a country bar. Alas, I hate this artist. The gang at work used to listen to him constantly and I couldn’t stand him. A live female tribute act is butchering this swill of a repertoire to the enthusiastic cheers of people who are into this sort of thing.
I am safe. Or so I think.
“This music rocks,” says a stranger to me. “I hope you’ll pardon the interruption, but since you’re here, I’ll update you on the situation.”
… or something like that. It’s really loud in here.
They point a gun at my face and nobody notices.
They say to me : “you have a lot to fucking explain and you’re going to do it where and when I tell you or I will end your hopes and dreams right here right now. What’s it going to be?”
“What would you like to know?” is my cordial reply.
“We’re asking the questions,” is their reply back to me.
I must decide : do I live to see another day or let myself get shot?
I have nothing to live for. She doesn’t love me. Without her, life has become a cheap imitation deprived of dreams. I choose to die.
They pull the trigger and shoot me in the head, the bullet going through my forehead and exiting from thirty degree angle to the rear of my skull. Surely I will die.
\*\*\*\*\*
I am fucking stunned by what happened next. Of all the things that I expected to have happen to me upon being shot point-blank through the skull, this was not one of them.
\*\*\*\*\*
Time passes.
How can it be that I am not a corpse? What has happened to me? I cannot breathe but with a bit of concentration, I realized that I am not physically discomforted for lack of breathing fresh air. Oh I wonder what the air tastes like on this lovely summer’s day but alas I cannot taste or feel the air. I wonder what will become of beautiful summer air.
I take a minute to appreciate my surroundings. I am in a cafe drinking Turkish coffee but surprisingly, a different cafe from where I was shot
The coffee is delicious but I am not enjoying it with my mouth but with its temperature. I can feel the change in heat distribution from the heat of the coffee in the mug in my hand. I can feel how my esophagus contracts as it becomes hot.
Wait. I am not a medical doctor. It feels like a contracting feeling but maybe I am wrong. I only know that I hate it.
Anyway, the mixture of its elements are the right density and the right heat to center my eyes in a new direction that might give me the insight to pull me away from this downward view.
How did I get here? I wonder. A moment later, I understand what I am feeling and I understand now that I am more ghost than I was before.
I would love so much to breathe in some air but alas I cannot breathe. It is not for sustenance that I crave to breathe. I can move and react very agile-like due to no restrictions on air intake.
I crave to breathe air in part for nostalgia in how it used to be proof that I was alive. If I am wrong about needing to breathe, perhaps I am also wrong about lots and lots of things.
Do not stop trying to breathe, says a search result that I didn’t ask for. Don’t kill yourself. It’s time to give yourself another chance.
Another chance to do what, I wonder.
I miss the air so badly. I never knew how I had taken it for granted until it was completely gone. I don’t smell a single fragrance, neither good nor pungent. Every place I wander feels as though I am in a video game simulation as an NPC and not really present in the moment. I feel like a tourist in a weird theater experience.
But then suddenly I can feel it : air flowing through me more than before and it is kind of like…. I’d better not say but trust me when I tell you it feels great.
So I drink my coffee and I feel a new set of ambitions and desires the likes of which I hadn’t realized would ever become things that I would crave.
I do not taste my coffee, and if I could cry, I would cry a million tears for no sensation that I have ever experienced will ever come close to eclipsing how I felt, drinking a relaxing cup of coffee and savouring the liquid velvet froth of coffee, heat, and water.
The moment passes and my mourning is over.
Days pass and I have not slept for a single time. I do not ever sleep. I kind of miss sleeping if not for as a way to spend time amidst my boredom. I have not once slept and sometimes I am tired.
There is no sex.
It turns out that a third of ghosts have no sex drive, regardless of their living libido. A very unlucky percentile retain their sex drive but are unable to have sex for ghost reasons. Make of that what you will.
So far as a ghost, I have not experienced anything as pleasurable as sex, but for some reason, I miss coffee even more.
The article concludes : “Necrophelia is a deplorable act that ought never to occur. Both medical scientists and necroscientists agree that sex between consenting living and consenting post-living is medically and physically safe, provided that safe sex precautions are in place.”
What an interesting way to end the article. That’s just my opinion.
While not getting laid, my existence is not without its moments of delight. Being less dense, I can appreciate more wavelengths of more types of light and colours look so astounding.
I took an art class. I think I am painting using five primary colours but I haven’t actually said this out loud to anybody in case they think I am crazy.
Sunrises and sunsets mean more to me than ever before. Until I was shot in the head, I had never before seen such wondrous colour.
Goodness gracious! It’s all coming back to me! Oh! The muscle tension and the scary head pains the likes of which you never knew unless you had been shot in the head and taken to a facility wherein you were experimented on.
…………. the past ………………………
\*\*\* “Is that enough anesthesia?” is the last thing I can recall being said. \*\*\*\*
I know exactly how I got here. I was accompanied by five muscled men and women who look as though they cardio train by playing rockclimbing tag.
They are here now. They have just arrived at my table and are sitting to join me.
A moment ago, I was alone, but now, I am with five people who are not letting me out of their sight.
“We owe you an explanation,” to me says one of the muscular cardio escorts. “We mistook you for someone else. You strongly resemble someone who owes our client a shitton of money so we killed you and mummified your corpse to observe the effects of your inanimate corpse in a certain chemical environment that reawakened the hippocampus in the brain to make you conscious.”
I don’t understand a word that guy just said and tell him, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“I’ll explain it,” says another one of the muscular cardio specimens. “When we shot you in the head, it wasn’t a bullet that penetrated your head but it was instead a laser. We made you unconscious and performed mummification experiments on your motionless body. Don’t bother going to the press about it. They won’t believe you. But we all feel horrible about what happened and what to give you some cash to get you through this very awkward starting point in your life.”
“We are really really sorry,” to me says another person.
I blink and I am alone again. A moment ago, five people had sat next to me at this table and they had a logical reason for being present and now I am alone, all alone. Did any of that really happen?
You know how when you get stressed, your reaction may be to breathe slowly until calmed down? When you’re in my state of being, you look at colours. I can’t smell cupcakes but I can notice the intricacy of the colours. My hearing is also improved. I can register more audio frequencies than ever before.
I blink again. The five escorts have again joined me at my table. They gasp and stay to themselves, “fascinating. Absolutely fascinating,” before they vanish again.
This time they do not return.
I return to my dwelling, and I find that it looks the same as how I left it.
I realize for the first time that I have been without my phone. The last time I had my phone was something to do with my employer, who I had forgotten all about until now.
I get an idea.
\*\*\* I saw this on a dark web science tutorial. The necroscience department’s official website is a .onion website. \*\*\*
Using the surrounding heat and calibrating my entropy, I can become a completely gaseous being, including my clothes, and I can spread my molecules so thinly that you don’t know I’m there unless you have blacklight and a UV light to see me in the dark.
………………… the present ……………………………
It is daytime.
Finally, my employer is alone. I react to the new environment to sublime from gas to solid so that I am visible to all around me
“XXXXX!!!!” screams my employer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m a ghost,” to my employer says me, and I do a ghost thing to prove it.
“XXXXX!!!!!” my employer screams again, followed by some more screaming, “XXXYYYZZZ!!”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” I say to my employer. “I could very easily go to the national security and tell them every single thing you did that would make them put you away for life or you can do what I tell you.”
My employer is not scared, but rather laughs. He says to me, “if I go down, I’m taking you down with me. I’ll make sure for every year they give me that you get double.”
Now it is my turn to laugh. I say to him, “I’m a ghost. They won’t be able to contain me in prison. Check this out.”
I do another ghost thing. I don’t know if it is impressive but it is definitely a thing that only a ghost can do.
“So are you ready to do what I tell you?” I threaten.
\[ What I do not know during this moment while I am threatening my employer is that there actually are ghost prisons. They are… the worst thing ever conjured. I… I can’t tell you about it. There are some things better left unknown and one of those things is ghost prison. Had I known about ghost prison while this was happening, I would have been a lot more cautious in that interaction. \]
My employer says : “what are your demands?” Lucky for me, my employer has also never heard of ghost prison.
“How many people remain unmurdered?” I ask.
“I dunno. I’m sure there are some who are still alive,” is the reply. “I’m a busy person. I have no idea who is living or dying during most moments.”
I make my first demand : “free them and give them each a million dollars and some land.”
My employer eyeballs me, or tries to, only he can’t because you humans can’t see ghost eyes, I later will learn.
“Why do you care so much about those fucking people?” he asks.
Good question. I don’t know. I just do. He doesn’t need to know that though.
My sympathy is less to do with their cultural identity and more to do with their human identity. No human anywhere during any time deserves what they will endure if I do not intervene. I wouldn’t wish it on myself or my family so I wouldn’t wish it on anybody else’s.
“Fine,” he says. “The land will be small and shitty. What else?”
“Leave the country never to return and cease all communication,” I demand.
The reply is : “I can’t do that.”
I reply in turn : “you can and will.”
“After all I did for you,” my employer curses. “I never should have hired you. You were a lousy employee.”
And we part ways never to see each other again.
The prisoners are freed and compensated. The overall sentiment is “too little too late but still better than nothing” which I think sums it up well enough. My former employer, true to his word, has left the country and ceased communication. News outlets have made it clear that if he ever returns to the country that he will be arrested upon arrival.
To make things worse, the Riverdance hockey meme got taken down over a stupid copyright claim.
The employer, thinking that I am bluffing, kills every last one of the ill-fated so that they’re demise is worse than advertised in a way that makes me want to find a nearby explosion and become vapourized.
I in turn steal his money and give it to a homeless shelter too far away for him to reach by his current means of begging barefoot in the streets.
#entertainment
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“Have you ever wondered if you share the same nightmare as somebody else or at least something similar to it?” to me asks an attractive brunette babe who is destined for true love, I’m sure of it.
I reply, “yes I have. What a silly thing to ask, no?”
She says to me : “would you like to know my nightmare?”
I reply that I do. She tells me of a strange dream she’s had ever since she was old enough to have visited a library.
In her dream, she sits at a desk, reading from an old book from the archeology section.
The name of the civilization changes from dream to dream but the setting is always identical : sitting in a library at a desk, reading an old book about an old civilization and their idea of what awaited “the evil ones” in the afterlife.
For the evil ones, every arachnid and insect that they had ever killed either accidentally or willingly would have multiplied in hell, waiting for them, all the while, reproducing trillions upon trillions of newly evolved arachnid insect hybrid type creatures bearing eight legs and three abdomens. The female of the species is poisonous. The male of the species has an extra set of pincers.
Their long antennae allow them to hear screams from great distances.
The pictures in the book depict a swarm of imagined arachnid insect hybrids of different sizes and different colours and interesting patterns on what appear to be hard shells.
They are larger than I had expected them to be, in this artist's depiction and I wonder, if given the chance, could insects breed to eventually become larger than the average sized arachnid or insect or even larger so that they become larger than the average human?
Thank goodness for me it is only a painting and not real life. I see a handwritten note in the margin written by a stranger. The message is never the same and I can never read it except for one time that I recall as clear as I see the sky.
She paid for that message to get written on a coffee mug : “no rats in here, Mama.”
I ask the attractive brunette : “and you’ve had more or less that same dream since you were a kid?”
“Yes,” to me says the attractive brunette.
She is excellent, this attractive brunette. She has nice eyes and a nice voice. I like what she is talking about.
The attractive brunette continues : “I’ve obviously looked it up on search engines dozens and dozens of times and I have not once come across a single piece of translation that remotely resembles what it is that I read about in my dreams.”
I say to this attractive brunette : “no, I do not share this nightmare for the moment but it sounds like something fascinating, for sure. My dreams are usually about me running through a forest or a jungle like I’m in a race or sometimes running from cops like in a video game and I get points, and then there’s a party at the end with babes of all hair colours and everybody finishes the dream drinking for free and going for a swim at the beach.”
What I omit in this version of my dream is that while I always flirt with someone who is fucking gorgeous and we get our flirt on real real nice, I wake up before anything good can happen. What a sad ending to such a nice dream. Oh well.
Just like my dream, this conversation concludes with a sad ending.
We had struck up a conversation while she did her job, answering questions and distributing pamphlets regarding a soon-to-be available university program, never before seen in known academia.
“What is the program?” I was inclined to ask.
“Necroscience,” she would explain.
It ended up being a very interesting conversation - not at all what I had anticipated.
The university has not revealed itself yet, as it claims to be in merely the early stages of data analysis for marketing. They did however say that they were located in Europe and that all attendees would need to relocate to Europe. A cost of living price comparison was not disclosed.
\*\*\*\*\* time passes \*\*\*\*\*\*
I used to be a waiter. One of my customers thought I was so good at my job that he offered me an excellent pay raise to work for him instead at his own restaurant.
Having served him his dinner, I overhear what he has planned for some hostages on whom he wants to exact his yearning for vengeance.
They and their offspring will suffer for centuries if my employer decides to go through with his current plan for retribution.
I don’t hate anybody or anything with any degree of sadism to wish upon them and their descendants such a needlessly cruel fate. I must intervene before it is too late. If I do not, I may never again sleep at night, woken by screams that never stop. I must act now and not a moment later.
“Sir,” I intervene. “For important restaurant reasons, I need to speak with you for five minutes. It is fucking important. I wouldn’t be interrupting you if it wasn’t.”
“Fine,” to me says my employer.
My employer is in a good mood today. I wonder what I did differently from my friend who was killed for having done something similar. Perhaps I too will be killed. Let’s see.
We adjourn to a very dignified drinks lounge and receive a complimentary round of drinks. The employer looks me in the eye and tells me : “this had better be so damn important that it either wins a trillion dollars with a winning lottery ticket or that you found a cunning way to guarantee coming on the winning side of World War Three so what is so important that you had to interrupt what was about to become the proudest moment of my entire life.”
For two months, he has been planning this act of retribution. His pride demands it.
I want to tell him : “you will end up destroying the entire restaurant if you go through with this.”
What I end up telling him is : “the police are here,” because the police have just arrived.
The police look like what you expect police to look like because they’re just police doing their job like we’ve all seen.
“Word on the street is you’re about to kill fifty three people,” the cops outright accuse of my employer.
My employer smiles apologetically and says : “who? Me, officer? I’m just a normal guy, doing normal things. Those weirdos are all in the same room because they’re waiting for their taxis to arrive.”
The cops say nothing further, and they leave us again to speak in private.
“If those cop cars aren’t gone in five minutes, I’m calling a tow truck. I don’t have time for this,” my employer muses out loud, and then glares at me, saying : “anyway, you were telling me why I can’t do whatever the fuck I want in my own restaurant that I own. What is it? Out with it. Now.”
My reply is thought-out and swift : “if you do that thing you’re planning to do, you will destroy the entire ventilation system and nobody will be able to breathe fresh air throughout the next year because that’s how long it will take to repair the overdone damage that this would do to the vents.”
“How sure are you?” my employer asks me.
“Very very sure,” is my reply. “Would you like more details?”
The answer is yes, I should add one more important detail.
I write discretely on a notepad, “are you certain that you got rid of all the evidence from the last time?”
The reply is no. With police nearby, and the building’s structural integrity at risk, my employer is sane enough to spare the lives of dozens of people for a moment. However, this isn't a happy outcome considering how much better it would have been to be drinking a cocktail on the beach.
“I still want to fucking humiliate them for what they did and for the reasons that I hate them,” my employer proclaims.
“Well you’ll have to make it quick and fucking snappy or we may never have again, a window of opportunity this long to dispose of the bodies for long enough for us to have gotten an alibi,” is my final say on the matter.
My employer nods his head and says “you make a good point, there. All right…” and he plans their painful but swift murder by private execution two weeks later.
I am reluctantly invited to the affair. It is my karmic punishment for being unable to save them completely, the way I would have preferred to, but at least I spared their children from the fate that otherwise awaited them and their next generation.
There is a cave in a mountain I never knew you could get to but if you manage to find the river accessible by one hard to locate pedestrian walkway, you can get to the cave. If you manage to find it, the walk is enjoyable, but until today, I had never known that entrance to have ever been there.
In we go. It is lit by torches. The ill-fated are stripped naked and body-shamed by drunk and stoned hedonists who delight in inflicting unto others what they dread to have inflicted unto themselves. It is the ultimate perversion. I am going to be sick.
I want to barf all over the place and get all the ill feelings out of my system but I keep my cool and observe the people in attendance.
Many are captivated by what the tragically ill-fated are enduring but others are treating it as a background act to a poker game, which is what my employer, in fact, is doing. His critics would have you know that he plays poker more than he works and he’s actually quite bad at it.
Alas, the screaming is too painful and weepy to be ignored and now I want to cry, feeling a bludgeon of guilt for being alive while others die.
I cannot wait for this moment to end, and then the moment is gone and all the ill-fated have breathed their last despicable putrid agonized gasp of a breath.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
I lie awake at night, never happy with the darkness of my room, never happy with the light of the outside world. I wonder all the while, did I make the right decisions and was there anything I could have done differently to have spared them such an agony?
\*\*\*\*\*\*
For a while, life goes on and then I meet a stranger at a bar.
I am at a bar because the hockey game is on and my team is playing. I am drinking a tasty ginger beer.
The stranger sits next to me with the intent of conversation.
“Hello,” to me says the stranger. “What do you know of necroscience?”
I reply that I know very little on this subject.
Actually, I know a little about necroscience. The attractive brunette gave me a pamphlet on necroscience, and I read it two or three times.
“Where can I talk to you about it in private?” is the question I receive in reply from this stranger.
I reply : “I’m not interested. I’m just here to watch hockey.”
The stranger to me says : “let’s make a bet. If the home team’s #37 scores off the blue line at the 4:04 mark with assists from #21 and #10 , then you agree to listen to what I have to say to you. If a single one of my score details is wrong, including numbers being mixed up in the order in which I said them, then I will fuck off and never talk to you ever again and I’ll even leave you enough money to pay your bill.”
This deal is too good to be true. Is today the day I get cider in my ear?
I restate the conditions : “if at the 4:04 mark, there is no blue line goal from home team player #37 , assisted by #21 and #10 , just like that and only that, you’ll fuck off?”
They say, “I will. However, if I am correct, then you will understand that you would be wise to listen to what I have to tell you.”
The game on the tv is a live broadcast, not a taped broadcast. The clock is at 12:14. There are eight minutes of gameplay to be had.
I say again : this was a live broadcast. The way the stranger was describing the game, though, you’d think it was a rerun.”
“Check this out,” to me says the stranger. “The ref’s gonna call an interference penalty and get cheered by the fans.”
On the tv, the ref has clearly made the interference call but the tv volume is muted. I cannot visually determine whether the televised fans are booing or cheering.
“Excuse me,” the stranger says to the bartender. “Would you please turn up the volume of the hockey game?”
The bartender turns up the volume and we hear the stadium cheering wildly for the ref’s decision to call that penalty. The commentators add : “that was clear interference, and the home team gets a much needed power play that could get them back in this game.”
“Nobody scores during this power play,” says the stranger, “but they get really close.
In spite of an exciting series of speed skating, passing, shooting, rebounding and much more, not a single goal is scored and the score is the same as before.
“Watch this,” says the stranger. “At around the ten minute mark, they’re going to show a highlight from another game where the shorthanded team scores a goal in overtime and they celebrate by doing a funny but badly done version of the Riverdance dance.”
The tv noise carries on over our human silence : “...they’re still reviewing that play, so we’ll show you highlights from the game that just finished in overtime. Check out this goal….”
…. and the shorthanded team scores a shock goal in overtime, and then does a funny but bad version of Riverdance in their skates that ends in them falling over, laughing. The moment goes viral.
Only a few seconds to the 4:04 mark and there’s a face off. There is no way there will be a goal. Shooting from the blue line from this angle is an endeavour fraught with overall distance issues and player interference.
The puck is dropped. Bing bang boom. From #10 to #21 to #37 who shoots from the blue line, the puck travelling just to the left of a defenseman, over the goalie’s shoulder and into the net. The crowd goes wild. The time of the goal is 4:04.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
How? This stranger must be from the future or something. Maybe I would be wise to learn what the stranger has to say. The stranger by the way is cute and female - two my favourite things. Sometimes you know what you like and that’s all there is to it. This is one of those times.
\*\*\*\*\*\*\*
We reconvene at a shitty foreign style cuisine restaurant that’s going out of business and they only interrupt to bring exquisite cuisine.
I order the cheapest thing on the menu.
“You are being followed,” to me says this stranger. “I saw you and fell in love with you and I know you could never love me back but I just couldn’t stand the thought of you dying, even if it meant you would fall in love with somebody else.”
I do not want to be followed. Being followed is a scary thing. I do not want to be followed.
I do not want them to follow me and to do unto the humiliations I dare not imagine could ever be so beneath the scope of reality as to never happen to me, the deepest vaults of my nightmares of degradation and pain turning real. I never want this to happen to me. It keeps me awake into the quietest hours of the night. I do not ever want to experience this pain.
Perhaps however, there is nothing to worry about.
I must remain optimistic.
I do not feel as though I am being followed. Perhaps this stranger is crazy. Mental illness is stranger neither to the beautiful nor the ugly. A pinnacle of beauty has the possibility to become mentally ill, same as the most despicable of ugly.
I have been close to death other times too.
“You are being followed by someone who wants to do something dangerous to you and I just wanted you to be prepared. Please fall in love and be happy. I will never ever forget you no matter what happens to me or to you.”
And she vanishes never to be seen ever again.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
Days later, it’s time to get the mail and I receive a very interesting pamphlet. It reads the exact same as the pamphlet I received from the attractive brunette that one night :
“Necroscience, the study of life after death.
According to McKendrick’s rules of dying, a person may be existing in life, post-life or death, but never simultaneously. Post-life is also known as “life after death.”
To be alive after death, one must first have endured an event that caused them to have fully died by medical definition of death - no breathing, no pulse - ever again.
In spite of not breathing and not having a pulse, the person in question continues to participate in the world of motion, either consciously or unconsciously.
\[ For a second, I actually imagine actually having no pulse and never ever breathing and still doing stuff like running or swimming. \]
Necrobiology : life after death at the molecular level. How do living and undead atoms differ from one another? Is there predictability within molecular orbits of undead specimens and does it have medical implications? Some governments and other factions are considering necrobiology in warfare.
Necro Optics : the study of ghost photography. What environment and physical conditions must be achieved for a ghost to appear in a photograph? Why do we see ghosts in photographs more easily than during the moment itself?
Everyday, new techniques are developed that allow unseeable wavelengths to be expressed in photographic format to be comprehensible to human optical limitations.
Necropsychology : are there inherent undead traits that might predict undead method or motivation? If there is no blood flow in the brain due to no pulse, what is creating thought in the undead? By understanding an undead’s hierarchy of needs, we can advance the complexity of communication between life and post-living.
note : in necroscience, undead refers to post life.
….. I didn’t understand a single word of any of that. I wonder what it means.
\*\*\*\*\*\*
Days later, I am at the grocery store, purchasing a small bottle of tasty delicious ginger beer and a voice behind me tells me : “we must speak again in private. At your place.”
“No thank you,” is my reply.
“I have a picture to show you,” is the reply.
I turn around. The person looks like a person in one shape or another - a sort of person whose image I have vaguely encountered. Like a policeman.
The picture is of my bedroom, just as I left it, including the angle of my reading chair. Sitting in my chair is a human coloured completely electric blue like graffiti, just sitting in my chair.
“We also have video,” they say to me. “Unfortunately, you can’t see the ghosts because necro optics can’t do video yet, but you can see shit move around right there and there.”
They have film of my apartment and pictures of my apartment. This is creepy and bad. I am moving. It is creepy and not normal and I am moving and that is that.
“What the fuck were you doing at my place?” I ask.
“Your roommate said it was ok,” is the reply.
“I don’t have a roommate,” I retort.
“Your landlord then. Whatever,” is the next reply. “The photographs I have shown you are ghost photographs. In the name of science, please let me photograph your place again. You have something living there that if not coaxed to leave, will eat your structural foundation as if it was breakfast.”
Speaking of breakfast…
The policemanish person to me says : “speaking of breakfast, let’s go to the diner on the other street. My treat.”
We eat at a table and watch the baseball game. The breakfast is smoked carrot that is supposed to taste like smoked salmon.
“Why don’t you have really smoked salmon?” asks policemanish person.
“We ran out. Last night’s game went into quadruple overtime and people ate like crazy.”
The carrot lox taste a lot better than I had expected it too. Very smoky.
Another set of pictures, this time of my bathroom. The same electric blue human figure is using my toilet, doing goodness-knows-what.
“Do the blue things ever appear on video?” I ask.
The photos are removed from the table. The policemanish person puts them in a jacket pocket that sounds an awful lot like a paper shredder.
“No,” is the reply from the policemanish person. “Necro optics is very young in its photography stage. We’re only able to capture still images. I could show you in person if you’d just let me one more time back into your dwelling to take photographs and then you would never see me ever again.”
I reply : “how about tomorrow?”
They accept my offer for a visit tomorrow and that is that.
I return home, I pack my bag and I leave. I’ll phone my landlord and tell him to rent the place as quickly as he wants to.
For the moment, I have very little money. I sleep in a tent in a slum while I think through my options.
One day, there is craving for a coffee so I go to a place that prepares really good Turkish coffee. A Turkish coffee is exactly what I need to turn my day the right way.
“Hey, good to see you!” says the owner who prepares for me a flavourful brew of Turkish coffee. “Your friend left a message for you. They had to leave early but if they’ll meet you at the next place.”
“Which friend?” I ask.
“I’ll show you a picture,” says the owner. “We took a selfie.”
The photo is of the owner and the person who showed me those photographs of my abode.
“Thank you,” I tell the owner, and I am rattled.
The deliciousness of my coffee is undercut by the dread of the words spoken to me by the owner : “they’ll meet you at the next place.”
Where will the next place be? Can I avoid it or will I be there no matter where I go?
I wonder where I would least likely go. Where would I least likely go? To a country bar.
I don’t like country music. No offence. You can’t change my mind. I have heard more country music than you give me credit for. Other than maybe like one or two good songs, the genre is just not my thing and it will never be my thing.
So I go to a country bar. Alas, I hate this artist. The gang at work used to listen to him constantly and I couldn’t stand him. A live female tribute act is butchering this swill of a repertoire to the enthusiastic cheers of people who are into this sort of thing.
I am safe. Or so I think.
“This music rocks,” says a stranger to me. “I hope you’ll pardon the interruption, but since you’re here, I’ll update you on the situation.”
… or something like that. It’s really loud in here.
They point a gun at my face and nobody notices.
They say to me : “you have a lot to fucking explain and you’re going to do it where and when I tell you or I will end your hopes and dreams right here right now. What’s it going to be?”
“What would you like to know?” is my cordial reply.
“We’re asking the questions,” is their reply back to me.
I must decide : do I live to see another day or let myself get shot?
I have nothing to live for. She doesn’t love me. Without her, life has become a cheap imitation deprived of dreams. I choose to die.
They pull the trigger and shoot me in the head, the bullet going through my forehead and exiting from thirty degree angle to the rear of my skull. Surely I will die.
\*\*\*\*\*
I am fucking stunned by what happened next. Of all the things that I expected to have happen to me upon being shot point-blank through the skull, this was not one of them.
\*\*\*\*\*
Time passes.
How can it be that I am not a corpse? What has happened to me? I cannot breathe but with a bit of concentration, I realized that I am not physically discomforted for lack of breathing fresh air. Oh I wonder what the air tastes like on this lovely summer’s day but alas I cannot taste or feel the air. I wonder what will become of beautiful summer air.
I take a minute to appreciate my surroundings. I am in a cafe drinking Turkish coffee but surprisingly, a different cafe from where I was shot
The coffee is delicious but I am not enjoying it with my mouth but with its temperature. I can feel the change in heat distribution from the heat of the coffee in the mug in my hand. I can feel how my esophagus contracts as it becomes hot.
Wait. I am not a medical doctor. It feels like a contracting feeling but maybe I am wrong. I only know that I hate it.
Anyway, the mixture of its elements are the right density and the right heat to center my eyes in a new direction that might give me the insight to pull me away from this downward view.
How did I get here? I wonder. A moment later, I understand what I am feeling and I understand now that I am more ghost than I was before.
I would love so much to breathe in some air but alas I cannot breathe. It is not for sustenance that I crave to breathe. I can move and react very agile-like due to no restrictions on air intake.
I crave to breathe air in part for nostalgia in how it used to be proof that I was alive. If I am wrong about needing to breathe, perhaps I am also wrong about lots and lots of things.
Do not stop trying to breathe, says a search result that I didn’t ask for. Don’t kill yourself. It’s time to give yourself another chance.
Another chance to do what, I wonder.
I miss the air so badly. I never knew how I had taken it for granted until it was completely gone. I don’t smell a single fragrance, neither good nor pungent. Every place I wander feels as though I am in a video game simulation as an NPC and not really present in the moment. I feel like a tourist in a weird theater experience.
But then suddenly I can feel it : air flowing through me more than before and it is kind of like…. I’d better not say but trust me when I tell you it feels great.
So I drink my coffee and I feel a new set of ambitions and desires the likes of which I hadn’t realized would ever become things that I would crave.
I do not taste my coffee, and if I could cry, I would cry a million tears for no sensation that I have ever experienced will ever come close to eclipsing how I felt, drinking a relaxing cup of coffee and savouring the liquid velvet froth of coffee, heat, and water.
The moment passes and my mourning is over.
Days pass and I have not slept for a single time. I do not ever sleep. I kind of miss sleeping if not for as a way to spend time amidst my boredom. I have not once slept and sometimes I am tired.
There is no sex.
It turns out that a third of ghosts have no sex drive, regardless of their living libido. A very unlucky percentile retain their sex drive but are unable to have sex for ghost reasons. Make of that what you will.
So far as a ghost, I have not experienced anything as pleasurable as sex, but for some reason, I miss coffee even more.
The article concludes : “Necrophelia is a deplorable act that ought never to occur. Both medical scientists and necroscientists agree that sex between consenting living and consenting post-living is medically and physically safe, provided that safe sex precautions are in place.”
What an interesting way to end the article. That’s just my opinion.
While not getting laid, my existence is not without its moments of delight. Being less dense, I can appreciate more wavelengths of more types of light and colours look so astounding.
I took an art class. I think I am painting using five primary colours but I haven’t actually said this out loud to anybody in case they think I am crazy.
Sunrises and sunsets mean more to me than ever before. Until I was shot in the head, I had never before seen such wondrous colour.
Goodness gracious! It’s all coming back to me! Oh! The muscle tension and the scary head pains the likes of which you never knew unless you had been shot in the head and taken to a facility wherein you were experimented on.
…………. the past ………………………
\*\*\* “Is that enough anesthesia?” is the last thing I can recall being said. \*\*\*\*
I know exactly how I got here. I was accompanied by five muscled men and women who look as though they cardio train by playing rockclimbing tag.
They are here now. They have just arrived at my table and are sitting to join me.
A moment ago, I was alone, but now, I am with five people who are not letting me out of their sight.
“We owe you an explanation,” to me says one of the muscular cardio escorts. “We mistook you for someone else. You strongly resemble someone who owes our client a shitton of money so we killed you and mummified your corpse to observe the effects of your inanimate corpse in a certain chemical environment that reawakened the hippocampus in the brain to make you conscious.”
I don’t understand a word that guy just said and tell him, “I don’t know what any of that means.”
“I’ll explain it,” says another one of the muscular cardio specimens. “When we shot you in the head, it wasn’t a bullet that penetrated your head but it was instead a laser. We made you unconscious and performed mummification experiments on your motionless body. Don’t bother going to the press about it. They won’t believe you. But we all feel horrible about what happened and what to give you some cash to get you through this very awkward starting point in your life.”
“We are really really sorry,” to me says another person.
I blink and I am alone again. A moment ago, five people had sat next to me at this table and they had a logical reason for being present and now I am alone, all alone. Did any of that really happen?
You know how when you get stressed, your reaction may be to breathe slowly until calmed down? When you’re in my state of being, you look at colours. I can’t smell cupcakes but I can notice the intricacy of the colours. My hearing is also improved. I can register more audio frequencies than ever before.
I blink again. The five escorts have again joined me at my table. They gasp and stay to themselves, “fascinating. Absolutely fascinating,” before they vanish again.
This time they do not return.
I return to my dwelling, and I find that it looks the same as how I left it.
I realize for the first time that I have been without my phone. The last time I had my phone was something to do with my employer, who I had forgotten all about until now.
I get an idea.
\*\*\* I saw this on a dark web science tutorial. The necroscience department’s official website is a .onion website. \*\*\*
Using the surrounding heat and calibrating my entropy, I can become a completely gaseous being, including my clothes, and I can spread my molecules so thinly that you don’t know I’m there unless you have blacklight and a UV light to see me in the dark.
………………… the present ……………………………
It is daytime.
Finally, my employer is alone. I react to the new environment to sublime from gas to solid so that I am visible to all around me
“XXXXX!!!!” screams my employer. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I’m a ghost,” to my employer says me, and I do a ghost thing to prove it.
“XXXXX!!!!!” my employer screams again, followed by some more screaming, “XXXYYYZZZ!!”
“Let’s cut to the chase,” I say to my employer. “I could very easily go to the national security and tell them every single thing you did that would make them put you away for life or you can do what I tell you.”
My employer is not scared, but rather laughs. He says to me, “if I go down, I’m taking you down with me. I’ll make sure for every year they give me that you get double.”
Now it is my turn to laugh. I say to him, “I’m a ghost. They won’t be able to contain me in prison. Check this out.”
I do another ghost thing. I don’t know if it is impressive but it is definitely a thing that only a ghost can do.
“So are you ready to do what I tell you?” I threaten.
\[ What I do not know during this moment while I am threatening my employer is that there actually are ghost prisons. They are… the worst thing ever conjured. I… I can’t tell you about it. There are some things better left unknown and one of those things is ghost prison. Had I known about ghost prison while this was happening, I would have been a lot more cautious in that interaction. \]
My employer says : “what are your demands?” Lucky for me, my employer has also never heard of ghost prison.
“How many people remain unmurdered?” I ask.
“I dunno. I’m sure there are some who are still alive,” is the reply. “I’m a busy person. I have no idea who is living or dying during most moments.”
I make my first demand : “free them and give them each a million dollars and some land.”
My employer eyeballs me, or tries to, only he can’t because you humans can’t see ghost eyes, I later will learn.
“Why do you care so much about those fucking people?” he asks.
Good question. I don’t know. I just do. He doesn’t need to know that though.
My sympathy is less to do with their cultural identity and more to do with their human identity. No human anywhere during any time deserves what they will endure if I do not intervene. I wouldn’t wish it on myself or my family so I wouldn’t wish it on anybody else’s.
“Fine,” he says. “The land will be small and shitty. What else?”
“Leave the country never to return and cease all communication,” I demand.
The reply is : “I can’t do that.”
I reply in turn : “you can and will.”
“After all I did for you,” my employer curses. “I never should have hired you. You were a lousy employee.”
And we part ways never to see each other again.
The prisoners are freed and compensated. The overall sentiment is “too little too late but still better than nothing” which I think sums it up well enough. My former employer, true to his word, has left the country and ceased communication. News outlets have made it clear that if he ever returns to the country that he will be arrested upon arrival.
To make things worse, the Riverdance hockey meme got taken down over a stupid copyright claim.
The employer, thinking that I am bluffing, kills every last one of the ill-fated so that they’re demise is worse than advertised in a way that makes me want to find a nearby explosion and become vapourized.
I in turn steal his money and give it to a homeless shelter too far away for him to reach by his current means of begging barefoot in the streets.
#entertainment
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