Morbid Curiosity

by Dante D. Ross

I sit there waiting for this car to pass a ghost appears next to me. He’s wearing a leather coat with the sleeves torn off. His jeans are dirty and he’s wearing no shoes.

  “Isn’t this exciting?” he asks me. “I’ve heard of you but never thought I’d get to meet you. My name’s Wreck. I know that cop told you where to go but you shouldn’t. Just a few minutes ago he wanted to arrest you. Fuck that. Go somewhere else.”

  “Don’t talk to me right now,” I tell him. I can't even imagine what this guy smelled like when he was alive. “I’d rather trust him than a reject from The Hills Had Eyes.”

  “Hey, its your funeral,” he says and disappears.

  Fucking intersections. Wreck was right. Why was this cop helping me? Just because someone dies it doesn’t mean that they gave up their occupation. A cop is always a cop. A plumber is always a plumber. A crossing guard is always a crossing guard. Since I don’t have a plan B I’ll stick with Rob the ghost cop's suggestion. The car passes and I run. Half an hour later I get to the place. It’s a house. Not that safe looking but its supposed to be good. I walk to the front door and a group of ghosts step out and onto the porch.

  “You shouldn’t come in here,” one of them wearing a painters uniform says. “Wreck was right about the cop.”

  “I don’t want to waste my energy sending you all away but I will if you don’t step aside right now” I tell them. They all look at each other and walk past me. “Thank you,” I say as I open the door.

  It's pitch black in here. I let my eyes adjust to the darkness and make my way into a kitchen. This place looks like it hasn’t been used in a while. I put down my bag and sit down on a dirty chair. Suddenly my senses start going crazy. This has nothing to do with my abilities. This is a natural reaction to something that is wrong. I grab my bag and rush towards the door. Wreck is standing there looking out one of the windows and laughing.

  “Told you, man,” he says. “Never trust a cop.”

  I run to the window and look out as well. More than ten squad cars are out there with their sirens off. I’ve been set up by a fucking ghost cop. I run into the kitchen and I can see shadows across the windows. This place is surrounded. What can I do? Yeah, I could call my parents or other random vengeful ghosts. There are plenty of them that hate cops. But that’ll get me nowhere. I’d be running until I was finally caught and then what?

  I drop my bags and head to the front door. Rob the lying ass ghost cop is standing there. He is smiling with his hands in his pocket and rocking back and forth like he completed a good job. I walk over to him and he takes a step back.

  “I’m not going to let you send me away,” he says.

  “That’s not my plan at all,” I tell him. I use my index finger and slice my cheek. A drop of blood runs down and I quickly rub it off and make a circle in my hand. “I’m not sending you away at all.” This is something I used a while ago. On my uncle to be specific. Rob tries to vanish but can't.

  “What the hell did you do?” he asks. He rushes for the door and tries to run through it. He hits it without a sound. He tries the wall, the window, the floor. Nothing. “What did you do?!”

  “A little trick I learned a while ago” I tell him. I place my hand on his back as he attempts to run. He freezes in place and starts screaming. “I hope you like it here” I say. “This place will be your new home. You will never leave. This spot you’re standing in; this is where you’ll always stand until I change my mind. Which I wont.” He tries to speak to me but his mouth wont even move. “Oh, right. And you can't speak. Matter of fact…” I close my eyes as I hear safeties being turned off just outside the door. “No other spirits can enter here. Welcome to your own prison, Rob.”

  The doors and windows all explode. The last thing I see before the world goes black is smoke and fists.

  My name is Steven Bowes and I am having a very bad day. Actually the last few days have been off the charts shitty. My ex wife was murdered after we had sex in a motel. She brought back the spirit of our dead baby. I sent her and my ex wife to wherever it is spirits go when I get rid of them. I had to use my parents to not only help me get away from the cops but to hold a werewolf down that was threatening me after I met with a vampire he had set up for murder. And now a dead cop screwed me over and I’ve just been arrested.

  These cops are not even trying to hold back. I can feel ribs being broken, my fingers snapped, and my head is getting hit so much I can't even feel it anymore. I just wish I would black out so I don’t have to listen to their lies. They are calling me a cop killer. Great. I know what happens to cop killers in jail. It isn't the parade you think it is. I’ll let them have their fun for a little bit longer. Oh, good. I’m passing out from the pain.

  I wake up handcuffed in the back of a patrol car. I can't see out of my left eye and my lips feel like slabs of warm beef on my face. I can only imagine what I look like. I look on my left and there’s Wreck, the filthy looking guy who warned me not to head into that house Rob sent me to. He’s just shaking his head at me.

  “What do you want?” I ask him.

  “Shut up, fucking psycho,” one of the cops says to me.

  “He’s just talking to himself,” the other says. “He’s trying to act nuts so he can plead insanity. It won’t work. Guy kills his wife…”

  “Ex wife,” I say.

  “…and two cops and thinks he’s gonna get sent to the puzzle factory.” The cops laugh. “I wish I had stomped his fucking head in harder. Surprised he’s even conscious.”

  “I’ve been beaten worse than this,” I tell him, thinking of my parents. I turn my attention back to Wreck. “So you here to gloat?”

  “No,” he says. “But I tried to warn you. I hate cops. They’re fucking dirty, every one of ‘em. That one that set you up shot me years ago. Me and my entire gang were slaughtered in that place.”

  “That explains all the freaks that tried to keep me out,” I say. “Fuck.”

  “Sorry, buddy. Man, they really beat the shit out of you” Wreck says. I lick my lips and don’t recognize the feel of them. “If they get you to jail they’re gonna fuck you up some more. You need to get out of here.”

  “That’s a great idea!” I tell him. “I’ll just snap my fingers and…”

  “Fine. Fuck it.” And with that Wreck vanishes.

  “I could use a drink,” I say out loud. The cops start laughing at me. “Do you guys believe in Heaven and Hell?” I ask them.

  “You’re gonna be experiencing hell for the rest of your stinking fucking life as soon as we get to the station,” the driver says.

  “That wasn’t very nice,” I tell them and close my eyes and imagine what the day is gonna be like.”

  You ever have one of those days where all you wanna do is sleep? You don’t wanna fuck. You don’t wanna talk to anyone. You just wanna sleep. That’s me right now. This guy, me, is having one of those days. They book me fast. There are news vans surrounding the jail. They want to lock me in solitary confinement since I am causing such a commotion but with the overcrowding going on that’s impossible. The one empty cell in solitary has a giant hole in the wall. It appears the vampire did some damage to that side of the jail when he escaped.

  Good for him.

  Most of the guys in the cell with me know who I am and the ones that don’t are being told while I sit in the corner trying to get the feeling back into my hands. Those handcuffs were rather tight. Fuck me. My powers or whatever the fuck you want to call them are out of whack. I’m having trouble telling who is a ghost and who is alive. One of them gets close enough for me to smell him. He’s very alive.

  “It true what they say about you?” he asks me.

  “Sure” I tell him.

  “You see any ghosts and shit right now?” he asks.

  “No,” I tell him. I have no problems lying. This guy is surrounded by pissed off ghosts. I’m sure he says he’s innocent of whatever crime they tossed him in here for.

  “No ghosts in here.”

&nbs
p; “They say you killed some cops,” he says. “They’re gonna beat your ass. You wont make it out of here alive.” I shrug. I don’t have the energy to talk to this jackass. “You don’t talk much do you?” I shake my head. “That’s good. That’s real good. You scream? Do you scream much?” I can already see him reaching into his pocket for a weapon.

  “Who wants to move on?” I ask out loud.

  “The fuck you talking about?” this guy asks me. I’m talking to all the angry ghosts around him. One of them, this big burly biker of a ghost, wraps his arm around the guys neck and throws his legs around his waist and starts choking the living hell out of him. Now everyone is looking at this guy choking and spinning around trying to get a ghost he can't see off his back. He falls to his knees and is gasping for air. Everyone starts screaming for the guards who eventually show up and grab the guy. Now he’s fighting the guards off. Now the guards are beating him down while the ghosts is still choking him. This ghosts cranks back one more time and the guy’s neck snaps. He drops to the ground and the guards look at me. I shrug.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I say. The biker ghosts walks over to me and smiles. I poke his leg and he disappears. The other ghosts look at me and I try to smile. “You watch my back and I’ll watch yours,” I tell them a moment before the guards tackle me.

  They end up locking me in an interrogation room all by myself. I wonder how that asshole