You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please)

by Andrew Stanek

  “I found it,” he declared.

  Nathan continued to look through q-tip boxes. He thought maybe there was another one in here somewhere, or a prize like a Happy Meal.

  Travis flipped the device over to the bottom and inspected the place on the 8-ball where words usually appeared.

  “It does not appear to be in operation,” he announced.

  Brian snatched it from him and shook it vigorously, but nothing happened.

  “Blast, they’ve sabotaged it somehow,” he said. “We’ll have to repair it.”

  However, there was no time. Armed police guards, who had managed to struggle back to their feet, waddled into the warehouse.

  “They’ve got the q-tips!” the captain shouted, pointing to Nathan. Nathan was holding one of the q-tip boxes. “Get them!”

  Sadly, the captain overbalanced and fell over again, but the rest of the men got the point. They started spraying the warehouse with bullets.

  “Run!” Brian shouted and dashed towards the back door. Travis jogged after him, looking remarkably composed for a man who was narrowly avoiding death. Nathan stuffed four boxes of q-tips under his arms for later and ran.

  “I’m going to clean my ears so much when we get back,” he said happily as they dashed down the street. The guards, over-encumbered though they were, were slowly pursuing them.

  “Where should we go?” Brian bellowed.

  “To the airport,” Nathan said. “That’s where we parked, and it’s only a block from here.”

  “Let’s go there, then,” Travis agreed, and struck out in the direction Nathan indicated.

  “Uh-oh,” Nathan said suddenly. “Opera singers!”

  In front of them, a band of marauding opera singers had suddenly rounded the corner and caught sight of them.

  Dodging the cacophony of gunfire from behind them and a swarm of furious opera singers who had just appeared in front of them, trying to force them to listen to a four-hour libretto, they dashed down the block. One of the opera singers lunged towards Nathan, singing aggressively at him in terrifying baritones, but Nathan stuffed a box of q-tips in the singer’s mouth and kept running. Shots from behind them forced the opera singers to scatter and then they were clear, racing to the end of the block and around the corner, then into the airport parking lot.

  Brian spotted Mr. Big’s car and approached it, trying the handle. The door was locked.

  “The keys,” Brian said to Nathan. “We need to get into the car to escape.”

  Nathan put his q-tips on the roof and patted himself down, but his usual smile fell a little.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Brian, but I left my keys on my previous body.”

  “You mean the one we left in the zoo?” Brian asked. “Then how are we going to get away? We’re trapped here unless we have a vehicle to escape.”

  “The transit device!” Travis shouted. “Can you fix it?”

  Brian produced the device and looked at it hurriedly, but he couldn’t immediately tell what was wrong with it. He turned it over and shook it frantically, but nothing happened. Behind them, armed police guards were closing in, sending occasional shotgun blasts and tennis balls sailing over their heads.

  “If only we had the keys,” he muttered, and yanked on the handle, to no avail.

  Just then, a large pelican swooped down from the sky and landed on the hood of the car. It opened its huge, spacious bill to reveal a jangling set of car keys lodged comfortably inside its mouth.

  “Mr. Quacks!” Nathan said joyously. “You came back for us!”

  “Why is he calling that pelican Mr. Quacks?” Travis asked quietly.

  “You do not want to know,” Brian answered, scooped the keys out of the pelican’s bill, and stuffed them into the car. He quickly got in the driver’s seat and gunned the engine. Nathan and Travis piled in the back, while Lord Wesley Benediktas the Third waddled into the passenger seat and buckled his seat belt with his mouth. Brian slammed down the accelerator and pulled Big’s tank-like car, screeching, out of the airport parking lot.

  Despite the horrendous amount of gunfire and violent behavior around them, the four managed to escape the parking lot unscathed, rocketing past the gaggle of absurdly armed police and onto the streets of Dead Donkey.

  “Head for the mayor’s office,” Nathan recommended. “The police don’t patrol around there.”

  “Too late,” Brian muttered, and looked into the rearview mirror. A collection of police cars were closing on them from behind, with the officers shooting wildly out the window at them.

  “Are there ever scandals where police officers use excess force and kill someone accidentally in Dead Donkey?” Travis asked Nathan conversationally.

  “No,” Nathan said, as an RPG sailed by the right passenger window and exploded. “Usually the police scandal in Dead Donkey is that the police committed the crime to begin with.”

  “That does make sense,” Travis replied, as the pursuing officers hurled some kind of insidious discus with razors coming out the sides at them, which mercifully missed. “Do you recall when I told you that Dead Donkey is a very violent city?”

  “Yes,” answered Nathan cheerfully. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently.”

  “They’re gaining on us,” Brian said, glancing out of the sideview mirror. “Our only chance now is to repair the Bureaucratic Transit Device and use it to escape, which might spare us all unnecessarily gristly deaths. Take a look at it and figure out what’s wrong with it. I can’t do it. Here, you hold it, Mr. Quacks.”

  Lord Wesley took the device from Brian and transferred it to the back seat, where Travis and Nathan examined it with vague interest.

  There was another shotgun blast from behind them and one of the tires on Mr. Bigs’ car blew out. It started to spin wildly and ground to a halt in the middle of the street. Police cars sped up on all sides of them. Policemen waddled out and leveled various implements of swift and assured destruction.

  “This is the police,” the captain shouted into a loudspeaker. “Come out with your hands up and put the q-tips where we can see them. Easy, now. No one needs to get hurt.”

  Travis was peering at the device.

  “There’s something written on the side,” he announced, and held it up to the light. Whatever the words said, they were written in black ink on the black material of the ball, making them exceedingly difficult to decipher. “It says, ‘this device is not to be used except for the purpose of haunting Dave...’”

  “It’s a regulation,” Brian said quickly. “Of course! They wrote a new regulation to constrain the use of the device. Wipe it off! Quickly!”

  “You have until the count of eight point seven six two!” the police captain shouted. “One... one point two two two nine... one point two two three six...”

  Meanwhile, the officers around him seemed to be pointing a loaded medieval cannon at them.

  Nathan was hurriedly wiping the writing on the side of the ball off on his sleeve. With the addition of a little spit, the black marker came off.

  “Eight point one one,” the captain continued menacingly. “Eight point one one one one two...”

  Writing reappeared on the bottom of the 8-ball.

  Nathan quickly shook it and the writing reformed itself as “Mayor’s Office, Dead Donkey, Nevada.”

  A door appeared in front of the car.

  “Eight point seven six one,” the captain hollered. “Eight point seven six one nine!”

  There was no time for everyone to get out of the car and run through the doorway. Brian hit the accelerator and the car zoomed through the door. Right behind them, the medieval cannon went off, causing a huge explosion behind them as the ball struck pavement and caused the road to explode, owing to Dead Donkey’s use of explosives in building its roads.

  At the fore of this huge explosion, the car managed to just barely pass through the doorway and came tumbling out into the park, outside the men’s urinals. It flipped and careened before finally skidding t
o a halt, sideways, at the feet of the mayor. The mayor paid the spectacle no attention and continued to give the political speech he had been in the middle of. He took a swig from his whiskey bottle and resumed speaking to his supporters.

  “People call me crazy, but rathouse banjo goldenrod muckraking cloudhopper spleen, blood in your spleen,” the mayor pontificated. His supporters cheered.

  “After a speech like that he’ll be re-elected for sure,” Nathan said. “Too bad. I was supporting the corpse.”

  The three men and the pelican clambered out of the car, ignoring the political rally just a few meters away from them. As soon as he had undone his buckle, Lord Wesley flapped his wings and took off.

  “Goodbye, Mr. Quacks!” Nathan shouted after him. “I hope we see you again some time.”

  The pelican did not respond as it flew away into the sky. Brian emerged from the smoldering wreckage of the car, which he suspected was no longer operational, and stretched. Just then, a message appeared in his hand.

  “What’s that?” Nathan asked.

  “It’s a notice saying I’m about to receive a memorandum,” Brian said. It was swiftly followed by another piece of paper, which popped into his hand out of thin air.

  “A memorandum saying I’m about to receive an official letter,” explained Brian.

  A letter soon materialized in his hand.

  “I’m about to receive a phone call,” Brian added, after opening the letter and reading it. Then his phone started to ring. He picked it up.

  “Yes. Yes. I understand. Immediately. Of course.”

  He briefly filled out the form to hang up and then hung up.

  “I was told I was about to receive an email with further instructions,” he said stiffly. His phone then jangled, and he briefly read the email.

  “As I suspected,” he declared. “Director Fulcher has recalled me due to my repeated attempts to help you and get revenge. I have to return to the office. I will need to borrow this.”

  Brian took the transit device and shook it. The words on the bottom of the 8-ball changed to read, “Receiving Department, General Office.” A door materialized just as swiftly as the letters had done, and he opened it, preparing to walk through. Then, hesitating, he handed the transit device back to Nathan.

  “I have no qualms giving this back to you, and I hope you will use it to cause further grief to Director Fulcher. Now I have to leave.”

  “Thank you,” Nathan said. “I guess this is goodbye, then.” He held out his hand.

  Brian did not shake it.

  “I think you are forgetting that I hate you,” Brian snapped, then stepped through the door. He slammed it shut behind him and it vanished.

  Travis sighed and turned to Nathan.

  “I strongly recommend that we use that transit device to leave the city as soon as possible,” Travis said. “We can use it to get out, but there’s no telling when the bureaucrats will find a way to deactivate it, as the atheists did. Perhaps they are already preparing the paperwork to receive authorization to form an exploratory committee to do so. If we don’t leave the city, the bureaucrats will come after you again and again. We should hurry and go, but knowing you, you will probably want to go back to your house and do your laundry instead.”

  Nathan thought about this. Something Director Fulcher had told him echoed through his mind.

  “But this must be very boring and stale for you, Mr. Haynes. Hasn’t it all gotten so predictable? You die, have a poke around some of our most sensitive bureaucratic departments and disrupt them in infuriating ways, then are sent to see me just so I can get rid of you. Then I dispatch you back to life, to your ridiculous home city of Dead Donkey, and the cycle repeats itself. It happens again and again, day in, day out. You see the same old faces, the same bureaucrats on this side and the same lunatics on your side. Don’t you think you are wasting your many lives and subsequent unlives, Mr. Haynes? No doubt by now, the initial shock of finding a bureaucratic afterlife has worn off and you find this all dull, intellectually, spiritually, and morally uninteresting. Don’t you think it’s time for a change? Why don’t we try something a little different this time? Something new and exciting - an adventure!”

  Then, to Travis’ great surprise, Nathan shook his head.

  “No, I’ll go with you and leave Dead Donkey.”

  And Nathan shook the 8-ball. The text on the bottom rearranged itself to read: “Outside Dead Donkey.”

  A door appeared in front of them.

  And Nathan stepped through it.

  Chapter 27

  Meanwhile, in a very different administrative subdivision of existence, Director Fulcher was receiving an expected and extremely unwelcome visitor. Overdirector Powell had just paced into the room, rapping her skull-tipped cane against the floor with every step she took. When she reached Fulcher’s desk, she declined to sit down, but instead turned to the wall. Then, she quickly filled out a Form 263345: Instrument to Create a Window Out of Thin Air (a form that only immensely powerful bureaucrats have access to; not everyone can have window offices after all), and a window appeared. Overdirector Powell then proceeded to stare dramatically out of it. Fulcher watched her in equally dramatic silence.

  At last, Powell’s knobbly knuckles and wiry fingers contorted around the skull on her cane. She turned.

  “Nathan Haynes is still at liberty and flaunting an ever-increasing number of highly important statutes. His file is out of order, and your attempts to stop him have not only failed, but actually backfired. Your decision to send Brian Dithershoes to monitor him proved worse than useless as Dithershoes helped Nathan more than he harmed him, your attempts to send managers and managers of managers to divert Nathan back to the afterlife failed, your attempt to hold him here in the afterlife after his last death using a restraining order was bungled, and even your attempt to win a rigged game at Rulan’s casino to undo the shameful agreement you signed backfired. Your alliance with the Particularly Cynical Atheists proved equally fruitless. I even understand that Haynes was allowed to rendezvous with Travis Erwin Habsworth of 2388 Shillington Road, Albany. You have been beaten by a braindead ghost with a pelican. Unacceptable.”

  Fulcher’s heart was beating very fast, but he clasped his own hands and pieced his case together in his mind.

  “It is only a matter of time before Haynes is permanently confined to death, where he belongs. As for Dithershoes, I have already recalled him and he will face severe punishment. I will change his name to Brian Brian Brianson if I have to-”

  “Last time I told you that you had failed me for the second-to-last time, Director Fulcher. You have failed me again so this time you have failed me for the last time.”

  Fulcher stiffened in his chair. He was afraid it would come to this. He reached into his desk and withdrew a folder, so carefully prepared, stuffed to the brim with immaculate forms and paperwork. Then he slid it across the desk to Overdirector Powell.

  “This is a Form 999999A - Application For An Additional Last Chance,” Fulcher informed her. “I think you will find it is all in order.”

  Overdirector Powell took the bulging file, reviewed the paperwork with a practiced eye, and nodded.

  “Very well. Then you get another chance. Last time you failed me for the second-to-last time for the second-to-last time, but this time you failed me for the second-to-last time for the last time. Do not fail me again, or you will have failed me for the last time, Fulcher. Remember that.”

  She tapped the skull on her cane.

  “I understand,” Fulcher said. “I will make sure that Nathan Haynes is brought into conformance with statute and protocol, no matter what. The regulations will be observed. All I need is time.”

  “Good,” Powell said, and straightened up. Her fingers tapped her cane. “When next I come, I will expect results. If I do not have them...”

  She tapped her cane again.

  And with that, she turned and left.

  Director Fulcher sighed, not entirely wit
h relief. He turned to the large stack of forms on his desk, his thoughts on one man’s forms in particular. Next time, next time, he would beat Nathan Haynes even if it cost him every form he had.

  Chapter 28

  Nathan Haynes and Travis Habsworth stepped through the door, which vanished behind them. They had emerged outside the outskirts of Dead Donkey. At some point, afternoon had turned to evening and the sky had dimmed. The city, and all its lights, were far behind them. All the morose birds, and the muggers, and the Muleball, and the police, and the firefighters, and the mayor, and the university, and its psychologists, with Napoleon, Harry Goldbug, and Dr. Vegatillius, the shootings, the arsons, the corruption, the traffic jam, the Symbol, and the Particularly Cynical Atheists - all those things were just a twinkle in the darkness now. Nathan faced away from them. He stood on the cusp of Dead Donkey, staring out into the Nevada desert, so cool at night. Here, the sands bubbled with mystery, and the wind stank of adventure. It was time to try something different, something new, something far away from the life he knew and loved.

  “Where will we go?” he asked Travis. “Will we travel the world?”

  “Probably,” Travis said. “I have to warn you that I’ve travelled the world before, and it’s not really all it’s cracked up to be. There’s a lot of hitchhiking and illness involved, and in the end a lot of places really just aren’t that interesting. But at least it will put some distance between us and where the bureaucrats expect you to be.”

  Travis checked his watch.

  “Time to go,” he added.

  Nathan shot one forlorn glance back at the city of Dead Donkey which, for all its misery and madness, was the place he had called home for many long years. Then, knowing it was time to leave it behind, he sighed and turned away. He took one step forward into the night, onto the open desert road. His first step towards a new life, with all its unexpected challenges and pleasures - his first step towards adventure.