by Zack Murphy
Ketty could physically feel a small aneurism clotting inside her brain and silently prayed that it would kill her quickly. She squeezed and rubbed the steering wheel causing a squeak under the force of the traction.
She breathed deeply and counted backwards from ten, a lesson she had learned from her yoga classes. She rolled her head around her neck, making a gruesome crackling sound as the pent up vertebrae snapped beneath the tension.
“I am not going to sit here in a cramped car for eight hours waiting so we can break into someone’s house to look for something we have no idea what we’re looking for in the first place. We’re leaving.”
“But--” he pleaded helplessly.
“We’re leaving.” She said through clenched teeth, still holding tight to the steering wheel beneath her sweaty palms.
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, but we’re not staying here.”
She started the engine and put the car into drive and sped off down the tree lined boulevard towards town. The shadows of the palm trees caressed her face as she peered out from under her sunglasses at the winding road before her. She wasn’t much of a drinker and it was only noon, but right now she needed something stiff and hard and at least one hundred proof.
“Are we coming back later?”
“Don’t talk to me right now.”
“But--”
“Silence!”
“Fine,” Barnaby huffed, “There was something else I wanted to do anyhow.”
*****
The Death of Australia, New Zealand and Countries with a Population less than 500 total People stepped out from behind a large bush trimmed in the shape of a flamingo and watched the car drive off down the road. She reached behind the topiary and yanked out Michael Ryan, who was feeling a mixture of paranoid nervousness about the crazed look in the eyes of his tour guide and a sense that somehow he had done someone very wrong when he was alive and he was now experiencing some kind of cosmic time-out for everything he had ever done.
He would have tried to escape during one of the numerous occasions she had turned his back on him to stare a hole into the two people they were tailing for no apparent reason except to try and conjure up some sort of romance out of two people who didn’t seem to like each other much. He would have tried to escape except for the fact that he didn’t know how he kept getting places and was not even sure how to get back, although sometimes running free amongst the streets of southern California as a ghost seemed to make a lot of sense.
“Did you see that?” she said, “Did you see how they were all over each other? It makes me sick.”
“I really didn’t see anything like that.” He sighed.
“Well than you’re not looking at it hard enough.”
“I looked pretty hard.”
DANZ & C>500TP spun around on her heels and grabbed Michael by the collar. Her nose pressed up against his, her bloodshot eyes inches from his. Her panicky breathing through her clenched teeth said to him he should really start just going along with whatever she said.
“That’s because you’re a man.”
Her words danced in the air and pounded his face, landing a couple of whirlwind rights to his temple. As grip on his shirt tightened, and as the cotton started to strangle his vocal cords he attempted to talk but nothing came out. He labored flaccidly to manage a slight gulp. DANZ & C>500TP let go from the tug of war with his larynx, causing Michael to fly through the air into a rosebush.
“Is this Hell?” He said as he stood up, picking the thorns that had lanced his nape. Looking at the hyperventilating woman hovering over him fixing for round two of their one-sided verbal pugilism, he gave up.
‘This is Hell isn’t it? I mean, where else could it be? I’m being punished for everything that I ever did while I was alive.”
“This isn’t Hell, you numbskull”. She began to run down the road at full pace. Michael Ryan stared at the sight of his trim captor pounding the pavement as her long locks flowed in the breeze. “Now hurry up and come on. We have to catch up with them before we lose them.”
He watched her fading into a dot over the grey horizon and started to run after her. “I knew it. This is Hell.”
*****
“Well, what do you think?” said Mrs. Plough, glowing with motherly pride.
“I take back everything I said about the hummels. This is the creepy room.” Satan stared in bewilderment at the sea of bright pink flowers on pinker wallpaper, glossy and soul-less porcelain faced dolls sitting piled high upon shelf after shelf, and the dizzying assortment of fuzzy, nondescript pastel animals that made up the bedroom. “Is it just me or did a Muppet throw up a diseased flamingo?”
“It’s Dana’s room.” Mrs. Plough beamed. She was in shear heaven as her eyes took in the collage of hot pink ambrosia that comprised her daughters’ childhood bedroom.
“You put it back to where it was when she was six?”
“Don’t be silly, this isn’t a child’s room. This is exactly the way she left it when she moved out after college.”
If Dana Plough had graduated from college when she was still in preschool the room would still have been too girly. Even for the most Disney princess-crazed, bubble-toed moppet was a bit more discerning concerning decor. This could not the room that spawned the future breeder of the end of civilization, he thought to himself.
Satan stood silently next to his betrothed’s eerily innocent mother when Dana Plough burst into the room with a pained look of a half-eaten gazelle in her eyes. It was a look that every teenager rolls with their eyes at their parents when being dragged out on a Saturday evening to the mall for back to school shopping, knowing that they’ll see kids from school whom they never talk to but want to impress in order to get into the right clique. Only to be deceived by their fifty degrees below cool waving triumphantly to all her little classmates.
Dana Plough’s eyes popped out as she froze, bewildered at the memories that cascaded over her in a river of bright lilac and lace. She groaned muttered to herself, as she left the room, something about her childhood, her mother, and a rabid French poodle named Missy. Mrs. Plough watched her turn the corner, never allowing her broad and euphoric smile to disappear from her mouth. She turned back and put her hand on Satan’s shoulder. “Let’s look at photo albums!”
“Oh goody?” maligned Satan.
*****
Stephen Mulraney had written three books, hosted a hit television show and was featured in a raunchy teen sex road comedy. This would have been fine and dandy if he hadn’t also been the world’s most famous clairvoyant, a fact that the after-life viewed as blasphemy.
The after-life doesn’t have any ill-will towards people who talk to the dead; the after-life was happy to have them around to converse with the dead [The dead drive most workers in the after-life insane with their inane blabbering about the meaning of life and why there isn’t a bigger selection of fixin’s in Heaven’s many salad bars], but they took exception to the ones who lie about it.
Mulraney was a shyster and a crook. Worst of all for him, as he would find, was pissing off people who had long memories and a whole lot of power. He would be subjected to a horde of rather cheesed-off individuals when the time finally came that he would be in a position to actually talk to the dead.
He confidently occupied center stage at a local community college’s theatre. He wore his trademark black turtleneck sweater and khaki dungarees. His large brown eyes shined through a pair of expensive designer glasses that he wore for the art, not for the vision.
A headset microphone shadowed his chubby cheeks, which seemed mismatched on his slender face. He peered out from the spotlight that caressed his ego and smiled at his waiting and screaming audience. He was a rock star of the diviner world and wore the approbation like a rainbow-colored robe.
He ineffectually but purposely tried to call his admiring fans with his patented “two finger shush of love” motion. This move consisted of putting his index and pointer to
his lips then sending a huge kiss to his bated audience that would make the Dating Game contestants seem like ice cream cone-eating virgins, riling his admirers into another frantic frenzy.
His smile beamed and if someone squinted hard enough they could have sworn that when the light hit his teeth just right, sparks flew. The man couldn’t converse with the dead, but he had the living eating out of the palm of his hand. His legions sat, their seats mere edges to teeter on, for Mulraney to go into his “trance”, during which he would become a vessel for anyone with a willingness to part with $400 for a chance say hi to grandma.
He sorted through the waves of raised hands until his glance fell on a young lady sitting halfway up the hall. He pointed and she shrieked. It was sheer mastery of crowd control, if you wanted your crowd to be raving lunatics.
He quickly dispatched her fears that her recently deceased father hadn’t been happy with her new career move, and proved his other-worldly conversation by telling her that she really liked chocolate chip cookies as a child. This morsel of knowledge helped to appease her worries, and the whole bit about a child liking cookies wasn’t much more than an easy lay-up by the con man in the black turtleneck.
Barnaby raised his hand and his eyes locked on the snake oil salesman in wizard’s clothes. Mulraney tried his best to avoid the tractor beam that was pulling him into a conversation with a man whom, he knew deep down inside that he didn’t want a dialogue with. He may not have been able to hear the voices of the dead, but he could certainly hear the voices in the back of his head telling him to eschew the conference.
But, there are certain things people just have to do, like slow down to a snail’s pace at highway accidents that happened across the median from them. People’s desire to see blood and others’ misfortunes will always trump decency. Barnaby’s hand was an accident across the highway, and Mulraney just had to slow down to see the monstrosity of tangled steel and flesh.
“Yes, the well dressed man in the dapper suit.” His finger fixedly waved towards the harsh gaze of Barnaby’s stare.
“Thank you, Mr. Mulraney,” Barnaby rose from his seat purposefully, methodically. The audience let out a small unified gasp, though none of them quite knew why.
“And which loved one would you like to converse with, or rather have me translate for, so to speak.” His pearly whites glimmered under the spotlight.
“It’s not so much that as I have a question.”
“Well, I don’t necessarily,” started Mulraney, unable to pull himself from the unease of his certain downfall.
“It’s just a small question.”
Mulraney could feel his heart beating through his sweater, and then it seemed to stop. In fact the entire room seemed to fade into a dark abyss of the piercing eyes of all the dead that he never once spoke to.
His affected upper-class Northeastern accent faded and his true Midwestern drawl crept across his lips as he answered. “Sure,” he gulped. The lump in throat was dry as a bone and felt like a razor as it bobbed around his Adam’s apple.
“Well, it’s more of a morality song really.” Barnaby flashed him a smile that put Mulraney’s dimpled toothy grin to shame. He stood and adjusted his suit jacket and loosened his tie as he cleared his throat and looked around the room and the hundreds of devoted faces that were transfixed to his lips. “Can I get a beat?”
“We don’t have a band.” As the words were spilling out Mulraney’s mouth, attention turned to the sound of a drum beat carrying through the air. His eyes became small and crossed as the beads of sweat that had been pooling on his well made-up forehead began to trickle down his nose.
“I brought my own.” The smile that permeated Barnaby’s face had grown wider with every second that he had Mulraney on the ropes. The beats of an unseen drum were soon accompanied by the twinkling of a baby grand piano, or at least that’s what it sounded like.
When listening to a live band with no actual equipment or players it was a tad hard to put your finger on just how big the piano actually was. “Oh, we got trouble,” said Barnaby as he slide-stepped through the aisle onto the steps of the auditorium.
“We got trouble?” echoed Ketty in a soft voice, tugging on his jacket.
Barnaby looked down at her concerned face. She was a deer caught in the headlights of Barnaby’s effervescent glow in the knowledge that he was in finally in the spotlight in this world he had been so forborne to discover.
The room darkened and a spotlight hit his face, cascading off the glowing aura that seemed to grow with each breath he took. He took a step down the aisle without ever seeming to leave his feet. “Yes, we got trouble.” He said as he took another step, “Right here in L.A. City.”
“Right here in L.A. City,” a large woman sitting knee high to the gliding Barnaby said as she felt the unconscious need to get into the action. It seemed to her as if the husband she had buried two years previously and had come to Mulraney’s dog and pony show to reconnect with had been slightly nudging her, the way he had often done when he was alive, when the stranger with the invisible band and lighting crew had begun to speak.
“Yes ma’am, right here in L.A. City,” He reached down and gave his spontaneous chorus girl a gentle kiss on the top of her feathered and cheap drugstore dye-colored head and whispered, “Joe says to move on and stop making the dog wear those ridiculous clothes; it makes him feel sad.”
“Joe or the dog?” she whispered back.
“I’m going to stray on the side of reason and say both.” Barnaby leaned down and kissed her on top her multifaceted headgear and took another step down toward the sweating Mulraney.
“This is an atrocity!” shouted the growingly uneasy Mulraney. Words that even he himself didn’t have the audacity to believe were spilling from him in a frothy mix of fear and envy “This man is a sham and a con artist. What he’s doing is totally and utterly impossible!”
“Impossible, you say? Well, let’s try another shall we?” Barnaby’s smile now seemed to have taken over his entire face. His skull had become one giant toothy grin as he hopped down the steps, “Is there an Anada Houle here?”
A hand shot up across the room and Barnaby zeroed in like a cat stalking a three-legged mouse. “Hi Anada, glad you could join us. You’re grandmother says you should stop seeing that guy.”
“What guy?”
“Lionel. And you knew that. You were testing me; I like that.” He grinned, “She says you’ve got to end the relationship before you get hurt.”
“Why would I? Lionel would never hurt me.”
“Well no, not physically, but he will crush you emotionally.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s gay sweetheart.”
A fevered hush ran through the audience as all eyes turned from Barnaby to Anada. It’s not often one gets the lowdown on a stranger by another stranger who seemed to know everything. No one in the audience knew Anada from Eve, but it was that grain of dirt that Barnaby dished everyone could call their own.
“That’s ridiculous,” a lump wiggled and nudged its way into her throat as a bright crimson masked formed on her delicate skin.
“Is there a Frankie King here?” Barnaby said, glancing around the audience. A tall thin man wearing a look of total desperation stood, his hand raised just above his ear.
“Frankie? Is it ridiculous that Anada’s boyfriend is gay?”
The lump that had formed in Anada’s throat made a quick jump across the room and landed squarely in Frankie’s Adam’s apple. “No,” he coughed through apprehensive breadth.
“And he should know; he’s been sleeping with Lionel for three months.”
Frankie King’s eyes shot to the floor, trying not to look Anada in hers. The floor seemed to be much friendlier than the beet-red and clenched-jawed tornado that used to be Anada Houle that stood across the room. At least the floor didn’t have eyes that pierced your soul while ripping out your innards and feeding on your dead carcass.
“Well, I never,” huffed A
nada.
“And that should have been your first tip off.”
Ketty, who had made her way through the oohing and aahing crowd, joined Barnaby by the steaming jilted lover who had just been dumped by a boyfriend who wouldn’t find out until four hours later he been outed in a room full of strangers and a very pissed off man in a black turtleneck sweater. “Are you finished?” she whispered to the now full head on glimmering white smile that used to be Barnaby.
“Yes.”
“And are you happy?”
He looked around the room at the stunned and silent spectators and a flicker of doubt began to fester in his mind. Had he really needed to put these people through this, and more so, should he have really exposed himself to a mass of believers who were never going to doubt anything again.
He then turned to Mulraney who stood furious in a lone spotlight in the center of a stage, his face brewing with an anger usually reserved for IRS agents who come knocking for a small sit down about all those “necessary expenses” you’ve been taking off for the past five years.
“Yes. Very.”
*****
There were 5 stacks of albums piled eight high lying on the coffee table. It had been three hours since Mrs. Plough had sat Satan down for a trip down memory lane that had increasingly become a super highway. She had just shut the last page on Dana Plough: age eleven, and was searching through the stacks for age twelve. Larry Plough had fallen asleep in his recliner, upright, as he was prone to do.
He had learned several years ago to nap whenever he was in the house with his wife, and if he couldn’t sleep, he had mastered the impression of seeming like he was. The sounds of an old man snoring wafted through the Plough house as Satan sat captured by a devoted mother who had single-handedly kept the Kodak Company from bankruptcy.
Satan’s hand crept down his face as he attempted to get some semblance of blood back into his head. His eyes drooped as he kept one eye on the forty pages of Dana Plough’s fifth grade dance recital and one eye on the gaudy wooden cuckoo clock on the wall.
