Nika Harper's Blog

It’s a tricky potion, no wonder it didn’t work right. It could have been anything; one too many stirs or an herb just a bit too dried out. Bryce could mix it again right now, just the same way, and maybe it would work. Perhaps not. There really isn’t a way to know, until… the right night comes along.

Which it was.

And there was blood on Bryce’s hands.

They say stakes can kill vampires, which is rather funny since it was not a vampire that he was defending from, nor had he planned any assaults that evening. A cracked piece of wood from a weatherworn garden fence was all he could manage. There shouldn’t be any pride in it, but there was, just the faintest inkling: he had killed a werewolf with a mere sliver of fence. Someday as a grandparent, or librarian, Bryce may look back on this (swallowing and hiding his shame) and claim his glory. Triumphant! Heroic!
Utterly at fault!

He wondered how soon they transformed back, after their injuries. He really hadn’t had much hands-on experience with werewolves, only knew that yes they were wolf-like and also not quite so. This checked both boxes. He also knew someone new to the township that was, openly, a werewolf. Rosaline.
There was a good chance that Rosaline was dead now. On his garden path. Leaking up the place with (presumably) tainted blood.

A giddiness overtook him; maybe the blood of a werewolf will transform his herbs into Wolfsbane and he can save cash at the apothecary. Or perhaps under the full moon the blossoms grow fangs and battle for supremacy. Maybe he could film it. Take bets on Swish.tv. He needed some tea. With whisky. Hold the tea.

What does one do with a corpse in their yard? He could call the authorities but there were too many questions, from them and from him alike. What if they brought in some kind of potions expert? Was there a committee he had to answer to? Other than the Neighborhood Watch committee that Rosaline was on?
Everything was a bad idea. There were no good ideas. The only good idea was stealing that fencepost and jamming it into a wolf’s neck. And that didn’t even turn out to be too hot.

It was not his fault he was attacked. (It was.)
The potion failing was not his problem. (It was.)
The Ministry would not hassle him. (They would.)
No matter the way it was presented, Bryce was in trouble. He hoped he’d get in trouble for the right thing… The thing least likely to incarcerate him. Not like every common criminal goes to Azkaban but he did take another life, someone who was here directly because of a wizard diversity initiative on his county and oh no he had just killed her. Welcome to town. Please don’t bite my leg off.
Bryce had VOLUNTEERED, was the hard part. He had said his Wolfsbane potion was great and that he had loads of practice. He said materials were no matter, that he did this all the time. He was lying. Just lying through his grinning, exposed teeth. Bryce wanted the committee to like him, and moreover, he wanted Rosaline to like him. He had never seen anyone like her before, and it swelled up in his mind that maybe he could be her hero and ease her burden and oh my golly do werewolf moons coincide with… you know… the feminine… distress?
He thought to check the corpse out of pure scientific curiosity but decided there was too much blood as is, indecipherable from its origin.
Well, Rosaline seemed to have noticed him, alright. Right down to where he lived and how he responded to strange noises in the yard. Steeling himself once more, he marched out of his entryway and up to the wolf, the pools of blood continuing to spread, a deep crimson in the bright moonlight. He could see it all, almost like it was a stormy day. The roan grey fur, double-stacked teeth, eyes that glowed just a bit, so subtly, so like the way Rosaline had looked when she first laid eyes on him. Rosaline… Just to think of her–

“What’s all this?”
Bryce nearly started out of his shoes. Rosaline! Her short chestnut hair and subtly lit eyes, yes it was her HOW WAS IT HER SHE WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HIM DEAD ON THE– oh…

“Werewolf?” was all Bryce managed to sputter.
“Looks about right.” Rosaline invited herself in, using the gate instead of the torn hole in the fence and hedges. She appeared ashen and gaunt, although her face was so full in shape he could see the cheekbones, and her mouth appeared wider. It was the full moon after all. “Huh,” she said, nudging the body with her boot, “I’ll be damned.”
Well that was rather literal.
“Ummm, I hate to ask–”
“It’s my ex.” She nudged it again, then descended upon the body with a ferocity unlike any Bryce had seen in a human being. Rosaline did not change form, did not need to, but it was clear that whenever she was done with her horrors that her coat would be well ruined.
After much sloshing and cracking, she was upright again, mouth smeared like she had gone facefirst into an Eton Mess.
“Forgive me,” Bryce said when most of the mouth-noises stopped, “I thought– I had feared– It was you?”
She stared at him evenly, “Why would you think that?
"Maybe my potion, it might not have been–” He had trouble finishing sentences around this woman. Maybe that’s why he was so smitten with her.
“Your potion was rubbish,” she smirked with her over-wide mouth, “but we can work on that. I know how to make a better one. Obviously.” Rosaline gestured to herself. It took Bryce a moment to understand what she meant, as the gesture also referred to her not just being humanoid but also covered in gore. Then it clicked.

“Uh, would you like to… come inside for some tea? While we wait for the authorities?”
She didn’t answer, just kept her eyes on the mutilated corpse in front of her. The moonlight played off her features in strange ways. The blood-smell was less pungent under her perfume.
“You look nice tonight,” he tried again.
“Covered in blood?”
“….Yes.”
“Good, ‘cause it’s all over you, too. We’re fashion icons, us.” Then Rosaline smiled at him, splitting her cheeks, eyes like tired embers.
Bryce had never felt quite so lightheaded.

I see them arching above us all, towering giving way to their name, and I cover my ears but naught else. They see me, even when I am not to see them, but what truly hurts is when we listen. We must never listen.

I am not old, though my actions and aversions have often gifted me the title. Even the old have phones, write sloppy-worded messages to their savvy grandchildren who grow up with their hands wrapped around crystal-screened devices while the Towers wrap invisible hands around them. They call it a web, which is mixing metaphors. Or appropriation. The ebb and flow of information is the feast, no longer sucking blood from prone figures or gorging on meaty innards. Murder is something that humans do, not the thin ones that stretch to the sky. It is bloodless, willingly given, and convenient.

What if every word you spoke was as recorded as you feared? Privacy is the war being waged, distrusting one another regarding easy numbers or vocal chatter. People now feel so connected to one another without knowing the paths their secrets take, the guise of being alone tricks them. Yet little rectangles in black plastic or rose gold may always be present.

The television is an output device, and I wiggle my ancient metal antennae to get the best signal even while I know they’ve been gone. Transmission, that’s the slayer. Giving back. Pushing out your message. Connection. Nearly everything is connected nowadays. I am not afraid of my television with its straightforward broadcast. I worry about who is on it, how they are the voices which call to us with familiarity, making us echo back.
Hello
Hello
How are you
I am well
Come to me
I will

No, not spiders at all. Spiders catch, set up invisible ropes on the way to destinations; spiders hinder. This is not spiderlike. The world-wide-web is nothing of the sort. It is the destination.

Phones and computers and transmissions feed on invisible waves in the air, jutting all the way into the reaches of space and back. The Towers would be fat if they weren’t so eternally hungry. I can feel their tongues on every video chat, their purring tendrils encasing each word with lust as it passes by, assuring that another will answer back. With every search engine request, a maw opens to dribble thick saliva upon externalized thoughts, lubricating the queries to be delivered all the quicker, all the more reliably.

It was easier once, when the figures dashing in the corners of our eyes were singular, when they wanted something tangible and ate their fill, absorbing voices to mimic cries for help or seduction. Trust is always at a Tower’s core. You could beat them by not believing your senses and moving on.

Have you seen a modern cell phone tower?
They stretch into the sky, even now so unsightly as to be hidden in the facade of a palm tree or conifer, relying on the familiar, co-opting innocuous appearances so it feels just like magic.
It IS magic.
Not all magic is well-intentioned.

I continue without phones or credit, letting ever-disappearing banknotes slip from my hands because cash, cash, always cash, and stamps you no longer have to lick escorting letters to awaiting fingertips. It is the only way.

It is thrilling to see such change, like butterflies evolving past their survival-need of nectar. Perhaps in a way it is more like spiders. A spider’s feast does not survive. I watch the words jolt to the ozone and back, listen to banal discussions and know they are an intoxicating meal as they transmit to and fro. I cannot see how we, people, are being eaten and digested, not yet. But the wendigo Towers are always hungry, and they will always feast.
I wonder how it will kill us.
We are prey animals, not meant to survive, and we do not know we are being chased.

I do not hide my face from these Towers, do not flinch under the weight of wi-fi internet buzzing around my ears. I am hidden until the Towers have done their feeding, until the crystal-screened serving platters go black. I know they will come for me then, again. Until that time I watch, and wonder, when will we people be spent.
How they will feed next.
How I will see them when they crawl out of their palm-tree costumes and stalk when the harvest runs dry.

The Towers are always hungry, and I must keep my ears closed tight, waiting for the current to slow, and change.

I was the other one. No, not that one either.
You’ve never met me. I didn’t make history, I didn’t have a name or a title worthwhile, but I know the stories and I was there. Everything that was said was true. All of it, even the variations. Because the truth is stranger than any of these things could express.

It wasn’t a frog, but it could have been. Certainly that was the easiest descriptor, because something bulbous and black and foul cannot be named, not when it used to be the Prince, not when it was my brother.
Yes. I am the sister.

All we had were questions and an empty chair at the banquets. A bed that was no more used than wetted by the oozing skin of someone once considered kindred, my friend and companion. Was it a curse? A natural anomaly? A prophecy we did not take to heart?
The thing, this Prince, could not answer. It belched meaninglessly, carried around the manor on a veiled sickbed normally used for ailing elders. It had eyes, somewhere… we could not tell exactly which of the protrusions were ocular, as they all seemed to be staring at us.

This creature of slime was not malicious in action, it seemed to have no interest at all. Not passive, no, but distracted. The handmaidens offered warmth and comforts, the finest velvet under this new mobile throne, but any semblance of personhood was never roused within my brother. He sat, gulping out of openings that disappeared back into its bulk when the gasping ceased. There was not one single mouth, nor one tongue. There was too much of everything.

Still, we kept the charade. My parents would talk to the creature over dinner, hoping it would respond to food or react to our kindness. An entire kingdom pretending nothing was amiss, resting the crown on a nearby gilded pillow, ignoring its squelching as easily as it ignored us. Neither heat nor cold bothered the thing, no food could tempt it.
Only once did I see it move of its own accord, a lone tendril inching across the silver plates presented before it, digging to find a prize. The room was still, all eyes fixated on this new arrival. I cannot speak for the rest, but my body felt locked with apprehension, and fear.
The curling limb squirmed to the center of the banquet, and quicker than anything I had seen, flopped itself into the pan of pork drippings beneath the roast. It rolled and slapped the wet fat, shuddering in the oily debris and lay satisfied. Slower than we could see, leaving a trail of dark gristle, it retracted. The room stayed still, and silent, and after our food had turned cold it was cleared and we retired for the night.
The dreams I had… I thought they were so horrible, but upon waking I recognized they were not different nor separate from this new reality.

That was when the noises began. Deep in our chambers, a sound reverberated through the empty halls, out into the valley outside and below. It was not so much audible as felt, a rumbling belch that rattled the windows. In the moonlight I sat upright, the dawn nearly peeking onto the horizon, and I felt the fear well up within me again. This was not a dream. It was long, this call, several minutes passed before quiet resumed in the manor. Though I heard no other noise, I knew there was not a person in the house who remained in slumber. One long call, then silence again.
The next night, two.
Then every night. The damp ululations vibrated the very hairs of my scalp, long utterances that echoed almost from another world… and the portal was, used to be, my brother.
Our mornings became weak affairs, the eyes of my parents sunken, my father looking wan and gaunt. Still, we continued the royal charade.
What else could we do?

The town below sent messengers and well-wishes, hearing these unearthly disruptions as clearly as we had. The gifts piled up in the entry hall, borne of both concern and care. Even as a moaning blob of otherness, he was still our Prince, and we must be reverent. Even in this monstrous form, he was extraordinary and important in a way I could never be.

Then began the nightly visitations. Knocks upon our door, the gates clattering and being forced open, always accompanied by a grim visage of women, their eyes glazed from lack of sleep or being currently entombed in slumber. Their arrival was consistent, summoned by my brother’s visceral calls into the moonlight. It wreathed these enslaved pilgrims in mystery as they slammed their fists against our doors, blank-faced and expectant. The first night, the pale girl was shown in and walked  through the halls, almost in a trance, disappearing into my brother’s chamber. We had long been used to disruption in our rest, and in the entry hall of our manor, my parents and I, chilly in our bed robes, watched the girl enter, and leave.
It was as though she had spent no time there at all. No words were spoken. We avoided each other’s eyes.
Then we retired to our beds.
For once, the calls had quieted. We slept.

The parade of women continued, different each night, varying times and myriad circumstance. Some were dressed as fine ladies, hair glossy and gems shining. Others wore tattered clothing, bare feet pale with cold. Some were frighteningly young. We did not bother to greet them; oftentimes I would lay with my gaze fixed on the ceiling, waiting for the ghastly chorus to be over, for the transient mouths to seal themselves and recede so I may return to my rest. Other nights, I would join the servants in the entry hall and watch the parade go past. Only one woman per night, but if sleep was truly evading me, I took a macabre interest in the happenings.

It was my mother and I who saw the woman who didn’t leave. She looked older, well-traveled, and I glimpsed a carriage at our gates which looked dusty from the road, but otherwise well-kept. This figure strode into the manor, her face sharper and more keen than many of the others I had seen. She looked at me, acknowledged I was there. Her confident steps clicked down the hallways, and this time my mother and I shared a glance. Something was different. The long-exhausted sense of fear roiled within me, awakened and angry.
We waited for the mysterious woman to exit the bed chambers. But she did not.

There is a new member of our household, now. We do not know her name, have never heard her speak, but it is clear. She is the new Princess, and at her side is the Prince, back as himself at least… looking as such. But mealtimes are silent meetings, their distant gazes not meeting ours as they slurp oily, fattened soups and lick glistening silver spoons teeming with lard.

My brother is back in a recognizable form, the guttural calls replaced with occasional midnight burbling, the only sounds I’ve heard either of them make.

So it seems my brother, the Prince, has indeed found his bride. They shall reign over this land in a way we never knew before. At last, there is a proper Princess that roams these halls.
At night, when I consider this woman with the travel-lined face and opaque stares, I am glad she is the Princess. But then I wonder…
The Princess of what?

It was considered a regular Tuesday.

James had a productive evening, catching a quick drink with a coworker who was stuck completing a project he had moved on from a month ago. It was still as fucked as ever, and James grinned inwardly as he got the leftover fried rice out of the fridge. Time for some Hulu.

Alex had a sinus infection, again, and was resigned to laying on the patched couch full of bleary-eyeing cold medicine. He fell asleep while flipping channels and woke with memories of a strange dream about the American Revolutionary War. No more napping to the History channel.

Marielue always felt awkward in the evening, the transition between day and night, and this particular walk home had perturbed her. A discarded brown sweatshirt in the gutter had, at a glance, appeared to be a dead dog, and after a double-take she couldn’t shake it from her mind. Everything became an abandoned animal corpse.
She saw three more “dead dogs” and one that looked like a slain kitten, but was actually a gnarled tree root poking out of a lawn.
She closed her eyes as she closed the door of her apartment, took a few deep breaths. But the rest of the night didn’t fare much better. Every bit of discarded laundry was a lifeless form; she saw a skull in a bar of soap.

Naseem was cooking up a stew for dinner, and he checked his phone for texts from his girlfriend. There was a flash of pain on his forearm; he had rested it against the stew pot on the stove. He washed it under cold tap water, but it glowed a livid red. He remembered thinking it would blister, and considered taking a picture for his girl. ‘This is what I go through for you!“’

Charles was out of the apartment, watching the basketball game on Ian’s couch and talking too loudly about a girl he’d met that weekend. He didn’t know it was too loud, though.

Amelia was plucking her eyebrows in the bathroom mirror. One, two stray hairs, grooming to the perfect shape of arched but still natural. The phone rang as she gave one last look in the mirror. Odd, that one had bled, and left a smudge of red on her dark skin. That never happens.

Caleb was doing laundry in the basement, full of coin-op machines and scuffed linoleum. He sorted the wet items into dryer-ready heaps, except one of them…
That wasn’t his. Maybe it was leftover from another tenant? A cotton pair of too-small boxer briefs, he was about to discard it before he remembered what happened last week.
Best to put them in the trash.
He bit his lip too hard as the garbage can top swung and creaked.

Jackie just woke up. Her head pounded, and she always swore Monday night drinking was the most abrasive of them all, because you’d be around people who may have no jobs or may have nothing left in life, and keeping up drink-by-drink was a hazard. She remembered some names… Michael or Mike or maybe something unusual like Makivar. One look at her phone said she was right. Skyla was asking how she felt, punctuated by emoji of which she could only see half and the rest were rectangular blocks. Then there was two missed calls from "Makkovar.”
She must have really liked him.
She wondered if he had a job.

Kevin removed his headset. The raid wasn’t going well. Wiped five times on a boss that they considered farm-status. He rubbed his eyes and didn’t notice the shadow passing by his fifth-story window.

Thomas and Stephanie lay on sweaty bedsheets, panting in the glaze of newfound love. Three times that night! It wasn’t even midnight.
“Need anything from the bathroom?” he asked.
“A towel.” Stephanie turned over and smiled into the pillow, feeling the stickiness between her thighs. But it wasn’t all just passion.
“Um, maybe I’ll… get it myself,” she called, carefully rolling on her back and edging out of the bed, trying to hide the blood on her fingers.
“Fuck,” said Thomas from the bathroom, the lights on, “Are you okay? I mean there's—”
“It’s fine, I got my period, sorry sorry.”
Stephanie hadn’t had a period in two years.

Ed was home early. It was bullshit. He pulled off his hat and cheap, dark wig, slamming himself down into his favorite lounge chair, the same chair his dad used before he died. The costume party was an annoyance at best, a disaster at worst.
“IT’S FROM TRIGUN,” he finally yelled out over the keg at a dumbstruck partygoer dressed as Finn. He didn’t mean to scream, but Ed had never been good at environments where music was blaring and everyone was drunk by the time you arrived.
He really cared about his outfit, it was good shit. A bottle of shochu washed the taste of cheap beer out of his mouth, and the remote flicked through his library to find Trigun, the episodes with Rai-Dei. He pressed 'Play.’
Ed looked awesome. Fuck anyone who didn’t get it.

Brandon took out the trash and found himself face-to-face with an oppossum.
He hadn’t recognized before how much their face looked like a skull.

Alejandro let the faucet run for a bit, waiting for hot water to make some rice. His nose was in a book, so he didn’t notice that for a moment, the water ran blood red.

Makayla wasn’t into that witchy shit, it seemed like stuff for dispossessed white girls. But on the websites, as fucking footnotes, there was a mention of Marie Laveau, and voodoo, and the things that called to her. She had more power here than she thought, without the fuckin’ salt lamps and quartz crystals that cost nine dollars each. Nah, there was good shit in here, and it called to her.
She held half a dead cigar in one hand and grabbed an oily eel filet, the best she could find at the Asian market, in the other.
It jolted through her like a seizure. Something was very wrong, and very near.
Makayla gasped and dropped her reagents. Nah, fuck this. She’ll fry that damn eel and not fuck around with this shit anymore.

John’s business worked at night. So he didn’t recognize the flickering lights in the hallways, excited squawks and yelps from other apartments doors as he passed. This was all normal.
Eyes followed him from the underside of dark doors, squinted through the keyholes of post boxes as he went to get his mail that evening. He paid no mind.
Why should he?

Renee had the worst night. Newly single, full of glass-shard memories that hurt to remember but they were everywhere…. It was easy to exist, to do normal things in a normal life because there was a repetition that was comforting. Coming home was the awful part. Moments to rest were the awful part. She felt unloved. Worse, she knew she wasn’t loved anymore. Things had ended that badly.
An hour passed sitting on her bed, thinking about a bottle of wine. Any bottle. It didn’t matter right now.
Then it was an hour and a half.
Mentally taking note of all the things in her space which SHE had touched, the candles they had lit on romantic evenings, the way the pillow still smelled like her, the dress and leggings still piled into a corner from the last time they…
It was three days ago. That they touched, that they felt each other’s heat and Renee felt the heartbeat of her as she lay her head on that chest, that perfect chest that held the most golden heart, the person she loved. It all seemed to be going so well…. Or well enough. Good enough. Enough to go on, to continue, to keep being in love as they were, as they had been for over a year now.
Maybe Renee hadn’t seen the signs. She must not have, because it all felt so sudden. Two days ago. Three days ago they had been twisting limbs in a galaxy of jersey bedsheets, and one day afterward, nothing.
She wanted to wash the sheets. But she didn’t dare.
There was no wine, so that… couldn’t have been the problem. Renee didn’t take any pills, she had always been a rather healthy person but admittedly she hadn’t eaten much that day and didn’t plan on putting together a dinner. Her friends didn’t know yet, so they couldn’t provide survival comforts. It was just her, on a bed, in a tiny apartment, alone.
So it wasn’t wine or pills or attributed to anything particularly chemical, but it just so happens that on that night, Renee got a nosebleed.
In the midst of her tears, a dark stain spread on her palms and she realized she was bleeding. It felt so dramatic, she walked to the bathroom pinching her nose and looked for the nearest towel to wipe on her face. As she removed the washcloth, a threadbare thing she would probably throw away after this incident of staining, she realized it had changed color.
It was a yellow handcloth, she had wiped her hands on it for years, probably too long without replacement, but it was yellow. It was a bit blanched with wear and wash. But it was yellow.
Not now.
The cloth in her hands was a deep red.
Renee’s eyes snapped to the mirror, inspecting her face and nose—maybe she had bled a lot more than she thought— but her face was clean. The cloth stayed red.
A single tear snuck from the corner of her eye… she followed its path in the bathroom reflection… and it was dark, moody, red. Like wine.
She felt wet, like having walked out of a steamy shower, the air was warm and full of vapor and she could barely breathe. A drop of blood splattered the hexagonal tiled floor, but her nose felt dry. Dropping the towel, Renee watched as her fingernails pooled with thick burgundy liquid and spilled to the ground.
This time the mirror showed her looking clean, and pale, and scared.
The floor was splattered art, white tile and grey grout, artful splashes of deep red.
Her sandals stood in pools of crimson, a steady flow easing out of the peep-toe opening.
This wasn’t just grief, it was worse than that.
Renee knew she wasn’t losing her mind. The world, like many other things, was here to blindside her, and she had no control over it.

Maybe the other tenants could have seen the sloshing red liquid in the other washing machine.
The mysterious stains on the stairs.
The pupils of their eyes that looked red and luminous in the mirror’s reflection.
The metallic tang from a bitten lip.

But it was a regular Tuesday night.
Easy enough to forget, anyway.

Found and transcribed from a piece of paper found inexplicably in a hotel room in London.

Dearly Departed,
Before I died, I hid a stash of unmarked bills in my basement. I’ve been trying to tell my (well, ex-) wife and kids about for some time, but they keep getting freaked out. I’ve tried everything! Moving furniture, flickering the lights, even the messages in the foggy mirror trick, but nothing works! Now they talk something about calling someone to cleanse the house! By the gods old and new, what can I do to tell them before I’m exorcised out the home?

Signed, Scary Rich

Requiescat in pace Scary,
Incidentally, a few other letters have described much this same problem, notably by Edward McCuen II whose granddaughter could save his secret treasure from becoming a golf course. As is typical with mortal relations, the guidelines for haunting are complicated and artful. We’ve long heard stories of the most majestic haunters such as Savine D'Echante who lured her loved ones with her marvelous singing voice, and Horace the Horrible who literally terrified tenants into discovering his secrets, like a spectral shepherd. There is no one perfect way to achieve haunting payoff, so break down your specific goal into broad, manageable tasks and tackle them however you feel fit.
If these ideas do not get your creative ectoplasm flowing, then I must ask you this: Why did you bother hiding your fortune in the first place? Poor planning may be the mistake you have to “live” with for eternity.


Dearly Departed,
This is a bit embarrassing, I’m about 50 years dead now and I still can’t come to terms with how I died, especially since it reflects in my ghostly form.
You see I died of a heart attack halfway through the act of coitus and now, regrettably, I shall forever fly at full mast. This is severely limiting my ability to interact socially with other ghosts and narrows down my haunting posts to positions I’d really rather not take.
Any advice on how to deflate the remains of my earthly indulgences?
Regards, Rigor Mortified

Requiescat in pace Rigor,
Oh my ghostness, I can see how this would be a problem! My first thought (apart from the obvious) is wondering why it is you chose to stay in this mortal coil, as there must have been a very good reason for your continued existence. The fact is, you have all the time in the world to appreciate your position and sheer luck, as many people (dead and alive alike) are envious of your cause of death. Consider that you have obviously have a good story to tell, and harness that confidence to become the “life” of the party! Your eloquence would be well-exercised here.
In the meantime, your fatal fornication may have allowed you access to wearable bedclothes, and it’s always a good time to bring the Sheet Ghost aesthetic back into fashion.


Dearly Departed,
I work in an office and due to my semi-corporeal nature, I sometimes have issues exiting the automatic revolving doors of my office. Obviously, it takes an enormous amount of concentration for me, I stand in this cylinder, ready to leave and I am trapped. I do not haunt my office. I should be free to go when I choose, however I am shackled by a technology which refuses to recognize my efforts. What can be done about this? I stand there sometimes for minutes just… waiting to be recognized. It’s frankly insulting.
Please. Free me from my corporate prison.

Professionally, Regreta Garbo

Requiescat in pace Regreta,
It appears to me that this is less a problem of yours, and much more of that to do with your company’s attitude toward ghosts. In fact, it seems in violation of the Magical Employment Equality acts introduced as far back as the 1890’s, and this may be an issue you could bring up to your managers or even perhaps the Ministry.
If a company is dedicated to employing spirit-kind, they should be making any and all effort to make their buildings spectrally accessible.


Dearly Departed,
How do I haunt the internet?
~@GhostintheC#

Requiescat in pace GhostintheC#
At risk of being colloquial, “You’re doing amazing, sweetie!”
While this publication has not yet made it to the Magical Information Network shell of the non-magical internet, I daresay it is difficult to strike fear into the hearts of a series of ones and zeroes. Perhaps think on a smaller scale, such as haunting particular beings who create these networks. Simple machinery like “keyboards” and “personal computers” afford many opportunities to affect specific change, perhaps even so far as a good ol’ possession! But be warned, there are guidelines to how much a ghost can terrorize non-magical kind (falling under, I believe, one of the amendments within the International Statute of Secrecy) so keep within the allotted trickery and GLHF!


Dearly Departed,
I want the other ghosts to stop screaming. I get it. You’re dead AND scary.
-Shushing all the Banshees

Requiescat in pace Shushing,
Well aren’t you just a fuddy-duddy. There is an eternity out there and you spend it criticizing when others have their fun! You seem like the type who would not attend deathiversaries or convergences, and to that I say, BOO!


That is all for this week, please send in your queries to our Agony Apparition care of Germanus Press. See you on the other side!

There also seems to be a url scribbled on the paper. For other submissions?

It’s right across from the Seattle Link train, and I can’t help but stare at it every time. Just a budget airport hotel where I spent a night around Christmas, when I was thoroughly and wonderfully in love.

It had been almost a week, and that time was memorable. It gets cold in Seattle, and it was the first time I had experienced the type of rain that is like standing at the foot of a waterfall; a thick cloud of wet that attacked from all angles. Umbrellas were useless. Every part of you and everything was soaked. But we smiled.

We looked good being together, our fashion and affection made us handsome. We walked everywhere, explored a lot, and I don’t think the city has ever looked greater than when I was sharing it with them.

We didn’t want the weekend to end. I checked into my flight, and in an airport cafe we had our last wine, just before security.

Certain things become forgettable over glasses of wine. I suppose I had lost track of time, or security became especially long, or… the reason was not memorable. But it was the last flight of the night. I called, in tears. And so, a cheap airport hotel…

I was distraught, and maybe a little drunk. The tan-upon-tan-upon-beige lobby had a two-foot tall attempt a christmas tree, all bent and sad taken straight from a cramped storage cupboard. Immediately, I went to work straightening and sprucing in an attempt to spread holiday cheer, and noticed that there was only one type of ornament present on the branches. I’d seen those miniature plastic apples on trees before, and loved them despite their cheapness. These were the same, but they were black.

All of them were black.

I had never heard of black apples before.

I took one.

I visit Seattle every year if not more, and I stare across the platform of the train.

The emotions and memories flood, all attached to one silly hotel sign. Of love, and guilt, and dreary lobbies, and black plastic apples.

The night was young but he couldn’t stop paying attention to the restaurant’s variable punctuation. On the plates and cups, and napkins even, it said “Du-Par’s” just like that. The menu claimed it was “Du'Pars” and the font was different. The logo on the computer at the hosting station claimed it was “Du'Par’s” which really threw off everything. He couldn’t remember what the sign was like outside. At any rate, it could have been “Par-Du’s” just to further the set. One is never sure.

The first table where he sat was grainy. Clearly some drunken excitement had occurred at the booth across from it, covering the otherwise set table with a fair amount of salt. Thrown over the shoulder for good luck, perhaps? But how unkind for anyone to throw salt in a restaurant, especially with such longevity. The salt was truly everywhere. He stood, relocated to another table and waited.

It was sort of an alibi, you see. Or for safety. Or for anything. If he had a receipt, and one person remembered his face, then he could not be pinned for the crime he knew was happening. Being aware of a crime is, sure, a crime, but not nearly as much as being involved. Which he was not.

Besides, that asshole had it coming. He made no effort to stop it, but wouldn’t lift a finger in either direction. No aiding, no dissuading. Just being confused by interchangeable punctuation on an old restaurant’s branding.

The food was better at the Vegas location, yeah he believed it. At least there, it wasn’t trying to be something else. This restaurant had existed so long that the city gentrified around it. In a world of Denny’s, Du-Par’s still tried to sell $29 steaks at 4am, the shiny oxblood vinyl booths torn without effort for repair. Salty tables undusted. No soup past midnight. Its sheer continuity was a puzzle to him. Anyway it helped keep his mind off crime.

He smiled and got the $29 steak. Live in the present, right?

It was dry. The air began to smell like a grocery produce aisle, refrigerated and tangy and a little chemical, though not in ways that could be defined. He busied himself comparing the condiment selection of various booths. Ketchup was not guaranteed. Hot sauce had 3 varieties at various tables. That one had a honey bear and nothing else. He couldn’t stop thinking of how it could be this way. that sandwiched by overpriced furniture stores and farm-to-table restaurants and organic quick-lunch business-park establishments that this place even had a chance. He wondered what made Du-Par’s live. He wondered why Leonard had to die.

It was a simple thing, barely worth the bother. Fucking assholes usually get theirs, karma is a bitch and so on and so on. Hell hath no fury, and so forth. The short of it was, Leonard couldn’t be ruined, despite everyone’s best attempts. That untalented fuck had been on the up and up for so long, that it seemed no sabotage or scandal could ever faze him. He just kept going, and kept screwing up everything and everyone he touched. Like it was a superpower. Like his villainy was brash ineptitude. And when his condo became a house then became one of the plentiful million-dollar homes in LA, nobody questioned it. He had a name now, at least within the industry, for reasons that nobody could really understand.

Maybe he just assholed his way into things. Maybe people bought into his braggart boasts. Perhaps they believed that he was as good as he thought himself to be.

What utter horseshit.

Still, tonight Leonard would die and that was that. Because nothing else seemed to work. Because justice is bullshit and patience has an expiration and at some point you’ll have to stop selling your $29 dollar steaks to people at 3am when you have dirty carpet and ripped-up vinyl. Because someday things will close down.

He didn’t think so, though. This place would go on forever, and maybe tonight Leonard would somehow survive. Wasn’t his business. And someone, like his stupid ass, would be the next guy to walk in and buy the damn steak.

He paid, tipped well, and lit a cigarette outside. He imagined flicking a cigarette, and the whole place erupting into flames like it was waiting for the excuse. Like it wanted to go and couldn’t tell anyone. He imagined the mismatched punctuation would be put to rest, the honey bear no longer lonesome on a table.

But Du-Par’s stood vigilant in the night, unaffected by fire or ill-wishes both.
And besides, he needed the people inside to remember his face.

It had been a while since Millenia had legs. They’d been gone far longer than she’d been in a state to notice, and many other parts required fixing before the limbs were to be bothered with, but she distinctly remembered being without them for a while. Long enough to adapt.

Automatons, cyborgs, robots, call them what you will (and everyone seemed to argue so much about the names that it cemented their stubborn usage forever) they had true range. Simple things performing menial tasks with no consciousness, or at least none that the engineers would talk about. All the way up to highly-functioning body replacement systems that kept a slice of a beloved personality and took off into the world. These ones were better regarded, as they could argue their own case better, in the vernacular of intelligent human speech with none of the hollowness of robotics. Millenia was one of that type. And she was in therapy.

Mainly, the focus was physical. Wiring systems together, exercising them back and forth until they no longer shorted out or locked up. A lot of that could be done without a conscious form, but Millenia was a special breed and her personality couldn’t stay dormant long. It was imperative to keep her internal, semi-organic structures, no matter how small, alive and well. Which meant a lot of bug-fixing was something she’d have to undergo while aware. There was no way to knock her out for the surgery, for instance.

Pain was something of a factor, in whichever way her kind could experience it, which manifests as a deep mental burden more than an agonizing reaction. Automatons feel things. They merely feel them very differently. Their mental processes overload.

Mostly, her arms were fine, which was very helpful in her recovery, and luckily her head (one of the trickiest parts to engineer) was in fine shape. She was still emotive, responsive, eloquent. Anything below her chest, though, that was almost entirely destroyed.
“Good time for an upgrade,” one of the engineers joked as she jockeyed a refrigeration unit into Millenia’s shell of a torso. She stayed silent and tried not to react; she could tell the trauma surgeons were uncomfortable. The hardest part wasn’t resisting the need to cry out, it was not blinking.

Reconstruction was a lot for any automaton to handle, most got scrapped if they were cheap and didn’t have a consciousness. There were a fair amount of survivors in the bunch though, important enough to the efforts of the world to undergo a second (or sometimes third or even fifth) chance at existence, cost be damned. Millenia had never really known about reconstruction therapy, purely from lack of necessity. She had been lucky, as had the beings she knew. In her social circle, she surmised, she was the first. Therefore it came as a deep surprise to learn that there was counseling. Group therapy. Acclimation and re-assimilation meetups. Places where robots talked about their feelings.
Who had even considered such a thing?

It was a nightmare, those sessions, and they never got better. It was everything horrible that could happen to a self-aware automaton concentrated into four-hour meetings, like walking into a ghastly slasher film and realizing you’re one of the victims and still in the middle of it. There was no respite in those sessions. The only things she felt for others was pity, not hope, not unified strength. She looked at Joylin with her misfiring spine, watched as Tungstein struggled to show expression on his blank, forgotten face. It was a carnival of horror, a robot show of suffering and Millenia knew that deep under the pity, she also felt disgust. Already shameful that she was inoperable, these broken, pathetic mechanicals could not help her redeem her power. She felt nothing for them. They knew she didn’t belong. Even among the broken ones, she was ‘other.’

The hardest thing, that she could not reconcile in herself, was that she no longer saw the point of existing at all. Her systems had all checked out, thorough in the neuro and personality areas and all were operating quite well. But the haunting question of “why?” invaded her thoughts with every session and rehabilitation surgery.

“Now wiggle your feet for me? Side to side.” The panel of engineers were rapt, clipboards at the ready.
She did.
But why?

Mindless robots are scrapped all the time. Delicate cyborgs are destroyed purely by accident. Somehow, these clinics deemed that she was too special and valuable to have left behind, but in the wake of all her physical reconstruction, she still had one thing missing: her purpose.
Automatons, with their advanced minds, were supposed to care.
Millenia had utterly stopped.

The steps she took were shaky and confused. Her knees didn’t work right, didn’t bend, sparks flew on occasion. Her hip was leaking. She trudged on and did the task immediately in front of her, supervised all the while. She went to the therapy sessions and watched Tungstein’s mouth  gape into a grotesque attempt at a smile, averted her eyes as Joylin snapped backwards and shrieked. Her refrigeration and internal systems were testing normal. It’s down to the re-learning.

Automatons can learn things very easily. They adapt. What they have trouble with is reverting to old data, processes that had been partially written over in the short span of, for instance, not having legs.
It wasn’t like “remembering how to ride a bike.” It didn’t all come back. It felt foreign and archaic. Trying to pick up the pieces and become what she had been a year ago, regressive, impossible. Regaining an existence that was ordinary to begin with, and had grown stale in her mind.

Millenia took the steps, stumbled, took them again, waiting to get a high score on her daily report card, just wasting time until they asked if she was ready to get on with her life and she could answer honestly, “I don’t know.”

I used to make little avatars, with stories. Tiny things.

The straps should have loosened by now, they seem to be regular fabric. The ends are floating and tickling my legs, but I can’t move enough to scratch or change it.
I’ve tried not to urinate, but I gave up. I shouldn’t drink either, but I’m thirsty, I’m not sure if I can even cry anymore. Yelling wore me out, I gave up on that yesterday.
If it really was yesterday.
It’s dark and everything echoes. That steady drip that has been keeping time, maybe that’s my seconds-marker. I’ve counted, and given up, and lost which tens of thousands I’m in, or I guess fallen asleep. My ears are ringing and sore, I wrench my neck to keep them above the water but I’m hurting, and I don’t have the strength. The drips sound like a drum underwater, and I can hear my feet move.
I worry about the air. It’s getting harder to breathe.
I’m drowsy and aching and lost, I’m not sure I can feel my body except when it itches or hurts. This doesn’t seem to be a big place, the echoes are tight and constrained. It might be a hot tub. I just don’t know where.
I always hated the smell of chlorine. Like public pools at gyms or at schools, it always felt so medical, the smell that covers up humanity and pretends there’s no sickness around, it becomes its own banner for denial. A hospital smell. Something to mask the revulsion we fear in the world, each other. Artificial purity. It burns in my eyes and soaks into my hair…
Which is coming out. My scalp is burning the longer it’s submerged and I can feel little tickles of it by my elbows, my knees, I know it’s just falling out and I want to scream again and I can’t. My throat is raw. My sobs creak. I feel swollen and tired.

I’m not drowning, not yet, but that drip has been slamming into the water and maybe it isn’t filling so much as it’s keeping the levels even but I feel the surface tickle my chin and I don’t think it was that high before, and the gag is damp and my mouth tastes like chemicals and bile and I can’t scream anymore I just can’t I don’t know how.
I shouldn’t breathe so hard because I don’t know if the air…
If they thought I was dead, they wouldn’t gag me. Someone knows I’m in here.
My head is pounding in its own rhythm, I guess it’s my blood and my heart and it used to be fast but now it’s slower than the dripping sound, sometimes it hurts so bad I clench up and it feels like my skin is bursting and scraping off against the straps, how can I feel so shriveled and bloated at the same time? I’m so thirsty but I keep choking on my own vomit and my stomach feels like there’s glass shards in there but I know I couldn’t be stabbed or else I wouldn’t still be awake in here after all this time. This is what rotting feels like, tight and distant and sick-sweet and salty with tears. My wrists burn, I wonder if they’re bleeding and it’s so dark everywhere, what if the water is bloody and red and I’m soaking it all in and recycling it back through myself, filtering in and out until everything equalizes, what if there’s nutrients in the water so I can’t die and they keep me here for a week like a body in a glass jar, waiting for me to move…
I wonder how much of this water is my tears, how much of this water is me.
Maybe I’ll slowly dissolve into a gelatin slurry and they’ll garnish me with parsley and dip in cups to taste how scared I am, like I’m dessert, like I’m art or else why would someone keep a person tied up in a tub like this?
It’s dripping every second and the water on my chin is just a tickle, like I’m floating and I can’t tell what’s the surface or what’s the fabric or what’s my loose hair or if anything can be a way out, if I could simply float up and evaporate entirely, sneak out the cracks and corners and join the clouds somewhere. I just don’t know what this means.

My feet are burning, and my knees are burning and my stomach is on fire, it feels like I’m being broiled and popping, oily bubbles of my skin like buttery bread, the shifting doesn’t help and I must have been asleep but now there’s another smell. It’s not the same at all.
The denial of death.
Those chemicals like science class with scalpels on limp piles of what was once a frog or a pig but is now a mutilated mess of labeled bones and soft organs, I know this smell and I know that feeling. It’s a preservative. The sharp smell of something yellow that lasts. My torso is stinging and the first bits reach my chin and I’ve still forgotten how to cry, but I’m trying, I’m trying to feel anything that isn’t a classroom experiment and I’d welcome being spread out on a table with a knife in me just to know that I once identified as a human being instead of a pickled mass of limbs and why is this happening now? Why can I smell the onset of death when it could have been over so much easier, so much earlier, what if there’s other things in here with me, what if that wasn’t my hair I was feeling and my tears I was floating in all this time? What if I’m just the newest one…?

My eyes are stinging, they might be open or closed I can’t tell anymore, but the drip is faster or maybe I’m slower, and the water is reaching to my lips or I’m sinking and not fighting anymore, maybe I’m not special but I’m just the next one, the fresh one, the experiment of how long until someone stops fighting.
And I’ve stopped crying, I’ve stopped screaming, and maybe after this rest I’ll stop trying.
I can burn underwater, I know that now, and I think I might stop fighting.
The taste of humanity and denial in my mouth and maybe I’ll just stop fighting.

I used to dream of floating in the clouds.