dragging it everywhere
I went. I thought I had to, at first, but a couple of times I didn’t and nobody
said anything, so I figured it must be optional. Just as well. The pants and
hair were being scraped off by the cement sidewalks. It’s bad enough being
dead, you don’t want to be bald and have your butt hanging out too. Besides, I
couldn’t be dragging a lot of dead weight around all the time. I had work to
do.
You’d think that
once you’re dead that should put an end to your obligations. That’s the way
most people figure it. Whatever the afterlife holds for them, they’re confident
they can kick back and relax at that point and let somebody else do the work.
But it’s not so. Ghosts are expected to do all kinds of things.
You’re supposed
to hang around places you frequented in life, for example. So I went to those
places and hung around. Stories of haunted strip clubs, drunk tanks, and
unemployment lines followed me around town wherever I went.
And once you get
to these places, you can’t just stand around picking your nose until it’s time
to go home. No, that would be too easy. Ghosts are expected to trudge up and
down stairs, move things around in mysterious and spooky ways, and float from
room to room saying all kinds of scary things like “boo” and “get back”. It’s a
lot of work, let me tell you. A lot of nights I just went through the motions,
or put in a token appearance. In my more reflective moments I wondered what it
was all about.
It probably
wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so clumsy. I don’t know how a ghost can
fall down stairs, but I did it. And I don’t know why it hurt, but it did. And
just about every time I tried to rattle some pots and pans to scare somebody,
I’d end up with the whole kitchen on top of me. So instead of all the spooky
rattling, my victim would just hear an explosion of sound followed by a lot of
unearthly cursing. It was probably scarier the way I did it, but that didn’t
make me like it any better.
As a ghost,
you’re supposed to make it a point to haunt the people you knew when you were
alive, so I appeared all over my neighborhood, giving old acquaintances a
scare.
“In life I was
your gasoline customer, Frank Burly,” I would wail.
“So what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want some
gas?”
“Not really,” I
would say, rattling some chains.
“Well piss off
then.”
“Righty-o.”
That sort of
thing. Kind of pointless, really. I mean, what exactly is it supposed to
accomplish? The gas station guy didn’t get what it was about any more than I
did.
Aside from all
the work I had to do, there were other things that annoyed me about being a
ghost. It’s hard to stay in one place, for instance. You’re too insubstantial,
that’s the scientific explanation for it. You don’t weigh enough.
You’ll be scaring
some dame, for example, saying “boo!” and “look out for me!” and “I’m trouble!”
and so on, snappy horror picture dialogue like that, and a gust of wind will
pick you up and the next thing you know you’re wrapped around the city limits
sign five miles away, or stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe, heading off in
the wrong direction. And the dame you were scaring is long gone. You can forget
about her. You won’t be scaring her anymore today.
Another problem
is you can’t eat anything. Well, you can, but it’s not very satisfying. All the
food you eat just falls out through the back of your neck onto the floor. The
only good thing about that is you get to eat it again. So you only need one
French fry to have French fries all day. It’s easy on the budget, but, like I
said, it’s unsatisfying.
But what really
got my goat about the whole ghost business, was that after doing all that work
I had to do, people didn’t even believe I had been doing it. They thought
everything I had done could be explained away. They said I was just some kind
of natural phenomenon: an air pressure change,
I went. I thought I had to, at first, but a couple of times I didn’t and nobody
said anything, so I figured it must be optional. Just as well. The pants and
hair were being scraped off by the cement sidewalks. It’s bad enough being
dead, you don’t want to be bald and have your butt hanging out too. Besides, I
couldn’t be dragging a lot of dead weight around all the time. I had work to
do.
You’d think that
once you’re dead that should put an end to your obligations. That’s the way
most people figure it. Whatever the afterlife holds for them, they’re confident
they can kick back and relax at that point and let somebody else do the work.
But it’s not so. Ghosts are expected to do all kinds of things.
You’re supposed
to hang around places you frequented in life, for example. So I went to those
places and hung around. Stories of haunted strip clubs, drunk tanks, and
unemployment lines followed me around town wherever I went.
And once you get
to these places, you can’t just stand around picking your nose until it’s time
to go home. No, that would be too easy. Ghosts are expected to trudge up and
down stairs, move things around in mysterious and spooky ways, and float from
room to room saying all kinds of scary things like “boo” and “get back”. It’s a
lot of work, let me tell you. A lot of nights I just went through the motions,
or put in a token appearance. In my more reflective moments I wondered what it
was all about.
It probably
wouldn’t have been so bad if I wasn’t so clumsy. I don’t know how a ghost can
fall down stairs, but I did it. And I don’t know why it hurt, but it did. And
just about every time I tried to rattle some pots and pans to scare somebody,
I’d end up with the whole kitchen on top of me. So instead of all the spooky
rattling, my victim would just hear an explosion of sound followed by a lot of
unearthly cursing. It was probably scarier the way I did it, but that didn’t
make me like it any better.
As a ghost,
you’re supposed to make it a point to haunt the people you knew when you were
alive, so I appeared all over my neighborhood, giving old acquaintances a
scare.
“In life I was
your gasoline customer, Frank Burly,” I would wail.
“So what?”
“I don’t know.”
“You want some
gas?”
“Not really,” I
would say, rattling some chains.
“Well piss off
then.”
“Righty-o.”
That sort of
thing. Kind of pointless, really. I mean, what exactly is it supposed to
accomplish? The gas station guy didn’t get what it was about any more than I
did.
Aside from all
the work I had to do, there were other things that annoyed me about being a
ghost. It’s hard to stay in one place, for instance. You’re too insubstantial,
that’s the scientific explanation for it. You don’t weigh enough.
You’ll be scaring
some dame, for example, saying “boo!” and “look out for me!” and “I’m trouble!”
and so on, snappy horror picture dialogue like that, and a gust of wind will
pick you up and the next thing you know you’re wrapped around the city limits
sign five miles away, or stuck to the bottom of somebody’s shoe, heading off in
the wrong direction. And the dame you were scaring is long gone. You can forget
about her. You won’t be scaring her anymore today.
Another problem
is you can’t eat anything. Well, you can, but it’s not very satisfying. All the
food you eat just falls out through the back of your neck onto the floor. The
only good thing about that is you get to eat it again. So you only need one
French fry to have French fries all day. It’s easy on the budget, but, like I
said, it’s unsatisfying.
But what really
got my goat about the whole ghost business, was that after doing all that work
I had to do, people didn’t even believe I had been doing it. They thought
everything I had done could be explained away. They said I was just some kind
of natural phenomenon: an air pressure change,
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