imperfections in a window,
lights from a passing car, a hallucination, or, most insulting of all, bits of
undigested beef.
“I don’t believe
in ghosts,” people would tell me, with a smirk, when I showed up.
This statement
would always make me mad.
“Who cares
whether you believe in ghosts or not? Shut up!”
“I think you’re
bits of beef.”
“Well I’m not!”
“That’s my
theory.”
“It’s wrong!”
“Ha!”
According to one
local newspaper only 32% of the population of Central City believed in “The
Arguing Ghost”, as they had begun to call me. The rest said I was bullshit.
A few
enterprising people tried to take my picture for the tabloid magazines, and I
kept trying to pose for those pictures. We could both make some money if we
could get a good picture. We could split it. But we never managed to come up
with anything convincing. The pictures all looked faked, especially the one of
me shaking hands with Eisenhower. That one really was faked. I’m not sure why
we did that. Only 14% of the people believed in me after that picture came out.
After awhile, even I started to think I was bullshit.
But probably the
worst part of the whole experience was the boredom. Halloween was a busy time
for me, of course, but once November rolled around things started to really
slow down. Not much call for ghosts on Thanksgiving. People want turkeys then.
At one point I
got so bored I started feeling a little sorry for myself. That felt good. That
cheered me up. So I tried feeling sorry for other people to see if that would
feel just as good. It didn’t. I went back to me. Poor Burly, I thought. Poor
old Frankie. What a raw deal he got. He deserved so much better.
Then one evening
while I was feeling sorry for myself over my French fry dinner, a special
report came on TV. It was that long overdue expose of the secret government
facility that I had been asked to deliver months before.
The reporter
whose place I had taken, Johnson, had finally been released by the government
after his hair and capped teeth grew back and they realized they were holding
the wrong man.
Johnson was
brought on with great fanfare (“And now, here he is… her-her-herherher... Stan
Johnson!”) and everyone waited expectantly for him to tell all about the
government facility, and all the evil secrets he’d uncovered there. But his
mind had apparently been wiped clean before his release, and all he could
remember now was how to flip his lips with his finger. After a few minutes of
this, another reporter came on and flipped his lips the other way, to make sure
we got a balanced report. So the long anticipated story was a bust. Of course,
that is show business for you. They can’t all be gems.
But the show
wasn’t a total loss. It had given me an idea. I would take my body back to the
government facility and hook it up to the Clarence machine again. If the
machine could fix it so I had never been born, I reasoned shrewdly, maybe it
could fix it so I had never been killed. You never know. There were plenty of
dials on that machine. Maybe one of them could reverse all of this.
I
ate my dinner a couple more times to fortify myself, then went to get my body
out of storage.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It took quite
awhile to get to the government facility. My body hadn’t gotten any lighter while
it was in storage. In fact, it actually seemed a little heavier to me. I
thought maybe it had been eating something in there somehow, but the extra
weight just turned out to be some kids riding on it. I scared them off. Darn
kids.
On the way down
the street, people who had seen my body around a lot waved at it. I made it
wave back.
I knew from my
previous visit that the facility was well guarded, so gaining access wouldn’t
be easy. I would have to be tricky.
Accordingly, I
presented my body at the main gate as an employee who was ready to start his
eight hour shift. I balanced lunchboxes on my body as props. Unfortunately, my
body didn’t
lights from a passing car, a hallucination, or, most insulting of all, bits of
undigested beef.
“I don’t believe
in ghosts,” people would tell me, with a smirk, when I showed up.
This statement
would always make me mad.
“Who cares
whether you believe in ghosts or not? Shut up!”
“I think you’re
bits of beef.”
“Well I’m not!”
“That’s my
theory.”
“It’s wrong!”
“Ha!”
According to one
local newspaper only 32% of the population of Central City believed in “The
Arguing Ghost”, as they had begun to call me. The rest said I was bullshit.
A few
enterprising people tried to take my picture for the tabloid magazines, and I
kept trying to pose for those pictures. We could both make some money if we
could get a good picture. We could split it. But we never managed to come up
with anything convincing. The pictures all looked faked, especially the one of
me shaking hands with Eisenhower. That one really was faked. I’m not sure why
we did that. Only 14% of the people believed in me after that picture came out.
After awhile, even I started to think I was bullshit.
But probably the
worst part of the whole experience was the boredom. Halloween was a busy time
for me, of course, but once November rolled around things started to really
slow down. Not much call for ghosts on Thanksgiving. People want turkeys then.
At one point I
got so bored I started feeling a little sorry for myself. That felt good. That
cheered me up. So I tried feeling sorry for other people to see if that would
feel just as good. It didn’t. I went back to me. Poor Burly, I thought. Poor
old Frankie. What a raw deal he got. He deserved so much better.
Then one evening
while I was feeling sorry for myself over my French fry dinner, a special
report came on TV. It was that long overdue expose of the secret government
facility that I had been asked to deliver months before.
The reporter
whose place I had taken, Johnson, had finally been released by the government
after his hair and capped teeth grew back and they realized they were holding
the wrong man.
Johnson was
brought on with great fanfare (“And now, here he is… her-her-herherher... Stan
Johnson!”) and everyone waited expectantly for him to tell all about the
government facility, and all the evil secrets he’d uncovered there. But his
mind had apparently been wiped clean before his release, and all he could
remember now was how to flip his lips with his finger. After a few minutes of
this, another reporter came on and flipped his lips the other way, to make sure
we got a balanced report. So the long anticipated story was a bust. Of course,
that is show business for you. They can’t all be gems.
But the show
wasn’t a total loss. It had given me an idea. I would take my body back to the
government facility and hook it up to the Clarence machine again. If the
machine could fix it so I had never been born, I reasoned shrewdly, maybe it
could fix it so I had never been killed. You never know. There were plenty of
dials on that machine. Maybe one of them could reverse all of this.
I
ate my dinner a couple more times to fortify myself, then went to get my body
out of storage.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It took quite
awhile to get to the government facility. My body hadn’t gotten any lighter while
it was in storage. In fact, it actually seemed a little heavier to me. I
thought maybe it had been eating something in there somehow, but the extra
weight just turned out to be some kids riding on it. I scared them off. Darn
kids.
On the way down
the street, people who had seen my body around a lot waved at it. I made it
wave back.
I knew from my
previous visit that the facility was well guarded, so gaining access wouldn’t
be easy. I would have to be tricky.
Accordingly, I
presented my body at the main gate as an employee who was ready to start his
eight hour shift. I balanced lunchboxes on my body as props. Unfortunately, my
body didn’t
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