One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau Page A

says. “Mitchie didn’t take any shit off this ghost.”

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    After his phone conversation, Charlie tries to get back to sleep, but he can’t. When he closes his eyes, she’s there, trickling blood onto the floor. When he opens his eyes and turns on all the lights, she’s still there.
    Charlie locks himself in the bathroom, setting out a blanket and pillow on the floor, but when he turns back around to sit, there she is, standing in the shower. Bloodied and headless. Just waiting. Is the rest of his life going to be like this? He can’t handle that.
    â€œJust leave me alone,” Charlie says. “Find someone else to watch you go and point at that old woman.” But she stays. She stands there bleeding and moving her lips. And so Charlie lifts the heavy lid off the toilet tank, and he lets it fall to the floor. It cracks in two, and the sound is loud and violent in the bathroom. The ghost just stands there, watching.
    Charlie goes to the kitchen and takes a long thin knife from the drawer.
    â€œFine,” he says. “You want revenge? I can help you get revenge. Is that what you want? Can you even hear me?”
    The ghost’s face is expressionless. The knife feels wrong in Charlie’s hand. But everything is wrong. He imagines Mitchie out in the cold night, wandering blind in the woods, looking for Charlie’s warm arm to snuggle underneath. There’s no way he would have lasted on his own. So helpless and stupid.
    â€œI’ll help you get her,” Charlie says to the ghost. Oh god, could the ghost hear the uncertainty in his voice? What does he think he’s going to do, wave the knife at her? “I’ll help you,” Charlie says, “but you have to help me too, okay? You have to help me find my friend Mitchie.”

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    The walls here are so far apart. Jackie is a ghost ship in the fog. The loudest sound she makes is when she pushes the elevator button. Click . Even the elevator walls are far apart.
    Her father is nervous. She should be in bed.
    â€œThis is the only tree I never visited,” Jackie is telling him. He knows about the map now, about the broken-arm tree, the first-kiss tree. He wasn’t there when Jackie broke her arm. He was long gone when she had her first kiss. Jackie tells him about Ann and Ms. Garcia. She tells him about Mrs. Hubert and about smashing her car windows because she cut down that tree. He knows about Jackie’s magic word.
    â€œOh, chickadee,” he said. But nothing else.
    They find the signs to the oncology wing. They follow the big pink dots on the floor and walls. Jackie’s mother’s tree is in one of these lobbies. It sounds like someone is whispering, but when she looks around, the sound stops. One of her crutches slides out from under her, but her father is there, and Jackie regains her balance.
    The tree is not where she remembers it was. It’s been too long. Jackie looks around. This feels like the place. But there’s no tree. Her father’s arm around her is warm.
    The nurse is on the phone.
    â€œWhere’s my tree?” Jackie demands. The nurse just keeps talking. Jackie lifts her crutch over her head and slams it down on the nurse’s station. Everything in the room stops. “Where is my dead-mom tree?” she says. The nurse looks up calmly.
    â€œHold, please,” she says into the phone. She pushes a button and sets the phone down. She looks at Jackie. Jackie can’t keep her balance without the crutch.
    â€œThere was a tree here,” Jackie says. The nurse looks annoyed at first, but then she looks worried. She reaches out to touch Jackie’s arm across the counter.
    â€œAre you supposed to be wandering around?” she says. “What’s your name, honey?” She looks at Jackie’s father, and Jackie can see the disapproval. He should never have let his daughter wander like this.
    â€œI am a patient,” Jackie tells her,