One Ghost Per Serving

by Nina Post

“Alrighty,” He Who Cleans House said. “I’d like us to play a game.”

  A collective groan rose from the group. He Who Dances for Ladies did a jubilant square dance.

  “Eric, why don’t you start. Pretend to be … someone from this group.”

  Eric cleared his throat. He stood and shook out his arms and cracked his neck to the side. “Hey, buddy, you don’t mind that I’m here, do you? I know you can’t decide on a single thing without experiencing crippling anxiety and fear, so I’m here to help with that. I’m here to take the risks that you can’t take for yourself!”

  The man-sized caterpillar whistled through its abdominal spiracles.

  Eric got into it. He walked a circle outside the circle of chairs. “And if you want a constant reminder of how you screwed things up, I’m the very personification. Be my sponsor! My recovery group meets at the school. We don’t believe in ourselves enough to just be spirits and we need guidance and support, too, so we possess other people. But I love possessing others, so my participation is a lie.”

  The room was quiet. He Who Eats Grapes blinked slowly. He Who Squeaks wheezed.

  He Who Cleans House nodded. “Okay, good. That was – good. Rex, why don’t you be Eric?”

  Rex stood and moved his shoulders in circles. He stood still for a second, then disappeared.

  “Where’d he go?” He Who Reclines, the orange ladybug, said.

  A minute later, Rex popped back into the space he had vacated. He was holding a bottle of beer. “I just teleported to The Gutbucket and stole some guy’s beer.” Rex gave the beer to He Who Cleans House then phased out. “Invisible!” Eric could hear him but not see him. Rex phased back in, then morphed into a tortoise, then a bear, then a cat, then back to himself.

  “Rex, how many coffees have you had?” He Who Cleans House put his fists on his hips, elbows akimbo.

  Rex phased into the beer stein. “I possessed the beer stein!” he said from the stein, then phased back into the chair.

  “What’s the point of this behavior, Rex?” He Who Cleans House said, hands resting on his clipboard.

  “The point is that Eric takes me for granted,” Rex said. “I can do all these things, but does he take advantage of any of it? No.” Rex crossed his arms and pouted.

  He Who Cleans House looked up and scratched his face. “Mm.”

  Eric laughed. “I already did take advantage of that, against my will. Or do you possess so many people for eighteen months that you don’t even remember how you took that much time out of my life.”

  “Of course I remember,” Rex said. “You should be flattered. I don’t usually spend that much time possessing one person, putting up shelves, hanging a plant. I like the occasional long weekend.”

  Eric went over to the food table and poured a cup of hot water for tea. “I’m so flattered that you chose to possess me and take over my life for more than a year. Who wouldn’t be flattered by that?”

  He Who Cleans House held up a finger as though he were about to speak, but Eric kept going. “Your life looked pretty damn good, but oops, I forgot to de-possess you. Sorry for running your life into the ground.”

  “Like it was all my fault,” Rex said.

  “A massive cause of it, yeah.” Eric grabbed a cup and pulled the carafe dispenser for some coffee.

  He Who Cleans House stood, all three feet of him. “Eric, let Rex have his turn.”

  Eric laughed so hard he had to put down his coffee and wipe away tears. “Good one, sprite.”

  The sprite looked confused. “Rex, let’s try this again. Why don’t you go ahead and pretend to be Eric.”

  “But I’m afraid,” Rex said. “Can I get a consensus from the group so I know what to do? I’m just so fearful about what could happen. Wait, let me ask the guy who’s always around, assisting me, giving me pep talks, trying to make up for the whole possession thing.”

  Eric sipped the coffee then set it down. The water sloshed onto the blue paper covering the card table. “Pep talks?”

  “I’m gonna ask for his advice, then I’m gonna push him away.” Rex’s eyes flared. “Because I don’t trust anyone, even him.”

  “Oh, because you should be the first person I would trust.” Eric waved around a cookie.

  “It doesn’t matter whether I am or not.” Rex adopted Eric’s body language. “Hey, Rex, I hope you have the patience for when I test you every minute. I don’t know if you’re really on my side or if you’re angling to possess me again, so I’m going to accept you into my life then push you away. I’m going to be all likable and stuff, but then I’ll doubt you, because I doubt myself.”

  Rex stopped, looking weary. Parts of his form phased out.

  “Rex, you’re getting intangible,” He Who Eats Mucous said.

  “It’s just hard to be his friend,” Rex became almost completely transparent, then flickered back. “He never tells me these things. But I guess I wouldn’t want to be reminded all the time about something it hurt to think about.”

  He Who Cleans House nodded.

  “I thought he had made his peace with our past and, you know, forgiven me. How the hell was I supposed to know how much he still resented me, or that he hated me the whole time? He never expresses himself.” Rex sighed then lowered his voice. “The truth is, I don’t possess anyone else.”

  Eric moved his neck forward and widened his eyes. “Excuse me?”

  Rex stood behind He Who Eats Mucous and put his hands on the back of the chair. “All those times you thought I was off possessing someone amazing?” He shook his head. “Never happened.”

  “What?” Eric said.

  “Yeah. I actually can’t leave your general vicinity for more than an hour or so, or it feels like I’m being wrung out like a wet gym towel. Something about possessing someone for such a long time. So I make myself invisible, to give you some space. I know you don’t want me around all the time.”

  Eric rose from his chair. “Seriously?”

  He Who Cleans House slapped both of his palms on the clipboard. “That was a real breakthrough. Let’s move on to you, He Who Eats Mucous, and you, He Who is Delicious. Go ahead, Delicious.”

  Eric slowly took his seat again.

  The jar of pickles stood in the center of the circle of chairs and cleared his throat, as he got into character as He Who Eats Mucous. “I was born female but got bigger than the largest male in my area by eating more than he did. And since I have territorial and body image issues, I surpassed the male in size, took over his territory, and turned male. Now I live in fear of a female doing the same thing I did, because I’m a greedy, prejudiced hypocrite.”

  The rest of the group turned to stare at He Who Eats Mucous, who put a hand to its mouth, eyes wide.

  Eric didn’t pay attention to the psychodrama unfolding around him. He thought about what Rex had said. He wasn’t sure if he should feel outraged or sympathetic. He was experiencing both of those emotions, maybe more the latter. He hadn’t decided yet. And maybe Rex was right. If he doubted himself so much, how could he really connect with Willa or Taffy? How could he expect them to believe in him? He cradled his head in his hands. That’s where he went wrong.

  “I have to go,” Eric said, looking up, grabbing his bag, then rushing out the door.

  “You see what I mean?” Rex said.

  At the door, Eric stopped then turned around to face the group. “I could have kicked Rex out a couple of times. I was strong enough. But I didn’t.” Eric shifted his eyes to Rex, then left the door swinging behind him. “That was my fault.”

  When Willa got back to Ed’s house with Taffy, she refused to let Mark come in with them. He tried to work his charm on her, which stretched her last nerve. Finally, when she was ready to throw a right hook in his direction for being so oblivious, he reluctantly left. Willa was barely holding it together by then, and regretted going to Maritimania in the first place. She went to distract herself, but what was the point? She saw a hundred things that made her think of her Dad
, and wished like hell she were alone. She had to duck into the bathroom at the Forecastle Deck Cafe and again by the swinging pirate ship to cry in private.

  Taffy grabbed some food and went off to her room. Willa set her bag down and pressed her lips together. Both of her parents were gone, she missed them terribly, and she felt utterly, profoundly alone.

  She let out a shaky breath, then noticed something on the dining room table.

  A beautiful cake, simple and elegant, with a red cardinal expertly illustrated on the top.

  A bottle of her favorite pinot, not cheap.

  And a book of photos she had never seen before, of her Dad posing in front of then-cutting-edge HVAC equipment, teaching, and touring plants. Photos of a trip she didn’t even know about that he had taken with her mother to the Southwest. Willa’s eyes burned with tears and she put a hand to her quivering mouth. “Dammit, Eric.”

  Because it could only have been Eric.

  Eric drove the Princess from the rear of the Fireworks Superstore parking lot to the center of it. He was wearing cut-off chinos and an old shirt. He held a paint roller in one hand and a bucket of paint in the other, and appraised the bus similarly to how Jackson Pollock would snarl at a canvas, or how an evening legal secretary would give a steely eye to a stack of motions, or how a street sweeper would set his jaw the morning after the Annual Jamesville Founder’s Day and Crayfish Parade celebration, or how an efficiency expert for a State Budget Bureau would look at a municipal department’s work schedule with the aim of minimizing overtime hours.

  He wasn’t going to be the Princess or the Patsy or the Princess Patsy. Not anymore.

  He was going to be Eric Snackerge.

  And he wasn’t going to be constrained to a legacy if it didn’t fit his life. Not anymore.

  He took the roller and painted the bus like it was the event horizon to a black hole and he was the only man in the world who could paint that sucker closed. He didn’t stop until he was done, and when he was, the bus was a solid matte olive green.

  He switched the buckets. He dropped the roller and took the brush in hand. He scrawled Snackerge on each side in black paint. Then he went back ten feet to survey his work. He heard a sound and whipped around sixty degrees. Taffy pulled up on her bike.

  “Cool.” She planted one leg on the pavement and and kept the other on the pedal.

  Eric painted a strip of green paint down her nose with the tip of his finger. Then he took out his phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Taffy asked, examining the bus.

  “Josh Konga. One of your Mom’s students.” Eric remembered the big guy from Willa’s class who mainly worked as a mechanic but also drove a forklift and sang for a speed death metal band, yet somehow found the time to pursue an HVAC career. A Renaissance man.

  Eric caught him between jobs and explained who he was, but Josh recognized Eric right away. Josh was so excited to get a phone call from the yogurt guy who happened to be married to his favorite HVAC instructor that he let out a whoop Taffy heard from under the hood of the bus.

  “Dude! I bought your autographed posters, your travel mugs, the stickers, the new lapel pins, and a tote bag for my girlfriend Rhonda.”

  “What are you talking about?” But as soon as Eric said that, he remembered Jerry giving him a stack of posters to sign.

  “Ha, that’s funny,” Josh said. “You’re funny.”

  Eric let it go. He described what he wanted done, then offered to star in a radio spot for the shop Josh worked for. Then for good measure, he tacked on free breakfasts at Sammy’s for a week. Josh agreed, and they arranged a block of time for that night.

  Taffy shut the hood. “Dad, there’s a cat living in your engine block. But it ran off into the woods.”

  “What did it look like?”

  She shrugged. “A tabby, I guess. Just small and furry. Actually, it could have been something else. Anyway, I want to install a spray marker.”

  “On the cat? I think it already has one.”

  “No, on your bus.” Taffy’s tone was impatient. “Like the ink that explodes in money packets. But it’s indelible fluorescent and you can spray it from the front or the back using a trigger on the dash.”

  “Um …”

  “It’ll come in handy. Trust me, I know.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Eric parked the bus in the lot of Argosy Foods. The sun’s rays shot through the moving cloud cover and glinted off the steel carts. The stock guy Eric had come to see noticed the bus and clamped his hands to his head in astonishment. He hitched up his work belt and met Eric just past the loading doors with an outstretched hand. “Whoa, what happened to your bus?” It looks like a tank! No more Princess?”

  “Hey Jimmy. Yeah, I gave it a new look.”

  “You told me it was your dad’s, right? Does he know what it looks like now?”

  Eric shrugged. “It’s not his bus anymore, it’s mine. Hey, I just wanted to come by and thank you for helping me with the yogurt. Knowing when the trucks were coming from the distribution center was really helpful.”

  “No problem.” Jimmy clapped Eric on the shoulder. He checked out the bus again like it was a new barbecue grill he wanted. “You send in the lids already?”

  Eric nodded. “Now I just cross my fingers.”

  “Deliveries of Quantal Organic Yogurt have been cut in half, I guess because the contest ended.” Jimmy shrugged.

  Eric knew DZ must have had something else in mind now. Assuming DZ wanted to keep infecting people with commerce spirits, the reduction in deliveries didn’t make sense. “The Quantal Organic Yogurt was always delivered in Nidus Monolithics trucks, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Jimmy squinted. “I never figured out why the Quantal stuff came in a Nidus truck, but fleet management, that isn’t my thing. I just receive and stock, receive and stock.”

  Eric crossed his arms. They both looked at the bus. “How do you know when to expect a delivery?”

  A beer truck pulled into the loading area.

  “Oh, we have this website we can check to see when deliveries are coming.” Jimmy turned toward the truck, ready to help unload it.

  “Is there a password?” Eric asked. He had to be direct.

  The truck backed up with a slow beep-beep-beep, then the driver hopped out and unlocked the back door. Jimmy stood near the back of the truck and Eric took a few steps closer along with him.

  “Password?” Jimmy said. “No, we just click in our region. And we can look at the deliveries for all Argosy Foods in the area.” Jimmy grabbed the first box of beer and loaded it onto a tall stacker with wheels.

  Eric sat in the driver’s seat of his bus, feeling like an oblivious, self-involved fool for not realizing how serious the problem was when he started to buy the yogurt. He was the guy who ingested a spirit from a POUNCE! He was the one who somehow survived an eighteen-month-long spirit possession, and he still wasn’t aware that at least half the population of Jamesville had also ingested spirits. The customers Eric had once viewed as contest competitors were even worse off than he had been with Rex possessing him. They were still conscious, but controlled by the commerce spirit they consumed from the yogurt. But Eric was so reactive that he just wanted to punch them for getting in his way, and he had put his family in danger.

  He started the ignition, shaking his head at himself. Cynosure would want to reach as many customers as possible, and at some point DZ would use the Nidus Monolithics resources to make it happen. He had to put aside his own problems and shut down Cynosure’s operation for good.

  Eric walked into the support group meeting in the middle of a heated argument between He Who Cleans House and another sprite he hadn’t seen before. The other attendees had taken refuge by the food table; they had adopted Eric’s additions to the offerings, namely vanilla cream cookies, cashews, pretzel sticks, doughnuts, and decent coffee. They didn’t need to eat, but the shrimp had admitted at one point that it was an emotional thing: they liked to partake o
f the human food when there was something to celebrate or when they felt bereft.

  Rex was nowhere to be seen and Eric got anxious. He sidled over to the table. “What’s going on?”

  He Who Eats Grapes, the gorilla, rolled his eye. He Who Squeaks made an aggressive series of undulating abdominal squeaks and wheezes, and even though Eric didn’t speak spiracle, he got the distinct impression that the caterpillar was displeased at the direction of the meeting.

  “Well –” He Who Eats Mucous was always up for some gossip. “He Who Cleans House’s cousin, who’s also a sprite but insists that he’s a brownie –”

  “It’s a regional difference. Be sensitive,” He Who is Delicious said.

  “– showed up with no advance notice and announced his intention to stay with He Who Cleans House,” He Who Eats Mucous said.

  “But He Who Cleans House hates his cousin and hates the whole idea of him staying,” He Who is Delicious said.

  “He Who Cleans House runs a tight ship,” He Who Reclines said. “He protects that house and looks after everyone in it, even though they have no idea that he’s there and trample over his feelings all the time.”

  He Who Eats Mucous hopped off his chair. “Why would he want another homesprite – sorry, Brownie. Whatever. Why would he want him in his house? If I’m confronted with a similarly-sized shrimp in my area, I have to kill it before it gets bigger, turns male, and takes over my territory.”

  As though to emphasize the shrimp’s point, Eric overheard He Who Cleans House say, “The Dixon house is a one homesprite household! I must insist that you stay in a motel.” The sprite’s tone turned political and calculating. “Wouldn’t that be more interesting, with allthat turnover? I have to protect and look after the same people, day in, day out. Talk about tedious. But a motel – that’s the stuff.”

  Eric caught the pickle jar’s attention. “Where is Rex?” He Who Is Delicious loaded his plate with vanilla cream cookies and Eric wondered how exactly he ate those, being a jar of pickles. “Rex? Oh, he went outside a few minutes ago. Said he had a phone call. No, wait – he just came back in.”