You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please)

by Andrew Stanek

  “And this, too,” Nathan said, and plopped down a pamphlet about the Cult of Dave on the table. “I thought maybe some spirituality would help you. Dave is always with you.”

  There was a lengthy, awkward silence as Fulcher surveyed the badger imperiously. To end the uncomfortable silence, Nathan cast his mind around for a topic.

  “I think I’m starting to see what you meant when you told me that my life is getting very routine and boring,” he said. “Get up in the morning - be murdered by a serial killer - come here - be sent back to life - get in a plane - die of a bathtub, badger, and stroke incident. It’s all very routine and mundane. I’m thinking of taking a vacation to mix things up a little. Maybe I will go to the Bahamas. That’s where the city councillors go when they want to take a break. Very long breaks, too. Most of them go and never come back, so it must be a nice place.”

  Director Fulcher regarded Nathan silently for a moment, then sat down at his desk, produced a form, and signed it. The badger disappeared.

  “Where did he go?” Nathan asked, trying to keep up the conversation.

  “The receiving station for badgers,” Director Fulcher answered solemnly. “But that is beside the point. Mr. Haynes, you have been a thorn in my side for far too long. In addition to refusing to sign your 21B and tricking me into signing your wretched contract, you have now started to violate universal law and put me in a very difficult position. I had a visit from my immediate superior earlier today, and she made it clear to me that you must be dealt with.”

  “Dealt with gently, I hope,” Nathan said, trying to maintain a positive attitude. As he’d told his serial killer, the key to life (or unlife) was to maintain a positive attitude at all times.

  “No, not gently. Decisively and cruelly.”

  Director Fulcher sank down into his chair and knotted his fingers.

  “I planned to trick you into accidentally returning to the afterlife by walking through a door created with a Bureaucratic Transit Device, but that proved to be unnecessary as you have died on your own. Now I am going to bind you here by serving you with this.”

  He thrust a piece of paper to Nathan’s chest.

  “What is it?” Nathan asked.

  “A restraining order. It says you’re not to go within fifty meters of life at any time. You’re in an abusive relationship with life, so I’ve decided to end it.”

  “The relationship or my life?”

  “Both.”

  “Hm...”

  Nathan studied the restraining order carefully. Sadly, he wasn’t very good at studying things carefully and couldn’t make heads or tails of the minute legalese, which probably would have required a team of lawyers wielding atomic force microscopes to decipher.

  “The problem I have is that I can no longer force you to sign any form, which prevents me from processing your file correctly,” Director Fulcher explained. “However, a restraining order does not require your signature. I can therefore use it to trap you here, in the afterlife, which is where you belong as a deceased spirit. You will remain here permanently and, with any luck, Overdirector Powell will be sufficiently satisfied to not turn my skull into the top of a cane. If you are very, very lucky, she may not turn your skull into a cane either.”

  “I think Dr. Vegatillius has already turned one of my skulls into a cane,” Nathan said, remembering the suspicious-looking cane in Vegatillius’ office.

  “Then you probably know it is not an entirely pleasant process,” Director Fulcher said summarily. “That is neither here nor there. The point is that you will now stay in the afterlife.”

  Nathan thought about this for a minute.

  “So what happens if I violate this restraining order?”

  Director Fulcher bristled.

  “Violate the restraining order? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s unbreakable. The moment you were correctly processed following your most recent death, the order took immediate effect, even before I served it to you. I rigged it that way so you couldn’t slip away before you came in to see me. Once your death paperwork was filled out, it was over.”

  “Oh, is that the way it works?” Nathan asked. “Good. That reminds me, I wish to complain about being mauled on your premises by a badger again.”

  “Because you cannot sue us, I am prepared to guarantee you that we will never, ever respond to that complaint,” Director Fulcher said. “Why did you say ‘good’ when I told you how the restraining order works?”

  “Because I wasn’t properly processed this time around,” Nathan said, and tore the restraining order into shreds, then tossed them across the desk. “Which means that’s not worth the paper it’s written on, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you mean you weren’t properly processed?” Director Fulcher snapped, but Nathan was already taking out the Bureaucratic Transit Device that he had tricked Ian into giving him. He concentrated hard on the site of the plane crash, where he had left Travis and Brian, and shook the 8-ball hard. An irregular doorway appeared near the center of Fulcher’s office. The bottom of the 8-ball read “Dead Donkey, Nevada.”

  “Wait, what are you doing?” Fulcher said in alarm. “Where did you get that Bureaucratic Transit Device?” He stood, but there was nothing he could do to stop Nathan, who stepped briskly through the doorway.

  And then he was being sped through the infinite, unending darkness once again, towards the bright lights of the city of Dead Donkey. Even though most of those lights were fires caused by arsons, Nathan was happy to be on his way again.

  Chapter 21

  Nathan stumbled back onto the ground of Dead Donkey zoo. Well, not stumbled exactly, because his foot ominously passed through the road below him as he went. Then he tripped and found himself floating straight through a burning remnant of the Flying Trashcan 2’s wing.

  Nearby, an equiclops chuckled at him.

  “I see you are a ghost again,” came Travis’ voice. “That took you longer than usual. Did something happen?”

  Nathan spun around to see Travis and Brian standing next to the still-smoldering wreckage of the aircraft. The flight attendant and the pilot were nowhere to be seen. Neither was the serial killer, who had left as soon as he’d found out Nathan had already died again.

  “There was a mix-up at receiving,” Nathan said. “I got bounced around a lot, but I didn’t get my body back.”

  “So you are a ghost,” Travis repeated.

  “And since the equiclops can see you, that probably means you are still bound by the laws of economics and therefore visible,” Brian noted. However, he didn’t look happy about this. In fact, his temple was throbbing a little bit. “The problem is that since you have died again, you can no longer use this body.”

  He held up Nathan’s most recent corpse and dropped it. It fell to the ground like a ragdoll.

  Nathan watched it with his usual smile.

  “That’s only to be expected, isn’t it?” he asked. “After all, I was just hit by a bathtub, mauled by a badger, and died of stroke.”

  “Yes, but the problem is that with your body unusable, I can’t execute my plan for revenge against you and Director Fulcher. I have to insist that you find a new body.”

  Travis shrugged his shoulders.

  “I also think you should find a new body if you intend to carry on existing in this world,” he said. “Admittedly, I believe this for different reasons. Perhaps it would be best if we left the city while you are still a ghost and then found you a body in the outside world, once we have evaded the bureaucrats who are following you - like Brian, for instance.”

  “I am not following you by choice,” Brian said unhappily. “What did Director Fulcher say when you died?”

  “He tried to serve me with a restraining order telling me to keep away from life, but he made a mistake so I tore it up,” Nathan answered.

  “A restraining order? Yes, brilliant in these circumstances. That means Fulcher is getting closer and closer to discovering a bureaucratic instrument to bind you to the othe
r world, Nathan. We can’t underestimate his cunning. Unfortunately, in order to stop him, we need you to have a body and physical form. It’s absolutely necessary. I have a plan for how we can get you a body, but we’ll have to hurry.” Brian checked his watch. “We’re running out of time, and Director Fulcher is probably contemplating new methods to trap you in the afterlife as we speak. Unless we obtain the correct documents, he will succeed.”

  “What documents?” Nathan asked.

  “Never mind that. For now, we need to find a way to get out of this place.” Brian gestured around at the zoo, which was currently hosting the flaming wreckage of a plane and a family of very confused-looking lemurs who were watching Brian, Travis, and Nathan with great interest. Behind them, a tour guide was leading a group through the zoo. Or, to be more accurate, he was talking to a single large stone that someone had placed in the back of his little safari-themed car as a joke. Still, the guide soldiered on bravely.

  “And to our left you will see an equiclops, to our right a family of lemurs, and dead ahead of us is the flaming wreckage of an aircraft that crashed here recently and three survivors. Now on to the tiger enclosure...”

  He drove ahead.

  Brian watched him go with irritation.

  “That guide could have offered us a lift,” he said irritably. “We need to get back to Dead Donkey in order for my plan to work, but first we need to get you a body. For both, we’ll need to travel...”

  Then he stopped as he spotted the little 8-ball like device clutched in Nathan’s hand. His eyes widened.

  “Where did you get that?” he demanded. “That device is only to be held by personnel authorized under Subsection 7, Section 325097, of Transport Code 573, or else by second-tier managers or higher. Why do you have one?”

  “I tricked Ian into giving it to me in exchange for an angry badger and some complaint forms,” Nathan said.

  “So you filed another complaint about a badger? Good, good,” Brian said. “Using that device, there’s a way to get you a new body... but...”

  He trailed off.

  “What?” Nathan asked.

  “Well, it’s a bit of a long shot,” Brian said. “And there’s a lot of risk involved, but it’s the only way to get you a body in short order. If it works, we’ll be able to get you a new body very quickly, but if it doesn’t work, there’s no telling what will happen.”

  “What are you talking about?” Travis asked.

  Brian bit his lip and started to explain.

  Chapter 22

  Bureaucrats are people too, or at least they are if they’ve remembered to fill out all the appropriate forms, and once every quizillion years or so the endless paperwork and filing becomes so dull and tedious that they eventually need a break or a diversion. Therefore, though it is little known to the deceased general public, the offices of the cosmic bureaucracy are actually equipped with entertainment facilities - foosball tables, soda machines, lounge areas, televisions, and so on. It is the hope of the general management that the creation of these entertainment facilities will ensure that fun and merriment is confined exclusively to the designated areas and will not, therefore, be present in the greater office space, thereby ensuring that the bureaucracy continues to run at the high level of efficiency that everyone has come to expect.

  One of the entertainment facilities in the bureaucratic offices, right next to the super-mega-bar and the movie theater (sign here to receive your form to authorize you to stand in line to purchase a ticket for the ticket line), is a casino: Rulan’s Casino, filled with dice pits and card tables and one-armed bandits, who rob passersby right next to the slot machines. It is the only casino in the bureaucratic offices, and the only place where you can put your luck to the test and let your future and good fortune ride on a single roll of the dice, turn of the cards, or apple on the head of a goat. The difference between Rulan’s Casino and any casino of the regular world is that unlike say, a Las Vegas gambling venue, the patrons to Rulan’s do not gamble with money. Instead, they gamble with forms.

  All of the games at Rulan’s are centered around winning or losing important paperwork, or more heart-stopping still, signing forms totally at random. This is what makes it so exciting to bureaucrats. The idea that they might fill out the wrong form instead of the one they want is terribly thrilling for them. The risk is such that they might have to spend the rest of their careers trying to sort out whatever form they just signed, or they might have instead signed an agreement that instantly promotes them five ranks. That’s what it means to put your fate in the hands of chance at Rulan’s Casino.

  Generally, there are games at Rulan’s where you are able to state what you hope to win, thereby naming the stakes. There are no stakes that Rulan’s cannot match, but you always stand to lose something correspondingly large if luck is not on your side that night. That said, many bureaucrats have walked out of Rulan’s whistling with a form they wanted securely in hand and ready to be filed.

  However, like all casinos, you can’t beat the house unless you have a plan. The games are all subtly rigged against the poor saps who walk into the casino to sit at the table, and inevitably they walk out less well off than when they entered. Bureaucrats run up large debts and end up having to file half their forms with the casino for the foreseeable future, and hung-over former managers are thrown out of the place.

  Normally, the forms that Director Fulcher used to give Nathan new replica bodies could only be found in Fulcher’s office, where Nathan could not get to them (since Director Fulcher was there and would presumably stop him). However, if they went to gamble at Rulan’s, Nathan might - the key word being might - be able to win the necessary form to give him a new body. With the Bureaucratic Transit Device in hand, they could go to visit the casino at any time, and Nathan could put his chances of winning a new body in the hands of fate and professional card sharks.

  Brian explained all this, but he looked very pensive as he did, leading Travis to suspect that something was wrong with this plan.

  “You don’t look confident that Nathan can win back his body,” Travis said.

  Brian hesitated.

  “Going to Rulan’s is the only way he might get a new body in such short order,” Brian said. “However, Nathan can’t sign any forms because of the contract he signed with Director Fulcher, so he can’t gamble himself. We need to find someone to gamble on his behalf. For that, we either need to find someone so lucky he can’t possibly lose or someone so unlucky that he can’t possibly win, then bet against him.”

  “Someone so unlucky he can’t possibly win,” Nathan said thoughtfully, and stared at Brian.

  Brian looked cooly back at him.

  “I’m not going to lose on your behalf.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad.” Nathan crossed his arms and floated there for a moment, trying to think. A certain person sprang into his mind. “All we need is someone who always loses, right?”

  “Yes,” Brian confirmed.

  “Great! I know just the person. Can I use this to go wherever I like?” He brandished the Bureaucratic Transit Device.

  “Yes. It’s not designed for going from point to point inside the living world, but I think it will work.”

  Nathan smiled and shook the 8-ball until the bottom read, “Dead Donkey Park.” A door appeared out of thin air in front of them, and Nathan opened it. He could see the green grass and obnoxious political activists through the door.

  “Let’s go,” he said, and then stepped through. Brian and Travis followed him.

  They materialized in the park. The door disappeared behind them. Evading the local ducks and the muggers who were eyeing them greedily from behind the nearby treeline, Nathan headed over to the basketball court, where two men stood arguing.

  “You lost another game of Horse,” one of the men said to the second.

  “He was a tough opponent.”

  “His arms were broken,” the second man said.

  “He moved like a panther.”
r />   “His legs were broken too.”

  “That guy did a trick shot.”

  “He was in a wheel chair.”

  “I was just a little off my game.”

  “I think he had a heart attack after the fourth shot.”

  “My jump shot wasn’t working today, okay?”

  “I didn’t know you could be thrown out for fouls in Horse.”

  Nathan approached the second man who had just lost to a paraplegic in the one-on-one basketball game Horse.

  “Hello,” Nathan greeted him cheerily. “My name is Nathan, and I’m a ghost. I need your help. Would you like to go to a casino with me?”

  The second man blinked at him.

  “I don’t know,” he said after a moment of hesitation. “I don’t have that much money on me.”

  “That’s because you were mugged by that baby,” the first man said.

  “Hey, that baby was armed and dangerous,” the second man shot back.

  “No, you’re just a loser.”

  “I’ll show you who’s a loser. Fine, I’ll go to your casino. My name’s Vince Kor. Pleased to meet you, ghost. Where’s the casino? Are we going to Vegas?”

  “Not exactly,” Nathan said, and shook his little 8-ball again. When the words on the bottom changed to, “Rulan’s Casino,” a door appeared out of thin air in front of them. Nathan opened it to find bright neon lights shining on the other side and happily walked through the door. He was quickly followed by Travis, Brian, Vince, and his friend, who walked through chuckling and shaking his head.

  The door disappeared behind them.

  Chapter 23

  It may seem strange to many readers that Vince agreed to go to a casino when he had just been mugged. This is because Vince’s tone and phrasing suggested that the mugging had not been voluntary and he therefore did not enjoy it. One might reasonably assume that he disliked being mugged because he lost all his money and got nothing in return. Since this is approximately the same experience as going to a casino, except quicker and more convenient for the mugging victim, we must necessarily ask ourselves why Vince would consent to go to a casino now.