Dead and Hating It

by Edward Kendrick

  “Maybe,” Sage replied from the doorway, “but you might want to ask him.” He was looking at the bed.

  “He’s here?” Mike said, at the same time Kurt said, “You can see me?”

  “I can,” Sage replied to Kurt’s question. “I’m presuming you’re Kurt.”

  “Yes,” Kurt replied, staring at him. “But how? I mean…”

  Sage smiled. “I’m a medium. I can see and talk to ghosts.”

  “He’s telling the truth,” Brody said, coming into the room with Jon right behind him. “Interesting outfit you’re wearing, or not wearing, Kurt.”

  Kurt quickly put his hands over his groin, even as his eyes widened in shock. “You…You’re a ghost, too, and so is he.” He looked at Jon.

  Brody laughed. “What was your first clue? The fact you can see through us? Well, the parts that aren’t clothed now,” he said before he went fully solid, as did Jon, adding, “I figured you’d be more likely to believe us if you could.”

  When Mike asked, Sage explained what was happening. Kurt looked at him then said, “He must be alive, but not like you, sir, if you have to tell him what we’re saying.”

  “He is. And Kurt, I’m not ‘sir’, I’m Sage. He’s Mike, that’s Brody, and he’s Jon.” He pointed to each one as he introduced them.

  “Why are you here?” Kurt asked.

  “Mike’s a police detective, although you already knew that, because of the photo essay you did. He didn’t believe the story that your death was an accident.”

  “And for sure I didn’t think you killed yourself,” Mike added, knowing why Sage was telling him that.

  “You better believe I didn’t. I was murdered.” Kurt shuddered.

  “He says he was murdered, Mike,” Sage said.

  “Who did it, Kurt?” Mike asked.

  “My boyfriend,” Kurt replied. He stared down at the floor for a long moment. “I thought he loved me.”

  Sage gave him a compassionate look, asking, “What’s his name?”

  “George Neville. He’s a salesman.” Kurt grimaced. “He sure sold me a bill of goods, damn him!”

  Sage relayed what Kurt was saying.

  “Okay,” Mike said, leaning against the dresser as he took a pad of paper and a pen from his shirt pocket. “What’s his address, where does he work, and what happened, exactly.”

  Kurt gave him the information he asked for, with Sage passing it along. Then he told them about the night he died. “Right before he pushed me under the water, he said, ‘I’m sorry I have to do this, but it’s time for me to move on and try again.’”

  Naturally, Sage repeated everything Kurt was saying, including his next words, “He’s not at his apartment. It looks like he’s moved out. Well, his personal stuff. Everything else is still there.”

  “So he’s already on the run,” Mike replied. “Did you see a laptop?”

  “He had one, but if it’s there…” Kurt shrugged. “I can’t open doors or drawers or even move things.”

  “That will come in time,” Brody told him. “I promise. Ask Jon. He was totally frustrated at first when he couldn’t.”

  Kurt nodded, looking at them while Sage told Mike what he’d said about the laptop. “Are you two stuck here because someone killed you?” he asked.

  “I am,” Jon replied. “Brody can move on but he refuses to until I can too, which at this late date I don’t think will happen. Whoever killed me has done a good job of covering his tracks.”

  “He’s a good friend,” Kurt said.

  Jon smiled, looking at Brody. “He’s much more than a friend.”

  “You mean…That’s possible?”

  “To love someone even though we’re ghosts?” Brody said. “Of course it is.” He chuckled. “The only thing we can’t do is screw. That’s not possible because, well you can probably figure it out if you think about it.”

  Kurt frowned then nodded. “No blood so no erection.”

  “Bingo.”

  Sage had moved beside Mike, whispering to him what the ghosts were saying. Now Mike said, “Back to George. We’d like to search his place. Do you mind, Kurt? I’m presuming from what you said he did have a laptop.”

  “Yes. Doesn’t everyone?”

  “You don’t,” Mike replied when Sage relayed Kurt’s words. “Unless Sage or the ghostie boys found it somewhere else in the apartment.”

  “Nope,” Sage said after glancing at Brody and Jon, who shook their heads.

  “I do have one,” Kurt protested. “It should be on the desk in the living room.”

  Sage told Mike what he’d said. “Did George have the keys to the apartment?” Mike asked Kurt.

  “Yeah. Why? Oh…”

  “Yeah, ‘oh’,” Sage said. “Do you think, after he cleared out his place, Mike, he came here to get rid of anything that would connect him to Kurt?”

  “Under the circumstances, I’d say that’s a given. Kurt, did you have anything he gave you, or wrote to you?”

  “Sure. Well, nothing he wrote, but he gave me a watch for my birthday. A really nice one, with our names inscribed on the back. I didn’t wear it when we went on our picnic because the band got broken when I was on my last assignment. I was going to take it to the jewelers to get it fixed. It should be in the desk drawer.”

  “I didn’t see it,” Sage said, then told Mike what ‘it’ was.

  “Another bit of proof he was here. It’s time to pay a visit to his apartment. Maybe, if we’re lucky, he got careless and left something behind. For sure there will be fingerprints. Oh, speaking of which, Kurt, I’m going to take this because your prints should be the only ones on it, and at this point I can’t print you.” He pulled an evidence bag from his pocket, put a comb lying on the dresser into it then went into the bathroom to get Kurt’s toothbrush. “Okay, I’m ready. Let’s go.” When no one moved, Mike said, “I think we’ll all fit in my car.” He grinned, walking out of the bedroom with Sage beside him.

  * * * *

  “What if he can’t find George,” Kurt said to Brody. “How will Mike be able to prove he killed me?”

  “He’s a great detective. He’ll figure it out, with our help.”

  “Your help?”

  Brody nodded. “I was a cop, too, way back when, before some punk shot me. I know what to look for, the same as Mike does.”

  “That gives me hope, I guess.” Kurt sighed. “It’s not that I want to go, well, wherever. I kind of like it here, but…”

  “Being a ghost sucks,” Jon said. “I thought so too, at the beginning. It’s really not so bad and there are some perks, like free movies.”

  It took Kurt a second to figure out what he meant. Then, he chuckled. “It gives a whole new meaning to sneaking into the theater.”

  “Bingo. By the way, I gather when you were killed you were skinny-dipping.”

  Kurt nodded, feeling embarrassed, again. “Does that mean I’ll be naked until I move on? I mean, is what you’re wearing what you died in?”

  “Yeah,” Brody replied. “But for the sake of your modesty, let’s try something.” He went to the closet to get a pair of Kurt’s jeans. “This may or may not work. It seems to me whoever set this whole ghost thing up might not mind if you’re not wandering around stark naked. If nothing else, for the sensitivities of any others of us you run into.” He grinned. “Not all ghosts are into men on that level.”

  He held the jeans so that Kurt could step into them, which he did. Then Brody zipped them and buttoned the waistband. “Okay, try walking and let’s see what happens.”

  “What if…?”

  “Think it can happen and they’ll stay on. Believe it. Well, unless you like walking around in the all-together.” Brody grinned.

  Kurt shook his head vehemently, concentrated, and took a few tentative steps, expecting the jeans to fall off because he shouldn’t be wearing them. He heaved a sigh of relief when that didn’t happen—and again when, with his permission, Brody tried to remove them, and couldn’t.

/>   “I guess that proves my theory,” Brody said. “Now let’s see about a shirt.” He took one from the closet. As with the jeans, he held it so Kurt could slip his arms into the sleeves. The moment Brody let go, the shirt fell off and no amount of trying to keep it on worked.

  “At least I’ve got jeans,” Kurt said, relieved that he did.

  Brady grinned. “You look like a model on the cover of one of those racy romance novels. Okay, let’s join Mike and Sage.”

  When they had, in the living room, Sage said, “That’s a vast improvement over the last time I saw you, Kurt. Brody’s idea?”

  “Of course,” Brody replied, smirking.

  “What’s going on,” Mike asked, so Sage explained that Kurt had been naked, but now was wearing jeans.

  A few minutes later they were at Mike’s car. Sage rode shotgun while the ghosts got in back. As Mike had pointed out, they had no problem fitting in, given that, despite the fact they were dressed, they were insubstantial.

  * * * *

  When they arrived at George’s apartment building, Mike got his kit from the trunk of his car. Then, with Brody doing as he had at Kurt’s place, they made it up to, and inside the apartment.

  Mike saw immediately why Kurt knew George had left, and quickly. Almost everything one would expect to find in an apartment was there other than clothes and personal items. And, as Kurt told Sage, who told Mike, some award plaques and two family photos were missing as well.

  “Where did he keep his laptop?” Mike asked.

  “On the desk, or when he left it behind because we were going somewhere, in the bottom desk drawer, under a bunch of files,” Kurt replied. “He wasn’t very trusting. I sometimes thought if he’d had a safe he’d have stashed it there.”

  Sage went to check the desk drawer, telling Mike why. If the laptop had been there, it was gone.

  “Did he have any other places where he stashed things he might not have wanted you to know about?”

  “If he didn’t want me to know, how would I?” Kurt replied through Sage, with a brief smile.

  Mike chuckled. “Good point. Okay, let’s start searching, but before we do I want to dust for prints.”

  He started to, and discovered someone, presumably George, had wiped down all the surfaces.

  “Try the undersides of the counters, and the outer edges of drawers,” Brody suggested, which, when Sage told Mike what he’d said, earned him an eye roll because Mike was about to move on to doing that.

  Unsurprisingly, he was successful, finding more than enough to give him something to work with when he got back to the station. “Okay, have at it,” he said when he finished. “I doubt we’ll find anything that links him to Kurt’s death, but it’s worth a try.”

  He was correct. George had left nothing behind of a personal nature. “Well, other than prints and some strands of hair,” Mike pointed out.

  “So what good was all of this,” Kurt asked tightly. “It’s not like I can get on the witness stand if you do find him and say he’s my killer.”

  “I know,” Mike replied after Sage relayed his words. “But when we do find him, he may have something with him, especially on his laptop, which will prove he plotted your murder. Like searches for methods to make a death look accidental.”

  “He wouldn’t be stupid enough not to delete his history,” Sage said.

  “He’d have to know how to make sure it’s gone permanently,” Mike replied. “Most people don’t and trust me, our computer guys know how to find it no matter how hard someone tries to delete it. But first, we have to get our hands on his laptop which means finding him. Kurt, you’re a photographer. Do you have any photos of him?”

  “No. He wouldn’t let me take his picture. He said he hated how he looked in them.”

  Sage told Mike what Kurt had said, then added, “Like it or not, if he had a driver’s license there is a picture of him on record.”

  “I know,” Mike replied. “Another thing to add to my to-do list.”

  “Can I ask why you needed his fingerprints?” Jon said, and Sage repeated.

  “To make certain the man who called himself George Neville really is,” Mike told him.

  Kurt looked at him in shock. “You don’t think that’s his name?”

  When Sage relayed Kurt’s question, Mike told him, “It probably is, but something he said to you, I think it was ‘It’s time to move on and try again,’ set off my radar. It almost sounds like he’s done this before.”

  “No way,” Kurt said in dismay.

  “I may be way off base,” Mike admitted, “But I plan on finding out for certain. Okay, let’s take Kurt back to his place, and then I’ll drop Sage off at his office. You two—” he looked where he thought Brody and Jon were standing, “—can do your thing and fly home.”

  Chapter 4

  “Fly?” Kurt looked at Brody in disbelief.

  “Yep. We can get anywhere we want to pretty fast that way. It’s another perk, if you want to call it that, of being a ghost.”

  “Could I do it, if…?”

  “If you believe it’s possible? Sure,” Brody replied. “Want to test the theory?”

  Kurt nodded slowly, so Brody told Sage they’d take Kurt with them. “It’ll save you an extra trip.”

  When Mike and Sage left, Brody suggested they go out to the parking lot behind the building. “The quick way,” he added.

  “He means through the floor and the walls,” Jon explained to Kurt.

  “I know. I’ve walked though doors. I had to, to get into my place. I’ve never gone down through the floor, though. I guess it would be faster than taking the stairs.”

  “No kidding.”

  They all vanished from the apartment, meeting up in the parking lot.

  “Okay,” Brody said as he floated up until he was a few feet above the pavement. “Think about getting up to me and you can.”

  Kurt pictured himself rising up in the air, and did. “It worked!”

  “Of course it did,” Jon said when he joined them. “Follow us and we’ll be at your place in a minute or three.”

  Kurt shook his head and returned to the parking lot. Brody and Jon quickly joined him, asking what was wrong.

  “It’s not my place, not anymore, and I don’t want to be there. There’s too many memories. Maybe I can find a vacant house, or…or something.”

  Jon looked at Brody, got a nod, then replied, “If you want, you can stay at our place.”

  “You have a house?” Kurt asked in surprise.

  Brody chuckled. “We don’t own it, but we’ve taken over the attic. It used to be a mansion. Now it’s a boarding house and the only thing up there is cast-off furniture and a lot of dust.”

  “We turned a room at the back end into our place,” Jon told him. “A friend of ours is staying there too, in a smaller room, but there’s plenty more if you want to join us.”

  Kurt smiled slowly as he considered their offer. “I think I’d like that.”

  “Then come on,” Jon said as he and Brody rose into the air again.

  Kurt joined them, then concentrated on tailing after them as they began to fly across the city. Soon, they were above the mansion. When Brody and Jon disappeared through the roof, Kurt followed and found himself in a fairly dark hallway, the only light coming from dirty windows at both ends.

  “This is our room,” Brody said, going through a door at the far end from the stairs, with Jon and Kurt behind him. He turned on the light, which was a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  There were two beds, pushed together, two chairs, and a table. Kurt was surprised to see a laptop on the table. “How can you use that?” he asked.

  “The boarding house has Wi-Fi I tap into. It and my phone are how I keep in touch with Mike and Sage. Mike pays for my phone plan for that reason.”

  Jon snorted. “Playing games and streaming movies is more like it, when it comes to the laptop.”

  “I never realized ghosts could do things like that,” Ku
rt told them.

  “Once we learn how to move and manipulate things, there’s not much we can’t do.” Brody replied. “Although driving a car isn’t really suggested. It would scare the hell out of anyone who saw it going down the street without a driver, or at least a visible one.”

  Kurt laughed as he pictured that.

  “Should we give him the room next to Tonio’s?” Jon asked. “He’s the friend we told you about, Kurt. We’ll have to move most of the old furniture to the one across the hallway, and do a major dusting, but I think it’ll work.”

  “If Tonio’s around, he can help,” Brody replied with an evil smile. “At this point, Kurt, all you can do is watch and cheer us on.”

  Having said that, Brody took him to the room they were talking about, while Jon disappeared into another room.

  “Do I need furniture?” Kurt asked as he looked at a broken bed frame with an old mattress on it, and several barely usable chairs piled in one corner.

  Before Brody could reply, Jon appeared, followed by a slender man with curly, dark hair, who appeared to be close to Kurt’s age. He smiled at Kurt, but it didn’t reach his eyes, which held more than a trace of sadness.

  “Kurt, this is Tonio. Tonio, Kurt,” Brody said. “Kurt was…Do you mind if I tell him?” Brody asked.

  “No. It happened, I can’t change that, and since I’m going to be here for at least a while, he might as well know.”

  Brody gave Tonio the short version of why Kurt was dead and still hanging around. Then, with Tonio’s permission, he told Kurt the details of Tonio’s murder. “We, well Mike, caught the killer,” he said in conclusion. “But Tonio decided to stick around afterward because he has David, his boyfriend.”

  “Had,” Tonio said sadly. “He’s alive, and he’s moved on and found someone new, even though he knows I’m here.”

  Jon put his arm around Tonio’s shoulders. “You told him you wanted him to.”

  “I know, and I meant it, but now that it’s happened, it hurts. He said he wanted me to stay, anyway, and I know there’s a part of him that still loves me, but damn.” Tonio sighed before apologizing to Kurt. “You don’t need to know all my problems. You have enough of your own from what Brody said.”