Sort of Dead

by Rob Rosen

  Voltan cleared his throat, held his boyfriend’s hand, his voice also in a whisper. “Ghosts, Didi. Has to be. Did someone die here, in this house, maybe in this room?” He glanced around said room, his free hand trembling, leg bouncing. “I’m scared, Didi.”

  She nodded, then shook her head. “My husband built this house. No one has ever died here. And there is no such thing as…no such thing as…” But she was wise enough not to finish the sentence. Mainly because, though there were no more bulbs to flick on, there were vacuums and blenders and numerus clocks with numerous arms that were sent spinning, and then came the noise, so much noise coming from all directions.

  “Didi!” shouted Clark, “are you sure no one died here, an angry spirit left behind, maybe?”

  Her eyes went to saucer-size. An angry spirit? Obviously, she knew of one. “I…” she said, eyes everywhere now, waiting for another shoe to drop. She looked pitiful. Suffice it to say, I felt no pity for her. She stole my life, snuffed it out as if I were nothing more than an ant beneath her Jimmy Choos.

  She went to retrieve her phone, perhaps to call for help. But who could she call? She texted someone before several of my newfound spirit friends pooled their strength and knocked the phone from her hands. She flinched, clearly shocked at the jolt of it. The phone landed on the nearby coffee table, a light in the otherwise now-darkened room.

  I hovered over to it and typed KILLER. Seemed apt.

  Clark leaned in and read it. “W…what does that m…mean?”

  Voltan also read it, but aloud. “Killer.” He locked eyes with Didi. “Did you…kill someone, Didi?” Voltan looked up to the ceiling. “Nord, is that you?” He again looked at Didi. “Was it you, Didi? Did you kill Nord?”

  Talk about your sixty-four-thousand-dollar question. It was now Max’s turn to type. YOU DID IT.

  They watched the letters appear, cringing in terror—or, for a couple of them, pretending to—as if each letter was a knife through the heart. Though I suppose you have to have a heart to begin with. “Didi?” croaked out Voltan.

  But she simply sat there furiously shaking her head back and forth, sweat streaming down her face. “I didn’t. I didn’t kill him. I didn’t. I didn’t.” I wondered who she was trying to convince: me, my friends, herself? The last one seemed the most likely. She looked at said friends. She seemed frantic now. She had good reason to be. “Do you think…do you think it really is Nord?” She whispered my name.

  “Really, bitch,” I said. “Really.”

  A couple of the other spirits had used up their strength, popped back to Arby’s. Not me, though. Not Max. We had to hear her say it, say she killed me, admit it to my friends.

  YOU KILLED ME, I typed, Max holding my hand, bolstering my strength.

  She stared at the letters as they appeared, her hand to her chest. “No,” she whimpered, eyes darting, trying, it seemed, to catch a glimpse of me. “No, Nord. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me.”

  Clark rose and put his hand on her shoulder. Softly, he asked, “You framed your husband, didn’t you, Didi? You moved the money around. You somehow used that document, explained its significance to the police. Everything was meant to look like it was Chaz.”

  Her jaw had dropped so low it might as well have been in a new zip code. “How…how did you know that?”

  “BINGO!” I shouted.

  Max hovered to my side. “She said it! She said it!”

  I turned to him. “She did. But it’s not enough. I can’t go poof without the rest.” YOU KILLED ME, I typed again. ADMIT IT.

  She reached for the phone and powered it down. Ironically, she was as white as a ghost by then. And, ironically, ghosts aren’t white. “I…I…”

  Voltan leaned in. Clark leaned in. Max and I followed suit. This was it. This is what we’d been waiting for. If I had any breath, I would have been holding it. “Say it,” I pled.

  “Say it,” said Max.

  “What is it, Didi?” asked Voltan. “What do you want to tell Nord?”

  Didi looked at him straight in the eyes and said, “I—”

  And, just then, the door burst open.

  We all looked over at it.

  Didi shot up like a rocket. “Paula!” She ran to the other woman. I watched in shock, expecting a fight, another murder, and certainly not the hug and kiss that quickly ensued.

  “Paula?” I managed.

  “Paula?” said Voltan and Clark, clearly just as confused as I was.

  Max was still by my side. “They were working together all along,” he said. “That has to be it. Paula was probably getting money from both sides, too. That explains that large house of hers, and why she locked us up in the basement but didn’t kill us when she had the chance. That’s why she had that flash-drive. Everything needed to point to Chaz. Nothing could point back to them.”

  I wished I could have cried right about then. “And now they have everything, and I—”

  “Have me,” said Max.

  The faintest of smiles widened across my face. “Talk about your silver linings.” I pointed to the two women. “But there’s still unfinished business. My unfinished business.” The smile vanished as I turned to the others, the spirits that had held on. “Give it everything you’ve got. She needs to say it. She needs to admit she killed me.” I was now pointing at one of the women, Paula. Didi kept saying she didn’t do it. That left one bitch standing. And I bet that bitch was the true owner of the scarf. See, it really was meant for a much younger woman, just like I’d thought. “Go!” I then hollered at the others.

  And go they did.

  Everything in that house that could be turned on was turned on. High. Loud. Didi tightly held on to Paula. “He’s back,” she cried.

  “Who? What’s happening?” Paula asked, instantly looking panicked, terrified.

  “Nord,” came the reply from Didi, from Clark, from Voltan.

  “But Nord—”

  “Is here,” said Voltan, pointing dead at me, to coin a phrase.

  Paula pried herself free from her accomplice. “Nord is dead.”

  Clark shrugged. “You say tomato.”

  FYI, there were tomatoes on the kitchen counter. FYI, didn’t take long before they were all slamming into the women before glopping down their—I’m assuming—expensive outfits. And then everything got tossed. If it wasn’t nailed down, and if we had the collective power to push it over or send it flying, it made it to the floor. Individually, we were rather weak, but take a couple of dozen of us, and, WHAM, Hurricane Nord!

  Still, one by one, the spirits began to disappear into the ether, while Max and I, either by shear willpower or through the force of abject hate, managed to hold on.

  As for Paula and Didi, they were prostrated on the floor, whimpering, crying, begging to make it stop. Voltan and Clark, too, were aping the same, ever the actors and friends that they were.

  “Paula!” shouted Voltan above the din as a banana whizzed by. “He’s going to kill us!”

  Clark furiously nodded his head. “First fruit, then knives!”

  Didi looked to the woman by her side. “It’s getting worse! Make it stop, Paula! Please make it stop!”

  “How?!” she shouted, her face wet with either sweat or tears, probably both. “He’s already dead!”

  “Sort of,” I said with a shrug.

  Max aimed a finger my way, “Yeah, sort of.” He hovered over Paula. “Say it!” he shouted down at her. “Say it!”

  Voltan and Clark crab-walked their way over to her, covering their heads and faces as they did so. “Tell him what you did, Paula!” shouted Voltan.

  “Tell him!” shouted Clark. “Before it’s too late!”

  “Tell me,” I whispered. “Please, please tell me.” I watched from a few feet away as Max hovered above them, as the living amassed in a trembling circle. I watched and I waited and I prayed. Hopeful, ever hopeful, because that was about all I had left. Hope. “I can’t hold on much longer. Say it, please.”

  Paula
craned her neck up and stared in my general direction. “I’m sorry I killed you, Nord.”

  And there it was.

  The noise stopped. What few spirits remained dearly departed. There was silence in the house except for heavy breathing. Theirs, not mine and Max’s, of course. Clark and Voltan stood up and brushed themselves off. It was an awful moment. It was a reason to celebrate. Voltan looked directly at me. “We’ll take it from here, my friend.”

  Clark nodded and waved. “Rest in peace, Nord,” he said. “And if you decide to come back again, wait until after we come.”

  I laughed. Happily, I could still do that.

  And then Max disappeared

  And then so did I.

  * * * *

  “Done,” said Max, both of us back at Arby’s.

  “Done,” I agreed. “But still here.” And then I smiled. “With you, though.”

  He reached out and pulled me in, the kiss as beautiful as a rainbow after a great storm. As analogies went, that one was right on the money. “Always, Nord. Always with you.”

  My head was on his chest. Always. It had a different meaning where we were and what we were. Or what we weren’t. “Bruce went poof right away,” I said. “As soon as his brother was in the clear, poof, he was gone.”

  Max rubbed the small of my back. “Chaz is still in jail. Your killers are still free. Business remains unfinished. It could be days, weeks, months.”

  “Or minutes,” I said, gazing up into those magnificent blue eyes of his. “What if it’s minutes, Max?”

  He smiled and kissed me. “Then I get to spend minutes with you, Nord. And I’ll take minutes over nothing any time.”

  “Hallmark moment again?”

  He shrugged. “It’s easy with you, Nord. Easy when you love someone.”

  There was the briefest of pauses. He’d never told me he loved me. I never said it, either. In life, I was too afraid. Nothing much had changed, even though everything had. Plus, to be fair, we were sort of busy for much of the time we were together.

  I kissed him, my lips lingering, scared to break contact. “I love you, Max.”

  I could’ve sworn I felt his heart beat inside his chest, impossible as that had to be. “I love you, too, Nord.”

  And then…

  Poof.

  Chapter 12

  I woke with a start and stared up at the ceiling. Only, this time there really was one. Or seemed like one. Looked like a cloud of sorts, but it definitely wasn’t nothing at all. I had to be lying down because I was staring up. Or maybe I was standing up and staring out. Either way, something felt off.

  I felt my head, ran my fingers through my hair, touched my cheek, my chin, my nose. Yep, felt like me. In fact, it felt like me, the me before. But that couldn’t be, could it? I felt my chest, my belly, my dick. “Whoa,” I said, “I have a hard-on! I have a hard-on!”

  “I can see,” said the voice next to me. “And a rather fetching one at that. In fact, if you toss it my way, I’ll definitely go fetch.”

  I breathed in. I breathed out. That, too, was weird because I could actually breathe. And blink! And get a hard-on! I turned his way. “Max.” It came out in a sigh. A sigh!

  “Nord.” He pointed down to his midsection, which could give the mast of a ship a run for its money. “I think it likes you.”

  “Loves,” I said.

  “Loves, for sure.” He smiled. He winked. Yes, winked! He had working eyelids and a working dick!

  “What’s going on, Max? Where are we? Together. Together, Max. We’re together.” I briefly closed my eyes. Thank you, God.

  “With boners,” he amended. “Let’s not forget that.”

  “Hard, no pun intended, to forget. And I can blink. And breathe.” In fact, I breathed him in. He smelled wonderful. Like sweat and musk and springtime in a field of clover, which might have been me exaggerating a bit, but not by much. “I love you, Max.”

  “And I love you, Nord. And I think that’s why we’re here. Together. With boners. And blinks. And lungs that breathe.”

  “Lost,” I said.

  He grinned and chuckled, the sound like pebbles being tossed at the shoreline. “Somethings never change.” He sidled in closer and held my hand in his. “We thought you needed to find your killer, that that was your unfinished business. But you and I, we went through life without finding love. Without even looking for it.” He rolled over and landed on top of me, his crowbar of a cock grinding into mine. “Seems like I was your unfinished business and you were mine. Go figure. We had the answer all along.”

  “Very Wizard of Oz,” I said. “But this isn’t Oz, is it?”

  “Nope,” we suddenly heard. “A bit north. Far, far north, in fact.”

  Max rolled off me as we both stared up in shock. “Bruce!” we shouted in unison, both staring at his dick in unison, mainly because it took up so much of the frame, so to speak.

  “Yeah,” I said, “I’d remember if they had boners in Oz.” I pointed at his. Took a while to finish said point.

  He swung it back and forth, creating a minor breeze in its wake. “Nifty, huh?” He crouched down. Meaning, we were indeed on our backs staring up. “I missed you guys.” He reached out his hands, hopped up, and took us along for the ride, until we were three men standing there with erections that could pry open a safe—though what a waste of perfectly good erections. Emphasis on the perfect.

  “Is this…heaven?” I asked, gazing left and right, half expecting Gabriel to appear with his horn at any moment.

  He shrugged. “Beats me. There’s once again no guidebook, no welcome wagon, no angels, no anything. But I can breathe and pop a boner, so heaven would be a good word for it.” He hugged me. He hugged Max. He had to stand to the side to do so, or otherwise he’d have impaled us, but it wouldn’t be the worst way to go. And, trust me, I knew the worst way to go. “I think this place is whatever you want it to be, that we’re whatever we want to be. I wanted to be here with you two, so I am. You wanted to be together, so you are. It’s a guess, but it feels right.”

  Indeed, right is how it felt. Better than right. It didn’t feel like Arby’s. It didn’t feel like Earth. But it felt like where we were meant to be.

  “The tether,” I said. “It’s gone. I don’t feel it anymore.”

  Bruce shook his head. “Wherever we are, there’s no way back now, only forward.”

  “Forward?” asked Max as he looked around at what still seemed like puffy clouds.

  Bruce smiled. As smiles went, it was just about the most glorious one I’d ever seen—apart from Max’s, of course. He then lifted his hand and made a wide arc with it, passing it through all that fluffy white.

  The clouds parted. The white turned Technicolor.

  There was a pristine land spread out before us. A road. Not golden, but it’d do. Max was to my left, Bruce to my right. I held Max’s hand and breathed in deeply, eyelids fluttering as we each took a step.

  Yes, this would all do very nicely. No sort of about it.

  THE END

  ABOUT ROB ROSEN

  Multi-award-winning and best-selling author/editor/anthologist Rob Rosen is the author of Sparkle: The Queerest Book You'll Ever Love, Divas Las Vegas, Hot Lava, Southern Fried, Queerwolf, Vamp, Queens of the Apocalypse, Creature Comfort, Fate, Midlife Crisis, Fierce, And God Belched, and Mary, Queen of Scotch. His short stories have appeared in more than 200 anthologies. He is also the editor of Lust in Time: Erotic Romance Through the Ages, Men of the Manor, Best Gay Erotica 2015, and Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volumes 1, 2, 3, and 4.

  For more information, visit therobrosen.com.

  ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

  JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!

 

 

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