Lethal Takeout

by Ehsani, Vered

  “Hello?” I called out, rubbing my chin, wondering when I’d start feeling the stubble and the scar, as Shadow promised would happen. “Faye Random? You here? Name’s Axe. Axe Cooper. Got sent here by DD. Heard you were recruited for The Ghost Post. Lucky you, eh?”

  I paused. No response.

  I tried again. “Hellooooo... Ms. Random.” I cleared my throat and raised my voice so that it was almost louder than Chan Junior and the kitchen staff. “Faye? Come out, come out, wherever you are.” I swivelled around until I was facing the kitchen staff, who were oblivious to the butcher knife levitating behind them.

  The butcher knife was the size of a guillotine and was slashing the air as it approached the grease-covered cooks. One whack from that thing, and there would be one headless cook and two ghosts in Chan’s Chinese Chow.

  “Stop!” I gasped.

  “Why should I?” a high-pitched voice softly hissed in my ear.

  “Blast it all,” I yelled and jumped so high I almost shot through the ceiling.

  “Oh my! That’s too funny for words, it truly is,” the same voice exclaimed and giggled. “You look just like one of those cartoon characters, the way you popped right up there.”

  It’s quite probable that I uttered some words a tad bit stronger than my usual ‘blast it all’ (sorry, Gran), but I’ll just have to sensor that part and simply state for the record that I cursed and cussed as I tried to swim back down to the ground. The guillotine-sized knife was gone. I gave my best glare possible, the Popeye glare.

  “Now don’t you be giving me that look, sweetie pie,” the spook in front of me ordered in a warning tone, and she giggled again.

  Still glaring, I demanded, “Are you Faye Random?”

  “Sure am!” she trilled as she spun about, her red dress flicking around her, bright against the dim lighting and the dark, rain-splattered windows.

  I stared, eyes wide, my mouth agape. “Serious? I mean, you’re… not quite what I expected.”

  “Really?” She stopped spinning and floated in front of me, her chin resting on her cupped hands, her elbows propped up on some non-existent table. “And just what were you expecting?”

  I kept staring and took my time in forming a response. I considered saying something like, ‘I was expecting to find an aging redhead who’s trying too hard to look too young.’ I figured that might be a bad way to start off a new acquaintance.

  Instead, I said, “I just never heard of a kid paparazzi, that’s all.”

  Faye’s smile widened. Visualise Shirley Temple when she was a child. You know, the very famous child actor from the 1930s. Okay, got the visual? See the huge blond curls bobbing around her petite face, the big blue eyes, the innocent smile and the rosy complexion? That’s pretty much how Faye looked, except a little less rosy, a whole lot less innocent and a little more pale, on the count that she was, you know, a ghost.

  “Is this form throwing you off?” she asked sweetly. “I can change that.”

  The little Shirley Temple lookalike stretched upwards until I was staring up into the face of a much taller, older, male version of the child. The blond curls had turned into blond dreadlocks; the red dress was… well, it was still a red dress.

  “There,” Faye said in a deep voice. “How’s that?”

  If I had been sitting on a pile of dead rats, my face couldn’t have been more twisted up. I took a second to regain control of my voice as I took a step away from the dreadlock guy wearing a short, red dress. I’ve seen a lot in my day, a lot of it bad, but this was a whole different kind of ‘bad.’

  I spoke softly, not caring about being rude, “That’s just down right creepy, that’s how that is.”

  She (he?) grinned. “Spirit has no gender, baby.” She then morphed back to her girl child self and twirled her thick curls around a slim, pale finger. “So why should I be trapped by my old body’s form?”

  “Because it’s your natural form.”

  “No, no, no. Oh, honey,” she crooned and then winked at me. Coming from a cute, angel-faced little girl, that wink looked so wrong—almost as bad as the tall, dreadlock dude in a red dress. “You think your form is…” She paused as she sized me up with a thoughtful look.

  “Careful, there,” I warned her.

  “A thirty-something tough guy.”

  “I’m twenty-nine.”

  “Fine.” She rolled her eyes. “A twenty-something tough guy. That’s what you think you are. But that’s just your old physical human-self talking.”

  “Nope. That’s my old spirit-self talking. I’m still looking like a twenty-something tough guy.” I glared at her for emphasis.

  “That’s because you’re holding onto some image from your memories, sunshine.” She turned into the guy with the dreadlocks again. “And as good looking as that old façade is, you need to just let it go. Then you can be anything you want to be.”

  My jaw tightened and my eyes narrowed; I could tell they were going stormy grey, because that’s how I was feeling. “I may’ve lost my body, but I guarantee you one thing: under this façade of a twenty-something tough guy, there’s just a very stubborn, easily irritated, hot-tempered, twenty-something tough guy.”

  Faye shook her head, clucking in dismay. “Well, that is a great pity, Axe Cooper.” She pouted. “You don’t even want to try…?”

  “Absolutely, positively not,” I yelped. “And I’d be mighty grateful if you can just stick to one façade whenever you’re around me. All this jingling back and forth is making me ill.”

  “Ghosts don’t get ill, my dear.”

  “Well, this is one ghost who does. The ghost with one façade.”

  “Alright, honey, don’t you worry your sweet little self one bit.” Faye morphed into her feminine child version and patted down the skirt part of her red dress. “So is Axe short for something?”

  “It’s short for Axe Cooper.”

  “Come on, tough guy. What’s your real name?”

  “That’s as real as it gets.”

  Faye stared at me, as if assessing her options. She must have decided they were pretty limited, because she changed the topic. “Now, why’re you looking for me, Axe ‘as real as it gets’ tough guy?”

  I breathed deeply, which was entirely unnecessary but habits are a lot harder to kill than people are. “Like I said earlier, I got sent here by The Ghost Post. You been recruited, right?”

  Faye played with a large curl, pulling it down and then releasing it so that it sprang up. Finally, she crossed her arms, pursed her lips and studied me with glittering blue eyes that weren’t so childlike anymore, like she was tired of playing around. “I don’t remember any interview. And I certainly didn’t agree to another job.”

  “Yeah, me neither, but here I am anyways.” I cleared my throat. “I’m supposed to escort you back to the office.”

  Faye pondered this for a moment and then asked, “How much do they pay?”

  I opened my mouth and closed it. Good question. I didn’t recall seeing anything about payment on that contract. Just that I would be signing myself away for 1,000 years, if I decided to sign. And I still hadn’t decided. “Ah, not sure. I guess ghosts don’t need to be paid, maybe?”

  Faye shook her head slowly and made a tsk sound. Her blond curls bobbed around her petite face. She wagged a manicured finger at me. “I don’t work if I don’t get paid. It’s my personal motto: no pay, no work. Why would you agree to such a job?”

  Now I felt stupid as well as indecisive. “I don’t quite remember agreeing to the job, actually.”

  Faye’s arms flew upward and her whole body followed. “Really?”

  I frowned. “That’s not the point. DD said you’d been recruited and I gotta escort you back. Anyways, what can we do with money?”

  “Who said we have to be paid with money? Hmmm?”

  “Good point.” I studied her and reassessed my initial impression. She may look like a ditsy little kid, but she definitely wasn’t thinking like one. “How long’ve y
ou been a… um… well, dead?”

  Faye fluttered her eyelashes. “That is a rather rude question to ask a lady, dear sir. I’d hoped for better manners from an older gentleman…”

  “Hey, watch it. I’m not a gentleman,” I interrupted. “And you’d really make my night if you’d just agree to come along nicely. That would be my first choice.”

  “And your next choice?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “How exciting,” she purred. “So you’re going to escort me to this office, are you?”

  “Sure. I guess,” I replied. “Just hope I can remember the way back.”

  “Excellent,” Faye exclaimed. “I like a stubborn man. Just follow the yellow brick road and we’re off to see the Wizard.”

  I shook my head, a glum expression drawing me towards the ground. “And here I was thinking my night couldn’t get any weirder.”

  In the Dark

  Eventually, we made it to The Ghost Post after getting lost numerous times. But I did make an important discovery along the way: drunk people can sometimes see things too. Given that we were in Vancouver’s Eastside, there wasn’t a shortage of homeless people in various degrees of intoxication. We had taken yet another wrong turn and were floating through an alley when a bunch of rags lurched into a vertical position.

  “Ghosts,” the collection of rags wailed as it waved a gunge-encrusted bottle at us.

  Faye shrieked and jumped behind me, her small hands fluttering over her mouth. “Is that a head in there?” she asked in a squeaky voice.

  I eyed the rags, keeping my distance. “Can’t tell. Wait. Yeah, there seems to be something on top of whatever that is.”

  The rags tottered shakily towards us, and we backed away. “I sees ya,” the head on top of the rags shouted. The bottle shifted towards the head. “I sees ya. No fooling me. It’s an invasion, I tell ya.” The rags began running down the alley, screaming, “It’s a ghost invasion! They’re here. Run for it!”

  “Poor thing,” Faye murmured. “No one’s going to believe him.”

  “I’m just glad I can’t smell anything right now,” I said, scratching my nose.

  A few minutes later, we exited the alley.

  “Goodness, where are we?” Faye demanded.

  I smiled. More like gloated. “Home, sweet home.”

  Faye didn’t say a thing for a moment, which was a record for her. She hadn’t stopped nattering and questioning me the whole way over. I figured she had said more in that one hour than I normally say in one month.

  “This is it?” she finally asked, her voice flat.

  “Yup. Sure is. And you’re gonna get along with DD so well.” I grinned and zipped into the building.

  “A little on the low-budget side,” Faye sniffed, following me to the office. “I’m not sure they can afford me.”

  I made the introductions and snickered as I watched the two ghost ladies eye each other. “Guess I better be looking for the second recruit,” I said.

  “It’s just past sunrise and it’s actually stopped raining,” DD observed. “You’ll have to wait. There’ll be time tonight.”

  My eyebrows scrunched up. “We’re ghosts, not vampires. Who cares if the sun’s up? We’re not gonna melt or burst into flames or something.” I paused. What did I know? “Are we?”

  DD sighed deeply, like answering a question required more energy than she could afford to give. She shook her head and then glanced at me. “You won’t melt, but the sun will fade you and you won’t have as much energy to go zapping about.”

  I stared up at Faye, who was twirling happily above us. “Doesn’t seem to have much effect on her.”

  DD sniffed. “Bah. She’ll slow down soon enough. Besides, who ever heard of ghost hauntings in the middle of the day? Haunted houses are only scary at night, for a reason.”

  “Great.” I peered around the empty office, starting to feel a bit tired suddenly as sunlight peaked in through the two large windows facing the street. Even Faye’s spinning top imitation had slowed down slightly. “So what do we do ‘til then?”

  “Yippee!” Faye shrieked. “Let’s dance.”

  I did say ‘slowed down slightly.’

  “Let’s not.” DD glared grumpily at the new recruit and then sank into the floor. “See you two later. Stay out of trouble.”

  “Like that’s an option,” I called after her. “What kinda trouble could we possibly get into?”

  DD had disappeared, but Faye responded. “Oooo, let’s find out. I’m sure we can come up with something, sunshine.”

  “You go ahead. I’d rather not.”

  “Party pooper.”

  “Yeah, that’s me,” I said while pretending to yawn. “Real party pooper person. I… ah…. Have to go now.”

  I didn’t wait for Faye to ask me where or why. I followed DD’s example and sunk down through the floor. I landed in a basement. It was cool, damp and dark. My energy immediately increased.

  “DD?” I called out.

  My eyes adjusted to the dark until they were sharper than before. The other ghosts call it ‘putting on your ghost eyes’. I just call it cool.

  The basement room I was in was about the same size as The Ghost Post office above, except with a lower ceiling, less lighting and no noise. There were broken bits of furniture thrown into one corner, a crate in another and a metal cabinet pushed against a wall. I floated towards it.

  As I got closer, I saw that the cabinet was actually an air vent bolted to the wall. I glanced around and figured that the vent went right up into the Chief’s office.

  Black holes, eh?

  “DD?” I called out one more time, just to make sure I was alone. No response.

  I stepped into the air vent. It was darker than dark. I waited for my ghost eyes to kick in. I kept waiting. It was still dark, the kind of dark that you can’t easily find on the surface of the planet, unless you’re inside a really large vat of black ink. And if you’re in that vat… Well, you’re probably dead.

  I frowned. There was no point in floating around in a pit of blackness. I turned to go back. I reached out an arm to pull myself through the vent. I kept reaching.

  No vent wall.

  I didn’t panic at this point. After all, objects appear much bigger when you walk through them as a ghost. In this case, the vent appeared huge. But it was still just a vent, and not a very big one. If I kept floating back the way I entered, I’d eventually get to the surface.

  Or not.

  I swivelled slightly to try for another surface. The voice bouncing inside my brain swivelled from anxious to panicked. In every direction I tried, it was a vast expanse of absolute darkness.

  And it wasn’t empty.

  As I groped my way around, my hands outstretched, something brushed against my fingertips. I snapped my arms back.

  “I can feel,” I whispered, my voice immediately lost in the muffling vastness around me. “I can feel again.”

  The frantic little voice in my head shouted back, “Who cares? What the hell was that?”

  A loud splash echoed around me. A wave rocked me up and down.

  Yes. A wave.

  Not a water wave. More like a wave made of air or energy. Whatever made that splash and wave was big. Really big. It flicked a part of itself against my back, throwing me forward into more absolute nothingness. The wave soundlessly slammed me from the side. From the other side, a thick, scaly something smashed into me. Something sharp sank into my legs and tugged me down, before releasing me.

  The thing was playing with me.

  I was going to die.

  Again.

  That sucked. I hadn’t survived long enough as a ghost to start losing my memory. And I’d never get the chance to solve my murder and maybe do something positive with my life for once. My thoughts turned to the only person who’d even care if I disappeared completely.

  “Sorry, Lee,” I mumbled. “I won’t be there for your retirement after all.”

  Despite my imminent s
econd death, a picture popped in my head of the first time we’d met. If I’d been her, I wouldn’t have opened that door to the human mess on the other side. But she had. She’d opened the door and literally saved me. It struck me then, as I waited to be devoured by the huge mass swimming around me: I’d never thanked her. I’d never told her what a brilliant friend she’d been.

  “Thanks for everything, Lee,” I whispered.

  I could imagine the snarky comment she’d have made to that bit of sappiness and smiled.

  A pale light flickered. I squinted. As faint as it was, the light was piercingly painful in the most beautiful way. Shielding my eyes, I glanced around for the source. I was inside a globe of dim light. I reached out to touch the surface, but there was nothing to touch. Beyond the edge where the light blurred into dark, the blackness squatted like a heavy monster waiting to pounce. I looked down, expecting to see a set of toothy jaws rushing up to devour me, and gasped.

  I was the source of light.

  My brain went into panic mode again and the light flickered out, but not before I saw the surface of the vent. It was right there, beside me. I pushed through and collapsed into a puddle of sunlight.

  I was back in the office of The Ghost Post.

  Bob, not Blob

  I floated horizontally, as if I was sunbathing. More like sun worshipping. Let the watery sunlight zap my energy. It was light and life and the opposite of everything that lurked in that vent. Was I going to tell anyone about that place? No way. I didn’t want to hear the explanation, if there was one, of what I had experienced. My brain was still flipping out and my fingertips buzzed.

  Yup. I could feel my fingertips. Not sure that’s a good thing or not, but it was different.

  I spent the rest of my first day as a ghost floating horizontally in an empty, sunny office and pretending to sleep. I might even have drifted off at some point, and that helped pass the time and stop my mind from inventing theories about the invisible monster.