Intervention (Hallowshade)

Nadia's text is mysterious- much like my best friend herself, since she became a teenage vampire four years ago:

Meet me at the Falcon- come alone

The Gilded Falcon is the only cool bar in our small northeastern town.  Sometimes I think it's the only bar in town, since it's the only one where anything seems to happen.  It's been exploded and rebuilt a time or two (or is it three?  It's been an eventful half decade, hard to keep track), but each time it seems to come back exactly the same.  Just like us.

Anyway, none of the bouncers there check our IDs anymore, so even tho' technically we're all seventeen or eighteen for the rest of eternity, we spend a reasonable amount of time at Falcon's, drinking things other than blood.  Well, except for Freja, who was spelled to violently reject anything but the blood of virgins a few months back.  We're still working on a cure for that, primarily because virgins are a rapidly dwindling commodity ever since Cyrus came into (as it were) his incubus heritage.

The Falcon looks closed as I approach (it keeps super-weird hours that oddly seem to coincide with when we need privacy), but I don't trust the quiet.  I stop across the street and glance around for anyone hiding in the shadows: nothing.  Then I concentrate for a moment on my hearing, listening for anything out of the ordinary.  Little bumps and scrapes coming from inside the bar indicate the presence of more than just Nadia.  I listen harder, but the problem with being super-powered immortal beings is that we've gotten in the habit of speaking very softly just in case someone with super-powered-hearing is listening.  I can hear at least two voices, but can't make out what they're saying.  Two more-or-less human heartbeats, tho', which is surprising: that means that, in addition to Nadia, at least Portia and Emir are in there.

Is it a surprise party? I wonder.  But there's no occasion for a surprise party.  My birthday was at the beginning of summer, and my deathday isn't until Christmas (and yes, it's just as obnoxious to share a deathday with Christmas as it is to share a birthday, even if it did give me a few extra vampire powers).

Eventually I shrug and cross the street.  There's no sound of a struggle, so it's unlikely that whatever's going on means trouble for me.

Oh how wrong I am.

There are nine-  no, wait, eleven.  There are eleven of us now that I've walked through the front door: the core five who started it all, and the six others who have wandered in and out of our lives since the day James and Nadia pledged their eternal love.  Of course, James is with Rei now, but we all get along tolerably well, even tho I haven't seen some of these people in at least three years.

"Hey guys," I say, trying not to feel paranoid.  "What's up?"

"This is an intervention, Ruby," says Nadia, and I can see her luminescent brown eyes are welling up with tears.

"For whom?" I ask, trying not to glance at Cyrus, who is currently nuzzling Emir's neck.  Emir looks vaguely bored, which is not a typical expression for a teenage werewolf.

"For you, Ruby," says Heinrich, placing a protective hand on Nadia's delicate shoulder.  He's capable of brooding even more impressively than his cousin, James, and he turns the full force of that troubled look at me now.  "We're worried about you, Ruby."

"About me?" I grin.  "Why would you be worried about me?  I'm the most drama-free person in this room!"  I mean it as a joke, but... it's actually true.  Really true.  Ten sets of inhumanly beautiful eyes stare back at me, and my smile falters.

"Ruby, you know we love you," says Muriel.  She's the newest in our little group, just pulled into our dimension last year, so I'm not really sure that she's had time to grow to "love" me, but-

"So much," says Nadia.

"So much," Muriel agrees, nodding her white-blonde head earnestly.  "But Ruby, have you ever thought that maybe you just..." she trails off, helpless.

"Maybe you're not good for the group," Hiro says, firmly.  I give him a raised eyebrow.

"I'm not good for the group?  I'm not the one whose weird twin-magic," I cock my head towards his sister Rei, "Had everyone body-hopping for three months.  Or the one who let their demon-turned father," I shift my gaze to James, "Blackmail them- with some stupid shit, quite frankly- into providing all of our blood for dark rituals.  In fact, I'm the one who stopped him-"

"By killing him!" James bursts out, eyes going red with rage-induced blood-lust.  Rei places a restraining hand on his chest, but I'm in no mood to coddle him.

"Hell yes by killing him," I shoot back.  "He killed Lydia!  He killed Dawn!  He killed Aaron and he was going to kill Portia again!  And every time he killed, his demon-self got stronger and more evil!  Of course I killed him!"

"There might have been a way to redeem-"

"There wasn't," I say, flatly.  "Keeping him alive would have lead to more deaths, and you know it."

"Then why did you kill Kate?" asks Freja, coldly.  "She was just a mortal, and hadn't killed anyone at all."

I throw up my hands in exasperation.  "She didn't kill anyone because I snapped her neck before she could.  And the only reason I was able to snap her neck was because she was still mortal which, if you'll recall, she was looking to change within the next month by killing a werewolf vampire hybrid," I glare at Heinrich, "With that damned cursed dagger she had!  I just stopped things from getting beyond our ability to deal with them."

"That's just it!" Nadia bursts out.  "You're always doing that lately!"

"Always saving the day?"  The sarcasm dripping from my voice causes her to flinch, but I'm irritated enough by this ludicrous situation not to care.

"Always stopping things before they get really interesting," Cyrus complains.

"Wait- what?" this draws me up short.

"Yeah," says Emir.  "You killed Kate before she could ascend as Hecate and we all sort of... went home.  End of story."

"And that's bad?" my voice raises an octave with my incredulity.

"Very bad," says Muriel, seriously.  "We're teenage vampires-"

"And incubi."

"And werewolves."

"And hybrids."

"And witches."

"And re-embodied ghosts."

"And dragon spirits."

"And-"

"The point," Muriel says loudly, "Is that we're immortal creatures of the night, and you're too pragmatic."

"You're making it boring," Rei pouts.  "When you figured out that James and I had secretly fallen in love, and that Nadia and Heinrich were actually eternally-bound soul mates, you made us all sit down and talk it out and we had everything resolved within three days.  That's not how epic love stories are supposed to work!"

"And just last week," Cyrus adds, "You smashed the Mirror of Ancients before anyone could get trapped in their past lives."

"...are you fucking kidding me right now?  Did you want to spend a few centuries stuck as a medieval peasant?"

"We just want you to try," pleads Nadia.

"Try what?" I snap.  "Try letting some psycho actually get all the way through their plan to suck Hallowshade into a hell dimension, without interrupting them?"

"You don't have to go that big right away," Portia says quickly.  "Maybe start with something a little smaller.  Like a love-triangle with a normal human couple, and in the end you selflessly leave so they can live out their mortal lives together."

"One," I hold up a finger, "that sounds incredibly pointless for everyone involved. And two," I hold up a second finger, "there are barely any normal humans left in this town, anyway.  Pretty much everyone has some sort of mystical connection going on."

"They could be outsiders?" Hiro said, helpfully.

"Still dumb," I snarl.

"Okay, okay, no love triangles," says Portia.  "What about-"

Cyrus suddenly brightens.  "What about a mystical preg-"

"If you finish that sentence, Cyrus, I will rip your fucking tongue out."  I mean this quite literally, and I'm certain he realizes it, because he shuts up.  There's an uncomfortable silence.

"Look, Ruby," Heinrich says at last, drawing himself up to his full, impressive height.  "If you're not willing to change, then we can't be a party to your actions any longer."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means," Nadia's tears have spilled over and are running down her perfectly sculpted cheekbones, gleaming silver in the bar lights.  "It means we can't... we can't..."

"We can't be friends with you any longer," says Freja, voice gone from cold to glacial.

"Yeah, I got that part," I say, rolling my eyes.  "But what does it mean?  Are you just going to give me the eternal silent treatment?  Or are we going to be, like, mortal enemies now?  Should I be looking over my shoulder for alternating assassination/reconciliation attempts?"

No one answers me- in fact they're all avoiding eye contact.  I heave a giant sigh, because I know how this has to go.  Have seen it coming for a while, if I'm being brutally honest with myself.

"You know what, never mind," I say.  "If you guys hadn't said anything, I probably would have, myself.  You haven't exactly been subtle with the way you ignore my perfectly straightforward plans in favor of your elaborate schemes.  I'll make this easier on all of us and just take my leave.  Give me a couple days to pack up my shit and forward my mail, and I'll be out of your hair.  I'm sure I can find a nice, non-magical-magnet sort of place to settle down and pass a quiet couple of centuries."

"Ruby-" cries Nadia as I spin on my heel, and her sorrow is exquisite enough to break your heart.  But I know that me leaving like this, all big-gesture-y, will give her more of what she needs than me staying to work things out ever could.  Besides, I'm just so exhausted by all of the convoluted drama, and it's only been five years since vampires came into our lives, and two years since I turned.  The idea of doing this for the rest of eternity makes me want to stake myself, and so I keep going, ignoring James as he mutters,

"Forward her mail?  See, that's exactly why she had to go.  In all my three-hundred years, I've never forwarded my mail.  It's just so mundane..."



***
(In Case You Were Curious)

Ruby- a vampire with "a few extra powers".  Like pragmatism.
Nadia- vampire
Freja- vampire witch
Cyrus- vampire incubus
Portia- re-embodied ghost
Emir- werewolf
James- vampire
Rei- water-dragon spirit
Heinrich- vampire-werewolf hybrid
Muriel- vampire from a hell dimension
Hiro- fire-dragon spirit

Ghost Story

We fell in love with the house as soon as we saw it- a cape-cod style built in 1910, remodeled (and expanded) in the early aughts, painted a cheerful yellow and just right for our tiny little family (two adults and two cats: we were hoping to up that by at least one baby in the near future).  The couple who had it before us had been there for more than forty years, but had decided they could no longer handle the stairs.

If I'm being honest, it was the garden that sold it more than the house itself.  The wife, Nancy, had been an avid gardener, and the backyard was a private oasis of serene, sweet-smelling beauty.  I sat on a low retaining wall while my husband Michael eyeballed the foundation, and I could quite clearly see our future children playing in the perfectly manicured grass.

About three days after we closed on the place, when the rooms were full of boxes but we were still sleeping in our old apartment, reality hit me: I am not a gardener, and I had no clue how to maintain my little oasis.  And so I did a little social media stalking and reached out to the former owners for some tips and tricks.  Nancy was delighted to give me pointers, but at the end of our conversation she seemed almost like she was trying to decide whether or not to tell me something.

"My husband didn't want me to tell you this," she said, "and of course the realtor thinks I'm just a crazy old lady.  But I feel so bad about... well, I just think you ought to know."

I felt a chill trickle down my spine.  Ought to know what?  Was there a pocket of hidden black mold behind the bricked-in fireplace?  Was the cellar prone to flooding?  Was there an annual snake infestation?  Nancy took a deep breath.

"There's a ghost who lives in the house.  Well, she doesn't live there- but she comes to visit fairly frequently."

There was no rational response to this, and so I said, as politely as possible, "How frequently is fairly?"

"Almost every afternoon, around 1:30.  Sometimes a little earlier, sometimes a little later.  She's very polite.  I tried to explain that we were leaving but... I don't know that she understood.  She gets confused about things, you know."

"Mmm," I said.

"You don't believe me," said Nancy.  "It's alright.  I didn't believe it myself, in the beginning.  But... well... she likes lemon cookies.  So.  Good luck with the peonies."

I told Michael when he got got back from the store- how could you not share a story like that?  Our very own ghost!  But the days passed, and our attention was taken up with turning our new house into a home, and I soon forgot all about the ghost who liked lemon cookies.

Until the afternoon I stepped out on our back porch and found a young woman- a girl, really- sitting primly in one of my bright white rocking chairs.

"Oh!" I said, because there really isn't much else to say when someone suddenly appears in your backyard that is surrounded by a six-foot privacy fence.  She jumped to her feet, looking vaguely embarrassed.

"I'm so sorry!" she said.  "I didn't mean to startle you.  I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  Her face flushed and she looked down at her hands, which were playing nervously with a button on the front of her gown.  She dropped the button and smoothed her skirt.  It was a lovely vintage-style thing, the dark green color extremely flattering with her smooth auburn curls.

"There's- um.  There's no Margaret here," I said, wondering why I sounded so apologetic.

"Oh!" she said, and for a moment she looked like she might cry.  "I... I guess I'll go then.  I'm so sorry to have intruded."

I glanced back over my shoulder at the kitchen, wondering just how she'd gotten through the house without me knowing.  "I think you'd better-" I began, turning back to her- but she was gone.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up.

"Hello?" I peered around the porch, as though she might somehow be hiding in a corner.  I stepped out into the garden and rustled the bushes.  "Miss?"

Nothing.  Vanished.  Just like a ghost.

I shivered.

"Well," I said out loud, if only to reassure myself that I was still there.  "That will certainly make for entertaining dinner conversation."  But I didn't mention it over dinner.  Or in bed.  Or at breakfast.  I'm not sure why- perhaps because I didn't want to worry Michael, who was more likely to take the "stranger snuck through the house" position than the "ghostly apparition" position, and insist on an expensive security system.

That afternoon I nervously poked my head out onto the back porch, but no one was there.  I gave a little laugh, feeling silly, and came out the rest of the way.  I needed to do a bit of weeding in the rose bed, so I grabbed my gloves and a little basket as I headed into the garden.

"Excuse me?"

The noise I made can best be described as a "yelp", and I dropped everything in my hands for good measure.

"I'm so sorry!" she said, because of course it was the young woman again.  "I didn't mean to startle you.  I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  She looked down at her hands again, exactly as she had yesterday.  I had a hand pressed to my chest, trying to slow my racing heart.

"She... um, there's no Margaret here," I managed to squeak out.  "Remember?"

For a moment she looked confused.  "No, I..." then her face shifted to the same misery she'd shown yesterday.  "I... I guess I'll go then.  I'm so sorry to have intruded."

"Wait-" I said.  "Did... did you maybe mean Nancy?  Nancy Ellis?"  The girl's face grew confused again.

"Nancy," she said.  "I think... I think I knew a Nancy..." her voice trailed off, her gray eyes distant.  But then she shook her head and refocused on me.  "No, no it's Margaret I was... hoping to find.  I should go."  She turned abruptly, her shin-length skirt fanning out ever-so-slightly.

The next moment she was gone.

I sank to my knees, shaking ever-so-slightly.  "Oh wow oh wow oh wow," I said.

I sat there for a while, coming to terms with the fact that I really, truly had been conversing with a ghost.

That evening I called Nancy, not sure if I was doing it to apologize or ask for advice.  As it turned out I didn't get a chance to do either: her voice mailbox wasn't set up.  No help there.

I spent the next morning baking, and by 1:15 pm I was sitting nervously in a white rocker with a plate of cookies in my lap.

The girl appeared standing at the edge of the porch.

"Hello," she said, shyly.  "I'm here for Margaret.  Margaret Nichols.  She, um- she isn't expecting me."  Fingers-clutching-fabric.

"Margaret isn't here right now," I said, trying to keep my voice steady.  "Would you like a cookie?"

"Well I-" she began, looking confused, but I interrupted.

"They're lemon"

Her lips parted every so slightly, and then she smiled.  "I do love lemon cookies," she admitted, and stepped closer to me.

"Well sit down and help me eat them, then," I said, gesturing to the other rocker.  She sat, and took a single cookie from the plate.  She could touch things.  Interesting.

"What's your name?"  I asked, taking a bite from my own cookie.

"Dorothy Easterling," she answered, holding out her hand polite as you please.  "But people usually call me Dot, or sometimes Dottie because of my last name."

I took her hand, and it was cool in mine.  Not cold, like a corpse, but cool- almost like shaking hands with solid mist.  "Nice to meet you, Dot.  My name is Melissa, although people usually call me Mel."

"Oh that's a lovely name!" she said, taking her hand back and breaking her cookie in two.  "I've never heard it before."

"Really?" I eyed her dress again, trying to figure out when it was from.  The silhouette seemed too slim for the fifties.  Forties, maybe?  Thirties?  "I've never thought of it as all that uncommon."

"Well I haven't exactly met a lot of people," she said with a blush.  "So maybe that's it."

"Why are you looking for Margaret?" I asked, and she gave a little start, dropping the cookie.

"Oh!  Um, it's not-" her eyes began to fill and she looked away.  "Not anything... important.  I should go."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I was, but she had already stood.

"Thank you for the cookies, Mel," she said, and dashed away into nothingness before I could respond.

"Alright," I said to the thin air left behind.  "Time to figure out who the hell Margaret Nichols was."

I'd like to say it was a long and dramatic search, but the truth is that it took all of ten minutes with a search engine to discover that Margaret Nichols was the second owner of my house, and had lived in it during the forties.  But there was nothing tying her to a Dorothy Easterling.

"Curiouser and curiouser," I muttered to myself, although it wasn't as appropriate as a crack about Kansas would have been.

Nancy was right on the nose when she said that the ghost- Dot- did indeed appear almost every afternoon.  She always started out asking for Margaret, but if I tried to get her to talk about the woman beyond that, she would get flustered and leave.  It didn't take long for me to stop trying- as it turned out, I quite enjoyed Dot's company, and didn't like upsetting her.  She seemed to enjoy my company, as well- in time she'd even remember a bit from one day's conversation to the next.

How does memory work, for a ghost?  I'm still not sure.

Visiting Ghost Opa and Other Bonding Experiences

Today I did something that is, no getting around it, pretty damn weird.

I took my kid to a cemetery to take smiling photos with him on my father's grave (and also over my grandparents' graves).

Yeah yeah yeah, understandable, whatever- still weird.  Get use to it, kid: yours will be a lifetime of this sort of weirdness.

Anyway, after that we came back to my mom's house and did the A#1 thing I had planned to do while we were in Alabama in freaking August:

SWIMMING!

 Yaaaaay!  Now granted it started raining literally the moment we got in the pool, so we were not exactly having the sun-soaked experience I'd envisioned, but whatever we were swimming.  I even put my new suit to the test by doing a few dives: it held up.

After Neeps was put to bed, Nathan and I hit the town- specifically a nice little pub downtown.  We spent much of our date marveling over the fact that we were able to be on it in Prattville: this little town has changed a lot since we were teenagers.

We shut the place down (not hard to do on a weeknight) and then went for a walk on the waterfront.  Eventually we sat on a bench and creek/moon/pokemon-hunter watched for a while.  All in all, not a bad way to spend an evening in a (no-longer-)small southern town.

Remember the Ghosts

My mother, as I have mentioned, sends lovely care packages, especially around the holidays.  She always includes things that may be opened immediately, and things that are not to be opened until Christmas Day.  Being adults (and perhaps somewhat dull) we did not actually open the "immediate" things until this evening, when we had a nice quiet moment to indulge.  Of especial interest were several flat, rectangular objects which whispered "book" to fingertips once deft at discerning contents based on shape and feel alone...

classic

My heart squeezed when I unwrapped this particular gift, because one of my clearest memories of my father is of him reading aloud to me the words of this story when I was no more than six or seven.  It was Christmas Eve, and we were curled up on the couch in his parents' living room, surrounded by a quiet darkness made gentle by the rainbow shimmer of Christmas lights.  His voice painted pictures in that darkness, bringing to life the humor, the horror, and the hope of the tale.

I held this tiny volume in my hands tonight, remembering, and had the overwhelming urge to read it aloud to someone else, to pass along the magic of a quiet voice in the darkness.  But there is no small form to share with me this Christmas Present, and it seems less and less likely that there will ever be one to share it with me in Christmas Future.  And I realized as I sat there, staring at the red and gold cover, heart aching with those twin emotions of joy and sorrow, that what I really want is for someone to read it aloud to me, curled up tight in the light of Christmas Past.

Echoing

When I was a younger lass, I spent a bit of time in Seattle- much of it with Lara.

We returned to prowl about tonight, revisiting old haunts, both those that still exist, and those that don't.

...my memories are the ghosts that haunt the bones of this place...

It was a good night.

Remnant

when i die
i know you will come for me

you will stand on my grave
touch your horn to the stone
and summon my spirit back up
out of the cold black earth

we will face one another
two impossible beings
and i will know you
and you will know me
tho' we never saw one another in life

and you will kneel just a little
just enough for me to pull myself up
onto your pale broad back-
and then you will run

together we will race
down the convoluted pathways
carved by my memories
through mercurial time
onward and backward we'll rush
until we reach the moment
when i stopped believing in you

we will kiss the girl that i was
and she will shiver
touch her hand to her cheek
and turn to look for us
because our kiss will restore her faith-

but we will be long gone
two old friends riding off
into the sunrise of eternity

(Remnant)

Fulfilling

It had been a long while since I'd seen him, and I'll admit- I was nervous about the meeting. He had let me choose the place- said he didn't really know any of the joints around here- and I'd chosen the Moon and Sixpence. Low-key place where we could find some semi-privacy and a few good drinks. Maybe even some nibbles, who knows...

I approached the pub feeling more than a little sick. It was a feeling uncomfortably akin to a first date, but so much more horrifically worse. The emotions involved in this went way beyond any that might be connected with a potential romantic encounter. I took a deep, steadying breath and pushed open the door, managing to be equally terrified of him not being there, and of him already waiting.

Turned out he was waiting.

He'd taken a table about halfway back on the left, and already had a drink in hand. And he was smoking a cigarette, of all things. He'd never been one to smoke when I'd known him. He caught sight of me and I guess my face must have announced my disapproving shock, because he gave me a wicked grin as if to say, Hey, we're all adults here! But I noticed that he stubbed it out pretty quickly. We might both be adults, but I got the feeling there was a part of him just as anxious to not disappoint me as I was to not disappoint him.

I made my way over to the table and he stood up and suddenly I couldn't move- what was the protocol here? Did we hug? I'd never in my entire life wanted so badly to fling myself into the arms of another human; it was something I'd imagined countless times over the past sixteen years, but now that the moment had arrived I felt... frozen. Almost shy. The lump in my stomach rose to my throat, and I willed it to stay there, damn it, and to not make its way up to my eyes.

And then he opened his arms and I didn't care about anything but falling into them, wrapping mine around him and crushing him as hard as he was crushing me. He smelled like warm leather and Old Spice and jet fuel and yeah maybe those are all cliched man scents but whatever- it's what he smelled like, and the memories washed over me so that I didn't even care that I was drowning, and the lump in my throat completely ignored my instructions and broke, flowing out my eyes and streaming down my face, and he just held me tighter, held me until I couldn't breathe and I still didn't care because here he was at last, at last...

I don't know how long we stood there, but eventually we broke apart, and I groped blindly for my chair and he said,

"Ah shit, sweetheart- I didn't mean to make you cry."

I let out a shaky noise that might have been translated as a laugh and responded, "It's okay. I cry at the drop of a hat anyway. Don't you remember how you used to call me Sarah Bernhardt?" He grinned his devilish grin again and took a sip of his drink.

"Yeah, I do- geeze you used to holler about the tiniest things. It was hard as hell sometimes not to laugh at all your so-called sufferings." I raised an eyebrow and signaled for the waitress.

"Which is probably why you usually didn't bother!" He shrugged.

"Guilty as charged."

I ordered a gin and tonic (chilled, no ice) and while I waited for it we just sort of stared at one another. He, of course, looked exactly the friggin' same. Me- I know I was showing the years. How could I not? I didn't dare ask how it felt to see me this way, to see me as an adult. I was afraid of what the answer might be.

"God you're beautiful," he finally said. "You look so much like your mother."

"Funny, she says I look like you," I accepted my drink from the waitress with a nod and a tiny smile, and took a sip. The juniper hit my tongue and I immediately felt more in control of myself. "You should see your son. He looks even more like her. Which is to say, a lot like Grandpa."

"Well that's good. Your Grandpa was a good looking guy."

"So's my brother."

"Well he comes by it honestly."

We were silent again for a while. I knew I should say something- I was the one who had yearned for this meeting, after all- but I didn't know where to begin. I had so many questions, but I didn't want it to be an interrogation. I had so much to catch him up on, but I wanted to hear him talk, not me. I just wanted it to be natural- just the two of us shooting the shit, maybe talking philosophy if we got enough liquor in us. My brain flailed helplessly until I saw his eye fall on my wedding band.

"You got married," he said softly.

"I did."

"And I wasn't there..."

"Yeah you were, Daddy. Your spirit was, anyway," I started laughing and crying at the same time as I relayed the great Wedding Crasher incident, how a big gorgeous husky had somehow made its way into the Botanical Gardens and gone cheerfully about its goose-chasing business right in the middle of my wedding.

"We all agreed it was your trickster spirit," I explained, and he grinned again. God, he never smiled- it was always a grin with him.

"Well maybe it was. Who knows- my doings of the past few years are a bit fuzzy, you know?" He took another sip of his drink. "Does he treat your right?"

"Daa-aaad..."

"I mean it. I only get this one night to be all fatherly, and I want to know whether or not I need to spend it shooting out some guy's kneecaps."

"Honestly, Dad. Yes, he treats me right. I wouldn't have married him, otherwise. You think Mom would have raised me to take any shit?" This got a full laugh.

"No, I don't imagine she would. Hell of a woman, your mother."

"I know."

"So do you like being married?"

"Did you?" I shot back, eyebrow raised. He nodded, but not just in the way that means yes: it was also the way that means, I understand. The left side of his mouth quirked up as he responded,

"I'm glad you found someone to take care of you."

"We take care of each other."

"Well then I'm even more glad."

He signaled the waitress back over, told her to bring each of us another round. As she left I took control of the conversation again.

"Will you tell me what it was like? When you first met Mom?"

And he did. He told me all about falling in love with her, and knowing he wanted to be with her the rest of his life, and the insanity of marrying someone after only three months. He told me the fear and wonder of knowing his child was growing in her womb the first time- and again the second time. He told me about what it felt like to fly, to be alone with God in His silvery courts, far above the mountains. He told me how he felt about religion, and politics, and all the things I'd wished for so many years to be able to talk to him about. And we agreed on a lot of things, but we also argued- of fucking hell, we argued about some things- but it was so good to have that chance. And by the time the pub was closing down and kicking us out I felt like maybe I was starting to get a grip on the man my father was.

"How much time do we have left?" I asked as we wandered into the crisp, clear autumn night.

"I have to leave at sunrise," he said. "Which is in about... five hours."

I was silent for a moment, face turned up to the stars. "You want to go for a drive?"

***

Two hours later we were at the coast. Specifically at my little slice of the coast: Short Sands. We sat on a piece of drift wood that was actually more like a tree, and watched the black water push white foam back and forth, just like we were passing a bottle back and forth.

"This is where I learned about passion," I confessed. "This is where I finally met God. When I surf I think I understand how you felt when you flew. I understood why you'd crawl back to base with a broken clavicle, and not get it seen to- because no amount of pain was worth being grounded."

"Your mother told you about that, huh?"

"Mom likes to make sure we remember you weren't a saint."

"Oh does she?"

"She does it at my request. Someone has to balance out your mother." He laughed at that, and told me a few more stories about him not being a saint.

More hours passed, and I did everything in my power to ignore the gradually lightening water. I wasn't sure when he'd disappear. How do the Powers That Be decide these things? Would it be when the sun cleared the horizon, or when its rays finally touched him? Would it be all at once, or would he fade out with the ocean mist? Should I watch, or shouldn't I? Could I bear it again?

In the end I laid down with my head in his lap, and he stroked my hair, singing the silly little lullaby he'd written for me when I was a child. I thought sleepily to myself that I should have remembered to bring a guitar...

When I woke I was alone again, face pressed hard against the bleached-bone tree.

Viral Ghost Echoes

Last night's entry got me thinking a lot about death and the afterlife (although to be completely fair it was a friend of mine's most recent art project that probably kick-started me into choosing that topic in the first place). Which in turn brought me back to part of an email I'd written to a (different) friend a few weeks ago about the nature of ghosts. Here is the passage in question:

"Airports that you visit with any sort of regularity are strange places. For me it is primarily because I have made such incredibly strong emotional impressions on myself in such places that I keep seeing little ghost-me's from the corners of my eye- for instance, me crumpled behind a pillar, weeping. It's like a tiny echo of despair that is going to vibrate in that spot for the rest of eternity, regardless of the fact that I was in a pretty damned good mood to be seeing Katie. Maybe that's what ghosts really are- not the spirits of people unable to move on, but solidified emotion. And that's why so many of them seem to be so sad, or so angry."

And that right there is another story-seed. Taken a step further, it could be a story about a person who has the power to dispel echoes- which brings up the physics question of what cancels out an echo? The part of my brain that retained some of what the wonderful Bernie Bates (my Physics 101 instructor) taught me is submitting that sound is a wave, and a wave can be canceled out by another wave of equal but opposite... waviness? Frequency? Whatever, you know what I mean... (yup, art major for a reason). Let's do a quick bit of research to either confirm or deny my suspicions, shall we?

Okay, screw it- research is taking too long and I want to go to bed. Let's take it for granted that I'm right, and we'll do the research later, if it ever gets beyond story-seed idea. So our purported hero/heroine is called upon to get rid of ghosts, but the only way s/he can do it is by creating an event that whips up an emotional frequency equal in intensity to but opposite in direction of the event that created the ghost. In other words, s/he would have to facilitate great joy, or hope, or something along those lines, in the same spot as the haunting... hmmm... Of course, if the ghost is someone's echo rather than their essence, what is the motivation for dispelling it? Maybe it grows... or infects others with its misery/rage... hmmm... viral ghost echoes...

And now that goes into my percolator for a while, and hopefully comes out as a full-on concept rather than just a device/seed... Do feel free to contribute your own thoughts on the subject (just so long as you hereby relinquish all rights and don't mind me straight up stealing your ideas... ;P)