“That makes sense.” They went from joking about Evan’s body to being understanding about my concerns at the snap of the fingers. They must bounce from emotion to emotion all day, every day. Like squirrels hopping from tree to tree, or electrical pole to electrical pole.
“We’ll take you home. No problem.” They all handed me business cards. I didn’t know cops even carried them.
I made sure Evan was able to come with me. He sat in the back of the squad car as I sat up front with Red Ears. I noticed that the back car door never opened, yet Evan was still present. We’d have some things to discuss tonight, for sure.
________________
I got ready for the evening like I always did. Took a shower, washed my face, used my toner, put on my night cream, and made sure my armpits were hairless, as well as my lady business. I made Evan promise he’d stay in the living room since locking the bathroom door was pointless. He could just walk through it if he wanted.
Evan struggled to pick up his toothbrush next to mine.
“Should we both be screaming at this point?” His hand passed through the handle of the brush yet again.
I folded my arms across my chest. Maybe I would wake up and the whole thing would be a giant hairy nightmare.
“Does it feel like anything when you move through stuff?”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. There was a reason we were still together. His beautiful shoulders were like eighty percent of why I put up with the fighting. His pretty face was another ten percent, his giant sex pistol another nine percent, and the final one percent was reserved for his personality and killer sense of humor. No pun intended.
“I mean, I guess it tickles a little?” His hands fell to his sides, clearly giving up.
“Let’s sleep on it. Maybe we’ll both feel better in the morning.” I wanted to offer him some comfort, but I was concerned that giving him a hug right now and walking through him would freak him out more than he already was. And that I would finally lose what little was left of my sanity.
I turned and walked to the bed, pulling the covers back for the both of us. He hopped in on his side, but the bed didn’t register his weight. I got in and covered us both with a blanket. It went right through him. I was under the covers, and he was on top of them. I had to move the pillow for him, too, because his head would sink about halfway into it and he said it was giving him a headache. I wasn’t sure he could actually get a headache since he wasn’t alive, but I didn’t feel like addressing that was a good plan.
He was staying on the bed, though, and I pointed it out to him, “Well, you have some sort of control over gravity, otherwise you would sink straight through the floor.”
I reached over to the melatonin bottle and took a gummy, then shook out a second one. I was going to need a little help falling asleep tonight.
WELL, CLOSING MY eyes was pointless. I could see through my eyelids. I was dead. I mean, clearly. But Sammi wasn’t upset. And maybe I was waiting for that cue. She’d said she couldn’t drive, so I knew she was in shock and acknowledged that. But I didn’t feel departed yet. Even a little bit. I felt very much alive. As far as I knew, I finished having sex with my girlfriend when I heard the screaming. The people at all the picture spots around the mountain had seen something horrifying. I had felt bad for them until I tried to pull Sammi close and my arms went through her. Then I felt bad for me. Actually, there was a period of time between pumpin’ and a humpin’ that I sort of blacked out. It was missing somehow. Like the file didn’t save properly.
The first few minutes I was a ghost, my only concern was keeping Sammi calm. That was my goal. We were on the edge of the cliff having mind-blowing makeup sex that was swirled in with the adrenaline boost we got from being so close to the edge. I was stupid. I mean, if I was really dead.
Sammi was passed out now, her full lips slack. I forgot how beautiful she was like this. In repose when she wasn’t up and fighting me. She looked like a vintage movie star with a Cupid’s bow mouth and porcelain skin. If I was really, really dead, what scared me the most was that I would disappear before I could tell her that the fights didn’t matter. It was the quiet that mattered. Her beautiful face and boundless adventurism. If we hadn’t gotten into that stupid fight, there wouldn’t have been makeup sex and I wouldn’t have been launched off the cliff. Now, I had no idea if I’d end up spending the afterlife as a semi-opaque fixture in her reality. With her, but never able to touch her. What a fucking buzzkill death was.
I sat up and was able to rest my back on the headboard. I just had to concentrate on the moment it happened a bit. The more I tried to focus, the more I realized I had some kind of memory block. My thoughts were, sex, pussy, sex is the best, I love my dick, her pussy loves my dick, my dick loves her pussy, pound harder… and then I could see through myself.
I didn’t believe the cops when they said her pussy had shot me off the mountain like a cannon. She was good. Hell, she was amazing. There were times I thought she was writing her name in cursive on my dick through Kegel exercises during sex, but she couldn’t launch me.
That was an insane conclusion to come to, but the cops couldn’t see that I was a ghost standing right there. I knew that now. And I needed to know more about this supernatural part of the world. I couldn’t be the only dead dude hanging around in a semi-transparent state. I leaned down and gave her a ghost kiss on the forehead. She was supposed to be up at noon, and I knew the melatonin would keep her out like she’d been hit over the head with a mallet.
I needed to find out more. Maybe see my body. See what the hell was happening on the mountain, because something was seriously off up there.
I rolled out of bed and landed facedown on the floor, except it didn’t hurt and the floor didn’t completely stop my soundless fall. Instead, I found myself staring at old Ms. Pontoon’s naked butt, her bedroom being right below ours. I was grateful that she required hearing aids, otherwise she would probably hate us. We fucked like we were trying to break the bedframe. And sometimes each other. We angry fucked a lot. The orgasms were out of this world. In fact, we’d had to replace our bedframe more than once in the two years we’d been living in this apartment. We’d also replaced the drywall behind our headboard. We’d dented it so many times, I actually put one of those cushioned memory boards up so I wouldn’t have to keep patching the drywall. I sucked at that.
Ms. Pontoon rolled over and I got an eyeful of her hairy crotch muppet. Her mudflaps with nipples sprawled on the mattress on either side of her. I tried to do a push-up, but I seemed to be stuck halfway between my own floor and Ms. Pontoon’s ceiling. It took me several minutes and a lot of concentration before I was finally able to roll over and pull myself back up to my apartment floor.
I lay there, huffing and puffing from exertion, until I remembered that I was dead and I didn’t even need to breathe, let alone huff and puff for dramatic effect. I hopped to my feet, half-expecting Sammi to be awake and silent-laughing at me, but she was still passed out. I could see her nipples peaking the fabric of her jammies, which was one of my old t-shirts from college. It helped erase what I’d just seen in the bedroom below ours.
If I wasn’t dead, I would have reached over and circled that nipple with my finger, but I was worried one of two things was going to happen if I did that: my finger would either go right through her body or she’d wake up and freak out over the ghost of her almost-fiancé touching her nipple. Either seems less than ideal.