Sort of Dead

I woke with a start and stared up at the ceiling. “That’s weird,” I said. “Where’s my ceiling fan?” I blinked. I blinked again. I thought to make it a trio, but then realized I hadn’t blinked the first two times—which is to say, I blinked but there wasn’t that whole ceiling, no ceiling, ceiling, no ceiling thing, which is what happens when I blink and I’m staring up at my ceiling. Not that what I was staring at was a ceiling to begin with, but still. I continued staring up. I supposed what I was staring at was white, given that it looked white, and I supposed that what I was staring up at was a ceiling because, give or take, most ceilings are white, mine included, but the white I was staring at sort of shifted around a bit. FYI, my ceiling didn’t do that, except perhaps when I was drunk. “Did I get drunk last night?” I asked myself. Only, I couldn’t remember last night. I couldn’t remember going to sleep, even. I remembered waking, but that was it. And I didn’t feel drunk. In fact, I felt great. Better than great, actually. Blissful would’ve been a good word for it. Light, too. As if I’d been weighed down and now I wasn’t. “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty—” “You can try, but He doesn’t seem to listen,” I heard, then jumped in place. My head whipped right. Nothing. My head whipped left. “Um, how did you get in my…” My what? This wasn’t my room. This wasn’t my ceiling. Was what was above me a ceiling anyway? “Wait, who doesn’t seem to listen?” The man to my left grinned. He looked about my age, early thirties, give or take, nice looking guy, too. Very Bradley Cooper like, stunning blue eyes and all. He was prone. He was lying next to me. He was naked. I stared down at my body. I, too, was naked. I continued staring down. There was no bed. There was my body, there was his body, there was that shifting white. “Don’t freak out,” he said. My heart wasn’t madly pumping in my chest and I wasn’t sweating, but I felt like I was freaking out, nonetheless. Especially because my heart should’ve been madly pumping and I generally start to sweat when I’m freaking the f**k out. All that is to say, I was FREAKING THE f**k OUT! “I’m freaking the f**k out!” I shouted his way. “Who are you? Where are we? Why is the wall and ceiling and floor shifting?” I blinked. It felt like I blinked, but I didn’t get the right effect again. “And where are my f*****g eyelids?” “You get used to that,” he replied. I sat up. That is to say, I tried to sit up. Only, I didn’t think I was actually lying down, and you can’t sit up if you’re not lying down to begin with. “Stop the ride,” I squeaked out, “I want to get off.” I was still staring at him. He was still grinning. “Give it a minute,” he said. “Takes about five minutes for all of it to right itself.” “All? What all?” I continued staring. It seemed like a minute went by. I was no longer lying there. I was standing. He was standing next to me. The not-a-ceiling was now not-a-wall, and it was still shifting, and I was, duh, still freaking out, f**k and all. “You were lying down before you got here, so it seemed like you were lying down when you arrived. Get it?” He said it very comfortingly. I felt less than comforted. Very. “Dude—” “Max.” He held out his hand. I shook it. I felt his hand in mine. There was indeed comfort in that. “Nordstrom,” I said. He laughed. He had a nice laugh. He had a nice grin. Max seemed nice. “Did your mom have a penchant for upscale shopping?” I shook my head. “I was born in one. And my mom had a penchant for making sure I was teased well into adulthood.” I let go of his hand. “Nord. My friends call me Nord. Otherwise, they don’t get a Christmas present.” “Well, nice to meet you, Nord. And I’m Jewish, so no Christmas presents needed.” He turned my way. He was standing in front of me now, not by my side. “Are you doing better?” I thought about it. I wasn’t doing worse, but better was another matter entirely. “Why are we naked, Max?” “Everyone here is naked, Nord. The soul is stained. Or at least that’s what we suspect. So it appears as if we are all here, and thus naked.” “We?” I pointed at the shifting wall. “We who?” He nodded. “Yeah, that usually takes another ten minutes. All in all, it takes about twenty minutes until equilibrium is reached.” “Lost.” He was still nodding. “Yeah, there’s no way around that.” He held my hand again. I held his. The freaking-out thing slid down the scale to a seven. I breathed in. I breathed out. But like the blinking before that, nothing really happened. In my head, I breathed in. In my head, I breathed out. My chest, however, had other ideas entirely. I stared at his chest. His was defined, quite hairy—also very Bradley-Cooper-like. I liked Bradley Cooper’s chest, so, ergo, I liked Max’s. Max had a flat, etched belly, also hairy. Max had a hooded d**k, the head two-thirds covered by crinkled flesh. My glance downward continued, going from his d**k to mine. “Um, I’m circumcised, Max.” I stared back his way. “And you’re Jewish, so why are you not? And why am I not?” I grabbed my d**k. I rolled back the skin. It was a disquieting feeling. Suffice it to say, I felt disquieted. “The stain begins at birth and continues onward, best we can figure.” He pointed down to my d**k. “That’s the way you were born.” “We—” I started to ask about that we thing again, but then noticed the wall had receded. There were other people there now, naked people, men and women of all ages, all races, dozens and dozens in all directions. They were grinning the same way Max was grinning. “Max,” I said, “are we…” His nod returned, then promptly stopped, um, dead. “Sort of,” he said. I thought to sigh, then thought the better of it. Or worse. Mainly because my glass was no longer half full. Mainly because there were no glasses. Lots of uncircumcised d**k, but no glasses. Lots of boobies and bushes, too, so there was that disquieting thing again, but no glasses. FYI, I wore glasses. FYI, I could now see fine without them. Sadly, I was seeing hooded pee-pees and boobies and bushes, and not much else. “You died, Nord,” he said, the grin faltering before all-together vanishing. “Sorry.” His hand was still in mine. I was freaking out at a six now. “But this place, this isn’t where you end up. I think.” He pointed around, finger swinging in a circle. “We think.” “And why, Max,” I said, “do you all think that?” “Because everyone here arrives like you, then eventually leaves. Poof.” He made the universal fingers moving outward poof motion. “Meaning, this wasn’t their destination. Probably just a layover of sorts.” I nodded. It made no sense, but I nodded. I was dead, but I nodded. I was too young to be dead, but, then again, so was he. I wondered how I died. I had no memory of it. Maybe I was hit by a bus. Maybe I was struck by lightning. Maybe I had an aneurism. Then I suppose I wouldn’t have a memory of it. It being a better word than the real word. As in far, far better. “How long have you been here, Max?” He shrugged. “Hard to tell. There’s no sun. No clocks. No Internet.” I groaned. “So maybe we’re in…” I mean, no Internet? We had to be in… He shook his head. “How do you feel, Nord? I mean, apart from the whole freaking out thing, how do you feel?” I thought about it for a moment. “I miss my old d**k, but otherwise I feel fine.” I grinned. I grinned like all the others. “In fact, I feel great.” I lifted my finger in the air, suddenly remembering something. “Are you an…an angel, Max?” His head again moved left to right and back again. “No, Nord. I was passing by and you suddenly appeared. I stopped to make sure you were alright, just like someone stopped for me.” He held up his free hand, sensing I was about to ask another of my questions—or seventy-two of them. “You died, Nord. I died, Nord. Everyone here died. Some of these people knew they were dying, so that’s why we figure we died. You have a body, or at least the body you recall, because, as best anyone can explain, your soul was stained by the body you had in life. And as to why we all seem to be here and not where the poof-people go to, again, best anyone can explain, when we compare notes, is that we all had unfinished business back in the real world, and so our souls are unwilling to make the poof-leap.” “So I’m sort of dead?” His grin amped up. “Now you’re getting it.” I shook my head, though the grin remained. I really did feel great. Divine, even. “Getting it? Not even close. I mean, if people here have unfinished business, why do they eventually go poof?” I, too, made the universal poof sign, old habits, uh, dying hard. “I mean, how do they finish the unfinished? From here, I mean?” “Just a guess,” he replied, “but there are two ways, at least as far as we assume. One, maybe if you’re here long enough, all the people back in the real world, all your earthly ties, die, and the unfinished becomes finished by the sheer fact that time really does heal all wounds. In other words, whatever problems you had resolved themselves on their own. Then, poof!” “And two?” His smile rose ever northward. “Take my hand, Nord.” I took his hand, the one I wasn’t still holding. I stared at my hands in his. Holding Max’s hands was comforting, a sort of cherry on that divine sundae of mine. I felt it, too. Like our souls were touching. I stared back into his eyes, eyes so blue they’d put the sky to shame—had there been any sky wherever it was we were. He was staring back at me. Then again, we couldn’t blink, so staring is all we had. “Ready?” he added. “For?” I blinked again—or at least made the valiant attempt—and we were no longer in poof-central. In fact, we, the sort of dead, were in a living room. Irony, it seemed, transcended life. My hands were no longer in his, mainly because his hands and my hands were now see-through. They were tangible before—or seemed to feel as such—and now, suddenly, we were all Casper-like. “Looks like ghosts do exist, Nord,” he said. I could still see the blue of his eyes, but I could also see the wall beyond that. “Where are we, Max?” “My home,” he said. The smile had faltered. The smile, in fact, was as dead as we were. “Or, um, was. Was my home.” I looked around. That is to say, I floated around and around, passing through walls and doors. It was a nice apartment. Two bedrooms, two baths, a sunken living room, photos on the wall, along the fireplace. “None of you,” I made note. He shook his head. He was floating by my side, looking at the same photos. “Not my apartment anymore. My family got rid of it. All my belongings, divided up or tossed. Years to amass it, days to get rid of it all.” He frowned. “Guess you really can’t take any of it with you when you go.” He pointed to his hooded wee-wee. “Any of it.” “And why are we here now?” He shrugged. “I can only take you to places I had a strong connection to. I have to think about it, and then I’m there. You were holding my hand, so you came along for the ride. I can take you to my office, to my sister’s house, to one or two other places, but that seems to be it. Here is the most comforting for me, even though it’s not my home anymore, not my apartment, not my living room, not even me living.” A man suddenly appeared from the bedroom. I jumped. Or at least it felt like I jumped. In fact, I simply floated. I could see the man; the man, clearly, could not see us. The man was handsome in a nerdy sort of way: tall and gangly, skinny, naked, sporting enough wood to build a cabin with. He was absentmindedly stroking said wood as he walked to the kitchen to retrieve a bottle of kombucha. He then returned to where he’d come from—to come, that is. I know this because I soon watched him come, all voyeur-like. Max watched me watch the mammoth d**k explode, spooge shooting up before dripping down a hairy, thin thigh. “He can do that twice a day,” Max informed, sounding rather glum about it. “Sometimes more. Always alone. Guy never goes out. Works from here, plays from here.” He again locked eyes with me. “The show at my office is far less enjoyable.” My smile finally returned. “You’re gay, Max.” He nodded. “Was. Though I suppose that, too, comes along for the whole death-ride. I was born gay. I’m dead gay. Seems to stain the soul as well. Thank…” He pointed toward the ceiling. “Judging by your interest in the spectacle…” He was now pointing at the flagging flagpole of a prick. “Souls of a feather…” I looked back his way and joined his nod with one of my own. “I still don’t get how this…” It was my turn to point at the rather fetching flagged flagpole. “Can make you go poof.” I snapped my fingers, little good it did me. I mean, my fingers snapped, but there was no crackle, no pop, and definitely no snap. “Doesn’t make you go poof,” he said. “Clearly.” To which he added, “But what if my family still lived here, a spouse, a sibling, a father or mother. What if they said something, did something to bring some sort of closure? Or what if I went to work, saw a project I’d been working on come to fruition? I’m guessing, we’re guessing, the multitudes of others, that it’s the closure, finishing some sort of unfinished business, that brings about the poof.” “Guessing,” I echoed. He shrugged. “Everything is conjecture. All of it. There’s no handbook. Still, it does seem that everyone eventually goes poof. Some just quicker than others.” The fully-flagged d**k disappeared. We were back in the other place. “And how long do you think you’ve been here, Max?” He shrugged. His grin had returned. Whatever this place we were in was, it brought some sort of happiness, peace. “As I said before, hard to tell. A good many years now, anyway. Long enough for my lease to end, for Mister Horny back there to move in, for my sister to get married, to have a kid, for the company I worked for to go public. I saw most of it happen.” “But still no poof.” His shrug had remained in place. “Those things weren’t my unfinished business, I suppose.” I paused. I held his hand. His smile grew. So did mine. “And how did you…” My pause returned. I was in uncharted waters here—had there, of course, been any water. Or sky. Or anything really. How do you chart nothingness? Plus, I was dead for less than an hour. You can’t get any more uncharted than that. “I mean, how did you die, Max?” “Leukemia,” he replied. “I was thirty-two.” The smile miraculously remained. “I knew I was going to die, Nord, mainly because I’d been doing so for five years. I’d made peace with it. Maybe something inside of me knew of this place. Or maybe I was simply ready to release all the pain, the fear. To die slowly for that long, it makes you not want to live. Makes you want to believe in…” He pointed into the void. “Well, this.” I was still gripping his hand in mine. “But there is no this in this.” “Yet.” We walked. Or what felt like walking. We passed other naked people. “There’s no pain here, no fear. You feel it, too. That much I do know. We all feel the same way. And there is a this in this, Nord. I talk to people, endless people. I hear their stories, see their lives through their words. It’s like going to the movies, reading books, like living, as it were, through others.” He looked my way. We stopped. “What is it? What’s wrong? You’re not smiling anymore.” I wasn’t and knew exactly why. “I wasn’t dying, Max. I was also thirty-two. I had a great life. I’d just received a promotion. I’d paid off my student loans. I was alive, and then I was…here.” He nodded. He’d obviously heard this story before. They all had. People died every second for all sorts of reasons. Had I been killed, hit by a car, a random bolt of lightning, or something like an aneurism, a heart attack, an electric shock? “We could find out, Nord. It’s not been that long. We could go see.” His smile flew south. “But no matter how you died, whatever we see isn’t going to be pretty.” I stared at him. He was indeed pretty. He was, in fact, far nicer to look at than anything back in the real world, that much was certain. Still, I had to know. Maybe knowing would get me that poof. “Will you come with me?” I asked him. He nodded. “You sure, though? You’re just barely dead. What if no one has discovered your, you know…body?” He whispered the word. The word made me wince. My soul hurt. And since I was nothing but soul, everything hurt at once. Not a physical pain, but a pain, nonetheless. “We could wait. We could go to a familiar place later, hear what happened rather than see.” “Did you go back?” I asked. “I mean, right away?” The nod turned shake. “Almost. I thought about it. But I knew what had killed me, so what would’ve been the point? I went home to my mom’s a while later. That was hard enough. I went back some more; it never got any easier. I couldn’t hug her, couldn’t talk to her, let her know I was okay. Same with all of them, all my family. Plus, it felt like spying. Instead, I go watch that guy jack off. I like being in my old home.” His smile returned. “I like it here, too, for now. The bliss, it’s easy to grow accustomed to.” “But what if it takes decades to move on? What if that bliss turns bust? What if whatever is next is even better? Or what if you’re wrong and that next never comes?” I was still holding his hand. I’d known him for less than whatever brief time it was, but it felt like forever. Maybe that was because we were literally in forever. Either way, the conversation was uncomfortable and his hand in mine was comforting. “Can you get an erection here, Max?” He laughed in that supremely nice way of his. Where had he been all my life? And, yes, the irony of that had not been lost on me. He then fiddled with my d**k with his free hand. I followed suit with his. It felt nice, though that was more likely because our souls were touching. Which is to say, nothing shifted, rose, pulsed, gushed, spewed. “No blood, Nord. Nothing to fill it with.” I shook my head. “Nope. This place is great, but not perfect. What if the poof is perfect?” He seemed to think this over. Eventually, his sea of blue locked into my puddles of brown. “Just think of a place, Nord. It has to be a place you frequented, that you had ties to. There seems to be a connection made in life that tethers you in death. Work, home, family, you can link to them if you choose to.” The smile had returned, but quivered. “Where were you last?” I’d been at my desk, at work. I could still see the screen in my head, then the ceiling that wasn’t a ceiling. Maybe there had been a fire, some sort of explosion. How does someone die at work, someone so young, someone in the picture of health? People suddenly died of aneurisms, like I’d thought before. That must’ve been it. “I was working,” I replied. “Why do you think I can feel your hand in mine, your hand on my d**k?” His laugh returned. “You make odd segues, Nord.” I laughed. It was weird to laugh given that I had just sort of died. “My head is full of questions. I want to ask them all at once.” “Yeah, been there, died that.” He squeezed my hand in his. “The body stained the soul. The soul knows of feelings, sensations. Those feelings seem to be mimicked here. It’s not the same but a close facsimile. Just as nice, either way. Just as real-feeling even when we know it’s not.” “I can see your body, can feel it.” I touched his chest, ran my fingers through the matting of hair, but there was no heartbeat. It wasn’t real. I was grateful for the facsimile, but how long would that gratefulness last? “Let’s go, Max.” He nodded, and we were suddenly back at my office. It had been around lunchtime when I was still alive, best I could recall, and now it was dark outside. Inside was another matter entirely. Every light was on. The place was full of people. None of them were my coworkers. All of them were either cops or paramedics. There was a bag on the floor by my desk, body-sized, black as coal. “f**k,” I said. He pointed at my desk, at the carpet. “Blood, Nord.” Lots of blood. Too much blood. I didn’t have a stomach anymore; still, I felt queasy. Rest in peace, my ass. Did people bleed from an aneurism? My computer was still on. I floated closer in. It wasn’t what I had been looking at. It was an old report. Why had someone pulled it up? Of course, the better question was, “Why did someone kill me?” We hung around, waiting for an answer, but, for now, people were taking pictures, writing things down, shipping me off. I tried to follow but couldn’t. Seemed that tether that Max had mentioned was all too real. I tried to punch my keyboard, to see if I could pull up a history of what else had been searched for, but, yeah, good luck with that. We floated there until we were alone again. I’d learned nothing, apart from the whole murder thing. Me. Murdered. I mean, I’d been no Mother Teresa in life, but no Mussolini either. People generally liked me. I was likable, after all. “Should we go?” asked the see-through version of my newfound friend. “Why would someone kill me? Doesn’t make sense. I was at work. I got along with all my coworkers.” I pointed at my screen. It had been left on. “That report must be the answer. I didn’t put it there. The person who killed me must have.” “What is it?” I again stared at the screen. “It’s a financial report. Two years old, at least.” “Is it significant in any way?” I tried to remember, exactly. I’d barely been with the company six months then. I was in the creative department, so I probably needed the report to determine future expenditures, what to spend my resources on, how much to spend, where to spend it. It was significant to me, but, again, it was an old report. Meaning, it was no longer significant. Though, seemingly, it was. At least to someone. “I don’t see how,” I replied. We were again back in the nothing. “What do you call this place, Max? I mean, it’s not heaven, right? And I feel too good to be in hell. Purgatory doesn’t seem to fit either. That has some negative connotations, right? Religious meaning, right? I don’t see any angels, and God doesn’t seem to be showing up with a welcoming fruit basket.” “Arby’s,” he said. I grinned. I was glad I still had it in me after what I’d been through, namely being murdered at my desk. What an awful place to die. Couldn’t someone have shot me at a Gaga concert? So much better for the obit material, right? He died as he lived: fabulously. “You call this place Arby’s?” He shrugged. “I loved Arby’s in life. I loved Popeyes even better, but my town didn’t have a Popeyes, so I settled for Arby’s.” He pointed all around. All around were naked people grinning. I preferred to look at him. “Arby’s seems a good name for it.” “Too bad they don’t have any jamocha shakes here, though.” He nodded vigorously, the slightest of moans escaping from his lips. “We already agreed this place wasn’t perfect.” “Well,” I said, “at least that explains that unfinished business of mine. Someone murdered me. Maybe that person needs to be brought to justice in order for me to go poof. Or maybe I just need to know who did it.” “You want to investigate your murder from Arby’s, Nord? Doesn’t seem an easy task.” I shrugged. “Not like I have much else to do.” I grabbed his hand; I had that to do. Maybe this place was perfect, after all. I tended to doubt I’d grow tired of doing that, I mean. “What about you, Max? What’s your unfinished business? Your life was cut short. But what can you do about that now? If they find a cure for Leukemia, will you go poof then? Do you have to wait for all your loved ones to die, for no one to miss you, for there to be no loose ends left?” His other hand found my other hand. If two hands locked together was great, four was even better. “I wish I knew, Nord. Again, no rulebook. I tried praying for an answer, but that didn’t work in life, so…” But maybe his prayers had been answered. I mean, he had found me, right? Was that by chance or fate? He’d be there a long time if he had to wait for everyone he loved to die; at least now he had company, a hand to hold, two. I wished feet could grip. I wished my d**k could grow hard. How would that prayer be answered, I wondered? “I’m glad you came along when you did,” I told him. He nodded, the smile radiant. Too bad they didn’t have sunglasses in Arby’s. “I was just thinking the same thing.” “You think gay guys kiss in Arby’s?” I asked him. I wondered if it sounded lascivious. I wondered, all things considered, if it was a good idea to sound lascivious. Was someone keeping points in Arby’s? Would my question earn me a demerit? The vigorous nodding returned. “There’s a reason this place isn’t called Chick-fil-A.” And his lips were suddenly on mine. I stared into the blue. That was heaven. Heaven was in the blue. I couldn’t get a hard-on, but kissing, yeah, kissing I could do. My lips could press against his, my tongue could snake and coil. There was no spit to pass back and forth, but the kiss was no less wonderful. “A guy could learn to like this whole sort of dead thing,” I told him, my face an inch from his once the kiss was broken. “Popeyes,” he said. “Seems I finally found one.” * * * * We left Arby’s and found ourselves back in his old apartment. Arby’s was wonderful, but it lacked a certain je ne sais queer. I sat on the couch. Max sat on the couch. Or, you know, floated just above it. Clark—we saw his name on a computer science diploma on the wall—sat between us. Clark was again naked. Clark was watching gay porn on a TV screen the size of Cleveland. Seemed that those feathered souls really did flock together. Fate again? I wished there was someone to ask. I pointed at the screen. “That guy should go and check the mole on his thigh out.” Max nodded. “It’s almost like we’re there.” I shrugged. “Heck, it’s almost like we’re here.” “You think ghosts watched us jack off all those years?” I shuddered at the thought that my gammy watched me dildo-f**k myself. I also suddenly wondered if she had gone poof. I wondered if I could find loved ones in Arby’s. Seemed unlikely. If we were meant to find one another, wouldn’t we have already? I sighed, despite my lack of lungs. The afterlife wasn’t what it was purported to be. I mean, no one told me I’d be watching a nerdy dude jack off or that I’d be making out with a fellow spirit. Maybe I would’ve gone to church more often had they mentioned all this s**t. “Sad,” I made note. “I’m sure it’s nothing; probably just a freckle.” I shook my head. I pointed at our jacking, geeky friend. “Clark needs to get outside, leave his computer, get some fresh air, meet people, leave his d**k alone for five minutes.” “His d**k doesn’t seem to mind the attention.” It was a beautiful d**k. Much nicer than the ones spurting not ten feet away on the screen. I wondered if the man attached was just as nice. Maybe he was a d**k, too. “Do you believe in mediums, Max? Psychics? Like Whoopi in Ghost? He seemed to think it over for a minute. “Probably not in life, but we are here among the living, so maybe it’s possible. Maybe there are people who can tune in to our sort-of-dead channel. Why do you ask?” “What if it’s reverse, though? What if we’re the ones tuning in? What if we make the connection?” He smiled. Or maybe he had been smiling and was simply smiling wider. The dead seemed to smile a lot. Without the worries of the living, the frailties of the body, being dead was fairly euphoric. Even being sort of dead was quite lovely, most of the time—except, perhaps, when you witness your bagged-up corpse get carted away. “You want to try and make contact with Clark? While he’s jacking off?” he asked. I chuckled. “We could wait until…” Clark shot just then. Clark must’ve eaten a lot of steak and chicken because he was clearly not protein deficient. Meaning, Clark came and then came some more and then dribbled more come after he came. “Wait’s over, Max.” “How do we do it?” he asked. I lifted my see-through hand up and tentatively went to touch Clark’s arm. My hand went right on through. Clark didn’t seem to notice. I didn’t feel any sort of connection, though it did look weird to see my hand disappear inside someone. I shifted over, over some more, until our bodies were overlapping. I, however, was still me—or what little remained—and Clark still didn’t seem to notice. Clark, in fact, was licking the jizz off his fingers. Maybe, I figured, that’s how he kept his protein reserves up. I slid back over. I shook my head. “Nope, that doesn’t do it.” “Maybe,” said Max, “we’re on a different plane of existence. Maybe watching Clark is like watching TV. You can’t talk to a character on a TV either.” I looked at said TV. A stunningly Nordic blond plumber was f*****g a stunningly ginger electrician. My plumber, in life, had been a portly man of indeterminable origins, my electrician a surly old guy with yellow teeth and a penchant for spitting—indoors. Life, it seemed, did not imitate art. I then looked down at the remote. I tried to grab it. Nothing happened. I tried to move it with my mind. Same result. I tried to press a button, to think of the button pressing down, to will the button downward. Guess what happened? Yeah, nothing. “There’s got to be a way, Max.” He shrugged. “We can’t go find a medium. We can only go to places we’re linked to. You linked to a psychic, Nord?” “My mom always seemed to know when I was up to no good.” He laughed. “I tend to doubt that’s the same thing.” I sat there watching Clark’s d**k go semi. Clark’s d**k semi was still a stupendous sight to behold. This was like owning a masterpiece painting and locking it up in a closet for no one to enjoy. It was a waste. Clark’s life seemed to be wasteful. I was dead far too early. I knew of waste. My smile quivered and collapsed like a house of cards in a mild gust of wind. But it was then that it hit me. Clark could help us. Clark could help me go poof. “Poltergeist,” I said. Max squinted my way. “You seem to have a penchant for old paranormal movies, Nord.” “No,” I said. “Poltergeists seem to be able to move objects. If they can do it, why can’t we.” “We?” I nodded. I stood. Or, that is to say, I floated off the couch. “What do you feel when we hold hands, Max? When we kiss?” He was still squinting my way, seemingly pondering the question. “I feel great in Arby’s. I feel even better when we hold hands, when we kiss. It’s as if one plus one equals ten.” “Charged,” I said. “You feel charged. I feel the same. That’s the word for it, right? Like our inner lightbulb is going from sixty watts to a hundred.” He touched fingertip to nose. Or at least tried to. “Charged. Right. That’s a good word for it.” He also rose off the couch until he was floating in front of me. “And your point?” I held his hand. Even as a ghost, the overlapping of our spirits had the same effect. Had we had hairs they would’ve been standing on end as soon as we made contact. And so, with his hand in mine, I again reached for the remote. It didn’t budge, as before, but the channel changed. The plumber was no longer f*****g the electrician. Judge Judy was now lecturing a negligent dog owner who failed repeatedly to pick up after the family schnauzer. All that is to say, that poltergeisting s**t was for real, if you knew how to do it. Clark looked up. I looked from the TV to Clark. Clark looked confused. “Dude,” said Max, wide-eyed. “What the f**k?” I grinned. “We’re poltergeists, Max! We’re like superheroes!” “You changed a TV channel, Nord.” “Even a superhero’s gotta start somewhere.” Clark jumped up and grabbed the remote. He eyed it, opened the battery panel, jiggled the batteries, and then changed the channel back. A construction worker had joined the naked fray. Didn’t seem like the housing project they were there to work on was going to get done any time soon. They also didn’t seem to mind. Then again, neither did the owner of said house, who was watching the spectacle off to the side, pulling his pud all the while. I looked at Max. “You think they went to acting school for this?” “The plumber seems believable.” I nodded. “Julliard, I’m guessing.” I again reached for the remote. Ross was suddenly yelling at Rachel that they were on a break. Clark stared at the TV again, scratched his head, his balls. Clark’s balls hung so low it was a wonder he didn’t trip over them. Such a waste that no one else could trip over them either. I floated to a lamp. Max floated with me. I reached out; the lamp flicked on. I hooted and hollered. I felt alive again. Sort of alive, that is. We floated some more, hand in hand. A computer flicked on. A blender started to blend. The overhead light flicked on, off, on, off. Clark looked left, right, left, right. He didn’t seem to like that his wiring was going wonky. Max stopped us. “All he’s gonna do is call an electrician, Nord.” I laughed. “Maybe then he’ll put that beautiful d**k to good use. Maybe a plumber and a construction worker will show up, too. Clark could join the union.” “No,” said Max. “I mean, he won’t know it’s us doing all this. If you’re thinking Clark can help us find out who, um…who, you know…killed you, he needs to know we’re asking for help.” I cringed at the whispered word. I’d been murdered. Me. But I was a nice guy. I was a young, nice guy. I was. And now I wasn’t. And Clark had a big d**k and an unexpected light show. Little good either of those things did me. I glanced at the flicked-on computer. “Bingo,” I said. Max followed my eyes to what they were locked onto. “Think we can do it?” “Only one way to find out.” We floated back to the computer. I reached for the keyboard, holding Max’s hand as I did so, feeling the energy surge between us. HELP, I typed, one letter at a time. It took some concentration, like I had to push the force of it out, from me to it, from us to it. I looked at Max. “That was difficult.” He nodded. “I felt it, too. Like an energy drain.” There was a desk lamp next to the computer. Max flicked it on and off, on and off, to get Clark’s attention. “s**t,” we heard him say. “What the f**k is going on?” He looked pissed. The look changed when he saw the letters on the screen, from pissed to anxious. “Help,” he read. He’d had f*******: on the screen. I’d typed help onto that. The letters had to have come from his side of things. “Help,” he read again as Max repeated the flick routine. Anxious morphed to nervous, with a hint of fright that seemed to quickly blossom into terror, if the look on his face meant anything. I reached for the keyboard again. I was growing tired. Or at least drained. What would happen if I continued? Can the dead die further? Could I evaporate into oblivion, Max right along with me? MAX, I managed to type, slowly, the effort quite real. If I could’ve sweated, I would’ve been drenched right about then. I looked at Max. He was barely there, just a shimmer of himself. I stared down at myself. I thought of Arby’s. We were back there in a heartbeat, so to speak. I grabbed for my chest. I was whole again. Max, too. Or, you know, wholeish. Or as wholey as we were gonna get. “Scary,” I said. “One more minute,” he said, “and I think we would’ve vanished.” “But to where? To here? And why, why did we start to evaporate like that?” He shrugged. “I think all we are now is energy. Here, in Arby’s, we’re probably surrounded by it, like we’re plugged in. Back in the real world, we have a limited supply.” “Felt like I was dying,” I said. “Moot point,” he said. “Still, that’s what it felt like.” I reached for his hand. The nervousness dissipated. “Weird,” I said, aiming my head at our fingers. “How long have we known each other now? A few hours? Feels like forever.” He grinned. He leaned in and kissed me. My energy tank was back to full. “I was sick for so long, Nord. You’re the first person I’ve kissed in years. There must be some bizarre irony in that, that it took my dying to find you.” I chuckled. “Schmaltz much?” His laughter joined mine. Such a nice laugh. Such a nice man. Too bad we were dead. “I got a shitload of Hallmark cards back in the hospital; the schmaltz must’ve worn off on me.” I held his other hand. “Clark must’ve s**t his pants.” “Except that he always seems to be naked, but yeah.” He gave my hand a squeeze. “Why did you type my name and not yours. Help then Max. Why not Help Nord? You’re the one who needs help.” “But your name he might know; mine he won’t. Plus, your name is one letter less. Three letters were all I had left in me.” “But we need to tell him more than that next time. How can we type everything we need to type? How can we let him know everything he needs to know in order to help us? And why would he help us anyway? He didn’t even know us when we were alive.” I stroked his cheek. “We can add an or else, next time. We’re ghosts, Max. Or else would probably do the trick.” He shook his head. “I’ve been watching him for a while now. I like him. He’s smart. He gives to charity. He calls his mother most every day.” His usual grin did a U-turn. “He’s lonely, Nord. I was lonely. Lonely and scared.” “You don’t want him to be those things?” He shook his head, then shrugged. “Okay, or else, but only as a last resort.” I looked around. We were surrounded by people. Peopleish. Arby’s was chockful of ishes. In any case, there were people on all sides, but it felt like it was just him and me. But what if I was successful in this new mission of mine? What if I went poof? What if he did? Would the lonely and scared thing make a triumphant return? The thought gave me a chill—figuratively speaking, of course. “We’ll think of something, Max.”