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[Halloween 2015]

Ghost Story: It’s 10 p.m.­ Do you know where your soul is?

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Marvin Lucas

Leaves slid across the patio, moving at the whim of the evening breeze. A body was on the ground—there but not there, as he’d absentmindedly stepped over it, fully invested in the conversation that was now at its sweet spot.

They breathed in the wet autumn air and talked about how poetic life seems when skies are grey and darkening. But then his mind took a walk. He was standing outside of the conversation, watching it. He knew this game.

The doctor looked at the sky and asked, “So, you become those people?”

“No, of course not. But I live a flicker of their lives somehow—the ideal version of their lives. I’m never them. I’m just seeing their reality as I perceive it, and sometimes it’s real. Or a shadow of real.”

This was bullsh*t. His brain never shut off anymore, not with all these house guests stopping in all the time. And with so much company, things had fallen out of order. What he really wanted from the doctor was consistency, someone to anchor him.

The doorbell rang. A waitress stopped at his table to ask for his order, and the bus arrived exactly when it was supposed to. He looked across the patio at a chair that was never there, eavesdropped on the discussion at hand. The woman talking about last summer on the houseboat smoked. She scratched her ankle and set her foot back down, extending her toes to examine them. “How do you come back?” the doctor asked.

He thought about it, wanting only to say something interesting. He’d say the truth if he could find it. The body tripped him. He was taking steps backward and kicked his heel right into it. His face flushed at the thought of the doctor seeing him stumble.

The door burst open, and strangers rushed onto the patio. They covered their noses and mouths as they looked at the guy on the ground. There was concern when they lifted him, a careful effort to not disturb things.

It was then that he become aware of the knocking. What’s with that? Can’t somebody get that? It got louder, more forceful. Panicked.

As they carried the body out, the strangers glanced around the house. His torn and bloody knuckles beat at the glass inside the television, but they didn’t hear. They didn’t see him. They just shut off the TV, and his world went black.

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