GHOST HUNTERS WANTED. NO EXPERIENCE NEEDED. That was what sucked me into all this, that stupid ad. They even used the Ghostbusters logo. Totally illegal, sure, but it’s a Facebook ad and who cares, right? The familiar logo caught my eye, the text made me laugh, and I thought, “Sure, why not?” And I clicked their stupid ad.
I was supposed to be at my friend’s wedding this weekend. And the thing is, maybe I was there? Only I’m pretty sure it was canceled. I went to the bride’s funeral. But—let me back up. I knew both Aldin and Petra from college. They met in Intro to Shakespeare sophomore year and hit it off immediately. They were both dramatic types, so their relationship was pretty entertaining for all of us. You know the type I mean, right? Nothing was ever middle of the road. Things were always either fantastic or ruined. Nothing in between.
Late last year, I suffered a stroke. The doctors tell me that I was lucky, by which they mean I survived. On the whole, I’m not certain that counts as luck. The left side of my body was all but paralyzed. I can manage to move my leg by swinging it like a club, but all dexterity is gone. My hand is useless, its feeble movements too erratic to even hold a book. My speech is slurred into incoherence, and I have a hard time making the words I want come out, anyway. Children point and whisper when I’m out in public. I can’t blame them. Half of my face hangs slack, the muscles drooping until I look like a wax figure left out in the sun.
I got fired today. I can’t fault my boss for it. He called me in for the monthly review, just like every month, and asked me to show him what I’ve been working on. I opened up my mouth to tell him and realized: I had absolutely no idea. Literally, I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d done at work for the past month. Valdis, my boss, gave me a puzzled look when I didn’t respond immediately. “Your projects, Cai. How are they going? Do you need any help, additional resources?” “I…can’t remember what I’ve been doing,” I told him.
I got fired today. I can’t fault my boss for it. He called me in for the monthly review, just like every month, and asked me to show him what I’ve been working on. I opened up my mouth to tell him and realized: I had absolutely no idea. Literally, I couldn’t think of a single thing I’d done at work for the past month. Valdis, my boss, gave me a puzzled look when I didn’t respond immediately. “Your projects, Cai. How are they going? Do you need any help, additional resources?” “I…can’t remember what I’ve been doing,” I told him.
“I want to go to Zelotes.” It was tradition. Ever since my grandmother’s vision got too bad for her to drive, every Sunday I’d take her downtown for whatever shopping she needed to get done. We’d been doing it for years, but for whatever reason, when she picked up the phone each Sunday she acted like my call was a total surprise. Oh how nice to hear from you, no I don’t really need anything, well if you’re going anyway….
I wasn’t always alone. I used to have friends. Four or five, at least. Good friends, I mean, actual friends, the kind who matter to your life. I’m pretty sure I had four. I don’t think there were five. I’m going to tell this story as it probably happened. Otherwise, it’ll be full of “I think”s and “I guess”s and “it must have been”s. So just know that this is true, as far as I can put the pieces together. There’s a lot of guesswork and probably a bit of wishful thinking, but I’ve done my best.
I’ve done something terrible. Or great. I’m not sure which. This isn’t exactly my story. It’s the story of a girl named Arianna, a friend at my school. My only friend at school, actually, and even then I’m kind of stretching the term. I’m not popular. Neither is she. Or wasn’t, anyway. But she’s not going to tell the story, so you get my outsider perspective on it.
When I was a baby, I had a mobile that hung over my crib. I remember the shapes, the circles with their patterns of dots and the wires connecting them to each other. It had a motor that made the branches swing around, and the circles would twinkle and wink in the moonlight that came in through my window at night. That mobile is one of my earliest memories, maybe even my first. I can remember lying there looking up at it and feeling warm, safe and content.
MISSING CAT, the poster said. It had a black-and-white picture of the cat in question, a generic-looking animal with mottled fur and a bored expression. It listed the cat’s name and description and gave a phone number to call. I silently wished the pet owners luck as I jogged by, but I didn’t slow down to examine the poster. It was a cat. It had wandered off outside, as cats do. For their sake, I hoped it found its way home again, but I certainly wasn’t about to go looking for it.
The dog ran away today. It’s an easy lie, a simple one. Believable. No one questions it. Everyone knows how dogs are. There’s some work to follow through on it, of course. Walking around the neighborhood yelling, whistling. Putting up posters. Fielding calls from people who claim to have seen the dog. Which they haven’t, obviously, but I have to play along for the kids. It’s sad to watch the hope flare and fade in their faces, but what’s the alternative? The truth wouldn’t make them any happier.
It started as a joke. My wife and I host a lot of parties, and if you’ve ever done cleanup after a party, you know that people leave things behind. Hats and coats constantly, scarves, purses, whatever. One time I found a pair of prescription glasses stuck in between the couch cushions. They were thick lenses, too, like Velma-thick. I don’t know how the owner made it out of the front door without them, let alone how they drove home.
We called it The Deef. It was supposed to be a joke. We had a game, the group of us. It didn’t really have a name. It was just the cryptid game. It was simple: every time we got together, one of us had to share a monster story. That was basically it. We’d started it back in college, and just sort of never stopped. There were more rules than that, of course. It had to be original. No more than one story introduced per get-together. Whoever had the best monster was winning.
