“Boo!”
I jolted upright, my copy of Poe’s “The Raven” clunking to the floor beneath my folding chair.
Lou laughed. “Serves you right, showing up all hung over.”
I glared at him, wiping drool from the corner of my mouth.
“If you had to wear pink to my niece’s bridal shower last night, you’d be in the same condition as me, Lou.”
Lou’s eyes widened. “Was there cake?” he asked. “You never said if there was cake.”
I thunked my head against my chair, pining for a few more minutes of sleep.
“Why’re you reading that junk, anyway?” I cracked an eyelid to find Lou’s jowls shaking in bafflement at my literary choices.
I sighed, regretting my entire life as I bent double to retrieve the book, bile sizzling at the back of my throat. I waved a hand at the sign above his cell. Paranormal Reconditioning Unit Detention Environment. Below it, a handwritten note in bold red marker: Do Not Feed Patient. No one told me why.
“I don’t know paranormal shit, Lou.” I said, throwing a thumb at the sign. “I got this job off a Craigslist ad.” Night guard. $36/hour. There will be ghosts. Bring a book. They didn’t even care when I showed up with boobs under my plain black T-shirt.
“Well, Vicki, you know one thing. To quoth the Raven: ‘I’m starving.’” Lou laughed, pacing the opaque, egg-shaped cell the hiring guy had called a plasma something-something. Pretty much all they told me about this place so far.
“Why don’t the Prudes feed you, anyway?” I eyeballed the handwritten sign again. The Prudes ran the Paranormal Reconditioning Unit, but ever since I started last week, they’d been busy rehoming a gang of ghouls that were picking off tent dwellers under the bridge on the north side of town.
Lou slumped to the floor. “I’ve been a bad ghost,” he sighed.
He didn’t look bad. Lonely, maybe. Sad. See through, for sure. And those red lips gave me shivers. Whenever I thought about ghosts as a little girl, which wasn’t often, I never imagined them with lips.
I shook my head, pulling a string of peppered jerky from my pocket. Deprivation didn’t agree with me.
“I brought a little something for you again.” I dropped it into a food tray slot clearly meant for other detainees.
Lou leapt forward, moaning. “You really shouldn’t have.” He looked at the jerky, then up at me, gliding back and forth at the cell door. Was he pacing? Do ghosts pace?
Finally, Lou hunched, stuffing the meat in his mouth. “You’re a good one,” he said, wagging a greasy finger at me. He sucked his fingers, and I felt my own go numb. I waved my hand in front of my face, surprised. He watched me, suddenly taut as a rubber band gun, those quivering jowls a distant reminder of his momentary delight.
“No!” He slammed a palm against the plasma wall. “Vicki. Listen. You got to cut me off,” desperation put a rattle in his voice.
“Why?” my words slurred.
“You know it’s not really the meat I’ve been eating, don’t you?” he said, brows bunched up with concern.
“It’s…not?”
He rubbed his face, groaning. “They’re going to keep you here forever, Lou,” he hissed. “Dammit. You know better!” His eyes went wide, and he pressed thin, white fingers to his mouth, as if to hold in a burp.
“Too late,” he said. Something genuine shone in his eyes, something too vague to hold onto. Was this dead guy sorry for me?
“It’s nothing,” I tried to wave him off, but my hungover hands wouldn’t cooperate. “I just need a little more shut eye.” I thought about finding my chair before the floor found me, but even that felt like too much work.
“You had to be a good one.” Lou whispered, shaking his head in slow motion.
He heaved as his arms drifted to his side. Those red lips parted, revealing an eternity of swirling blackness.
I could only stand there, thinking, this here is going to be a nap.
Then the world became mist.
About the Author
Keema Waterfield won an honorable mention in our 2nd Annual Napkin Microfiction Contest (May 2022) with the award winning story The Rehabilitation of Lou the Devourer. Keema won a cash prize and will be published in Indie It Press’s 2nd COURAGEOUS CREATIVE Anthology: Volume II, in 2023.
Keema Waterfield is the author of Inside Passage, a nomadic childhood memoir set along the wild coast of Southeast Alaska. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, WIRED, Brevity, Scary Mommy, and others. She resides in Missoula, Montana, with her husband, two children, a bunch of extra instruments she doesn’t know how to play, and a revolving cast of quirky animals. She lives and writes on Séliš and Qlispé land. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @keemasaurusrex.