Young Writers Society

After a few rounds of satyr fighting and beer, the trio staggered out into the sunlight.

“Guys, if we’re all ghosts, how are we drunk?”

“Frank, you’ve been a ghost for six hours and that’s your most pressing question?”

“Yes.”

Lily left the boys standing in the parking lot and went to find the carriage. A few cats appeared out of the alley behind the bar, some were living, some full form and few were just gray forms floating along. They all quickly rushed behind the reaper except for a small kitten that rolled over to Frank.

He leaned down and scooped it up.

"Aw, isn't he just precious?"

Fan lifted his coat to his face and backed away from the cat.

"We don't know what kind of paranormal diseases it might have."

"It's just a kitten."

"Or is it, Frank? Or is it?"

"Hey Frank! What're you doing around here?"

"Hey Marty. I finally bit the big-time bullet. Unlike you just skipping out every time with a hip wound."

"Hell, you know it hurts just as much. By the way, do you remember Duke from the Seattle department?"

Frank turned to look at the slightly portly man dressed in a leather jacket with a badge and a gun hanging from his hip. He extended his hand while saying, "If I was a bit younger maybe but I can't for the life of me remember your face."

Marty picked up his cane and pointed to Frank's ghostly form.

"Funny that you would say 'for the life of me' at a time like this."

"Well I've got to have a hobby in my eternal age."

"Yeah of course. It was nice seeing you Frank, just wish it had been under better circumstances."

As Marty and Duke walked past, they gave stares to Fan and Lily, like they had never bothered to notice them before but were very interested now. At a point when they thought they were out of earshot, Duke turned to Marty.

"A repo agent hanging around with a phantom and a reaper. Are you sure he was alright in the head?"

"Not anymore."

Lily was the only one to hear their muttering from the left-hand side of the carriage. Fan and Frank were still in the back fighting over the little kitten that had joined their journey. Of course, neither one of them was holding the kitten anymore, now she just had to drive and watch to make sure it didn't run under her feet.

Felix sat obediently on the seat and stared down at the small kitten named 'Oscar'. He watched as it floated around and would every so often resume full form, before bouncing back to the gray shadow. It started to climb up the seat when Fan was finally made aware of its presence again.

He took the newspaper out of his lap and swatted at it.

"Hey! Get off the upholstery, your buddy already ruined it."

Felix turned in shock to Fan who was daring to call this little kitten his buddy. No matter the names that they had been given, there was no way that he was willingly going to be the playdate of this disease-ridden creature. Every time he tried to dodge away from it, the kitten just followed him and smashed its face into his fur.

Lily kept driving through the event and tried very hard to ignore what was happening in the front and back seat. It was hard enough to concentrate on the road without Fan’s shouting, the cats meowing and Frank snoring all the way in the back. The road was packed with cars from both worlds and none of them wanted to behave in a polite way.

Once church is done, the drinking cycle just begins again, doesn’t it?

It was hard to tell in a town like this if the driver was just old, drunk or both. Most often the answer was both, which meant that Fan almost never drove between the hours of 5am and 5pm, when it was prime senior citizen hours. Lily was the one who had driven the carts and jeeps and tanks during wars, not Fan the mild-mannered country boy.

She laughed at the thought of Fan being a sweet and innocent soul, as she looked back to him staring out the window. The trip home was always longer because they weren’t always sure where they would go home to. Fan lived in the attic in the church, but it was starting to be risky after he had some late night interactions with Father Alvarez. Meaning that Alvarez was in his pajamas and was not hallucinating and saw a full form Fan leaning into the refrigerator.

And then there was another occurrence including Fan being mainly naked and Alvarez being completely naked. Lily hadn’t heard about this one from Fan but rather from Alvarez when she went in her human form to talk about funeral arrangements. He was leaning over in a pew with a small journal in his hand, recording something about the hallucinations continuing and how they were always of a man. The particular event he was describing now wasn’t as innocent as the kitchen mix-up.

She didn’t read much before the man noticed her presence but just enough to get a sense for how bad the situation was. Yes. It was getting risky as well as risqué.

Even in the spirit world, Fan continued to cause trouble for the others around him. And he knew it and there were a lot of things that he was regretting as he stared out the window. It was better that they were going to Lily’s house out in the middle of nowhere, otherwise he probably would have crept down the rafters to spy on the young priest again.

Part of his old soul was telling him that it was a sin, but it had years since he had really looked at someone. Years since he had ever felt anything about anyone but himself and his own basic survival. Fan had lived through so many difficult times in history that he didn’t really know what to do now and he knew he could live his life with a partner, it just couldn’t be this man.

He turned to Frank beside him who has somehow now asleep, even as the carriage jumped over every bump. He wondered about Frank’s life and how happy he must have been with his vampire husband. It might have been an awkward marriage but it was probably better than the nothingness he was feeling in his heart.

And then he looked forward to Lily, the girl who had her heart broken a few centuries back and ran off to be a nun. Then she died young, became a reaper and as far as Fan knew, had spent the rest of her time walking around breaking the hearts of others. Lily had lived through just as much as he had and probably even more, but she wasn’t like him. She didn’t have the same ethical limitations on who she could sleep around with or if she did, they didn’t matter to her anymore.

Fan noticed how the world around them was getting much darker. He flipped his watch over to check the time. 18:30. The sun shouldn’t have been setting for another hour at least but still the world was growing dark around them.

As they passed under a bridge with trucks rumbling above, Frank finally woke up.

“Where are we?”

Fan didn’t answer him for a few minutes, instead studying the scenery. The plants were all still living but had turned to dark shades of black, purple and blue. The spiders that hung from the trees were bigger than trash can lids. And far off in the distance there was the sound of screaming and festival music.

Fan turned back to Frank and wondered how to explain where they were. Even as the great repo man Frank claimed to be, Fan was betting on him not knowing what this place was.

“Frank, welcome to Reaper Town.”

“For the last goddamn time Fan, it’s called Pine Terrace.”