Phantom - 1.1

Father Fantome sat in the front pew of the church, noticing how quickly it was filling up. No one noticed him, which had been the norm for nearly 300 years and though the trans-Atlantic travel hadn’t been great, Florida was a much better haunting ground.

There were always all sorts of reapers lurking around during the services, just waiting for one of these little buzzards to slip away after their heart failed them. Sad that there were so many deaths but he really liked to have friends, and might have been guilty of scaring little old ladies to death in the lavatory.

Lily floated down from one of the corners with a flower in her hair, keeping her eyes on a short guy with gray hair in one of the corners. Fantome noted that he was wearing some sort of medical alert bracelet and had several stacked metal identification necklaces.
“So, is that your new target?”
“Now Fan, why would you even have to ask a silly thing like that?”
“I could have complimented the flower in your hair, but I don’t like to mix business with pleasure.”
“Well of course he’s my new target, silly goose. Frank McMillan is one mass away from going out and dying on the church steps.”

Fan took another look at the man, who was swaying back and forth in a way that he had previously accredited to the holy spirit. A white form started to slip out from behind the parishioner and look down on the body.

“Uh Lily?”
He turned to his companion only to see her out in the parking lot, lurking over a golf cart and staring at a cat. Fan didn’t know anything about collecting souls. He just knew that they needed to be collected and that he certainly did not have the right certifications for that. Lily was still haunting the cat in the parking lot, so he made the decision to capture the soul, this was his haunting territory after all.

“Pardon me but are you Frank McMillian?”
“What has happened to me?”
He rolled a few lines around in his head before deciding on the most blatant answer.
“You’re dead.”
The spirit of Frank starting shrieking and thrashing about, a sound loud enough to pierce through the veil and cause the parishioners to look up to the ceiling. Fan was not prepared for this. He tried to go after Frank but the spirit just dove head first into the ceiling fan, and the splintering soul was soon spread everywhere.

“Oh my god.”
Lily popped back in with a ghost cat, which on a normal day Fan would criticize, because she just kept collecting the spirits of cats. She was a crazy cat lady reaper.

But right now, he was dealing with a crazy reaper and a newly undead feline scratching at him because he had lost “the soul that was putting that nice bread from Publix, on the table this week.”

“Hey, easy, Sister.”
“That was a lot of lives ago. All that matters now is that you sent Frank to Hell.”
“Are you completely sure that he wasn’t going there already? I mean, when was the last time you really saw Frank in confession? I know I haven’t seen him within the last six months.”
“They never send me cases with any sin attached, I guess I seem too straight-laced to the people upstairs.”
“I wouldn’t use you and straight in the same sentence.”
“Well, I certainly don’t think anyone has associated you and ‘straight’ together, now or however many centuries ago.”
“That’s fair.”

The rapid ghost cat had settled down from scratching Fan’s face off, and now sat on Lily’s lap, as the two continued to bicker about. It continued for a bit through a series of glares and questioning glances towards Frank’s limp body, which they were keeping alive on a prayer. Lily sighed and matter-a-factly said, “You know, we need to replace his soul now.”
"We can't just take someone else’s soul."
"Fan, why do you choose this second to act innocent?"
"Because I'm a ghost."
"I thought you would have used the 'I was a priest three centuries ago' line, again."
"I like to change it up. Where are you gonna get a soul anyways, 'Soul-Mart'?"
Lily produced a small red binder, and flipped to the 'S' tab.
"It's actually called 'Souls-Are-Us'."
“Shouldn’t it be “Souls-R-Us’?”
“If you sold millions of dollars worth of souls every year on a basically black market, would you really want to be associated with a semi-defunct toy store?”
“I mean, I guess not.”
“Exactly. Now give me your car keys. Communion starts in about 45 minutes, so we have 30 minutes to get a soul and get back.”

They walked out back to Fan’s ‘car’, which was a horse drawn hearse, that was perhaps older than the ghost himself. The horses were a ghastly skeletal sight to the average human being, that is if the average human being ever had the chance to see them, which very rarely happened. Lily, still carrying the ghost cat, walked up to the horses and producing a bag of treats from her pocket.

“Lily, please don’t feed them.”
“Oh, are you afraid they’re going to get fat? They’re all bones and no skin anyways.”

Fan did his usual sigh while attaching the harnesses, and double and triple checking to make sure the leather wouldn’t slip off their rather slim figures.

“Now, where’s this store?”
“It’s in Parrish.”
“Friar. Do you know how fast I must drive to get there and get back?”
“Neck breaking speed? Good thing you don’t have one.”

This cued another sigh, as they sped off to the market.

The 20 mile trip was over in about 2 minutes. And even though he shouldn’t have been feeling dizzy after all this time of traveling at such speeds, Fan was always dizzy when he got out of the carriage.

“Grow a backbone, bud. Oh right, you can’t.”
“One of these days, Lily, one of these days.”
“We can’t be acting like an old married couple all the time. I think we spend too much time with the citizens of Sun City Center.”

Fan and Lily then walked as casually as possible, as someone can manage while trying to replace the soul in a body barely hanging around, into the store called Souls-Are-Us.
Fan ran for a cart, Lily grabbed an ad and the ghost cat whined and scratched at the leather out in Fan's car.
"Oh look Fan, that nice brand of souls, are on sale for buy one get one free."
"Lovely. Maybe they have cheese puffs on sale too."