Never Say Goodbye…
By Sakura Negai-chan
Chapter 1
"Oh, my God…" sighed the Jackal, stretching out as far as he could in his cube. "I am bored beyond all reason.
"I wonder what it would be like to crossbreed a sheep with a donkey," stated the Angry Princess glumly.
"Why, what did you have in mind, dearie?" replied the Juggernaut (or "JT") lethargically. He had just given up on prying his cube open. And so the three of them just sat there, their three ghost cubes side by side in the lonely basement. The Torn Prince looked at each of them from across the hall.
"You guys look pathetic," he said.
"Let's see, AP," the Jackal said to the Angry Princess, whom he called AP for short, "Should we pretend like we care, or should we just kind of ignore him as usual?
"It's best not to flatter him too much. We should ignore him." But if one were to think about it, what is there for twelve ghosts to do all day, locked in ghost cubes by containment spell with no one to scare the bajeezus out of?
The Withered Lover had finally gotten to the insane point of frustration. She began banging her hospital equipment against the glass of her cube, screaming gibberish; she was obviously trying to create some kind of counter spell.
"Hammer," whispered The First Born Son (or "Sonny" as they called him) to the ghost in the neighboring cube, "are all women that scary?"
You'd be surprised, kid. Just wait. Someday, I'll-" but the Hammer was interrupted by a young man wearing a gray business suit strolling down their hallway. The Torn Prince perked up.
"What are you staring at?" chuckled the young as he passed by the Prince's cube. I'm looking at your face, the Torn Prince thought, and it's really not much of a view.
"Hey, nice boobs!" the man Said to AP with a laugh. She screamed at him and threatened him with her knife. "Gaah! You! What's your problem, bad representation?" the man joked as he walked out of sight.
"Get 'im, princess!" encouraged the Pilgrimess eagerly."
"How?"
"Oh." But then, suddenly, the sound of an old machine just coming to life was heard. There was also a loud jolt as the Black Zodiac grid locked into place…and the Angry Princess's door slid open.
"Booyah!" AP hollered in total glee of finally getting out.
"Aw c'mon, Princess!" griped the Jackal, or "Jack" as he'd come to be called. "You got to kill the last one!"
"Yeah, but he didn't count--I stabbed him once and he kicked the bucket!" The Angry Princess strutted away as many of her fellow spirits requested that she put some clothes on while she's at it (she is said to have wandered Hell in the nude).
* * *
AP followed the man's footsteps all the way down to the end of the corridor. At the door she stopped and just waited for him to turn around. The man was shuffling papers around and looking through many briefcases. When he seemed to have found on that he liked, he picked it up and started towards the door.
He halted when he viewed the Angry Princess. She menacingly raised her knife to his quivering face.
"I-was just kidding back there, I uh…"
The other ghosts all cackled when the heard the man's voice crack. They began hollering things out at her, suggesting different ways to kill him, each suggestion more disgusting than the one preceding it.
"Stab him!"
"Slit his wrists and leave him for the vultures!"
"Eat him!
But AP had her own idea. She inched him closer to the doorway, her knife still raised.
"Snap his spine!"
She wasn't listening. She kept her eyes on the whirring machine, timing her kill just right.
"Cut him in-" The Jackal could not finish his sentence, but he had the right idea. For the two, sharp sliding glass doors had closed right on the man and cut him in two width-ways. The ghosts and the man were stunned.
"Half…" the Jackal completed. As the man moved his eyes to the side and his glasses and tie fell away from his body, he too slid to the floor, leaving just the back half of him against the doors where the back end of all his organs could be seen.
"Whoa…" the Great Child (GC) exclaimed, his dark, beady eyes in an expression of awe.
"Cool!" agreed the Torso. Then all of the ghosts exploded in cheers and applause. AP grinned and through her hands up in pride of her one-hit K.O. But they were interrupted by the grid locking in three more places; the Bound Woman's-
"Yes!" she yelled as she exited her cube. The Withered Lover was also released-
"Finally!" she sighed. And then, the Torso's, or "T's" unlocked.
"Score!" T hopped his cellophane-wrapped body of his cube. The three of them caught up with the Angry Princess and were ready for some fun.