DISCLAIMER: See previous entries.
Warning: Alan heavy chapter, not as much Phantom stuff. But a LOT of plot movement.
My sleeping pattern has been getting worse. I've old you about some of the time I sleep like everyone else, other times I'm up all night and never even yawn. This is what I call my ghostly insomnia. Have you ever seen a ghost sleep? Neither have I. Maybe that's why I can only get some shut eye half of the time. But lately I've been up at night more than ever. Our tale starts with me getting my first hour of sleep in nearly a week.
…and being jerked out of it by a thin magazine whacking me square in the nose.
I shot upright, flipping the pamphlet that hit me onto my lap as I looked around to find myself lying on an overstuffed couch in the top floor library. Towering over the short-legged couch was my cousin, arms crossed and her eyes locked on my idle form like a sniper sight. I glanced between my attacker and the magazine, seeing it was one of those grocery store tabloids about aliens and other fake stuff. I glanced back up at Kirby, who hadn't moved an inch.
"…uh…was I snoring?"
She didn't laugh. Her blue-emerald eyes just narrowed slightly, forcing me to glance down and notice the headlines of the magazine she'd thrown at me.
Aliens go on strike, no more abductions?
Elvis's son not really dead, he says so!
Angel in leather jacket seen at crime scenes, appears on film!
I was about to read the one about talking cows when the third one caught my eye. I slowly looked back up at Kirby, who had softened her glare slightly but was now sitting on the table with her arms loosely crossed. I cleared my throat, pulling an explanation out of thin air.
"…they're fake?"
She extended one of her giraffe legs and flipped the front page over to one of the splash pages featuring pictures of the 'biker-angel' as they called it. I squinted at the cheaply printed film captures.
"...so he has my haircut, white is a popular color."
She just kept giving me that look. A month ago and I'd be on my knees with this kind of attack, but I've built up a slight defense to it. Instead of curling up in the fetal position I just sighed, causing her mouth to curl in a triumphant but stern smile. She nodded for me to go on. I picked up the cheap read and flipped the pages as I told her about my recent night life.
"I've just been checking out some high-profile cases, seeing if I could help track anyone."
A sharp, Latin-forged remark.
"They have pictures of you. They're pieces of shit and you can't even make out your skin color, but it's you."
I shrunk into the couch slightly, rubbing my neck in realization. Kirby reached up and rubbed her eyes, her drill sergeant disposition melting away instantly. I figured out later it's very hard for her to look serious. Heck, that little glare she used just now may have pulled an underdeveloped muscle, takes more to frown than to smile.
"Primo, how did they even see you?"
I shook my head in disbelief as I looked over the various pictures of normal crime scenes with a blurry white figure with a dark torso on the sides of the pictures.
"I was in stealth mode. This cheap film they use must pick up heat glare or something."
She nodded, her face going back to her usual sunny outlook as she tilted her head sideways to look at the pictures that honestly looked like a ten year old dumped water colors on a picture and it came out looking like a person.
"My friend mentioned these on the phone so I picked up a copy. I thought it was just more fake stuff until she mentioned how it only appeared on major crime scenes."
I nodded, focused on the blurry specter that looked like it was leaning on the wall of an expensive condo turned shooting range. If you squinted, it was like its head was looking at the bullet marks in the wall next to it. They were made using soft-texture ammunition, harder to trace using firing pin tracks.
The problem is, they aren't clean shots. It can take a whole round to get a guy down with these things and that's if you're a great marksmen, judging by numerous discharges in the walls this guy should have stuck to a BB gun.
"…why'd you make a big deal over this? You can't tell it's me, I've never heard of a Halfa working for the FBI, and I don't think Vlad reads these magazines are closely as your friend does. Speaking of which, did they ever catch Batboy?"
I handed the flimsy stack of newspaper scrap to Kirby over the gap in the furniture, she shook her head sadly.
"I asked her about that when she called, he's still out there."
I rolled my eyes, how could a mutant bat creature be on the loose for decades at a time and still be known as 'Batboy'? Are there too many copyright laws for him to grow up and be Batman(Property and Trademark of DC Comics)? I reached down and adjusted the beltline of the cutoffs I'd been wearing when I snuck up here to catch a much-needed rest. Away from the staircase that Kirby clomped up and down every ten minutes at random intervals.
"…Kirb'? Why'd you look at me like I killed some one?"
She flipped through the cheap ads for weight loss machines and sex life enhancing hats as she stated plainly.
"I figured it'd make you feel guilty enough to take me to the gym, the TV channels are busted and the internet hates me."
My eyebrow rose from the seemingly dead, moving an amazing centimeter North.
"…you still can't work a web browser, huh?"
She snapped the trashy magazine closed, tossing it over her shoulder onto the table as she started examining her toes while she sat cross-legged on the oak table.
"Nah, Kerri taught me how to do that yesterday. But now every time I go to a web site or something a bunch of jerks start saying I'm a guy pretending to be a girl."
"…welcome to the internet. Where men are men, women are desperately lonely men, and children are undercover cops. So, we're going to work out or what?"
Four Sweaty Hours Later
"Jab. Jab. Hook. Cross. Jab."
I responded by carving that set of punches into the logo side of the bag, behind which Kirby called out combinations while she held the bag to judge how hard each punch hit. Our workouts had gone smoothly and we had time to kill. She proposed this 'game' out of the blue, and here we are.
"Weave jab. Hook to the body. Uppercut."
As I slid to the side while throwing a jab, she called out the body hook. I smiled a bit, which she didn't see as she held the bag with both hands in front of her. I pulled back ever so slightly and launched an arcing cross into the belly of the bag. As I did everyone around us stopped skipping or punching to watch it hit its target. They knew this punch.
It didn't look like those mighty punches sluggers are famous for. If anything, it just looked like a well-thrown right hook that may hurt a little. But when this quick, finesse based punch hit the bag a sound rang out like a side of beef hitting a brick wall. Everyone who heard it, let alone saw it winced. A few of them had been on the business end of that back when I was on the prowl.
My cousin on the other hand, had never even heard of my punch. I heard a yelping squeal from behind the bag as it swung back violently like no one was holding it. I reached one of my gloved fists and stopped the bag from swinging before peeking around the bulging side of the heavy-duty bag.
Sprawled out on the floor a good eight feet behind the bag, Kirby lay staring at the ceiling. Thankfully she had been wearing that headgear of hers when the punch sent her flying, even with the bag in front of her the shockwave got her. She eventually pushed herself into a sitting position, the silent gym waiting for her reaction as they held in smirks and guffaws.
She reached up to scratch her forehead under the padded bar of her helmet before slowly panning her eyes around the gym at everyone else. She asked in a voice that everyone heard because of the pure tone, not the volume.
"…did ya'll know he could do that?"
…she sometimes did a white trash accent when she was dazed, tired or coming down from a sugar rush. Everyone, young or old, black or white nodded at the golden girl who hadn't gotten off the floor yet. She sighed, pushing up onto one arm as she rolled her eyes.
"Next time we'll put the bag against the wall, and I call the punches…"
Some smartass called out from the locker room.
"We tried that once, we made the best of it and turned the hole into a closet"
Everyone except my training partner and I laughed, more at the private joke that is my right hook than the way Kirby stumbled onto her feet, finding her cat-shaming balance within seconds. All while cursing in Spanish. Man, who ever lands this girl in a church is just going to have a ball of a marriage, right after I threaten him with an ice pick about even thinking of hurting her.
After she dusted herself off and bowed to her new audience, we dumped our equipment into my old military duffel bag before heading out to the train station. Until I spotted my Aunt Janet at a fruit market. And I made the mistake of nudging Kirby and pointing out her mother in the crowd. It turns out our Cuban grandmother is off on a Vegas weekend, Kirby is welcome in her own home for a change.
One thing led to another and we ended up having dinner in the extensive apartment above the dance studio where Janet and her husband lived, and had lived ever since she bought the studio. At first it was just two rooms. As hey got a financial platform they slowly bought the other tiny apartments before buying the entire building and remodeling it into a large home. Kirby's father, a very skilled carpenter of all trades who helped me rebuild the rotting barn a few years back.
My Uncle Carlos wasn't always the handyman in the family. Back in the day he was a detective with a sterling arrest record and a police academy shooting range named after him. You'd guess it with one look at him. He's a bit taller than me, which is saying something. About the same size, but I'm more the bodybuilder type while he's the construction worker type. He also spends every morning grooming a stupid Zorro-style mustache that he only had because Janet loved it.
Does all this surprise you? Me being the nephew of a cop, detective and carpenter? If it did, you need to go back to junior high and get your diploma. And as I've mentioned, Kirby and I were like siblings as kids. Hope that explains a few things. When Janet led us up to steps to their home, he was in his workshop putting a spray finish on an old Oriental table, Janet collects foreign furniture.
The mother and daughter started working away in the kitchen, chattering in Spanish about the goings on in the neighborhood. I stood there like a POW until Janet laughed and said I could run off and play with my uncle. I let out a whoop, and skipped like a kindergartener down the hall to his domain where he was finishing up the table finish. When he saw me he cut the pressure on the spray gun, pulled his mask down and smirked at me the same was Kirby did.
"Alano! Where you been? That daughter of mine giving you any trouble?"
He looked menacing as he pulled off his leather gloves, I pretended to be nervous.
"…No, Sir…"
We both broke into an identical chuckle, the ongoing joke in this family was, you guessed it, Kirby. Her father joked about being strict with her, even though he was the kinder parent. And my aunt could go on for hours about her daughter being an unholy combination of her own and her husband's worst habits. Yeah, they loved her more than…eh…more than Frost does, that dog never gets off her bed.
I caught up with my uncle as I helped him restore some more furniture my aunt had imported. This is what he does with his spare time, roll with my aunt's hobbies. He has the time, anyhow. When I was four or five he led a bust in the headquarters of a drug ring..
It didn't go so well, he took sixteen bullets point blank. The weird thing? A week in the hospital later he was fine, only one of the shots had even come close to seriously hurting him. The rest of them? They were still lodged in various parts of his body. That's enough insurance money to retire young.
For a while he loved living the easy life.Helping Jane a the studio, sudying carpentry. But after a short while he started hating it. He began trying to get involved in freelance detective cases and the like, the local department keeps telling him he's been through enough and he needs a break.
He got so fed up he started keeping track of every major unsolved crime in the area. Without his wife knowing, Janet and Kirby both hate police work. Kirby caught on a while back that her father had been teaching me the trade, but her mother still thinks I just hang around her husband too much.
As I helped him re-attach a clawed chair leg, he looked past the doorway to see if anyone was in earshot before asking if I've read anything about the Belanksi case. I thought over what to say before mentioning reading about soft-core ammunition being suspected. I didn't mention the victim had terrible taste in carpeting. We whispered about these unsolved murders and thefts while covering our banter with the sound of sanding or power tools.
When dinner was served we kneeled around the knee-height table to eat. Where we eating Asian food? Actually, Kirb's family just liked to kneel when they ate, so they used these low tables but skipped the chopsticks. As I sampled the three kinds of chicken Kirby mentioned to her father about her becoming a boxer.
He stared in disbelief at his daughter as I gave myself the Heimlich maneuver with the back of my chair. He quietly asked what she meant. She smiled at my choking form before going on about the last few weeks at the gym and in the barn.
By the time she had finished and I popped out that chicken bone, my uncle had lost all signs of understanding as he sat there pulling on the end of his famed mustache. I thought I was going to end up being nailed inside a Chinese treasure chest until he asked me what style I'd been teaching his daughter. Cops have boxing leagues, do the math.
"…eh…well, I was a street swarmer who could weave…she more or less copies me."
He kept adjusting his facial hair as he stared at the place I was sitting, but not at me directly. Suddenly the side of his mouth curled in a manner identical to way Kirby had that very morning.
"Alan. I want you to teach my daughter as much as you can, but on one condition."
I stayed silent. Dear god, I have to kill some one don't I?
"…she wears headgear. Pass the salsa."
I slowly pushed the bowl over to him. He thanked me in their native language before starting a new conversation with Janet about where they get their furniture from. My eyes drifted over to Kirby, who was trying to tear a steak apart by holding it with her knife and pulling on it with her teeth. She eventually snapped a piece off, and as she started chewing she flashed me a wink. Why? That's all I've been asking myself lately.
After the other parts of the meal had been eaten Kirby and I had to catch a twilight-hour train back home. As I snatched up my duffel bag Janet whispered something to Kirby, who just shook her head in response before kissing her mother on the cheek and bouncing down the steps to the building entrance. When I caught up with her on the sidewalk I asked.
"What'd your mom ask?"
She idly watched a tandem bicycle float by.
"She asked about that vision she had of you flying, if anything happened. I told her you got a motorcycle, that's about it."
I stopped dead on the side of the sidewalk as Kirby kept walking before looking over her shoulder at me in confusion.
"…you…never told anyone…"
She glanced in both directions like a cat turning a corner before shrugging, closing her eyes to show how little she cared.
"Who'd believe me?"
She turned back around and continued walking. I jogged up next to her and we walked in silence to the train station. Well, she was humming one of her original tunes so it wasn't exactly silent. Then again, are things ever silent when this girl is involved?
That Night
From a couple hundred feet up I had a clear view of the old country roads. It was an old road going through a forested mountain area, mostly tourists and the like coming and going in the direction of the reserved camp sites. I was flying high in the night sky, following the road by the lights of the cars and the shiny trailers some had. Why was I out in the middle of nowhere following camper traffic? Here comes my reason now…
A sound of screeching brakes and swerves came like a wave down the dark road as a glowing object shot right down the middle of the two-lane road, not changing direction or avoiding the other cars. From up here it looked like a neon green station wagon. With a brightly painted Confederate flag on the roof. Even from up here the sounds of drunken yells and whoops in a Southern dialect coming from the car were detectable.
The car was going…fast. Insanely fast. Speeding right against traffic, causing the other cars to swerve or crash into the gates on the side of the road as the deceased hillbilly drivers yelled out what a hoot it was. I narrowed my brightly glowing eyes as I kicked my flight speed up a notch and started a shallow descent toward the secluded highway, planning to attack from above so I could control which way they crashed, last thing these poor tourists need are more accidents.
Soon enough I was flying over the beat-up car, it looked like it'd been through a couple accidents. Maybe the ghosts inside were re-enacting how they died, that would explain why those voices sound intoxicated. I was still invisible, last thing I need is some one taking pictures of their wrecked car for insurance company and catch me on film. Unfortunately for some reason this cuts down on my top flight speed, must be that concentration thing again.
Soon enough the highway was evacuated by the local police to avoid more collisions. So now these hoodlums were just tearing rubber down an empty road in the middle of the night. The yelling sounded like different three people, won't this be a walk in the candy factory. I made a sharp descent down so I was flying right next to the driver side window, which was open along with all the other cheap roll-downs that they haven't made since the 70s.
Leaning over the chain-link steering wheel was a green-skinned, buck toothed guy with a trucker hat pulled sideways over his white, greasy hair as he laughed at a joke that no one told. He didn't notice the two hundred pound guy in the jacket flying outside his window, two feet away. He was showing off how he could drive with his eyes closed.
In the passenger seat was a bleached blonde girl, wearing torn cutoffs and a red checked shirt tied above her midriff. Wow, sleezy trailer girls also come in green. And rolling around in the back seat was some lanky guy wearing just a pair of overalls over a scrawny green chest, sporting a cowboy hat pulled over his face. They kept laughing as he swerved all over the road, I had to swerve back and forth to stay with them. I raised one hand to my mouth, keeping the other extended in front of me as I flew.
"…you kids mind pulling over?"
The driver snapped his bloodshot green eyes and gawked at me for a second before grinning, showing off his cracked teeth and slamming the sick shift to the side. The car took off in a cloud of exhaust, leaving me coughing and blinded as I kept flying forward. When I broke away from the fumes I saw the green wagon tearing off into the distance, gaining more speed by the second.
I went all out trying to catch up with them again, but eventually I just slowed to a stop on the side of a road and dropped down onto a tree stump. Great, now idiots are selling their soul so they can get some extra horsepower in their roach coach. I dropped my face forward into my hands, rubbing my forehead as I wondered what to do. The bad guy got away. What now? It's not like I can cut to a commercial break. I let my hands slide off my sweat-filmed face as I heard something. What the…
My eyes shot open as I saw that same green car fly past, this time going the opposite direction. I stared down the road and watched it disappear just like it had before. Then a few minutes later they came whooping back, not seeing me on the side of the road.
My eyebrow jerked up in confusion around the fifth time. I stood up and crossed my arms, watching the way they shot back and forth without a care in the world. If I stepped into the road they'd just swerve around me, and at that speed I'd probably snap into quarters.
Maybe their territory is limited to this road? Is this the path they died on, so they have to stick to it? A few more drive-bys later I clenched my hand into a fist before throwing it out before me, opening my palm and letting a handful of glowing green spikes fly out of my hand and clatter onto the road. I stepped back and put two fingers in my ears, this was going to be loud.
I braced myself as they came around again. They screamed by when they saw me standing there, waving like drunks right up until their tires hit the spikes, popping all four of them with a deafening pop and lurching them forward. I opened my eyes to view the damage, seeing just black concrete with my spikes still glowing from it.
I slowly turned my head to see the car still going, now sending up sparks on both sides as they ran on the rims. And judging by the screams this was very entertaining to these freaks as they sped down their little stretch of road.
I just took a deep breath and smacked myself in the face. Once again, cartoon logic will get you nowhere. I sat back down on that stump as they sped past again the other way, showering my feet with hot sparks but I didn't notice.
I thought stopping ghosts was supposed to be fast paced. I was sitting here watching a car speed by that I was supposed to catch but couldn't. Now I know how that one coyote felt, all I need now is for their horn to go 'Meep-Meep' every time they passed.
I reached into my jacket pockets and emptied them out onto the tree stump, maybe I had something useful. Let's see, gum wrappers…Kirby must be wearing my clothes again. Pocket knife, won't touch ghosts. Keys to the bike and my house. The little owner's manual for the Termisake…wait…
I stared at the motorcycle pamphlet for a second before sitting down on the stump, making myself comfortable and opening the front cover.
"Chapter One, you and your transmission…"
That damn car went by again, the girl in the passenger seat yelled she liked my hair. She pronounced it 'Har'. Man, if you die drunk you stay drunk? Or are these punks just idiots? Okay, back to transmissions…
3 Hours Later
"…and wipe with a damp cloth…"
I closed the little book, having spent my precious time reading the entire thing. The ghost-hick mobile had gone by a few hundred times while I sat there reading. I stuck the little bookle into my back pocket before hopping onto my feet and walking onto the side of the road.
I waited, and a second later the car and the hillbillies sped by, still enjoying this. I watched them speed off before turning my eyes back to the road and closing them. I clenched my fists and teeth as I concentrated for a few seconds, and when I pried my eyelids apart slightly, what I saw made them shoot wide open.
Parked in front of me was an exact replica of the motorcycle I love like a girlfriend. Exact model and build, same seat style even. Identical, except for this one being painted neon green instead of crimson. I circled it slowly, examining all the parts to see if it could actually work.
After checking the shocks I slowly mounted it, leaning it off the kickstand and taking hold of the handles. I wondered whether to turn the green key in the ignition, or whether to check it over again. I was worried I got a detail wrong, like forgetting to make brake cables or fuel lines. Why do you think I read that thing for three hours? I had to memorize it. Right when I was about to hop off I heard the car coming again behind me. I hopped back on and took the key in my hand. Well, it's not like I'm strapped for time…
The incoming muffler sound finally got to me. I gave the key a quick twist as I held my breath. I let it out in a sigh as I felt the bike come to life under me, the sound of a nearly silent engine heating up between my knees. I tightened my grip on the starter the car came closer, and I muttered to myself in a voice identical to that of my second grade teacher.
"Mrs. Fenton, your son is honestly an idiot…he can barely read a stop sign, and his art projects look like train wrecks!"
…and I just memorized 260 pages of schematics and made a working motorcycle with my mind…and…eh, ghost powers…
I shot my eyes to the right as the car tore by, the drunken yells with it. As they started to speed away I jerked a lever and held tight as the chopper shot forward over the pavement, quickly getting in line with the car I'd been chasing for close to four hours. I yelled out the feeling as the wind cut through my silver bangs. Take that, Mrs. Turnberry. Oh yeah, and those art projects sucked!
I drifted over, once again next to the driver's window. This time I whistled to catch his attention, he did a double take when he saw the bike.
"…where ya'll been? We's been waitin' for ya'!"
…so, they kept driving back and forth because they wanted me to chase them…is the afterlife that boring? I glared as I leaned over the bars of my bike, the hick grinned back. Then he slammed the steering wheel toward me, sharply swerving the car right into me. I cursed, tilting myself parallel to the road and drifting out of crashing range as the passengers yelled that I was a dead man. Tell me something I don't know.
He saw me dodge and veered over again to slam my bike, this time I slammed the gas and shot ahead of the fender, arching in front of the car and braking so I was now coasting next to the passenger window. Now, remember we're going above the speed limit by a couple hundred miles…when the female ghost-hick spat at me out her window the wad shot sideways down the road, having barely gone a foot forward. I would have spat back but she yelled to her boyfriend which side I was on, and I gunned it to avoid another sideswipe, this time staying in front of them.
My plan worked, they hit the gas and tried to run my smaller vehicle down from behind. I responded by gunning it whenever their rusted bumper came close to my back tire. This went on for a few quick miles before I called back to my pursuers.
"…how are the brakes on that thing?"
Some one in the back seat yelled back.
"…wha?"
I swerved to the right, letting one arm loose from the handles to give them the finger as I dovetailed out from in front of them, they shot off past me. Right as they yelled for the driver to turn around, there was a metal crash and the sound of scraping rocks, adding sparks to the ones being created by the car's bare wheels.
I did a half donut through their dust cloud, slowing down and hitting the brake when my headlights revealed a torn metal bar in front of me. I hit the kickstand, dismounting and walking to find that beyond the mangled gate was a sharp little cliff ending in a straight drop, gotta love these mountain paths.
I walked all the way to the rocky edge, looking down at the dark abyss that the full moon didn't shed any light on. I summoned a flame and launched it down off the cliff, watching it go down all the way to see if its green light reflected off anything metal. It stubbed out in the dirt at the bottom of the cliff, revealing that the car and the passengers had disappeared after going off the cliff. Am I the only ghost who remembers I can fly?
I walked along the metal guard bar that the car had gone clear through. The headlights from my still running bike flickered on something, and I saw a tiny wooden shrine on the edge of the drop, a little framed picture of three teenagers in a car identical to the one those ghosts had been driving.
I stared at the little shrine for a second, reading the date and time of the accident that happened decades ago before looking over at the chopper and snapping my fingers. It disappeared into thin air, along with the glow of its headlights leaving me in the dark. But before the light fully faded I muttered.
"Learning disabled…HA!"
So, how'd I know about the cliff? I flew here, I saw the cliffs along some of the roads and thought of them when the car started tailing me. Did I send them off like that on purpose? Yes. Can I do that thing where I make a ghost-cycle again? I could, but I'd have to read the entire manual over again to refresh my memory. I took a deep breath of the country air as I looked up at the stars. And one thought crossed my mind.
Where….the heck…was I?
A coyote howled in the distance. Yeah, I'm screwed. Okay, I can memorize a motorcycle blueprint, why can't I remember which highway I took here?
Two Days Later, Please Don't Ask How I Got Home
Coupons, coupons, dating service, dating service coupons, death threats…
I flipped my junk mail into one of Kirby's guitar cases, I was stretched out on the floor of the loft and surrounded by instruments that I knew from bridge to pick but couldn't play to save an orphanage from a guitar-hating alien warlord. Why was I up here? I found a bunch of my mail up here while looking for one of the hoodies Kirby stole from me. I'm serious, she has a stack of letters addressed to me that she forgot about.
A week ago she took upon herself the responsibility of collecting the mail every day and delivering it to each Fenton Family Member(code-named FFM units), usually by slipping the letters under their door. This system works fine for the twins' fan mail and my folks, but she usually forgets that she has a stack of perfume-scented letters addressed to me with a return address in France sitting on her pile of music paper scraps.
So here I was, weeding out the unwanted advertisements and occasionally reading a letter actually written by another person. The internet has been going through some issues, paper mail is back as a fad. I got a few letters from old friends, one of which is getting married in a week to a girl who is going to run off with everything he owns. And he knows it.
Next up, we have a postcard from Rita. She's still down in Puerto Rico doing missionary work in an area that isn't exactly a tribal village. It's more like a small town that just doesn't have a church, she got the short end of the stick in this Peace Corps thing. Who's Rita? She was my trainer's wife since high school. Over the years we've gotten to be pretty close, in fact she wrote a P.S. about her younger daughter's son asking how his Uncle Al is doing.
Uncle Al. My trainer really considered me a son, his grandkids act like I'm their real uncle. I haven't seen any of them since the funeral. He had talked about writing a will during his last years, but none of us met with his lawyer to talk about it. We all took it pretty hard. Walt was just that kind of guy, his wife took it all in stride while I was out of it for months.
I remember a few nights before that fated hotel convention, so few months ago yet so long. After months of dull shock, I entered the next stage of grieving and pretty much went into denial. For the first few months as a ghost I told people I retired for education purposes.
In fact I told myself that right up until Kirby pulled it out into the open, asking why I gave up my chance at the rings. I still haven't built up the nerve to openly thank her for that.
Speak of the she-devil. I saw the barn door creak open, followed by the creaks of some one climbing the ladders. I stashed Rita's letter under my pile of junk mail as my cousin's head popped up over the edge of the loft floor, looking around like a groundhog before seeing me and vaulting up onto her feet and walking over.
"You getting your mail, or finally letting me give you a guitar lesson?"
I waved my fanned out stack of mail as I walked around her to the ladder. She spun around so she could watch me go, watching me grab the sides of the ladder with a slightly sad expression. She was smiling of course, but it was just a smile, not a Kirby-smile.
These last couple days we haven't seen much of each other, she's been taking the train down to a recording studio and talking deals with her new agent while I've been cracking down on my Fenton research.
I slid down the worn ladder, landing on my feet softly and walking over to the door she'd left open. Right as I was about to go find Frost and try to get him to play Frisbee, I heard a voice call down from the loft. I looked over my shoulder to see Kirby standing on the edge of the loft, waving for me to come back. I walked back a few steps so I could hear her.
"…yeah, Kirb'?"
She grinned down at me, scratching her crossed arms with her stubby nails.
"…I've gotta work on a canción and I'll be out here for a while…"
I nodded, stepped back to walk out again. She saw this and blurted out.
"…could you hit the bags while I play?"
My eyebrow broke its high jump record as I stared at her, she blushed slightly. For once in her lifetime, Kirby wasn't in control of a situation. I thought it over, how could I not with that begging look she was giving me?
"…I guess I could work on slip jabs…"
She tried to hide her relief, failing by smiling so widely when I went to wrap my hands. What the heck happened? Well, it seems we've developed a symbiotic relationship. She can think clearer and write songs easily when I was pounding leather on the floor below her. And I had gotten used to weaving and striking to those fast riffs that drove my parents and their old fashioned taste so crazy that her music was exiled to the barn along with my boxing.
A hopeless fighter and a talented musician working together. Being infused with Ghost DNA I can believe. Chasing the Demonic Dukes of Hazard on a magic motorcycle I can believe. But having a girl who's going to make it bigger than you ever will both financially and fame-wise, ask for your help? You people expect me to believe that Kirby and I enjoy being around, let alone need each other?
I believe it, I just don't want to.
Author's Notes
...he finally admitted it, huh? But let's get serious. Why the heck am I bringing up these nobodies in Alan's life? They're not ghosts or ghost hunters. Why did I waste a page talking about some punch? I just had to tie up some loose ends. For instance, Kirby hasn't told anyone about Alan. I've showed Kirby's family. I've introduced more of Alan's trainer, post-mortem. Alan took out the Dukes of Hazard. Okay, so that wasn't a loose end, I can just barely stand Sean William Scott, and Johnny Knoxville stole my nickname. And since when can Alan do more than just fly and punch? I'm not sure, that took me by surpise as well...Sorry if this chapter is lacking, just had to get this stuff out there.