Chapter Eighteen: Gelatin Mode

Bowser had gone through the flap doors, and down a long hallway, dimly lit by light bulbs overhead. The bartender had told him to take the fourth door on the right. The hall actually stretched a long way back, with two wood doors on the right side of the wall, before the hall itself took a turn to the left. More doors lined the walls there. It was on the second in this turn of the hallway that Bowser figured was referred to.

Bowser knocked.

Silence.

He was a little nervous, but he thought now (with a bit of an internal chuckle) that he really had nothing to fear. Whether he had come to the wrong door, or he gave up and turned around, or even just burst through this door altogether without warning, nothing he did would make him any happier or unhappier. There was a weird sense of freedom to his latest auto-philosophizing, the conclusion that if nothing he did made any difference to anything, then fine, he could really do (or not do) whatever he wanted without a sense of guilt. He was powerless, and in a sense, had no responsibility. With little power comes little responsibility.

He was about to knock again when a dry voice inside said: "Come in."

Dry voice… vaguely papery… The sound made Bowser a little nervous.

As he opened the door into the room, the first thing he saw was a fireplace on the left side of the wall, lit and crackling. (Had there been a chimney above the bar, with smoke floating out? Yes… Bowser recalled it now…) The door opening further, two chairs were revealed in front of the fireplace, angled diagonally to face towards the fireplace and somewhat towards each other. The left chair appeared to be empty. Someone was in the right chair.

Bowser stepped in. What did he have to be nervous about? This wasn't supposed to be a big deal at all. Bowser had only intended to speak to the owner for a couple of minutes, at the front counter, and just ask a few questions about the owner's history with the Koopa Kingdom. This wasn't supposed to be… such a big deal… big fancy meeting… with a big fancy fireplace…

His thoughts were slowing down, because he was getting the sense that something was wrong. There was something wrong about the person sitting by the fire. It wasn't a "dangerous" wrong, but a quirky, "Is this possible?" sort of wrong.

"Shut the door behind you." The voice sounded old.

Bowser obeyed without a word.

"And sit down." A limb gestured.

But it wasn't a limb with a hand. Or flesh. No…

Bowser's legs carried him over beside the empty chair, to look directly at the occupant of the other chair. His vision panned slowly, and strange color, the preposterous shape, entered his eyes. Floating. Round. Dead—

A ghost. A boo.

So ghosts are real, was Bowser's first thought. Boos are real.

It looked like it was from the old storybooks. Something like a bluish-white ball with two little stubby arms, two dark eyes, and a mouth. A sharp tooth stuck out of the right side of its mouth.

Unlike the storybooks, however, this ghost was not threatening. It looked a bit tired, a bit contemplative, a bit… kind.

"That's right. I'm a ghost."

Bowser stood still. Even as a "creature", "existing", looking at the boo felt like opening a very old book, with the crackling of pages and the old smell, and the sense of the dead as in a painting— not a fearful monster.

"This doesn't surprise you."

Bowser shook his head. "Not really."

If he'd thought every thought there was, over and over, was there anything that could be surprising? If he'd read enough books and seen enough movies, was there an idea that could really surprise him?

If he was forever depressed, was there any real feeling—besides that of true danger—that could catch him off guard?

(Upon reconsideration, later, he could still say "yes" to that last question. In this moment, he would say "No, and the proof is that encountering an actual ghost does not surprise me.")

The boo materialized a pipe from somewhere. "Well, sit then." From out of the air, little shreds of tobacco or some other substance flitted down into the open top of the pipe.

It was a this point that Bowser began to wonder if he was just hallucinating all of this. (That was the most obvious answer, really.)

Then the fear that he was going crazy entered his mind, but dissolved fairly quickly as his newfound, newly strengthened sense of nihilism walked in, and asked simply: What difference does it make?

"Well," Bowser sat, "Alright."

"Hm." The boo floated up and down, lightly, smoking its pipe.

Bowser watched for a moment. "You can still do that when you're dead, huh?"

The boo blew a cloud of smoke out. "Only in certain circumstances."

Bowser waited for the boo to continue.

Smoke floated upward. "It's a matter of if you're a boo or not. Most people who die do not become boos. They cannot smoke a pipe. Also, if you're a boo, but you do not like smoking (you truly hate it), you cannot smoke a pipe."

This was said completely seriously, though the phrase sounded like a joke.

"Just because you hate doing something doesn't mean you can't do it." Bowser leaned back in the chair. It was rather comfortable. "You probably won't do it. But you can force yourself."

The boo exhaled. "Boos are more closely aligned with will. They will do only what is natural. Anything that they would hate, they will not do. It can never even be a possibility to them. It is the same as with living creatures, but more obvious."

"What do you mean the same with living creatures?"

"No one does anything they truly hate. Not you, either. After all, you still 'chose' to do whatever it is. Whatever you didn't do is what you truly hated, even if, as you began to partake in the choice you made, you believed that you were in an awful situation, and you wished things were different. You knew beforehand what the worse road was, and you took the better— even if it still hurt."

Bowser grinned a little. The sight of the boo smoking the pipe and philosophizing was rather funny.

"You're not listening." The boo commented. "Not really. You're thinking about how funny I look, and you're not fully absorbing my words."

Bowser blushed a little. The boo was right. But the absurdity of the situation, and his nihilistic courage (shall we call it that?) pushed him on, and he simply shrugged. "What difference does my 'absorbing' make to you?"

"I've been watching you for some time now." The boo was looking into the fire. "Since you first came to Dark Land three months ago, I've been watching your progress closely. I knew you would want to meet me at some point. And, you finally asked a week ago."

Now Bowser was caught off guard. "You've been watching me?" Have I been haunted by a ghost?

"Mostly out in the streets. When you talk with your friends. When you go to those parties." The boo looked thoughtful.

"Yes? And why?"

The boo blew out a trail of smoke. "You reminded me of someone I knew a long time ago. When I was alive. This was many years ago now. I have wandered as a boo for about one hundred years, and for most of that time out in the wilderness. I only recently, in the last ten years, made arrangements to acquire my own business, and return to the transactions of the living world. In these ten years, I have watched a number of people who have come into this pub, this Dark Land, and you are the one that most caught my eye."

Bowser thought about this for a moment.

"So. You came to live in a city, in Sarasaland. You somehow acquired a business, with money. Hired at least a couple of real people to work with you. Then you hid out in this bar, watching whoever came in. You watched anyone who came into this bar dedicated to the Koopa Kingdom…" Bowser trailed off. He had been planning to make some argument about how bizarre the situation was, but he still couldn't put the full situation in words.

"I lived in the Koopa Kingdom when I was alive." The boo smiled a little. "Yes… I spent the first thirty years of my life there. But something tremendous happened— when I was about thirty years old. I called that something "terrible" for most of my living life, but near the end I came to see it more as inevitable. That it had to happen… It was an event of tremendous importance."

Bowser was reminded of the mysterious "happening" that had happened to the younger bartender.

"After that event, I left the Koopa Kingdom and traveled much of the world. I was on a mission. I traveled through the Sarasaland of old multiple times during my journeys, and it was here too that I finally died, far from my homeland. When I had passed, and found that I was a boo, it was to the Koopa Kingdom I returned firstly, though only to wander the forests and mountains. After many years of this, my heart quenched with wandering the place of my life, my will desired to return to the place of my death."

Sarasaland, Bowser mused.

(He still wasn't sure if he had already lost his mind or not.)

"So I returned to Sarasaland, and set up a bar. A place where travelers come. And sometimes, where they tell stories. Because I wanted to remember my homeland. And listen to find out if any miracles happened there."

Miracles?- Bowser wanted to ask, but he was starting to get the sense of the situation. It was better to just listen, and let the boo's words unwind naturally.

But the boo asked him at this point: "Would you like a drink?"