A Sweet Beginning or a Bitter End?

A Ghostbusters Doom Patrol Tale

Fernandina Beach, Florida

July 2006

Dr. Gabriel Hideoto Tanaka yawned wearily, stretching his arms into the air as he sat up in his bed. He rubbed the last effects of a sleepless night from his eyes. "Shit", was all he said as he looked around his bedroom (a veritable pigsty by the few women Gabriel had managed to get past his front door). Living as a bachelor in a one room apartment at Buccaneer Villa was nothing like Seinfeld. Had he known that, he supposed he would have gotten married already, much to his mother's delight.

The moment he made his way towards the kitchen, he cursed again. There was little food inside the refrigerator, except for a gallon of two-day old milk, some Udon that Rachel had sent him in acknowledgment of the holiday (Tanabata, a romantic festival that Gabriel had tried hard not to celebrate, even though he knew that Rachel didn't see him in that kind of way), two pints of Jack Daniel's, and a Slider special from White Castle. Peering inside the White Castle bag, he found nothing but a molding over burger.

He found some fresh eggs (wondering how they would have ever gotten there) on the second shelf.

"Yummy", he said grabbing the Udon and the eggs. He grabbed a bowl from the top shelf and poured the Udon into it, running water over the synthetic meal and stirring it up. He cracked the eggs into his breakfast and stirred the concoction.

As he passed over into the front room, he hit the Playback button upon his answering machine as he flopped onto his La-Z-Boy. There were two messages waiting for him. The first one was at least two days old; the second was brand new, probably from earlier that morning.

Yo Gabey Babey!

Good God, Gabriel moaned in his head. I don't need to hear that voice this early.

It's me, Tia, letting you know I had a wonderful time last week. But you haven't returned any of my calls.

"And I'm not returning this one", he said and pressed 'delete'.

The second message started up.

"Echi shite kudasai!"

"What the hell?" Gabriel asked and then suddenly heard a burst of laughter. He recognized that laugh.

"Hey Hide, Joey here. Hope you didn't stay up late last night downloading La Blue Girl. Hah ha ha."

Gabriel scoffed.

"Anyway, we got a new case to look into so we're gonna need you to come into the office sometime today. Cheerio and all that British shit. Peace."

Gabriel hung his head down low and sighed as he rose from his chair. The Udon was crap, so his breakfast was already ruined. As he poured it down the drain, he walked into his bedroom. Undressing, he went into the bathroom and into the shower.

The feel of the hot water upon his tired body felt like heaven.

Even if my life is a veritable hell.

He was only twenty-four years old and a graduate at the top of his class from Stanford University, and yet he felt completely lost in his life. His parents had come to America with the hopes of opportunities for their children. Gabriel was the first to be born in the "land of opportunity", East Orange, New Jersey to be exact, whereas his older brother Kiyoshi had been born and raised on the family farm in Yamagata.

Hide (as he liked to be called, feeling that Gabriel was much too flowery/nerdy) was more like his father, a hardworking yet stern man who had an inability to be affectionate, than he wanted to admit. As he got out of the shower, he remembered how hard his father pushed he and Kiyo through school.

"Never settle" was Nobouo Tanaka's favorite saying. Some would say that he lived through his two sons because of his own past failures (Hide would never admit to that, even if it were true) but regardless Hide went through all levels of public school, graduating early from high school at the age of 17.

Perhaps the key difference he knew was that after awhile Hide began rejecting most of that which his father had held dear, to find his own identity.

Traditions, history, even God himself were all inconsequential, concepts by which idiots measured their pain. To Hide, all that stuff were fairy tales that he was too old to even be believing in. He enrolled in Stanford early in 1997, double majoring in science/psychology. For that first year and a half, he lived alone, never interacting with the other students. That would change, however, in the fall of the next year when a gangly young Freshman became his roommate. He too was a science major, but what was this? Parapsychology? Occult Sciences? Folklore?

He remembered the cheesy grin on CJ's face as he shrugged. "I love that stuff man", he said as he dove into his bed. CJ London was highly unusual indeed: he was a comic book and sci-fan fan who owned a poster of Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell but also loved Chaucer and Kerouac, Chandler and Nietzsche, but hated 'high art' and often shirked classes to go to the beach…

Not to check out babes.

But to hunt, of all things, ghosts.

His immediate estimation of his new roommate?

"Freak." Hide was so sure that CJ had a similar view of him, but he never showed it. He'd occasionally chastise Hide into joining him in downtown San Francisco. He'd refuse of course, but that would never be the end of it.

Not quite the type of guy he'd expect to even make it past the first year. Yet, somehow, the guy made all four years to graduation, and even more incredible he'd convinced Hide to join him back in Florida to join an off-shoot paranormal agency.

"What are we supposed to be?" Hide had asked. "Ghost hunters or something?"

Again, CJ grinned cheesetastically.

Hide hated that grin, but the weird thing was he believed what CJ said to finally convince him.

"You believe in finding answers, don't you Hide? Trying to figure out what it is that man's really trying to figure out, whether or not there is some omnipotent Galactus-level mofo out there with his finger on the proverbial pulsating button of doom? Think of the benefits my man! You'd go down like Einstein in history for your accomplishments!"

It sounded good in theory. And yes, maybe Hide had managed to have some fun. After all, he, CJ, Zak Kong, Joey Hightower, and the object of CJ's affections Rachel Gleason had been a pretty good group of scientists and occultists. But in Hide's eyes, he still couldn't wrap his mind around ghosts and demons.

How could he be expected to believe in something he couldn't actually feel with his own hands? The equipment they used was ridiculous and sub-standard at best and there was that weary feeling that maybe, just maybe, the public laughed more at them than not.

But suddenly, and very lately, Hide had been asking himself a question he once thought was just plain whining on the part of the idiot.

Now, he was the idiot.

What am I doing with my life?

"Domo-kun Tanaka-san!"

"Boku no shiri ni kisu siro!"

"What's that mean?"

"Mean's 'kiss my Asian ass Hightower'!" Hide said drolly as he walked into the small office of the Florida Department of Paranormal and Extranormal Activities. This was the home of the field team of North Florida. Hide found it a joke that their "office" was nothing more than a two story building on historical Main Street sandwiched between the ice cream parlor and the Christmas store. Not the he nor his teammates had ever been to the other branches to see if they had it worse, but he imagined that the North was considered more bumpkin than the South.

We don't even have a fax machine.

With his legs propped up on his desk that faced Hide's was Joey Hightower, a blonde, spiky-haired young man with a gap in his teeth.

"That wasn't nice", he said grinning as Hide sat down at his desk. "You haven't cussed me out in Japanese in about two weeks."

"I must be slipping in my old age", Hide replied. "Rachel coming in today?"

"Nah, she called out sick, and that new guy we got to replace Zak quit."

"What the hell? Why?"

Standing up, Joey put his hands on his hips and did a bit of a flowery motion. "Oh you know, he couldn't handle the late hours and the stresses…"

"The non-existent pay", Hide added.

"Exactly. So, poof! He's out."

Hide sighed as he sat back in his chair. "Joey, what did you want to do before you came here?"

"Hmmm?"

"I mean, was there anything that you ever wanted to do besides this?"

Joey thought for a moment as he unpeeled a banana. Taking a bite of it, he said:

"Well, you know back at Stanford my main thing was Occult Lit. I was mostly just going over dusties for dusties. Hell, I would have had to transfer to Miskatonic University just to get a crack at really knowing if that Necronomicon shit is really on the level."

"Well you can either shit in one hand or have a 4,000 inbred amphibians invade your town in the other."

"Ah, touché", Joey said. "Anyway, I like what I'm doing right now anyway. It ain't the most glamorous job in the world and we barely get paid, but if there's one job where I love spending government dollars it's this one!" Joey burst out laughing.

"I knew it was a bad idea trying to have a serious conversation with you."

"Alright already, Mr. Serious. You want the truth?"

"If you please."

"Fine. Doing this, I realize how little I really knew and couldn't have learned if I stayed in the library all the time trying to get Old Lady Bailey to order Lovecraft. I probably would have ended up by this time in a teaching position somewhere, but I wouldn't have been really happy talking to a bunch of crumb munchers about stuff I don't care about."

"But what if that was truly what you were really meant to do Joe?"

"Then I would have gone ahead and done it. But I didn't. I came here because it looked interesting for a year and would have probably helped get me that job at Misk. But I stayed and I've never looked back."

"Wish I could say the same", Hide said under his breath.

"What was that?"

"Nothing. What was that case you said you had for us?"

"Ah." Joey pulled out a vanilla dossier. "Old-school stakeout case. The groundskeeper at the cemetery claims that the soil on a few of the older graves appears defiled, as if someone is deliberately digging up the graves."

"That's not our job. What's he suggesting? Grave robbers?"

"That theory's been brought up, yes."

"Joe, don't you realize that those graves are more than six feet deep, the coffins more than two-thousand pounds, and that it's rained every day for the last month?"

"Yeah. What's your point?"

"My point is that something like that would require at least two people to do with a Mack truck and a lot of time. The rain would complicate that and there'd at least be tire tracks in the dirt. Did that old fool figure that out?"

"I don't think there's any tire tracks Hide", Joey said. "Albert Blue didn't mention them when me and Rachel went over there yesterday to interview him and survey the area."

"So what's he want us to do if you've already been down there?"

Joey turned to the last page in the dossier and read from there. "Please comb over entire area. Usually occurs between midnight and five a.m. Will pay two-hundred dollars for trouble. Albert Blue."

"Kuso yarou!"

"I don't know what that means, but it can't be too good…"

"It means if I don't get out of this job soon I'm gonna go crazy..." Hide stood up and walked outside. Inside his jacket lapel was a pack of cigarettes.

A filthy habit that would make his parents cringe. He knew this, but took a macabre delight in shocking them.

Pulling out a single stick and lighting it, he inhaled deeply, the fumes pouring into chest, relaxing him. He exhaled through his nostrils.

This really is my life now, he thought.

Playing Scooby-Doo for a few piss dollars.

He'd made up his mind. He couldn't work like this anymore. All efforts for research had been dulled by the department and there was no real hope that he was ever going to advance unless he quit.

That's it.

He walked back inside. Joey was just finishing up on the phone.

"Okay, I'll tell him. Good-bye." He hung up.

"Who was that?" Hide asked.

"A chick by the name of Erin Cummins", Joey said writing on a notepad. "A client administrator in Philadelphia."

"I hope we aren't accepting that call collect..."

"Hmm? Oh, she accepted the charges. Anyway, guess what group she represents?"

"The Rolling Stones?"

"No."

"The Kinks?"

"Nope."

"Ringling Bros-Barnum and Bailey?"

"You really are pessimist when it comes to good news aren't you?"

"Just tell me what it is."

"Ghostbusters."

Hide's heart dropped when Joey mentioned the name. "Hey man, you all right? You look a little pale."

"No...I'm fine..." Hide said sitting down. "Ghostbusters eh?"

"Philadelphia branch. The Ghostbusters Doom Patrol."

"What the fuck kind of name is that?"

"Remember dude? That's the team CJ joined a couple years ago."

Oh yeah. Hide had remembered the day CJ burst into the office holding up the Western-Union telegram he'd received asking him to come to New York urgently. The boy had kept in touch off and on over time, keeping the crew up to date with his adventures in an almost Sherlockian tone. "What did they want?"

Joey grinned, exposing his gapped teeth.

"What?"

Joey grinned some more.

"What?" Hide asked again, not liking this scene more and more.

"There was a little bit of a shakeup at the offices and the team is calling in some pinch-hitters."

"Oh yeah."

"Yeah. Apparently they're checking out some of the paranormal groups around the U.S. and recruiting."

"We got anyone here they want?"

"Yeah, I said we'll send one of our guys."

"Great." After he said this, Hide thought for a moment. "Wait, Zak quit last year so it's only me and you."

"And everyone knows I know shit about that type of stuff", Joey said.

"So that means..."

Joey slapped him on the shoulder.

"Congratulations Hide. You're a Ghostbuster now."

To be continued in :

Ghostbusters Doom Patrol: "The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man"