2019-07-31 - The Ghosts Of Our Past

Inside the Sweet Retreat main room, seated at a small table in the back to himself and his newspaper, Everett reads the paper folded in quarters, held with his meaty palms on the table's surface around his cup of coffee he brought from downstairs. It had been several days since the strange occurrence in his loft and he still hadn't replaced his singular stool forcing him to come down into the main room if he wanted to sit in chairs that are too small for him, and not on the floor. Normally local news wouldn't interest him, especially the writing of Podunk journalists who couldn't make it in the big cities; but having been educated, recently, on a string of murders made him curious.


Therefore, he sat, and read, for a little while at least. Avoiding moving his lips while he did so, or sounding out the big college words until a tingling sensation started that he couldn't ignore. At the back of his mind as if, he was been watched.


Looking up, he scans the room. Slow, a Wednesday afternoon, but a bright day. A family of two and a couple sit, and talk. The children doing what children do with the consumption of sugar: get dirty and grow restless. But nobody's paying him any mind, the bull at the back of the store, trying to look unobtrusive, hiding behind the printed word. He looks towards the back and his staff. The visible teenaged waitress, chewing gum and blowing bubbles while thumbing her phone, a glassy look in her eye. And his manager, moving in the back, looking busy (though if he were of not, Everett was a poor judge.) Neither of them too, where looking at him.


Army green dispassionate eyes scanned the room again; this time as they passed the large windows towards the boardwalk, flashy colors caught his eye. In a red and blue roller skater's thin jacket with golden trim she stood. Her long bleach blonde hair in ponytails, the end few inches colored in light blue and pink. She wore a choker and underneath a tight white t-shirt with rips around the midriff, one showing her unjeweled, innie belly button. The t-shirt was thin, thing enough to see the pink push-up brassier underneath. For fashion, she wore a thick, black punk belt over her tight booty shorts and fishnet stockings. She was Harley Quinn, at least, that's how she was cosplaying as. Dog, when the rat-faced man was being particularly revolting, liked to brag how much he liked those shorts when they were dating. "So tight," he'd said, "I could see when she was ovulating."


The gollira's eyes opened, wide. Bottom jaw, dropping. She wasn't supposed to be here. Fuck, she wasn't supposed to be alive. And the vision, while whomever it was took her hands out of her satin jacket to turn away from the intense stare she was giving the man inside the ice cream parlor, walked down the boardwalk. Her appearance caused his memory to come flooding back like the diagram punch before a dry-heave.

A gunshot bringing the ringing begins in his ears and a warm, wet spatter to the left side of his face. The familiar taste and smell of copper assaulting his senses. And a heavy hit below his right eye which slowly slid down his cheek, leaving a blood red tear streak, the only tear he left for her. The gun shot that ended two lives.


He stared. He couldn't do anything but. Into the chaotic mash of pinks and reds that at one time had been her beautiful face. Lifeless, the meat that was once his lover slumped backwards. No escape wound meant the slide down the wall was dry and her petite lower mandible dangled, still connected by her cheek until the end of her journey. The skin tore and her jaw landed in the valley of her breasts to come to a rest. Nerves that thought she was still alive wiggled her tongue, and gas escaping from lifeless lungs bubbled blood where the back of her throat used to be. The ringing began to subside, he wasn't even aware the bed was shaking. Just aware of one immediate thing.


Tick was laughing. His jelly filled beer belly shock while, beneath his beard, his cheeks and face took on a red color. He doubled over, holding his knees, his gun still in hand, while he laughed and then stood erect and pointed. At the beautiful corpse or at Everett, he wasn't sure. Everett's own face, his milky-white pallor, was turning red. But a different shade, for a different meaning, his teeth ached with how hard he gritted them.


"You fuck--", Everett started to say, beginning to bring his feet up under him, so he could launch himself at the obese man.


"Ah ah, Fuckface," reminded Dog, his boot on the bed. It was he, rocking the mattress, to snap Everett out of his temporary catatonic state. "You, me, and Tick have got some business to take care of. Back at the clubhouse." The slight man waved his gun, Everett's gun around, "We'll get some Propies to come and clean up this mess. Make it like it never even fucking happened. But Rocko had an accident today and we need you to tell the Board what we're going to tell you. If you don't? Well. Then the pigs are gunna find your gun, and your bitch girl's body."


Dog grinned while Everett blanched. Tick had the good sense to quiet his laughing to soft chuckles. Dog smiled his slimy smile while leaning forward, even to see the red flicks on his face, and gave the mattress another kick. "Now get some fuckin' clothes on."




Shaking his head to clear the web of memories and bring him back to the here-and-now, Everett looks outside the window, to see she's gone. Whoever it was, because it couldn't have been her. Violently, he stands, kicking the chair out of the way much to the surprise of those present. He's at the door in a hurry, glaring to the left when he pushes the door open. He ignores the ringing of the bells, or the thud of the man's face the door collides with -- bad luck, it's going around. Instead, he races down the Boardwalk, looking where she went.


Looking for his ghost.