Vapor Boy

A bored ghost struggles to entertain himself on the mean streets of San Francisco while plotting his revenge.

 

This wasn’t going to be easy for me because I was new. All my life I tried to stick to the things at which I excelled so that no one would think of me as an incompetent. A loser. A nothing. Now for the first time that I can remember, I was going to have to blindly meander through the fray until it started to make sense.

 

The old me would have never allowed myself to be put in this situation, but the new me was dead.  I’m a ghost and that’s why I didn’t really have much of a choice in the matter. So, yeah, I’d have to learn to adapt. All ghosts did.

 

Not everyone gets to be a ghost when they die. I’m not bragging here, but it is a bit of an achievement. It’s not exactly like becoming an astronaut or a professional basket ball player, but if you were a complete screw up during your life or the nature of your death caused your appearance to be grotesque, you weren’t going to be haunting anything. Your final appearance in life dictated how you looked as a ghost to a large extent. That’s why that movie Thirteen Ghosts was so realistic. How did they know?

 

I was lucky. I died in a Japanese restaurant eating improperly prepared blowfish. Why do those b******s keep serving blowfish? Is blowfish just really low in cholesterol or high in fiber or something? Being here with the other dead, you see how many cases of blowfish poisoning there actually are. You’d be surprised.

 

The good news is that once the swelling goes down, you look pretty much like you did before the poisoning. Well, other than the really pale coloring and billowy sheets. Billowy sheets are de rigueur for ghosts. Contrary to popular belief, they aren’t always white. Mostly muted pastels though.

 

So, here I am in front of this grumpy recruiter, waiting while he flips through my file. I say something like, “I know it doesn’t say this in there, but I’m a really hard worker. He doesn’t look up. “I’m also a people person.”

 

“What’s that?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Okay. Wow me, kid. Why do you want to be a ghost?”

 

The real answer is that if you don’t become a ghost, you become the soul of some inanimate object like an aluminum can or clothes hamper. No one wants to be filled with soiled socks and underwear for all eternity. But I know that this guy wants to hear something else, so I say, “Ever since I saw the movie Ghostbusters, I’ve always aspired to this vocation.

He studied me for sincerity for a moment and said, “Hah! What was your favorite character?” I thought about saying “the slimer,” due to his striking similarity to the recruiter.

 

“Um…the Librarian?” I decided to play it safe.

 

“Kid, you’ve got some brass balls. You know how many stiffs walk in here and throw out the same line? Only some of them use the movie Ghost. Patrick f*****g Swayze! I usually send them to become dumpsters or something.” He took a drag from his cigar. “What are you about thirty?”

 

“Twenty Eight.”

 

“I have an opening in Kyoto, Japan.”

 

“No! Those b******s killed me! You can turn me into an old shoe or something, but I am not going to blowfish central.”

 

“Okay, you spoiled little punk. You can have San Francisco. Take it or I will turn you into Kim Jong Il’s hair.” Not all hair has its own soul, but his did.

 

San Francisco didn’t seem that bad really. I had never been there. The requirements were pretty simple. It was a PR job. Lately, there hadn’t been much in the media about ghosts. In fact the Hodges Apparition Index had fallen to an all time low. I had to commit four hours a night to haunting some historic site or other. A couple of times a month I would have to make my outline visible in a tourist photo. Pretty standard crap.

 

There are a lot of really cool things I can do as a ghost. I can fly. I can go through walls. Head first or upright. I can make noise that you can hear. I can drop the temperature in a room and even freak out dogs and cats. They can see ghosts. All animals can. They always freak out. I can even hold and move inanimate things, but only with my hands and feet. The rest of my body can’t affect matter.

 

Still, the toughest part is fighting the boredom. Food, for instance, is an exercise in frustration. You can eat it, but you can’t taste anything and it just drops out some part of your body. Just because of the relation of the head to the buttocks it usually looks like you are defecating entire un-chewed pieces of food. So eating is generally out.

 

I take in a movie occasionally. The old theaters are the best. People love a ghost in an old theater. Yeah…

 

You know what I really hate? It’s not the job…although, let me tell you, we have our crazy moments. We’re actually trying to put together a road trip to LA, but I digress. It’s the sex or lack thereof. When I first got on the job, I just thought of all of the great possibilities. I mean this is San Francisco - a world city. Being a straight ghost, you do have to be careful about which walls you pass through. You don’t want to accidentally walk into a bath house or some seedy hotel. However, there is a pretty good selection of eye candy regardless of your tastes. The problem is that when you die, they change your wiring. You can look all you want, but nothing is happening below your waistline.

 

When I first died, I had all of these visions about slipping into the 49er’s cheerleader’s locker room or something. A lot of famous actresses pass through this town. Hey, I’m not a canonized saint. Get over it. Voyeurism is all I have left.

 

So now I have it all: cool powers, lot’s of free time, flexible hours, hot and cold running chicks, but, yeah, a useless phallus! No blood, no erection. It’s physiology. It’s science. I spent the better part of my first year at the library looking for a solution. But in the end, you just have to accept it. It’s still better than being an ashtray.

 

A typical day for me starts around 5:00 AM. I don’t really sleep, so I just haunt an upscale apartment on the bay. It belongs to an international banker who is always out of town. I get 200 channels or, well, he does. No pay-per-view though. Have to keep up the illusion of a ghost-free apartment for him. It probably wouldn’t matter, because he doesn’t believe in ghosts.

 

For breakfast, I’ll usually look at some pictures of bacon and eggs on the internet. Well, sometimes its pancakes or French toast, but I’m really trying to stay away from the carbs. When I’ve had enough, I fall through the floors until I’m on the ground. Elevators are pointless. Sometimes I will jump through an outer wall and try to hit someone on the street.

 

There’s not a lot to do in the mornings. The movies don’t play that early. Sometimes, I can go watch the sports teams practice but it is a pain in the a*s to get there, even with flight capabilities. I’m not able to just jump on a trolley. The odd thing about being a ghost is that you can’t use mechanized transportation. I could ride a trolley but I have to keep flying along with it. Otherwise, I just fall out of the back when it moves. Cars are just impossible. For some reason the normal laws of physics don’t work for us, so if I want to go to watch the Niners, I have to fly out there myself.

 

You can forget about going if it’s game day. Those aisles and stands are packed with ghosts. We can’t intentionally occupy the same space as the living so we have to just fill in the gaps. However, if the meat sacks walk through us, well then that’s not our fault.

 

Around lunchtime I meet my Felix down at this crappy diner down on Lombard called “Harry’s.” Yeah, that's original. Since, we couldn’t actually eat, I didn’t complain about the food. The atmosphere was another matter. Felix was more of a work acquaintance than a real friend. We would pair up for two-ghost jobs. The conversation would pretty much go like this:

 

“Why do you drag me to this greasy dive?”

 

“What do you care? Besides there’s always an open booth.”

 

“This booth isn’t open, you idiot. No one else will sit here because they haven’t cleared the table in what looks like about a month.”

 

“Quit your bitching. I’m trying to read about the Giants.”

 

I knew the real reason that he came here. He was in love with one of the meat sacks - a waitress that he had known before he died. I don’t know how he pulled that one off. You weren’t supposed to be able to haunt the city where you had lived. Just way too many temptations to interfere with things. People have to move on after you die. They couldn’t do it if you were in the area. The healing just doesn’t happen.

 

After lunch I would head over to the area just south of Chinatown. There are a lot of little Psychic shops down there. Here is an immutable rule: all psychics are frauds. It’s not their fault. They don’t mean to be. Yes, they do get information from the dead, but it is invariably wrong. We love to feed misinformation to these broads (they’re always women). It’s not the polar opposite of the truth, but all of the significant talking points are wrong. Here is another good thing to know: no one can predict the future; not even ghosts.

 

Chinatown is an interesting place. Everyone down there believes in us. Well, almost everyone. These new young whelps didn’t listen to their elders so every once in a while I perform a few shenanigans to put some scare into them.

 

There’s a market that actually sells blowfish. If I get there early enough, I put the number “1” in front of the price so that it looked like it was $120 per pound instead of the usual $20. They have to throw the fish out if they can’t sell it.

 

Six PM starts the hour of worship. That’s why you will never see a haunting during that time. We were only allowed in certain churches. When I was new I thought this was an odd practice so I asked the ghost of an old minister about God.

 

Me: “So, God exists? Interesting.”

 

Minister: “Absolutely! He does.”

 

Me: “So, you’ve met Him?”

 

Minister: “Not in person, if that’s what you’re asking.”

 

Me: “But, you have friends, other ghosts, who have?”

 

Minister: “Can’t say that I know of anyone who has.”

 

Me: “So how do we know that He exists?”

 

Minister: “It’s kind of a faith thing.”

 

Me: “That’s the same deal that the meat sacks have. So, why does everyone believe in God?”

 

Minister: “Well, most of them never believed in ghosts when they were alive. I guess they learned their lesson and quit demanding proof about every damned thing.”

 

What a circle jerk. I died and still don’t have any of the good answers. By ghost logic, we should just believe in everything. I found that this was usually the case. It wasn’t just God and ghosts. It was the devil, the yeti, the Loch Ness Monster, vampires, the Bermuda Triangle, dragons, gnomes, etc. You name it, ghosts believed in it. Ridiculous!

 

However, rules were rules and I would dutifully go to church from six to seven under protest.

 

We go clubbing a lot. They can take a lot of things away from us, but they can’t make us stop dancing to the music. Even if it is that techno-crap that had become pervasive in the San Francisco club seen. It kind of sucked for us that most of the good clubs were of the homosexual persuasion. Ghosts as a rule are straight. There have to be some gay ghosts, but no one will own up to it. We’re just behind the times, I guess. I’m not gay, but I might as well be. It seems like a lifetime ago since I’ve  had a woman. Ghost humor.

 

You know that move that guys do, when they see a couple of women dancing and you just start dancing up to them? It never works right? That’s because the women can see this dorky guy with his lame dance moves, but it works for me every time. When you’re a ghost, you can even “grind” on the women without them getting offended.

 

It was one of these club nights where my afterlife took a dramatic turn for the worst. I was hanging with a few new ghosts. A couple of teenagers who had died of a whippet overdose. Tragic really. Anyway, we were comparing death stories when one of them shot out to me: “Blowfish poisoning? They should call you Hootie.”

 

I didn’t break my rhythm. I was dancing with a leggy blonde that I was hoping was a real woman. F*****g San Francisco. You can never be sure. I said. “Why’s that?”

 

“You know? Hootie and the Blowfish?”

 

“Oh, yeah. Funny. What the hell are you talking about?”

 

“Dude, you’ve never heard of Hootie and the Blowfish? The band?”

 

This kid was pissing me off so I grabbed one of his sheets, “You mean to tell me some sick b*****d named a band after the tetraodon cutcutia?” I was trying to sound impressive.

 

He looked up at me all sober and sincere, “Yeah brother. They’ve been around for like ten years. I thought you knew.”

 

There is an odd thing about dying. You lose a lot of the memories from your pre-death life. You remember who you are essentially, but not a lot of the little details about the world. Politics, current events, pop culture. Things like that just go away. Sometimes you have to touch something from the real world to get the memories back. I flew out of the club and floated to a music store on Market Street. They were closed for business, but the store was inhabited by a helpful ghost.

 

“Hootie and the Blowfish are over here. You know they are playing next week. September 19th. It’s sold out for the meat sacks, but you can still…hey are you all right?”

    

When he handed me the CD, a rush of memories had come back. I remembered them. I had never thought much about group one way or the other, but I remembered them. Looking back at my reaction and the subsequent events, I may no longer have been of sound mind, but what ghost ever is? I threw the packaged disk against the wall and flew straight through the roof.

 

There were prohibitions against us interfering with human events. It was an important protocol. Otherwise, we could rig sporting events, casino games…even the stock market. We could make our families extraordinarily wealthy or destroy our past enemies. Violations of this rule lead to punishments that are both creative and severe. However, I cared about none of that. I didn’t hate the music or the band, but they were a symbol of all that I despised. Hootie and his accursed Blowfish were going to pay for the crimes of a thousand Japanese sushi chefs with their millions of malignant little slices.

 

At the diner the next day, Felix tried to talk me out of it as he stared intently at his beloved brassy hair meat sack.

 

“You can’t do it. They will punish you”

 

“I know, but people need to learn what happened to me. I’m kind of bored with work anyway. Want to help?”

 

“No, I can’t take a chance at losing this.” He ran a sheet laden hand through the air to indicate Harry’s in all of its majesty. As he did, he knocked it into the tray that his waitress was carrying. She felt the small impact, but her reaction was dramatic. She threw the entire tray of dishes in the air. It looked to me to be about twenty dishes laying in fragments and shards. The cook shouted from behind the counter, “That’s a buck per dish!” He had a wicked grin on his face.

 

Felix looked upset. Well, as upset as a slightly obese ghost can look. “That’s bullshit. He buys them in bulk. They’re worth a quarter a piece, if that.”

 

“You know she can’t move on while you are here? You know that right?” Felix was inadvertently torturing this poor woman. In truth, he was upset and didn’t need a lecture, but I was mad at Felix for his selfishness.

 

“I’m out of here. I can’t stand to see her cry.” With that Felix flew through the wall. I think there was a urinal on the other side of his exit wall. Gross.

 

I sat there for a minute while Harry yelled at the waitress. When she ran away to the bathroom, I floated over to him. There was a large amount of hot grease in the trap by the griddle. Steam was rising off of it. I slapped my hand into it so that a small sheet of the molten liquid hit his tattooed arm causing a nasty burn. I blew through the wall and started running from shop like I had just murdered a half dozen people. Then I came to a few realizations:

 

I hadn’t killed anyone. I just splattered grease on some abusive loudmouth.

 

No one would even know to chase me because I’m a ghost.

 

I didn’t have to run because I could hide pretty well, being invisible and all.

 

So, I slowed my pace to a cocky, ghostly strut. I felt empowered. Maybe, I could start doing some good, but first I had to take care of the Hootie and the Blowfish. It simply had to be done.

 

The preparations weren’t easy. I had to get certain materials into the arena before the event unnoticed. I’m invisible but I couldn’t make other things invisible. I wasn’t that kind of a ghost. Also the material objects can’t penetrate walls with me. So, it took a bit of innovation and the use of several air ducks to get the stuff in. I know it’s “ducts,” but can you imagine a ghost sneaking through a duck? That’s classic humor. At least all of my ghost friends think so.

 

The night of the show was unbearable. Who knows? I may have liked Hootie and the Blowfish during my life, but now in death their folksy inoffensive sound had become raucous noise. Ear plugs would have been useless as they would fall to the ground. Only our hands and feet really have any tactile effect on earthly objects. I also can’t wear sunglasses.

 

The stands were packed with humans and ghosts. Some of the latter were ignoring the prohibition of occupying the same space as the former. If they were caught they would be disciplined. I didn’t need to worry about any of that. I was in the rafters sharing space with some rodents, who were after my mission supplies. I don’t like rats because they can see us, but then pretend that we don’t exist. It’s really demeaning. Yeah, like they’re so great.

 

No, I didn’t kill Hootie and the Blowfish. What the hell would I have done if they had become ghosts and I had to work with them? My plan was more symbolic. When the Chinese couldn’t sell their stocks of overpriced blowfish, they went bad. I found two or three hundred in the dumpster in the ally. I had bagged as much as I could realistically store in the banker’s freezer. That banker had a Sub-Zero 601-F. The 601-F holds about 100 puffer fish, but I only had brought 94. I don’t know why he owned that thing. He never ate at home.

 

That wasn’t my problem though. What was my problem is that the 601-F had done such a good job at freezing the blowfish solid that they hadn’t even thawed by the time of the show. I had intended for there to be a horrifically putrid smell that would make the band gag and the fans leave. I was disappointed but undeterred. Damn you 601-F.

 

I began dropping blowfish one by one onto the stage. The first one almost struck Dean Felber, but landed in front of his feet. He looked up with an agitated sneer, but then, consummate showman that he was, smiled and kicked it off into the audience. I dropped another.

 

Darius Rucker picked this one up and started to sing to it. He then threw it out into the 15^th row. He did have one hell of an arm. I began dumping the fish in mass. Only a few even came close to hitting band members. They began kicking them off of the stage and the crowd began to toss them around the arena like Frisbees. The crowd was going wild like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

 

Apparently, the band had thought that they had missed the memo on some new piece of stagecraft that their manager had arranged. After seeing the crowd reaction, the event manager stepped in and took full credit for my malicious deed only to be fired a week later. Some fanatical fans took their trophies home, only to find that they were real and rotting blow fish. Apparently, everyone had thought they were plastic replicas. This caused some of the fans to complain to the production company.

 

I was disappointed in the outcome. Eventually, I would make my peace with the lowly blowfish and I actually have a few Hootie songs on my IPod. Although, in fairness, I downloaded them without paying. I know I shouldn’t do that, but I don’t have an ITunes account because I’m dead.

 

I didn’t get away with it though. I was suspended for a month without pay. I know it doesn’t sound that bad, but the problem is that you can’t really suspend a ghost because of our fairly liberal work parameters. So they decided to have me become an inanimate object for a month: Harry, the diner owner’s, greasy hat. The good news is that when he starts yelling, I just squeeze so hard that he passes out.

 

I also noticed that Felix stopped coming in. His meat sack waitress looks ten years younger and doesn’t cry anymore. Way to go, Felix. Way to go.

 

http://www.myspace.com/chanceransom

 

 

Reviews

[Flame DM]

Very very interesting piece. The narrator himself is just soo hilarious you love him before you reach the third paragraph. The whole idea about ghosts and going through their perspectives is brillaintly done. I laughed because if there REALLY are ghosts...then why the hell are they not questioning the fact that they didn't go to heaven or hell...that made me laugh.

Excellent write!

Flame

[Molafvt]

Ha, ha......! Extremely inventive story on a timeless subject with an unparalleled sense of humor. I like the way your ghostly brain matter works. I was either chuckling or laughing out loud throughout the entire piece. I had a particularly focused interest in this piece as I have actually had a number of "very" real, "wickedly visceral" encounters with ghosts. This was brilliantly crafted with a most masterful and unpredictable warp and weft which left me speechlessly celebrating the victory of this little gem. What more can I say, but bravo.....!

[Greg the Bard]

A twist on an old subject. It is easy to read and follow so in my mind it follows well with a great hidden humor. The first person is very well done and leads the reader as it should be. This is a story unto itsdelf but seems as thought it is a part of a bigger work. Well done and good luck with the book.

[Holly Marsh]

Okay- first of all- blowfish- Simpsons did it! :)

Loved the concept. LOVED the idea of offing Hootie and the Blowfish. With blowfish. HA!

It reminds me of the Wingman Chronicles, but different.

Keep it up! I want to read more about Vapor Boy's world and the rules of living as a ghost. :)

[JC]

This was very entertaining, a total different view of the other side.

Sorry it took so long to read it, I'm back though so feel free to send me something else!

JC

[TL Boehm]

what an interesting premise. I've been unable to get over to read this until now but it was definitely worth the wait. Great treatment of the ghost theme, wonderful wry humor and good dialogue. You could continue this as a longer story. It has possibilities -

[Steffi]

I thought this was a really humorous and entertaining story :D i love the characterizastion you provided for the main character. I thought the way that you portrayed this story to be really outstanding. How you made him try and get revenge on Hooty and the Blowfish just cause Blowfish is how he died. It was marvolous.
:D Great Write

[None]

A very entertaining and fun story. This is well thought out and different from the run of the mill Ghostbuster-type stories out there. You covered the diary quite well and made this pretty realistic and convincing.
"We go clubbing a lot. They can take a lot of things away from us, but they can't make us stop dancing to the music. Even if it is that techno-crap that had become pervasive in the San Francisco club seen."
I liked the other club comments as well and all the humor throughout your story. Thank you for making me smile. It seems ghosts have more of a life than some of us living!

[Jennifer Ryan]

I agree it is an ok story. Usually a story to have a purpose needs a crisis. To grab the attention of the reader you need to have this crisis somewhere at the begining. I read through half and still didn't know what the purpose of this piece was. It was somewhat humorous but it was too cliche. Some cliche themes are okay but this was too much. If you ever decide to change this some please send it again, I would love to read the changes. Thanks for sending me the request.

[Nicole (Carpe Diem)]

very interesting story - i loved the story.
i have always wondered what it would be like to have a ghostly visitor... and now i know...