Now, I know I shouldn’t complain. I had a roof, I had food (mostly), and if I needed them, I could always call my parents. Though, I’m still not entirely convinced they aren’t zombies. I know—a couple of zombies giving birth to a ghost sounds stupid, but it makes more sense than you might think. Probably happens more than you might think, too.

  They certainly took care of me, but they didn’t seem particularly engaged in the process. They just sort of shambled through everything. Like dead bodies driven by some mindless impulse. Even my dad’s job was just about as lifeless as one could imagine. Go ahead—imagine the most lifeless job you can.

  Now imagine a middle-aged white guy with zero personality doing it.

  There you go, you’ve met my dad. He’s an okay guy, and an even okayer zombie. Christ, imagine being an okay zombie.

  My mom was there too. Not at the lifeless job, but milling about our lifeless house. If you think ghosts and zombies wouldn’t talk much, you’d be right. It could best be said we were both aware of each other. She would leave out meals once in a while, and I would float by when the feeling found me to gobble them up.

  Mostly she sat in front of the television. I think it’s the combination of constant noise and motion that attracts a zombie to it—sorta hypnotizes them into this state of complacency. When my dad wasn’t working, he was sitting next to her.

  I spent my time reading books. Well, “books” is probably too generous a word. I read comics. Scary comics mostly, some picture books too. Deadworld gave me nightmares. I loved it. Though, Hellboy was probably my favorite. I also had this book on ghosts and monsters that I really liked. It had drawings, stats, and various facts about all sorts of creepy things. I forget the name.

  So, when I started to see death all around me, I wasn’t exactly scared. Dead people were just that: people. Ghosts were just like me: invisible.

  The only significant difference I can think of would be the often-excessive blood, or the complete indifference toward their very apparent injuries. Oh, also, some of them were a bit transparent (literally and figuratively). Otherwise, they were just like regular people. Some were nice, some were not, but most of them saw right through me.

  The first non-living entity I met was half a dog named Charlie.

  How do I know his name was Charlie? It was printed on his dog tag.

  Do you think it was the back half of a dog I met? That would be gross and impossible. Even dead things need a brain of sorts to carry on living. Life, afterlife —who we are is in our heads.

  Charlie was a wiener dog. I think I was six at the time. I later found out wiener dogs were called dachshunds, but that’s irrelevant because I won’t be calling them that.

  Charlie was the front half of a wiener dog. He ran around like a normal dog, carrying on like he still had an ass-end, even though it was just a segment of intestine dragging behind him. I used to laugh when he would chase it. I’d intervene when he would catch it. The last thing I wanted was for Charlie to eat himself deader. There was hardly enough of him for me to pet as it was.

  I didn’t need him chomping away at the rest.

  I never could have a pet, so when Charlie wound up in my backyard, I was a very happy kid. I spent most of my time —when I wasn’t reading scary stories of course—outside playing Charlie. I would throw a stick; he would chase it. Depending on how fresh the stick was, he'd bring back its ghost.

  Though, most of the time the stick would cross over before he could bring it back to me, so he’d just come back and wait for me to throw another.

  People are surprised to learn that plants have little to no unfinished business. Mostly that they had any unfinished business at all. I thought about it a lot when I was younger, and the more I learned about plants, the more I thought I understood.

  See, I think it has to do with plants not really thinking too much. They have a few objectives to follow, but no real thoughts or feelings beyond those. I think most plants don’t even realize they’ve died right away, and when they do, I don’t think they understand it’s time to cross over. Then I wondered what caused them to cross over at all. I’m still not sure.

  Anyway, since meeting Charlie, I started seeing more people everywhere. I didn’t understand it for the longest time. I’d talk to certain people and they’d ignore me, but then when I’d talk to other people, that first set of people would give me strange looks.

  By the time I was ten I understood that the living people didn’t seem to like very much that I was talking to dead people.

  When I was twelve, I found out it was because they couldn’t see the dead people, so they thought I was just a weirdo. I suppose I am, or was, or—it doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, I just am.

  I guess what I’m trying to say is that from an early age, the world taught me that dead people were more appreciative of living than living people. Dead people enjoyed the extra company. They didn’t look through me, because they could see me. That’s how I figured out I was (and always was) a ghost.

  Now, with all that out of the way, we can get to the start of the story.

  Growing up and making my way in this world was a challenge. Finding jobs and holding them was very difficult. Holding on to them made finding them feel easy. I mostly worked entry-level jobs, and I mostly rented rooms as cheap as I could find.

  Funny story about rooms.

  One time, I rented a room from a nice widow who had extra space but needed help paying the bills. I lived there for three months. I thought she and I got along great. She minded hers and I minded mine.

  However, at month four, someone else moved into my room.

  She rented out the room I was renting.

  She thought it was still empty.

  I guess she just didn’t see me anymore? I don’t know. But when I ran into her again a year later (she was clearly dead), she was quite happy to see me. She finally saw me. She apologized for what she’d done, something she didn’t do when we were both still alive and under a rental agreement.

  She said she just never noticed me after renting the room and honestly thought she’d dreamt up renting it altogether.

  I told her it was fine—that that sort of thing happens to me all the time.

  She thanked me. Then a light appeared, and she crossed over. I suppose she must have felt bad about it deep down in the bottom of her heart brain, because it was enough to keep her sticking around. I was happy for her.

  Still am.

  I tell you this story because most of my employment history played out in similar fashion. I’d get a job, I’d work a couple weeks. They’d forget to pay me. I’d have to raise Hell (figuratively, of course) until someone noticed me. They’d pay me, then fire me for said Hell raised.

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  It was a horrible pattern I had become desperate to break. Like, eating canned foods without the means to heat them up desperate.

  Unheated raviolis are not good, but unheated beans taste okay. Thought you might want to know in case you ever find yourself in such dire conditions.

  Anyway, I was sitting in the mall—Biltmore Fashion Park in Phoenix, to be precise—enjoying the free air conditioning during a particularly hot summer day. I was sitting in the food court, hoping someone might be just enough of an asshole to leave their leftovers on their table so I could swoop in and eat ’em.

  Which, I guess, made them generous in a messed-up sort of way.

  I remember there were these two girls talking about how one of them was being haunted. For them, it was a terribly frightening ordeal. The girl who wasn’t being haunted told the other that she should hire a medium to exorcise the ghost.

  I couldn’t believe how stupid I had been all this time. There I was, with the ability to see all sorts of things people don’t want to see. Not once had I thought to use it to help others for profit.

  It would solve so many problems. On top of that, they’d just forget about me after the job was done. No one remembers someone they never saw. I feel like my parents even forget I exist sometimes.

  I walked up to them.

  “Excuse me.”

  They both ignored me.

  I put my hands on their table and leaned in. “I couldn’t help but overhear you were in need of a medium?”

  “What?” the girl who’d suggested it said.

  “This one is being haunted?” I pointed to the other girl.

  “Michelle,” the other one said. “I have a name.”

  “Sorry,” I said. I could feel sweat forming on my forehead. To clarify, I’d never done this before, so I was sure I had already screwed it up.

  Then I froze. Completely. Just—silence. I thought for sure they’d be like, “Yeah, OMG! I’ve been haunted by this terrible ghost! Save me! Whatever you need, I can afford it!”

  Instead, the two girls just stared at me.

  That’s when I noticed him.

  A ghost was approaching.

  He wasn’t like the other ghosts I’d met. He was more like the type of ghost you’d see in a cartoon or Pac-Man, only with arms.

  I thought maybe the entire ordeal had been a dream.

  The ghost reached the table, locked eyes with me, and smiled. Without looking away, he picked up a French fry and held it above the table.

  I took my hands off the table and stepped back.

  The girls became transfixed on that fry. I could see the wheels turning. Their entire world had come unraveled in that moment.

  Then the ghost said to me, winking, “Check this out.”

  He carefully slid the fry right up the haunted girl’s nose.

  She didn’t move until it was all the way in. I don’t know why. She just sat there with this look—imagine surprising someone from behind a door and catching their “OH GOD” face, but extremely slow.

  Not like figuratively “I saw it happen in slow motion”, slow, but actually slow. Real-time, fifteen-second transformation from “I have no idea what I’m looking at” to “Holy effing crap, I’m going to die. My life wasn’t everything I hoped it was going to be and I’m filled with regrets. If only I had been a better person.”

  Meanwhile, her friend kept calling her name with increasing urgency:

  “Michelle.”

  “Hey, Michelle.”

  “Michelle, hey. Michelle!”

  “Michelle, MOVE! Hey, Michelle!”

  Until she was just shaking her head and muttering, “No no no no no no.”

  When the fry finally stopped moving—snug as a bug inside her right nostril—Michelle jumped up and batted at her face. You know, the way you do when a fly tries to crawl up your nose.

  “Wow,” I said, “Never seen a ghost do that.”

  Now, I was talking to the ghost, but of course Michelle thought I was talking to her. Living people only seem to think I’m talking to them when I’m talking to the dead.

  So full of themselves.

  “I’ll give you a hundred bucks,” she said, “if you can make it stop.”

  For me, a hundred dollars at the time was a large sum of money, because I was very hungry.

  “Sure,” I said, then looked at the ghost and winked. “I can do that. But stand back. These rituals can get a little… er… let’s say bumpy.”

  “Fine, whatever,” Michelle said. I held out my hand and waited.

  She stared.

  I don’t know if she thought it was part of the ritual, but it took her a solid minute to realize I just wanted my money.

  She rolled her eyes, dug through her purse, and slapped the bill into my hand.

  “Let’s get started then,” I said to the ghost.

  I slowly reached for the saltshaker on the table.

  “This ought to be fun,” the ghost said as he picked up a few more fries and started wiggling them around and moaning, “OoOoOoOo.”

  I snatched the salt and smiled at him. “Stand back,” I said again. I flung salt across the table and muttered nonsense Latin.

  I think it was something like “Spiritus nostri effugare infernalis.” I’m not one hundred percent sure what it means, but they are some words I remember from the Exorcist. I’ll let the editor translate them, I guess.

  To set the scene, by this moment a crowd had gathered—because why wouldn’t they? Food was floating everywhere. They couldn’t see the ghost, but he was really having a good time. He threw fries at Michelle and picked up the soda on the table. With his other hand—while I’m speaking Latin—he started shaking the table violently.

  I nodded at him, and he nodded back.

  I shouted, “Back to Hell with you!”

  The ghost let go of the table and tossed the soda at Michelle at the same time. She shouted—as one does when a ghost throws a half-full cup of soda at them—but her scream was drowned out by the applause from the surrounding crowd.

  As they dispersed, a handful placed money on the table and said things like, “Thanks, that was awesome,” or “Well done.”

  At first, I’m thinking they are talking about the exorcism then, as they complimented Michelle despite her beet red face, I realize they think it’s all a show that the three of us put on.

  Michelle locked eyes with me, which made me very uncomfortable. Mostly because she looked like she wanted to kill me or, at the very least, demand her hundred dollars back.

  The ghost floated up beside me.

  “Hey buddy,” he said, “I suggest you grab the tips off that table and get out of here while you can.”

  “Right,” I said, and snatched the money like a burglar in the night after the homeowner turns on the light.

  I made a break for it, heading to the opposite side of the mall. I found a bathroom to hide in for a while. I hid in a stall that looked like someone had attempted to train a dog to poop in. I closed the lid, placed a layer of toilet paper over it (because even the top of the lid had stains), and sat down.

  After I counted my take, I had one hundred and twenty-seven dollars.

  “What’s my cut?” the ghost said, floating through the door. “I’m thinking half.”

  “Half?” That felt unreasonable. “You don’t even eat. Obviously, I should get more.”

  “Yeah, that’s definitely a point,” the ghost replied. “But what’s your rent situation like? Because mine’s due, and I’m short.”

  “I’m sorry?” I asked. He had to be messing with me.

  The dead don’t pay rent. I know, I’m one to talk since I was a ghost myself at the time. Obviously, though, that was a metaphor.

  This was a ghost ghost.

  “If I don’t make rent,” he explained slowly—like I didn’t know what rent was—“I’ll lose my trailer. If I lose my trailer, I’ll be out on the streets, floating aimlessly like some ‘lost’ soul.”

  He mimed air quotes around lost.

  “And if that happens, I may as well follow you home and haunt the crap out of it, since you’ll have been the reason I got evicted. Does that register? You seemed pretty bright back there, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “I know what rent is,” I told him. “I’m in the same boat. It's just—I’ve never heard of a ghost paying rent. You don’t need a roof or food. I need those things to live.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t need to live. And yet, here we are.”

  “Okay,” I conceded. “That’s a fair point.”

  Just when I was about to pony up half, I had an idea. I thought it was great at the time, but looking back, it was a terrible idea.

  Well, sort of. Not having the idea would have saved me a lot of trouble.

  Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself.

  “Say,” I said, “What if you had a roommate?”

  “I already do,” the ghost said.

  “What?”

  “Yeah,” he explained. “It’s a skeleton. He doesn’t pay rent, so I guess I have more of a squatter than a roommate.”

  “Well, do you have an extra room? Because I just made a decent handful of money faking an exorcism with a ghost I just met AND I happen to be in between living arrangements.”

  “Okay,” the ghost said, nodding along. “I see what you’re saying. Tell you what—if you keep giving me half, and don’t mind a skeleton taking up a good portion of your usable closet space, then I think we’ve got a decent arrangement.”

  “I think I can live with that, but you should know—I have a dog.”

  “No deal,” he said. “I’m not sure if you realize, but all dogs do with ghosts is bark, and I can’t live like that.”

  “Oh, no, don’t worry. It’s dead.”

  “Oh, okay. Deal then,” he said, holding out a hand. “Name’s Orson.”

  I shook his hand—it felt like Jell-O—and replied, “Deal. Nice to meet you, Orson. I’m Amir.”

  Amir asked I clarify. “My mom is second generation Pakistani, even though that’s not relevant. I just don’t want anyone getting all pissed because the son of a boring white dude was inexplicably named Amir.”

  Pun most definitely intended. Amir denies it.

  I know Amir said people never saw him, but to clarify: “Obviously, when I did something strange, like talk to nothing, people took notice. People don’t like when other people are strange.”

  Our spirits escape the infernal