DEAD(ish) Read online

  Second Edition published 2010

  The Boring – aka 'Legal' - Stuff

  Copyright to this ebook and the content therein is held by Naomi Kramer.

  This ebook is distributed under a Creative Commons License - Attribution and Non-Commercial Use specified. In simpler terms, this means that you are welcome to copy the file and pass it on to friends, family, enemies, whatever. You can even change the formatting or fix the weird Aussie spelling if you really want. But you're not permitted to make money from it, and you'll need to attribute my work to me.

  If you'd like to use this ebook in ways not permitted by the license, get in contact with me. I'm generally fair and reasonable. My email address is [email protected].

  This ebook is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people – living, dead or in between – is pure coincidence.

  The cover art is by Katerina Vamvasaki.

  Prelude

  "LOOK," he said, cutting across yet another plea, "You're dead. You need to accept that."

  "But -"

  "No. Stop pretending to be alive. It's stupid. It's creepy. Now GO. THE. HELL. AWAY."

  She crossed her arms and stared at him.

  "Never."

  He rolled his eyes and stomped away.

  “Women!” he muttered. “Can't live with 'em, can't escape even by killing 'em.”

  Mike

  "You're like a priest, right? You aren't allowed to testify against me and shit? Not quite? Oh, fuck it. I don't care anymore. Help me out, I pay you, and then if you want you can dob me in. I'm too tired to give a shit, I just wanna get rid of the bitch.

  "So, I killed my girlfriend. Weirdly, it was accidental. I say weirdly, because – but that's a whole 'nother cricket game. Let's not go there, eh?

  "We were arguing because I saw her fucking the next door neighbours – gay guys, what the fuck? – on their back veranda. Both of them. High noon, bright daylight even. The backyard can only be seen from one place – ours. And we were never that interested in watching the naked, oil-slicked freak shows that went on there. Well I weren't. Wasn't. Obviously Linda was a bit more interested than I'd thought. Guess they did make me look fuckin' boring. Kama Sutra and oil and screams of ecstasy. Linda and I went for good old missionary position and I came every time and she never complained. That seemed good enough. Well, fuck me. I was wrong.

  "Damn, I've lost track. Right. I killed Linda. But like I say, it was accidental. I know all murderers say that, except the freakazoids who eat people's faces while they're alive and tied up, then fry their fingers and make haggis – shit. Off topic again.

  "It was accidental. Just believe me. We were arguing, she told me I fuck like a jellyfish (what the fuck?), and I slapped her. Fuck, wouldn't you? Nothin' much, if she'd been a bloke she'da laughed in my face. But she fell off her stupid stilettos. That's all she was wearing, see, just stilettos and a coating of oil. Christ, she stank like a whorehouse. But she said that, and she smirked. It was the smirk that did for me, but it was the high heels what did for Linda. She went sideways and lost her balance on those tall, stupid spiky things and went down, smacking her head on that fancy 'occasional table' with a nice meaty thump.

  "She died 12 or so hours later. In her sleep. We'd called a truce and gone to bed and fucked – yeah, missionary position – and fell asleep. I woke up clutching a dead-cold cadaver that wouldn't move so I could take a pulse.

  "Fuck. Reliving that has me crying like a little girl. I'm off to get a beer. You might as well fuck off for the night. See you later."

  I get up, wipe my eyes and show the guy the door. Maybe he'll go straight to the cops and put my arse in jail. Can she get into a jail?

  ****

  Bang. Bang. Bang.

  Music and thumping. Fuck.

  "LINDA!" I yell. "Shut the –"

  I open my eyes, because she's gonna do something nasty to me before I finish the sentence. I'm getting to know this bitch better than I did when she was alive. I don't like her.

  No one there.

  Bang bang bang.

  She's outside? What the fuck is she knocking to get in for?

  I shuffle out to the door and open it. A skinny bloke in glasses is standing there with his fist in the air, looking fucking stupid.

  "Oh. You're back? How much did I drink last night?" I ask, holding my head, which is pounding. And what the fuck is playing on my sound system? Oh fuck, Blondie? Just what I fucking need right now.

  "Fuck, dude – you've got shit timing, ya know? Sit down and shut up while I get me a chaser. And turn off that bloody music, right? If she'll let you."

  ****

  "So, I was sounding like a utter psycho last time you were here. But you've gotta understand, mate – I'm living in a little piece of hell. In fact, I reckon demons sticking pitchforks in my arse while I stand on hot coals sounds easy-peasy right now. Because this silly bitch has more imagination than any demon. Anyone'd think she'd been studying up on interrogation techniques – minoring in Breaking The Bastard Down.

  "I've had feminist crap music being played full-bore in the early morning, my TV switching channels every time I relax, the fridge and freezer being unplugged, my BBQ's exploded... I'm a man on the edge. Coffee doesn't help anymore. Besides, I have to go to the cafe to get one because she'll switch the sugar with salt just for a laugh. And you don't wanna drink coffee with salt in it. Ever tried? It's the nastiest thing I've ever tasted, and I've tasted some nasty shit. Including Linda.

  "Lemme give you an idea of one of my days, OK? Yesterday. I woke up, and there was no music playing. Thank God, I think, she's gotten the hint and buggered off. So I sit up, and my foot lands in a pile of horseshit. Don't wanna know where the hell she got that from. So I swear and wipe off my foot and she pinches me on the bum while I'm doing it and I fall on my arse and set off my sciatica, like she knew it would. I hobble to the bathroom to piss, and then take a look in the mirror. My hair's blue, and my eyebrows are green, and my skin's orange. I look like a smurf, a munchkin and an oompa loompa had an orgy and I was their love-child. Shit. I get into the shower and scrub and scrub. I get out and check the mirror, and discover that it's changed... not a bit. Fuck fuck fuck. So I give up, and I go to the cafe anyway. Everyone's staring and laughing the whole way there, and then the staff are goggling and trying not to be rude.

  "'Psycho ex,' I explain and grin kinda cute, and shit if it don't work – they all smile n get all sympathetic and the bloke at the coffee machine makes me a free extra-large iced coffee thing with extra cream. Then, because he's a smart-arse, puts green, blue and orange sprinkles on top. Whatever. Caffeine. Cholesterol. Sugar. Heaven. Temporarily, of course. Cos then Linda turns up, right in public. She sits opposite me and one of the staff come over to take her order. She asks for a double espresso, black, hot. I frown at her but I can hardly say, 'Bugger off, you're a ghost!' in front of everyone, can I? So I sweat it out, and her double espresso arrives. She throws it in my face and disappears.

  "The staff are all gaping. Hell, they did just see a woman disappear into thin air. didn't they? I count my options and quickly look as confused as anybody else. To help matters, I squeeze out a tear or two. Not too hard considering I just had scalding liquid all over my face.

  "So there you are. She's a psycho bitch, and I gotta get her outta here. You're the exorcist – how the hell do we get rid of this chick?"

  ****

  (Trent)

  I sit in the chair, listening to this pale shadow of a man pour out his crappy black heart to me, and I do my best to look sympathetic. MUSTN'T smirk! We don't want to put the wind up him. Professional pride aside, Linda would kill me if I stuff this up.

  Trent

  My name's Trent. I'm a private detective, hired by the late Linda Stev
ens. Obviously, I believe in ghosts. I never used to, but Linda is a pretty determined woman with some very convincing tricks. Cripes, I don't want to start thinking about it. She'll drive me mad if I dwell on it. Let me just say this – don't ever let a ghost like Linda near your pants.

  She told me about herself, and insisted that I write it down. Why? I asked. I knew I'd remember every detail – it's my job. Besides, she could always be on hand to remind me of anything that slipped my prodigious memory.

  "For posterity," she said. Well, can't argue with that. Besides, arguing with a ghost is one of those exercises in futility, like chasing rainbows or trying to ride the wind. At least it is if the ghost's Linda. I'd never tried arguing with a ghost before.

  My name's Linda. I'm dead. It sucks, OK? Especially because I'm dead for no good reason. I'm dead because my dumbarse boyfriend shot me and it hurt like hell and that's all I remember, to be honest. Until I woke up without a body. Now I know from books and movies that that's not the way it's supposed to happen. Well, in a way it is, right. But the ghost is always anchored by their bod, and they can't move too far away from it. Which implies that they know WHERE THE HELL IT IS. Whereas, me? I don't know where my body is, and I'm not limited to any location. And for some reason, this is really important to me. I need to find my body. Maybe I need closure, or some shit. I don't know. I just need to. So I hired Trent. He'll find my body for me. I hope. If he doesn't, I'll fire his arse and haunt him in between haunting my ex-beloved and hiring someone with a clue.

  I think that last bit's a threat.

  ****

  I wander around the outside of the house, 'feeling the vibes'. Mike walks beside me, and I can almost feel him shaking. This guy is seriously on the edge. I pause in about every location I can think of, watching him out of the corner of my eye. I can't feel 'cold spots' for shit, but I can read people. They tense up when you're close to something they desperately don't want you to find. Although this guy is so stressed I'm not sure he'd tense up if I held a knife to his throat and threatened to rape him.

  I keep wandering, over the obvious bits – shed, garage, vegie garden – nothing.

  "Did Linda have anything – a treasure of some sort, like a journal – buried out here?" I ask, spreading my hands above the vegie garden in what I hope is a cold spot sensing kinda way.

  He shrugs, looking puzzled and vaguely irritated.

  "No bloody idea, mate – can we go back inside now? I need to sit down."

  He really does look wrecked. His skin's still orange, although he's managed to bleach the colour out of his hair and eyebrows. But Linda's been having fun with nail polish, and his fingernails and toenails are a very pretty bright pink. So now he just looks like the victim of a deranged beautician. He scratches at his skull absent-mindedly.

  "How'd you get the colour out of your hair?"

  "I just used the stuff in the cupboard," he says and shrugs, still scratching.

  Bleached his hair with household bleach? No wonder he's scratching. His head must be one big blister.

  "You do know there are different kinds of bleach?"

  He looks at me blankly.

  Stuff it, I think. Let the neckless wonder suffer.

  "Never mind."

  The Cops

  (Mike)

  Reggae music is blaring. I wake up and groan. I'd been dreaming about fucking Anna Kornikova, I wake up to the same old nightmare. Except different, because she's an imaginative bitch. New Rule #1 – Don't date women who paint. Arty-farty doesn't just equal freaky in the sack, it also equals nasty genius revenge. I don't like genius when it's happening to me.

  I shamble out of bed and don't fall over or get slimed or hurt. Huh. I Shot the Sheriff? She's slipping, if Bob Marley's the worst she can do to me. I get to the sound system and turn it way down so I can hear myself think. I hear a loud banging on the front door. Fuck. Some of the neighbours bitching about the noise, I bet. Fine. I paste a shit-eating grin on my face, thread my way through the plant pots to the front door, and open it.

  Cops.

  Fuck.

  They're looking shocked, which scares me a little.

  I look down. Fly's unbuttoned, for a start. My dick's waving hello in the breeze.

  "God, sorry!" I say, putting him away and straightening myself up. "Rough night. Umm... can I help you?"

  One of them tears his eyes away from my pants and looks at my face, trying not to look fascinated by the fact that I'm bright orange still, I guess. My fingernails are still bright pink, so I must look like a freakshow even with my clothes in order.

  "We're responding to a noise pollution complaint, sir – may we come in?"

  The other guy's still looking shell-shocked, but he's staring at my lounge room. I motion them in, and turn to look at whatever's got the bastard enthralled.

  IT WAS NO ACCIDENT!

  is written all over the walls The-Shining-style in red paint. Fuck.

  At least the plants are hiding some of it.

  Wait – plants in my lounge room?

  A few dozen mature cannabis plants. In pots. Oh, FUCK.

  ****

  The cops booked me, of course. Best thing to happen to them all month, I'd say, since it's generally the cops in disgrace who pull 'noise pollution' duty. So we went down to the station and I docilely gave my details to a fat balding cop who looked like he hadn't stirred from behind his desk for a few years. But I stayed polite and obedient, even when Linda appeared behind the fat guy and stuck her tongue out at me. Even though I desperately wanted to be childish too and stick my tongue out at her. That's about the only revenge I can get on the stupid bitch right now.

  Misery

  (Trent)

  I'm starting to wonder if an all-expenses-paid long-term hire is really worth it. Certainly, I'm eating consistently for the first time in years. My rent is paid up for months, my clothes are new, and I have a NICE car. But I also have a sad, whiny female hanging around me a lot, and she's a bit of a downer – what with the "I'm so miserable" thing 24/7. Can't even take her to bed to give her a hormone fix. Can't kick her out, because this woman is half pathos, half stalker queen incarnate. And believe it or not, I'm a sucker for a woman in trouble. That's part of the reason I'm usually broke.

  Here's Linda's take on things, scribed by yours truly. I really must teach her to use a keyboard so she do her own blasted typing.

  You know what sucks most about being dead? Hunger. Sleep. They're all controlled by your body, right? But the cravings didn't just go because I'm dead. They're just vague and weird. Like, I find myself drifting off to sleep and the world just fades away and I could be out for days, or only minutes. I panic almost every time I drift off, because it feels like I'm just floating away to another place. If I was alive, my body'd wake me and it'd bring me back. But I can't find the bloody thing, and I don't think it'd help me anyhow. Not with this. Cos it's dead. So I get kinda hungry, and I can't do a fucking thing about it. No steak for me.

  I tried to eat. What a joke. I could pick it up. I've gotten damn good at that. But I couldn't find my mouth. It should be there in my head, right? So I headed over to a mirror for some help, and I get a shock. I don't have a reflection. I looked down at myself, and I was looking just fine. Trent could see me. The bastard was hiding snickers behind his hand as he watched me try to eat. Nothing in the mirror, though. It's like I don't have a soul. And then I realised that even if I got the stupid burger in my mouth, I didn't have teeth. Or anything. Fuck, what a doofus. So I'm stuck wandering around playing halloween tricks and looking for my body, tired and hungry and more and more grumpy.

  See what I mean? Whiny. If I had any sense I'd get the hell out of this deal and find me some sunny beach where she couldn't find me. The moon, maybe.

  I'm not completely heartless. I do feel for her, in the midst of wishing she'd take herself off to the afterlife. I even took her out clubbing in an attempt to cheer her up. I was expecting drunk idiots to crack onto her, and then suffer some L
inda-esque revenge, which always seems to cheer her up. But nope – her aura of misery kept them away in droves, while the women flocked to me.

  In case you didn't realise, I'm NOT a looker. But that 'I want you but I can't have you' look is magnetic, apparently. By the end of the night I had a pocketful of phone numbers, and Linda was droopier and more miserable than ever.

  Jailbird

  "LINDA!"

  "What?"

  "What the FUCK do you want?"

  "My body, arsehole!"

  "I don't have it!"

  "Tell me where it is, shit-for-brains, and I'll leave you alone."

  "You're gonna get me killed, you crazy bitch!"

  "Self-inflicted, arsewipe - where's my body?"

  "LINDA!"

  He stands in a solitary jail cell, pants around his ankles, yelling at a besser-brick wall. The warden watching the television screen shakes his head sadly.

  "Geez, they reckon that shit's harmless, eh? Look at the poor fucker!"

  He doesn't see the KISS ME written in beautiful cursive in red-rose lipstick on Mike's arse that Mike's just spotted in the mirror – and which has sparked this latest screaming match.

  "Linda, for God's sake..."

  She disappears.

  He slumps to his knees and starts to cry, as she reappears behind him and crumbles a biscuit into his bed.

  ****

  (Mike)

  Ten times round the hot concrete exercise yard. What a crock. The shittiest thing is, that was the highlight of my fucking day, after Linda's visit last night. Even with the other cons staring at me and whispering to each other and the resident arsehole who had to come over and grab my shoulder right on the nerve and 'welcome' me to his fucking dump.

  Back inside I go, and I sit in the jail cell, butt cheeks freshly scrubbed, and try to work out what the fuck I'm going to do. With Linda dead, there's no one who gives a shit about me. I'm broke, in the eyes of the law, and I'd have to be out of here to get hold of some of the real cash. I can't post bail for myself, no one else will, so I'm fucked. Stuck in prison again with a bunch of arsehole losers and a ghost writing come-on messages on my arse.

  Fuck.

  Fuck.

  FUCK!

  There's no way out of this shit. If I tell Linda the truth, the shit'll just hit the fan. She thinks she can just find her fucking body and float off to happyland. If she finds out what I've done with it, there's gonna be no happyland for nobody. She's gonna fuckin' kill me.