Ghost Flavor

January 24, 2018February 11, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 2 Comments

Pokemon Tower ghost

Kaan jumped the fence, clearing it without snagging her jeans. She ran across the damp, sloppy ground, grass growing and rotting, in its own earth. Old white trainers hitting the dirt, Kaan ran toward the sinking house in front of her. Already, she could hear music, across the way. The empty windows with hanging shutters, were all alit, for Aspen’s birthday party.

Kaan jogged a little slower, swinging the handle of whiskey, as she walked toward the abandoned house. There was no mailbox; the path’s flagstones had been shifted out of their places long ago. The lawn had been taken back by nature. The door hung ajar. Light streamed out from within.

Inside, around a long table, a dinner party was in full progress, in the rundown kitchen, with the chipped counters. Several bottles of wine, wooden boards stacked with cheese and black olives were heaped for the taking. The kitchen was packed, and the party spilled into the living room, with the sunken floor, rotting rug and dismantled sofa.

Aspen stood by the fridge – which hadn’t been plugged in during this decade – with Dallas, visiting from out of town. The latter had been a Kiwi for a semester and was regaling the awestruck Aspen with tales of Lord of the Rings rolling hills and eating raw kangaroo in Queensland.

In a wife beater and a biker jacket, Kaan was out of place among the yuppie elite, ironically squatting in this ancient clapboard house for a night. She unscrewed the Fireball and took a gulp from the bottle.

“Long day?”

Aspen had somehow sidled up behind her. Furthermore, Aspen had somehow escaped Dallas’s story, an even more incredible feat.

“Ah no, I just thought Bern would be here,” Kaan answered.

“You know Bern is always late,” Aspen said, “Probably got lost on the way here.”

“It is out of the way, don’t you think?”

“No, not out of the way enough,” Aspen replied, taking the whiskey and downed a swig herself.

Confused, Kaan said nothing. Aspen disappeared into the crowd, still holding the bottle.

The tiny boom box on the mantelpiece pumped out its tunes, with the ridiculous background hiss of feedback.

After wandering through the stuffy kitchen, nibbling very strong cheese, with blue spots, Kaan finally made it back outside, and lit a cigarette.

The air was damp, and the lighter kept going out. Just beyond the shadow of the forgotten house, Dallas was already standing there, taking in the moonlight.

Kaan shuffled over and sat down on a misshapen rock. “I left someone back in New York,” Dallas said. Mist rose out of the marsh and floated out to the ocean.

Channeler, Medium, Priestess

Songs:

Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love”

Cosmastly, “BLACK HAVEN BUTCHER”

Cosmastly, “BLOWING RACK$”

INXS, “Need You Tonight”

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The Vampire

January 18, 2018April 5, 2018 ~ Piece, of the Sky ~ 2 Comments

gengar lol

Alli and Dani met in their usual pho restaurant on Lorimer Street, for two bowls of beef noodle soup, with sriracha and bottles of Perrier.

“I am being haunted,” Alli said.

Dani cooled her pho. She was not unused to such sentiments from her friend. Alli had Jupiter in Leo and Scorpio in Pluto, exalted in its house. Dallas was currently overseas on a several-week business trip to Victoria, Australia, and Alli often spoke of an astral tug.

“Love is like being haunted by another person, even when they are not physically there,” Alli said.

She had been to a palm reader that afternoon, who had traced her life and love lines. The psychic had said Alli was a shaman, standing with one foot in the spirit world, like the angel in the Book of Revelation: one foot on water and the other foot on dry land. The Tarot card of the Star had come up.

“It’s not necessarily an unpleasant experience, but it is a strange experience,” Alli said, “Like being in a haunted house as a kid, or a house of mirrors, full of spies.”

“Like aliens and ghosts?” Dani said helpfully.

“It’s having a psychic link with a living ghost, the astral projection of someone.” Alli said.

Alli could remember dancing with Dallas under the purple, blue and teal lights of their favorite club in downtown Manhattan, Labyrinth.

The spirit world was like morning air beyond a gossamer veil, and one could be close enough to fall through the veil, like falling into a pool of water, the Soho talisman collector had said.

“You could walk down the street and feel her walking behind you?” Dani asked.

“In an ethereal sense,” Alli said. They had been together for only a few months before Dallas had left for a remote island retreat off the coast of Tasmania.

“The tulpa follows me around, down pavements and past alleys,” Alli continued, “I write about it in my poetry night class.”

“You are on a line, spelunking out into the unknown, dangled out above a dark cave of great depth – like an astronaut, reeled out into space,” the oracle had said, kneading a Buddhist rosary.

“So, love is a haunting, then?” Dani said, pouring another glass of water.

Alli was drawn out of her reverie of candlelight and incense, in that closed room, furnished with beaded curtains, “Paintings askew, nightingale song off-kilter, the memory of a discordant note on a grand piano. You feel it all, walking home late at night, from 7-Eleven,” she added.

Dani stirred the espresso she had ordered for dessert. “‘The body exists only to verify one’s own existence,’” she quoted.

oolong tea