#anyway imagine being a ghost and finding out these two bitches are investigating your death

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A High Magic

The theme being pure dialogue, I did not bother with tags. This is my 8th competition win.

You've always known what you wanted to do then, and that's really admirable. In my case at six I wanted to be a vet, as one does, but by eight I'd caught on enough to want to be a firefighter. You know, helping people and stuff. Intervening. At eleven I had made up my mind that I would become a guru. Seemed to me if I were successful, it'd be the best way to have people take proper care of their dead. Change their habits at the root, the core of their convictions.

It wouldn't have changed the way the masses behave. The world is just too big.

Well, I had to believe, right? Plus everything is interconnected these days, word goes round, people follow trends. Could have made my cult all online and reach people everywhere, even abroad.

I suppose... How did that work out?

I never got around to even try. I don't think it would have been that great a success if people knew the origin of my abilities.

Is it so? I find that surprising! Surely it still is impressive no matter what sparks it?

Most people just pitied me. The folks at the evaluation office did too. Listened to me describe all the ghosts, and what I'd come to understand of hauntings, and why the ghosts always ended up following me around in the end, and they nodded and said how it was quite rare to have magic coming out before eight. You know that gramps, don't you? Earliest magics to manifest are the elemental ones–

Fire, air, water...

Yes, and that's 'cause they take no imagination. Anything more complex and the kid needs to have some understanding of higher concepts. It worried my parents a lot, that concept thing. How I got to see ghosts when as far as they knew I didn't know what death was and never did come home with a dead animal and questions. Least of all seen a dead person.

So they just labelled you with a higher, or spiritual magic and left it at that? Surely people saw the value in that at least? Did no one want to investigate?

Not really. Like I said, it spooked people. My assigned magic counsellor drafted a few career paths for me, spiritual re-connector, grief counsellor, Voodoo witch, whathaveyou. He didn't understand! Everyone just assumed I got to see these ghosts if I wanted to. Everybody with magics, small and big, even feral magics, they get to control when they use it. Dead people, they don't work like that. They're there, following their victim of choice, the person they latched on to, and then they notice me seeing them, and that's it! They jump wagon. Because you see, ghosts are just attention seekers! They have to have it! Talking to them is like bacon down a dog's gullet. Makes them follow you loyally. If you see them, and you react to the stuff they do, they're in attention heaven! Some will even just start reciting their entire lives at you, bitch and moan and groan, it's a nightmare.

I guess, you being dead, as everyone around just ignores you... Even the people dear to you, it's quite hard on the mind.

Gramps, do you know how ghosts are made?

Mmmh... Not really? I have my ideas, monks at my temple do too, every culture thought about what happens to the spirit after death. But I'm sure, considering you're the expert...

Right, I don't though. Nobody really does. Here's my educated guess : They're born of people's attention to begin with. People can't get over the death, they rehash it, might have trauma, dreams, they call out to their dead ones, and that makes their essence–whatever ghosts are made of–stick around. They can then coalesce into whatever makes the flavour of ghost they end up as, depending on their own regrets and emotions and drives. They're kept here by that anxious maelstrom of emotion, and form based on their own worst traits. It's a bad mix. So they'd come to me alright, scare the shit out of me and persecute me, right until the day I figured out that you could make them leave!

Hah! How did that happen?

Was at one of my favourite joints. Mikwa kitchen, run by a couple, maybe five tables–didn't matter, food was from heaven's own canteen. Always got the same damn thing, never got tired of it.

I understand. I was the same with corn dogs. Corn dogs never got old, even if I did.

You know what it's like then, long week, tired, tough time at school, girlfriend getting all in my face about my magic being unmanageable... It was a Friday and I was needing my dose of Mikwan to just–

Relax.

Damn right. Anyway. I'm right outside waiting for my take away to be done, and she drops right out of the tree I'm leaning on! Rope around her neck, face all purple, eyes... You get the idea. She starts screaming at me, and man, it was just too much! So I screamed right back at her! "Fuck you, bitch! You don't fucking get to ruin my Mikwan fucking meal. I don't care about your sad shit story, go haunt somebody who gives a shit!"

Ahaha! That's very colourful, young man, but don't yell so–here, let me top up that glass of yours. Go on–what happened?

It worked. She tried to drop out of two more trees on my way back home, walked right past her, cussing but not giving her a glance, and she gave up. Shortest haunting I had had my whole life.

How old were you?

That day? Twenty.

Mmmh, it must have felt like a long time coming. Did you not try to see a soother?

I did. Biggest shock of my life, that.

Did it not work?

That's just the thing! I went a year after the tree lady. I'd managed to find ways to cope by then, but I couldn't believe I struggled this much still with my magic. It just didn't seem worth it, to keep it. So I go to that well recommended soother. With a high cancelling magic. Could erase abilities down flat. Had to save for four months for that appointment. Dude sits me down, grills me about my reasons for being here, and at least he was agreeing with me! Asked if I had consulted with someone to help "master" my magic first. Told him I plain didn't want it. Nothing wrong with having no magic.

Quite true. Never had a shade of ability myself, hasn't stopped me from being happy.

I didn't picture you as magicless somehow, gramps! I thought you'd have a trick like curling up moustaches or something! Hah! Anyway, man puts his hands on me, frowns...

Oh?

Says I don't have a magic at all.

Whaaa–

I know! And he was adamant. Just nothing there for him to remove! He even refused to charge me. It struck me then. In the eval office, they don't touch you. I mean, not for check ups like mine. First they listen to what you can do, or look if you can show. If you fit in a category, that's all there is to it. Only those with big potentials get appointments with staff with abilities. I never saw one. Lady never touched me, she probably had no magic to be able to tell anyway. What I described to her sounded like a pesky magic that would feed a psychiatrist for years, and nothing more. So they never checked. And then you know how it goes: at school, during civic duties, in the army, they ask but unless you make a big splash, nobody sends you to a Senser, or anyone who can tell for sure...

So you spent your whole life thinking you had a higher magic, when in fact you had...

Nothing. Nothing anyone recognised, at least.

That has to have been a shock.

Tell me about it.

But then, what is it?

That soother called a senser friend of his and sent me in for a free appointment. She too said there was nothing there at all. She was fantastic. Marta Balbin, we're still in touch, she's great. Anyway, she tagged with me in search of a ghost we could squeeze for some good intel that their relatives would validate, to prove I did see stuff for real, you know?

Did you show her how cussing at ghosts makes them go away?

Aha, I wish! But no, that's not quite how it works. With tree lady I got lucky. What you need to do is press their buttons, scratch their itch, tell them what they need to hear. Making them leave requires you to interact with them somehow, and I'd spent two decades avoiding that as much as I could.

Ah, I see, each ghost needs their own special interaction in order to be able to move on?

Precisely.

And so she believed you?

Oh yes, and finally helped me meet with a person with answers for me!

How exciting! Pray tell, young lad, tell me what it is!

She introduced me to the high priest of Enmu, in the capital's temple.

The God of the Netherworld? I suppose it makes sense to ask them.

Prepare yourself to be blown away : it turns out I was dead at birth, for two whole minutes the doctors worked on me, and I eventually breathed. Apparently though as a newborn I'd had no sins to weigh and I had already been given a rank in the Great City. So when I was brought back... I was an official of the Great City.

A foot in life and a foot in the Netherworld? Is this even possible?

High priest was the same! All Enmu high priests are! Apparently outside of ceremonies they spend their time putting ghosts at rest.

That is incredible! How can such a secret be so well guarded?

There are only a dozen people like this in the country, so it's not too hard. They'd have found me sooner, if the magics office had done their job properly and not discounted me as a minor seer or medium.

So are you one of them now? A high priest of Enmu? Working for a God?

Precisely.

And you work with ghosts?

What do you think we're doing here, gramps?

I– What?

You're Jeremya Mikkels, an archaeologist deceased at the ripe old age of eighty-eight, you wrote books on ancient civilisations until the bitter end, didn't you? You loved digging up secrets.

Yes–I... I did.

And I just gave you a great secret. A truth you never knew in your living days. Exactly what you'd been craving. You've regretted not digging up more, haven't you? Well, now you can take this very rare knowledge with you to the Great City.

I can? Yes it's... Yes, I suppose I can.

Leave us with no regrets my friend. Times have changed for me too, I enjoyed our chat, a lot more than if I'd met you fifteen years ago!

I would have haunted you...

And I wouldn't have had anything to say to satisfy you. But now, you can go in peace gramps.

Thank you, lad. I can see it and... it means a lot. I'll bring good word of you.

And I'll seek you out in the next life. We shall talk again, and I will bring you more secrets of this world. Now be gone, Jeremya Mikkels. Cross under Enmu's obsidian gate without regrets.

~~ August 2020 – Theme : Pure Dialogue

#original work #original story #competition #win #fantasy