Intersections

  And here we were, standing out in the open. Exposed. Stuck between a post-orgasmic gay man and my possessed ex-husband. Fucking great.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine Mr. Shady spotting us through the trees. Our ghostly auras must’ve stood out like beacons in the thicketed darkness. My ghostly flesh tingled. The wee phantom hairs on the back of neck stood straight up. I bore my eyes into the phone and gritted my teeth. We tried again.

  The phone rose but only barely. Shannon whimpered. Her body trembled, either from the effort or sheer terror.

  “We got this,” I told her, though I didn’t know it to be true.

  We tried again, lifting it maybe an inch before it fell back down with a muffled thump. Thankfully the lovers didn’t hear but we couldn’t risk that again.

  What happened next came from pure desperation. Or maybe it was the sight and sound of the two men toiling with each other in the dark. I ground my pelvis against Shannon’s ass, rubbing in a concentrated circle. Her tremors ceased. She pressed her butt back against me. I cupped her hip with my free hand. She grabbed my palm. Waves of tension poured over us. Our merged auras throbbed with silver light. Silver, not gold. She slid my hand across her flat belly, over the bulge of her twisted guts. Now lower.

  Before, when I’d touched or been touched by other ghosts, there had been tingles. Now, those tingles blossomed into something all-consuming. Strengthened by our desire, power swelled inside us. Through us. Around us. That silver light pulsed.

  All the while, we lifted the phone.

  My fingers drifted lower. The phone rose higher.

  Lower and higher. Lower and higher.

  Until the phone hovered at eye level with the cracked window.

  Until my fingertips slid under her waistband through trimmed hair.

  We pulled the phone out just as I nudged my middle finger over her clit. I’d never touched another woman like this before. Her labia felt different from my own, fuller and more complicated somehow. I wanted to do more—to slide my fingers inside her and taste her phantom nectar—but we hadn’t the time. She moaned and grunted with frustration. I ground against her, my own pussy throbbing. We almost dropped the phone. It wobbled from our grasp but we caught it before it hit the gravel.

  “Quick,” I said.

  Crouching low, we hustled the phone away. With every step, our dominion over the rectangle of plastic diminished. The device fell lower and lower so that in the final steps it skimmed over the gravel. At the end, it slid upon the dirt at the lot’s edge. Panting pointlessly, we hit the home button. Lock screen.

  We tried their home address. No.

  We tried Tara’s birthday. No.

  “Try her birth year,” I said.

  The cacophony of screaming grew still louder. My hand rested on top of Shannon’s, index finger pressing into her fingernail. Our merged auras still glowed with that silver light, but it was fading. We had to hurry. I followed her lead, our fingers dancing a slow waltz across the screen. The year worked. The home screen blinked on.

  “Yes!” Shannon said. She navigated to Mr. Noble’s contacts, but Tara wasn’t listed.

  “Screw it,” I said. “Just enter her number.”

  “I don’t know her fucking number. Who the hell memorizes phone numbers?”

  “I hate your generation.”

  “Wait. He calls her Hooter.”

  “He calls her Hooter?”

  “He says her big eyes make her look like an owl.”

  “Ah.”

  Sure enough, she found Hooter in the list of contacts and started a new text message. I imagined it must’ve been agonizing for her, texting in slow motion like this. She was probably one of those annoying kids I saw at the coffee shop, thumbs blurring over their phones while smirking.

  She typed:

  * * *

  Tara its me shannon i have posses zest your dads phone. Help me. Summon a

  * * *

  She paused.

  “Posses zest?” I said.

  “Fucking autocorrect. How do you spell Ouija?”

  The coldness inside me intensified. Our hands trembled. I told her how to spell Ouija and she continued typing:

  * * *

  Ouija then drive to airport. Hurry. Ple

  * * *

  That was as far as she got, because a tangled pile of shadows emerged on the other side of the lot. The mangled mess of glistening dark spirits writhed and screeched. Broken bones protruded from dangling limbs that hung disjointedly from the gruesome bundle of darkness. The tortured spirits were stacked as high as ten deep at their peak. Atop this horrid pyramid, Mr. Shady stared down at us and smiled.

  19

  We sent the unfinished text message, scrabbled to our feet, and ran. At first, we tried using the long gravel road, but Mr. Shady had the advantage on the open ground. Our hands clutched each other, but the combined will of his minions easily surpassed our own. He gained ground on us, and a sickening chill wiggled inside me. I knew what we had to do, but it was going to hurt so damn bad.

  With a grunt that sounded far fiercer than I felt, I yanked Shannon off the road and into the woods. Sticks stabbed into our feet and branches slashed at our ribs. Bushes lashed our thighs. We ran almost blindly, and our only compass was the dreadful cold nipping at our backs. Behind us, Mr. Shady’s slaves shrieked and moaned. I dared not look back.

  The woods stretched on forever.

  Near the top of a muddy slope, a stray branch skewered my face, jabbing right beneath my eye. I screamed and collapsed.

  I’d never known exhaustion like this, not even after a half marathon. We were done for. Mr. Shady and his demented crew closed in. I was ready to give up, but then a loud horn blared nearby. By the trailing pitch, I could tell that the noise came from a speeding vehicle. A highway. So close.

  Shannon smacked my face—the unskewered side. “We can do this, bitch. Come on.”

  I stared into her eyes and nodded. We scrabbled back to our feet and pressed onward, though Mr. Shady was only a stone’s throw away. Atop the rise, white headlights and red taillights slashed through the night. I was pretty sure the divided highway was Interstate 70, which would take us right past the airport.

  Renewed with hope, we sprinted down the hillside. Twigs and brush slashed through us, and we tumbled into a ditch as a bloody mess of torn flesh and cracked bones. Still clasping hands, we crawled onto the shoulder of the highway. Traffic hurled past, the wind from the semis knocking us over.

  Behind us, something roared.

  Mr. Shady and his minions barreled out of the woods. The conglomeration’s souls shrieked, begged, and cursed with tinny voices. Mr. Shady towered over us. Sour cold radiated from his slaves, numbing my back and freezing my phantom blood. Dark grey swarmed over my vision.

  We scrabbled to our feet and into traffic. It was our only chance. We ran with the traffic, chancing looks backward to change lanes and avoid being run down by oncoming semis and vehicles. Mr. Shady soared over the interstate on the backs of his nasty crew. He closed the gap between us though our legs pumped at a blur.

  Shannon kept looking back and changing lanes.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  Mr. Shady drew so close and the chill emitting from his followers grew so strong that I could barely feel sensation in my numb legs. I looked back. He loomed overhead. We cut into the right-hand lane. Mr. Shady followed, and a set of headlights tore through him. Shannon pulled me down just in time. A gigantic tanker truck smashed through the slave ship—an explosion of light and shadow that sent pieces of souls spraying through the air and over the road. The truck roared overhead. After it passed, Mr. Shady flailed through the air and tumbled over the blacktop—a long dark comet with a black blood-splattered tail.

  For a moment, everything dead remained still. Bits of souls—once again glowing dimly—lay in pieces. Hands. Arms. Torsos. Heads. Then the screaming began—the horrid symphony of more than a hundred spirits suffering in stone cold agony.

 
Amidst the maimed souls around me, I realized the cold hard truth about being a ghost. Our astral forms seemingly had no quota for suffering. In physical bodies, we had the blessing of unconsciousness and shock. Our meat bags had the blessing of shutting down when we hit our threshold for violence. Not so with ghosts, apparently.

  “Without bodies,” I told Shannon, “there are no limits to the pain we can experience.”

  “Cheerful thought, Molly. Thanks for that.”

  Across the way, Mr. Shady oozed to his feet.

  That was all I needed to see.

  I pulled Shannon to her feet and we staggered the opposite direction, now moving against traffic. My legs were stiff. My back throbbed. My golden aura looked cracked and mangled—as if scrubbed with a wire brush.

  Traffic whizzed past us, rippling our souls. I chanced a look back. Mr. Shady trailed after us, collecting chunks of souls. Each piece that he touched soon went dark, and before long, he climbed atop a squirming mass bigger than a bull. We were screwed.

  All the hurt throbbed inside me. My ghost muscles screamed. My bruises and lacerations wailed. Traffic barreled toward us. Mr. Shady’s mount galloped and lurched—closing the gap. A pickup whizzed past. I almost reached out to grab ahold, but I knew the impact would obliterate my hand.

  That’s when I saw it.

  A white Aztec zoomed toward us, its roof rack crowded with a Skybox and kayak in the middle with a bike on each side. I saw no other option. Grasping Shannon’s hand, I ran at the car head-on and leapt into its path. The Aztec collided with my soul—a bone-crunching impact that nearly knocked me senseless. The driver side bike impaled me. I clutched its handlebars and screamed. Beside me, Shannon shrieked. The passenger side bike had speared her through the chest.

  “You fucker,” she said.

  “Seemed like . . . a good idea . . . at the time.”

  Ectoplasm rained out of our bodies, sprinkling through the air. Mr. Shady watched us zoom past, my ex-husband’s black head cocked at a jaunty angle. The wind pressed at my back, shoving me still further onto the bike. A tangle of innards fluttered behind me like the tail of some demonic kite.

  “Did you see that?” Shannon yelled over the wind.

  “What? My creeper ex-husband riding a bunch of demonic ghosts? Yeah. Kinda hard to miss.”

  “No, idiot. That last sign.” Ectoplasm peppered her words. “We’re on I-70 West. Mile marker 34. Does that mean we’re close to the airport?”

  I closed my eyes to focus on the numbers. Through my milky eyelids, I watched as the impaled Shannon struggled against the bike frame. The car’s velocity sent harsh winds knifing through me. From below, music drifted upward—just a hint of guitar and lyrics. Despite all these distractions, I managed to get my bearings.

  “Shit,” I said.

  “What?”

  “We’ve already passed the airport. We’re going the wrong way.”

  20

  The wind sliced into me, cleaving canyons into my shoulders and whistling through the hole in my chest. I braced my feet against the kayak and my hands against the bike frame, and tried to shove myself free. I swore I heard a dog barking. Agony screamed inside of me. I tried a different tactic, reaching down across the windshield for the edge of the hood.

  Through the glass, a beautiful young woman with sculpted cheeks, curly red hair, and pale blue eyes took a hit off a joint. On the seat next to her, the messy-haired dog barked and growled at the ceiling. It must’ve sensed us. The driver put down the joint—smoke trailing toward the window—and patted the dog. Behind the car, the eastern sky glowed with the coming dawn. I then realized how our souls would be extinguished. The sun would rise over us, raking through our impaled bodies, and turn us into screaming plumes of ghost smoke. By then, we wouldn’t even care, because the dark would’ve drowned our eyes.

  I tried pulling myself forward, but couldn’t get a grip or the leverage I needed. Across the car, Shannon wasn’t fairing much better. We were stuck, and this hippie chick was driving us further and further away from our goal.

  The dog barked harder now, and the driver slowed down and changed lanes—maybe to better focus on her canine friend. She pulled right behind a semi trailer that mercifully blocked most of the wind. It was now or never. I braced one leg against the kayak, the other against the bike frame. My hands clenched the hood and windshield wiper. I bore down, pushing and pulling. The metal inside me scraped my innards, hollowing me out. Tears and blood rained behind me.

  It all happened fast. The dog barked. Shannon grunted and moaned. I reached for her, hoping that by grasping hands we could find additional strength. Our fingers clasped—my left hand with her right. I steadied my feet against the kayak. We exchanged looks and nodded to each other. Our shredded auras emitted a faint golden light. With my free hand, I grabbed the frame. My muscles tensed. Something gave inside me. I made a bit of progress, inching my ravaged torso off the bike frame. My ghost body sucked at the long hard metal. My legs quivered. My hands ached. I pushed against the wind. I screamed and clenched, birthing myself free. I used all of the strength left in my phantom body.

  It wasn’t enough.

  Maybe my foot slipped. Maybe my hands failed. The wind shoved me back onto the frame, now impaled even deeper than before. The bike chain ensnared my innards. Beside me, Shannon gasped. I looked, hoping she’d freed herself. No, she was in the same boat—or bike, rather—as me.

  So doomed, we raced futilely westward away from the approaching dawn.

  21

  A dark blue hue now filled the sky behind us. The winds carved spiraling tunnels through my mangled body. Every particle of my essence screamed with agony. So much suffering. Shannon squeezed my hand and I looked over at her. Thick blackness filled her eyes, leaving only a slight ring of white. Her aura now throbbed as a violent purple shade. I stared at her lips, remembering how it felt to rub against her.

  “I have to tell you something while I still can,” she said. She should’ve been whispering but the wind meant she had to scream.

  “You have a captive audience, Shannon.”

  “The accident was my fault.” Her lip trembled. “I wasn’t watching where I was going. I was texting some girl I met online. We were flirting.”

  I processed that. “What . . . What were you texting her?”

  “I was sending an emoji of a finger pointing up and down, up and down. Y’know, all classy like that. I don’t even know her real name. She had me call her Violet. I met her in a forum for young lesbians. Hell, she could’ve been a middle-aged dude for all I know.”

  “So you killed me because you were text-fingering someone who may or may not have had a vagina?”

  “I guess. Yes. I’m sorry.”

  I stared at her. Well, I tried to, but the wind kept nudging my eyeball free of my skull. Down below, my lone shoe kept slipping off, spiraling backward, and then whirring back onto my foot. Over and over, it did this. It kept coming back. Shannon’s grip on my hand loosened. She was pulling free. I didn’t let her.

  We held hands and stared at each other. I nodded as best I could with the wind slicing through my neck.

  “I’m sorry I killed you,” she yelled.

  “It’s okay. I wasn’t really into it anyway . . . my life, I mean . . . not until I died.”

  The car carried us away from our doom, but nowhere near fast enough. Our fingers flexed. Our thumbs stroked the backs of our palms. Though everything else hurt like the blazing fires of hell, her grip offered at least a little respite. I lay back and focused on our connection, the one pinpoint of relief through all of this suffering. It wouldn’t be a pleasant death, or after-death, but at least we’d be together. I thought about how it felt to rub her clit and ached at the thought that she’d never touched mine. And to think, I’d hated this girl only a few short hours ago.

  Life was funny that way. And death was flat-out fucking hilarious.

  Sickly cold wiggled between my toes. Shannon clenched my hand. I looked back
down the highway toward where the horizon blushed. Something dark and twisted this way came.

  At first, I thought the oversized shape was one of those OVERSIZE LOAD trucks towing an entire house, but as it drew closer, the cold wiggled deeper inside me. Mr. Shady and his gruesome underlings had hitched a ride upon a semi truck. The mess of hijacked souls crowded upon the trailer, oozing and wiggling over the sides. The architect of this horror sat atop the truck’s cab, feet dangling over the windshield. I smacked the Aztec’s roof, urging the hippie chick below to go faster. She didn’t.

  The Shady Truck loomed closer, now directly behind us. Its headlights tore through me. Mr. Shady raised a slick black hand and wiggled his fingers. Hello.

  I thrashed and bucked against the bike, but couldn’t pull myself free. At least he couldn’t get us now, not with the gap between the two vehicles. For the moment, we were safe. Our only hope was for the sun to set us ablaze before Mr. Shady could reach us.

  Not the most pleasant of hopes.

  His broken mass of slave ghosts oozed to the driver side of the truck—a disjointed jagged slosh of black limbs and torsos. Their screams almost muted the roaring wind tearing through my skull. A new set of headlights appeared, pulling alongside the truck. Looked like a white SUV.

  With a sickening lurch, the mess of shadowy ghosts slurped across the lane and attached themselves to the SUV—now forming a drooping, writhing bridge between the two vehicles. As the SUV pulled forward, the bridge of souls went taut. Mr. Shady leaped off the truck cab and slid headfirst over the sick mess of his minions. For all the world, I could only think of the faded yellow Slip ‘N Slide that we kept in the backyard one summer so many years ago—killing a long rectangle of grass.