Lost in Translation: A Collaborative Story

Part Six: Shady

"What are those ghosts anyway?" Rebecca mused while munching on a sandwich.

Mike sat beside her, and drew a little item from his pocket."Maybe...lost Christian souls or something. Doomed to wander the earth, we need to find a priest or something. "

"Mike, we're not going with the Christian concept of ghosts — No one here is Christian, remember?" Devian said, and ripped half the toast from her sandwich, the bitch. His name didn't rhyme with deviant for nothing.

Mike nodded, and lit what turned out to be a blunt. "Right, I'm an atheist now, and Rebecca is Jewish as hell — forgot."

Devian looked concerned at Mike's sudden newfound amnesia.

"....Maybe you should stop chain-smoking blunts," he said like the preppy goody two shoes he was.

Mike gave him the middle finger and inhaled. Because he was punk that way. "Maybe you should go fuck yourself. "

Devian cocked a brow, sly smile in place."Maybe I will."

"Ew."

Rebecca stood, rest of the sandwich in hand, and approached a ghost. If she joined in the banter they would bicker the whole day, and something about the tingling in her stomach told her they didn't have that time.

"Everyone concentrate, if we wanna know how to get the ghost out of me we first have to understand how they work." She crouched to eye level with a ghost, turquoise pink hair falling in her face. The catlike ghost eyed her dripping egg salad sandwich with a quiver.

"Seems like they like egg salad," Devian said, keeping a safe distance.

"Which means they're their own living organisms, something dead wouldn't need nutrients. They're just somehow— " She reached out, and her hand went through the ghost. The ghost arched its back and booked it. "Somehow not quite as atomically firmly fixed as we are. It's like they're only partially there. Stuck between states."

"Schrödinger's ghost," Devian said. "It's a cat and a horrifying supernatural being at the same time."

Mike nodded grimly in agreement. Took another obnoxious drag. Devian swatted the blunt from his hand.

Rebecca bit back an exasperated sigh. "We need to talk to Mike's weird esoteric aunt, we're at an impasse on our own as far as I can tell, and she's been researching this stuff for years so she might have some insight we've missed."

Mike frowned. Put a hand up. "Wait, wait, wait — I have an aunt?"

"Maybe you really should cut down on the weed." She shot him a flat look. "Anyway, if we're lucky we can call an uber, everyone rack up the money. "

They piled about 20 bucks in one-dollar bills.

Rebecca grimaced. "Good enough."

Part of her was glad they probably wouldn't make it back here on their own, the school was creepy as fuck. But considering the blood she could taste at the back of her throat from something squirming in her guts, unraveling the ghost mystery was in their best interests.

"Come on then," she said. And the boys did.

After an embarrassing ride filled with handing over a bag of one-dollar bills, and the uber driver questioning their life choices — they made it to a shed that looked like a glorified garage.

Mike's aunt responded after the 6th knock, grease-stained hand waving them in without taking a glance at their faces.

A wide space opened before them, filled with machinery Rebecca could only vaguely guesstimate the purpose of and what looked like Geiger counters and pieces of weapons.