Dead Men Scare Me Stupid (12 page)

Finally, when the
machine started shorting out, and smoke started rolling out of my body in
places where there should be no smoke, I realized it was no use. I’d given my
body everything the machine had. And it wasn’t enough. Sadly, I pulled the plug
on myself. I would have wanted it that way, I figured.

I unhooked my
body and started dragging it back home. I was tempted to just leave it where it
was. The hell with it. I was tired of lugging it around. Let the cleaning
people deal with it. That’s what they’re paid for. But I decided that wouldn’t
be respectful. I’d been through a lot with this body. I should take it home
with me and put it in a place of honor. Then when I got tired of it I could
dump it somewhere out back. A place of honor out there. I owed it that much.

I started
dragging it back out of the facility, muttering about the whole thing being
bullshit, which it was, and vowing to get revenge on somebody for this, which I
never did. Getting out of the building was easier than getting in, because all
the guards were pointing the other way. So I didn’t really need to hit them
with fire extinguishers. But I did anyway. I guess I was just in a bad mood.

I made my way out
past the sleeping guard. As an afterthought I went back in and stole some
stuff. Might as well. Everybody else was doing it. I put the stolen stuff in my
body’s pockets and under its shirt until it looked like a covered wagon. At
least I had finally found a use for it. At least it was good for something.

Just as I got my
body back out onto the street, clouds began forming over my head, thunderstorms
began racing in from all directions, and lightning bolts began furiously
blasting my corpse. Apparently, assert my friends at the coffee shop, who seem
to know everything about meteorology as well, my body had been zapped with so
much electricity, it had become the greatest lightning conductor of all time.
It was being hit by every lightning bolt west of the Rockies. My body was being
blasted all up and down the street.

And the lightning
wasn’t all. I could have gotten used to that. But the furious winds that
accompanied the thunderstorms were picking up all the loose debris in the area,
including me, and hitting my body in the face with it. And my ghostly body kept
being picked up and blown half a mile away and having to walk back. So, like I
said, it wasn’t just the lightning that was the problem.

When the storms
finally started to subside, and I was just starting to think the worst was
over, I felt myself being sucked towards my body by some powerful unseen force.
I didn’t have time to think of what to do. There was no time to think. There
was only time to act. I turned to run away, but the irresistible force was
pulling me in. I realize now that I wasn’t thinking clearly at this point. I
shouldn’t have been resisting. I should have been running delightedly towards
my body, not away from it. But in the end it didn’t matter which way I tried to
run. The force was too strong.

Suddenly, with an
unpleasant “thuck”, I was sucked back into my body. And if you’re looking for
an uncomfortable experience, I’d recommend that. It’s kind of like being sucked
headfirst into an ATM machine, if you’ve ever done that. Anyway, that’s what
I’d compare it to. That’s what it reminded me of.

Once I was inside
my body again I tried to look around, but everything was black. I wriggled
around a little bit until I had repositioned myself enough so I could see out
the eyes. Then I wriggled a little more until I heard a small click. That did
it. My spirit and body were one again. I was alive! I wriggled some more to see
if I could get back out, but I couldn’t.

I sat up and
checked to make sure I was all there. I wasn’t. Two of my toes had been blasted
off, and a small unimportant part of my skull was gone. I saw a squirrel
running off with that. Plus, it looked like some asshole had filled my shirt
with liquor bottles. But I figured it was close enough. I was mostly back the
way I used to be. While I was checking myself out for any other damage, and looking
for a kneecap that had rolled away somewhere, a car ran over me.

After
a few more lightning strikes, I came back to life again. I got out of the
street quicker this time.

“Frank Burly is
back from the dead and raring to go!” That’s what my advertisement in the next
day’s paper said.

That enthusiastic
headline was a bit of an exaggeration, to be honest. I wasn’t completely back.
I was still 20% dead. But I figured that was close enough. My left nostril and
right eyelid didn’t work. Which meant I didn’t take a good flattering picture
anymore. So I mostly handed out old pictures. People looked at them and asked
who it was a picture of. I usually told them to just take the picture. It’s a
free picture, isn’t it? Just take it. What do you care who it’s a picture of?

My upper lip was
on the fritz too. It drooped down over my mouth and flapped disconcertingly
when I talked, often standing straight out towards the client when I was
alarmed. Sometimes I had to lower my rates a little to get clients to put up
with this. Sometimes I just had to give them a pocket calendar.

I knew I wouldn’t
win any beauty contests looking like this, but I had never won any before
either. I guess I should stop entering them. I should start being more
realistic. But I didn’t see why my looks should affect my detective business. I
don’t solve cases with my face. So I didn’t worry about it.

I tried to get my
landlord to lower my rent since I was 20% dead and presumably wouldn’t be using
all of the office anymore, but he said the remaining 80% of me should drop dead
too. Everybody’s a wise guy. Everybody has a sense of humor.

You’re probably
wondering how I could even be a detective again - I still hadn’t been born, I
still didn’t have a valid PI license, I wasn’t bonded, I didn’t have any of the
documentation you need to operate a detective agency – but after all I’d been
through I just figured the hell with the paperwork. If City Hall or the Logic
Police wanted to kick up a big stink about it, they knew where to find me,
presumably. Meanwhile, I had to make a living.

To my surprise, I
didn’t get any flak from the authorities at all. It turned out City Hall had
bigger things to worry about than technically nonexistent detectives like
myself. The mass hallucinations that had been plaguing the city for months had
stopped coming and going. Now they came and stayed.

Among other
things, Central City now seemed to be ruled by a small army detachment from
Peru, under a Captain Hernandez. Citizens were being ordered to “Bow Faces In
Mud” when the Captain came by. If that wasn’t possible because of the lack of
mud, they would be ordered to “Make Mud”. Plus, all of our lakes and mountains
– remember them? – were gone. And there was only half a sun in the sky. These
changes did not make the voters happy. Quite the reverse. And there was an
election coming. So City Hall was frantic.

And the problems
weren’t just confined to Central City. The whole country was a mess. The
federal government, which had spent the entire year doing nothing but brilliant
things suddenly couldn’t do anything right. The dollar collapsed overnight. So
did the penny. And that, I’m told, had never happened before. One of our
inalienable rights disappeared, even though the Constitution said that was
impossible. And the day after I came back from the dead, somebody noticed that
one of the Dakotas was gone. The best one, too.

Government
spokesmen were spinning these events for all they were worth, making it sound
like the President meant for that to happen, and it was good, it was part of
his Bold Plan For A New America #6, but nobody was buying it. As a result, the
incumbent party was looking pretty bad heading into the election season. And I
was glad. I had lost confidence in the current administration. They shouldn’t
have erased me from existence like that. And the meat they shoved through my
bars shouldn’t have been lamb. When you do things like that to me, you lose my
vote.

It was while I
was reading in the paper about the latest government blunder – something about
trading landmarks for hostages - that Ed and Fred arrived in my office
demanding to know how I did it. They wanted to do it too, whatever it was.

“How did I do
what?”

“You’re alive,”
said Ed. “You’re not a ghost anymore. Tell us how you did it.”

“And what on
Earth happened to your upper lip?” asked Fred.

“I don’t have to
tell you anything,” I said, self-consciously covering up my droopy lip with my
hand. “Piss off.”

“What!”

“You heard.”

I hadn’t
forgotten all the trouble they had caused me in the past. I don’t forget things
like that right away. You have to wait awhile. A few weeks, anyway. I didn’t
feel I owed them anything. I got up and opened the door, repeating my request
that they piss off, and indicating that this was a door they could conveniently
piss off through.

“You’d better
tell us,” said Ed, dangerously.

“If you don’t,
there could be trouble,” added Fred.

I opened the door
a little wider.

“Piss off,” I
reminded them.

They left, vowing
revenge, which, as you know, is how I usually leave places. But I almost never
come back. I’m usually bluffing. They weren’t bluffing. They did come back.

A few hours
later, I heard distant screaming in the streets, and the soft pattering of
people fainting onto concrete. I looked out the window. Thousands of ghosts
were coming up the street towards my building. Many of them were wearing
ghostly army helmets. And they had gotten a ghost cannon from someplace.

I locked the door
to my office and put a small chair under the knob.

The ghost army
stopped in front of my building and began firing cannon shells into it. The
shells passed harmlessly through the building - they were as insubstantial as
the ghosts - but they were loud, and they were scaring the hell out of
everybody. Once the ghosts felt that their target had been properly softened
up, they charged into the building with an unearthly yell, and started up the
stairs towards my office.

I went to the
back window, with the idea of going down the fire escape, and never coming
back, maybe making a new life for myself in a different building, but there
were already ghosts climbing up the fire escape towards me. So that was out.

I thought for a
moment, then put an additional chair against the door, and one on the fire
escape.

The ghost army
reached my office door and rattled the knob. It was locked. They paused and
then rattled it again. Still locked. They discussed this development with each
other in low tones – I distinctly heard the words “It’s locked, I tell you” and
“try it again, Sergeant” – then, after some more knob rattling and another
pause, they started oozing through the walls into my office.

It was an
uncomfortable position for me to be in. As insubstantial as ghosts are, they
can still pack a wallop. They had killed me before. They could do it again.
Even easier this time, because there were more of them. And they had artillery.
I couldn’t give them what they wanted – tell them how to get back into their
bodies the way I had. I didn’t even know how I did it. I think I just got
lucky. Plus, they didn’t seem to have any bodies to get back into. I wasn’t
sure what the rules were, but I was pretty sure you needed a body for something
like this.

As I backed up
away from the ghosts, who were yanking at the cannon, trying to get it through
the wall, my glance happened to fall on a newspaper on my desk that was covered
with headlines about how incompetent the government was. That should have given
me an idea, but it didn’t. Which was too bad, because I needed an idea right
now. I looked around in the drawers of my desk. No ideas in there. I asked the
nearest ghost if he had any ideas. He didn’t. He didn’t even know he was
supposed to be thinking of any.

Finally I decided
to just fall back onto my old standby plan – the plan that I always use when I
don’t have any ideas. Stall. Play for time and running room. I would promise to
give them what they wanted. I knew I wouldn’t be able to deliver on that
promise, but that would be a long time from now. Time I could spend being
alive.

I stopped backing
up, faced the army, and held up a restraining hand. They stopped and looked at
me suspiciously. A few fired shots at my hand. I put it in my pocket. The
firing stopped. A few of the ghosts watched my pocket in case that hand came
out again, while the rest lowered their weapons and listened to what I had to
say.

I told the ghosts
that I was touched by their plight and promised that I would show them how they
could become real men again just like me.

“Will our lips
droop like that?” asked one of the ghosts.

I decided I
shouldn’t try to make the deal sound too good. Otherwise they might smell a
rat. “More,” I said.

Though it had
been privy to some unusual sights over the past few months, Central City had
never seen a ghost army parading down the street led by a half-dead detective
with a droopy eye and a floppy lip. So we were something new. A crowd gathered
to watch us. A few took shots at us, and our boys let loose a couple of
deafening cannon blasts in return, but neither side could actually hurt the
other. So the firing quickly ceased and we continued our march in peace.

When we got to
the government facility we found we were strangely unopposed. No one tried to
stop us. No one checked our ID to make sure we were the right army or anything.
There were no sentries in sight. I took us around to where the sleeping guard
had been, so I could show everybody my trick for getting in, but he was gone
too. That kind of pissed me off. When you don’t know much, you like to show off
the few things you do know.