I See Right Through You
Josh turned to me, exasperated. “Buddy, you need to get laid. Just ask him out already!”
“I did. After work.” I said, “‘Would you like to get a drink with me?’ and Charley says, ‘I see dead people.’ I laugh, then I say, ‘Awesome movie! I loved that one.’ He says, ‘No. I date dead people. Ghosts.’ Seriously? I think to myself. He’s joking, right?”
“Got to be. Though I wonder what his Grindr would be like?”
“Queer obituaries?” I roll my eyes. “Anyway, so I say, ‘It’s okay. I’m not dying to go out with you.’ And he says, ‘Too bad. But we can still get a drink.’” I sigh, studying the condensation on my beer stein. Rising bubbles in the amber appear as seductive shadows. “So… what am I to do with that?”
“He either likes you, or he’s thirsty. Did you get a drink with him?”
“Yeah. We met down the street at Zeitgeist Bar the next night. He brought his boyfriend.”
Josh raised an eyebrow, pulled on his beer and smirked. “I didn’t see that coming.”
“Ha ha. So, it’s the two of us, or so I think. Charley orders two beers, pulls up an empty chair and says, ‘This was Pat.’ I look at the empty chair. ‘Was?’ I ask him. He says, ‘Pat doesn’t use their current name.’”
“Dude!”
“Right? He says to me, ‘Pat has a joke for you. A ghost walks into a bar. Wait, that’s impossible – she’d walk through it.’ That one fell flat. So I ask him, ‘How did Pat die?’ and Josh says, ‘They died in the boy’s locker room. The lacrosse team asphyxiated them with spray body scents. It was an AXE murder.’”
“Charley’s dating a kid?”
“Nah, it was just Pat’s joke. He was translating, or whatever you call it.”
“Hmmm. Do they have sex?”
“I asked. He said they ‘Merge.’ Pat takes over his body and they get off. I said, ‘Isn’t that called masturbation?’ He says, ‘You just made Pat mad.’ ‘Well,’ I said. ‘Pat can leave but be careful of that screen door. I wouldn’t want them to strain themself going out.’ Charley got pissed and left.”
“Sorry,” Josh said. “I know how bad you’ve been wanting to date again.”
“Actually, it worked out,” I said. “I saw writing appear on Pat’s sweating mug. It read, ‘Can I follow you home?’”
R R Angell’s (he/him) work has appeared in Gargoyle, The Baltimore Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and many anthologies. His LGBTQ YA VR AI SF romantic thriller, Best Game Ever, published in May 2019. More at rrangell.com