Ghostly Reward

This post is in response to the 100 Days of Writing challenge I’m doing with the L.A. Writer’s group, where I will try to write 200 words (minimum) a day to get back into the writing groove.

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I don’t know what made the ghost appear to me, but I wasn’t going to spurn the chance to acquire its essence.

Call me selfish, but I believe it’s to our mutual benefit–mine and the ghost’s—to do what I can to harvest the fine, powdery residue that they leave behind when their unfinished business in our world is concluded. The ghost can find some sort of resolution in the afterlife, whether it be a Heaven, Hell, or simply a return to existence as a new being, I don’t really care. Alchemists pay four crowns an ounce for spirit dust, and that’s a damn good payday that’ll keep me nicely pickled in liquor for a month or two.

The spirit is saying something about its child, still living, who is in some sort of danger and needs to know some secret, I’m only half-listening. Ghosts usually hang about the place where they died, but some are tied to their rotting flesh enough that they’ll make their way over to the cemetery, and it looks like this one’s get has been visiting their forebearer’s grave; there’s really only one headstone with flowers on it, and I think it’s a fair bet that it belongs to the luminescent, floating apparition that’s making the night turn all green around me.

I sigh. Traipsing around the city at night while the curfew is still enforced is a sure-fire way to get put on the rack, if not conscripted and sent to the front. I’d managed to fool a couple of patrols by playing the cripple, but I can’t count on being so lucky. I memorize the name that was chiseled onto the headstone and start thinking about how I can find out where the ghost’s child lives.

With a flaring of greenish light, the ghost fades away, leaving an unpleasant odor. I put my trowel back into the sack with the few grave mushrooms I’d found before the spirit showed up and start making my way home, carefully avoiding the patrols that roam the streets.

The following morning, I manage to get out of the hovel I share with the other street rats, clean myself up as best I can in the trough beside the back entry to the whorehouse on Nieman street and cross half the city towards the records building. I wait outside until Friedrick leaves on his lunch break and spend the following hour convincing him to go down into the archives to find me an address. It doesn’t cost me more than five minutes behind some bushes in the public park, and I’m sure the bounce in the archivist’s step will bear fruit before the day is out.

That night, as I knock on the bright red door, I’m feeling quite confident that the payday is forthcoming. The neighborhood is quite nice, if not exactly rich, and the quality build of the structure speaks to sufficient wealth that I could potentially ask for a reward for delivering the message from beyond the grave. Add whatever I can squeeze out of the descendant to the dust I’ll have to dash over to collect—I have to hope no one stumbles on it before I get there—and things were definitely looking up for me in the immediate future.

Maybe I could have enough to buy myself an apprenticeship, like Friedrick had done. Maybe I could stop living in the street. Maybe I’d be able to afford clothes and food.

I chuckled as the fanciful thoughts crossed my mind, but I knew the truth. Any coin would be spent on escaping my lot in life via the most expedient way. Liquid.

The door opened and a strikingly handsome man stands there, smiling at me. I can’t help but blush and mumble my way through the message the ghost had recited over and over. Even though I memorized it, I don’t really understand what a ‘marrow match’ is, what kind of candidate the son needs to ‘tend to’, but the message is clearly something important.

First, shock wiped the smile off his face, then tears welled and he hugged me, filthy and smelly as I was, and invited me into his house. He fed me, bathed me and gave me some clothes that probably belonged to a sister, or lover, even though there didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house. After dinner, he’d spoken at length about my reward and taken me down to his basement, where he kept his money.

There’s a lot of strange things in the brightly lit space, jars with bottled lightning, alchemist concoctions and all sorts of beastly samples in glass jars. He tells me to remove my clothes and I find myself doing so, which I only think is strange for a second before I comply.

He lies me down on a large table and begins putting needles connected into hoses into my arms and legs. It hurts, but I feel disconnected from it all, as if it’s all happening to someone else. I feel warmth spreading across my body and everything is calm.

Everything’s alright.

Every