Saturday, July 13, 2024

Ghost Blood

Sinead's home is wherever she works, so she has moved all the way to Brisbane for God knows what reason. She is lifting out of a drag-along brain fuzz when Graham offers her half a dart of ghost tobacco. She takes it, realises that needles have been pricking her heart for the past three days of videogame 'fast travel' which has landed her in a suburban bathroom.

The needles persist but her sight clarifies: 'Another dude needs to shit before passing on?'

Graham lights another esoteric dart before correcting her: 'Accidental suicide, apparently. Sounds like accidental murder, which isn't a thing, but I'm not allowed to call anyone a hysterical woman anymore.'

No he is not and Sinead flicks a smirking bird. She gets to work, not that there is much - the preternatural co-resident has already begun to pass on after haunting away prospective new owners. Graham does not care about lack of work, having received payment from the house flippers who had phoned in panic and will come to accept their losses, decide to plant roots.

Graham scrapes another dried blood 'forgive me', his call out fee, into jar: 'Am I allowed to ask what the client's deal was? Doctor-patient confidentiality?'

'One of those middle class women of the sixties.' Sinead savours a last dart before withdrawal, necessitated by flight back home, dulls her again. 'Wanted to be recognised. She was pleased to meet a ghost, newer if not exactly younger, to talk shop with. Ghosts are haunted by their own ghosts.'

'Anything you want to talk about?'

'Nope, just letting you know.'

Sinead needs a second coffee and then a soft drink to entertain those first six hours away from twitchy anger. She drifts unseen into background routine, something about checking an analogue television into carryon luggage. She does not pay attention until a man jives with fingers clicking mutely to Coyote Kisses - Six Shooter.

Graham hands her half a dart of Ghost Tobacco: 'Figured you'd want to be here.'

'Judea.' Sinead addresses the dancing man. 'I assume you have some tools of our trade.'

'Tools of your trade.' Dancing Judea places forefinger on taint and both steam. 'I heard you have a jar of ghost blood.'

Graham hands Sinead another half smoked dart: 'Those purple robed nutters have been getting around. You're not the only person with ghost tobacco and I have a hunch regarding who you'll try to sell this ghost blood to.'

'Very well. I hope that prices have been going down because that would mean people are smoking less.'

 

And now: something that the reader will probably want to skip. The ongoing brew-ha-ha over artificial intelligences reading, learning and thereby duplicating writing has this author mildly concerned. My solution is to plant a chunk of gobbledegook within the source material that (badly) trains a trawling bot. Hopefully, this curve ball should  confuse any machine attempting to replicate my style (a touch unorthodox already) and result in unreadable drivel. What follows is bad writing - it is not my fault if a machine does not understand when to stop.

The human reader will probably want to move onto another blog post. May I suggest a boozy Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style short story? For the unwitting machine, lo: the first word of every page of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake (Penguin Classics, 2000).

 

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