On the Price of Ghost Tobacco

On the Shelf:	Behind the Counter:
₵$36 Ghost Tobacco (20)	₵$41 Memory Coffee
₵$20 Bloody Mary	₵$30 Christian Repellent
₵$50 El Dorado Green (1/4)	₵$100 Anti-Flimflammatory
₵$24 Black Meat (g)	₵$6 Extrasolar Teas Box
₵$1 Slut Root (kg)	₵$1 Rare Minerals (g)
₵$30 Marital Aid Potion	₵$16 Fine MRE Spice (g)
₵$5 Quetzalcoatl Feathers (doz.)	₵$10 Magic Coat Hanger
₵$5 Blue Roses (doz.)	₵$46 Cleansing Ale
₵$30 Mythril (oz.)	₵$292 The New Shampoo
₵$4 BZTCN	₵$410 Four Pack of Beer

This Week's Special:

Ryan chose a fraying 70's weatherboard home, on a street of equal peers, as his debt.

Easy: 'Why?'

'So that I can grow Ghost Tobacco.'

Dorothy: 'Ok, why?'

'So that I can trade Ghost Tobacco for stuff.'

'Yeah, but why?' Mamta peels paint off with single scratch of fingernail. 'You don't seem, hm, status oriented. What's your end game?'

'No end game.' He offers her a glass of Chaffey Bros Salvis Gratia 2021 Eden Valley Sémillon. 'May as well do something, for the time being, in case that changes.'

Ryan's backyard tobacco is grown on an American Indian burial ground, but not the politically incorrect kind. His crop is Ghost Tobacco, which resonates with lingering spirits. The smoke, second hand or otherwise, gives mass to ethereal issues untended by shrink during flesh-time.

Ghost Tobacco is useful for peeps looking to commune with those clinging to mortal realm. But, like, face to face, none of this Ouija board social-media bullshit. The usual market is someone familiar with ghosts, professionally or personally, or perhaps dead and craving.

That market is Sinead and Graham.

Sinead is a counsellor who can talk people through psychological issues and, whilst very good, is handicapped by her death. Graham has picked up some psychology but is primarily the guy who deals with the clients, due to being alive. They have a functional partnership in enterprise that stops shit from being haunted. Their primary tool of trade is Ghost Tobacco, so their working relationship is calmer during work.

Their latest job is not a ghost. Sinead has smoked herself into physicality, which is unfortunate. Graham and Sinead duck behind ingredients bar, dodging pizza bases which are first thrown vertically spinning then frisbeed at themselves.

'Fucking stoner poltergeists.' Sinead spits dough. 'Get the thing.'

Graham does: a roll of raw cookie dough for weed cookies. A meat-cleaver on slate splits the roll in half and food fight ensues. High-THC dough globs through poltergeist before pancaking onto walls, equipment and utensils. About 90% of the cookie dough, which absorbed the poltergeist, is collected (with some pizza base) inside traffic cone. Which is good enough. This mixture hardens and sticks, making the Self-Righteous Traffic Cone.

Ghosts are human spirits that procrastinate their journey to the afterlife. Poltergeists operate on different mechanics. Like how Curses are the product of accumulated negative emotion, poltergeists are the accumulation of schoolboy dumbfuckery.

So now the Self-Righteous Traffic Cone poses as a regular, if heavier, traffic cone. Hence the name. If passed arrogantly by unauthorised pedestrian or motorist, the Traffic Cone will raise and hurl itself at the transgressor. The benefits of this are primarily emotional, for those who place said knee-height warning.

That market is Yvette.

Breaking down the shopping centre's cardboard boxes is not part of the contract. Unbroken boxes prop up layers of cardboard and form caverns within dumpster. Sufficient people are slack-ass in breaking boxes that the dumpster quickly fills with empty space. When the dumpster is 'full', slack-asses pile cardboard (unbroken) in mound. This wasted opportunity for box fort is classed as tripping hazard, which Yvette is paid to deal with. Pre-emptive, she spelunks twice daily, knife between her teeth. Sometimes she finds cool shit.

Such as twenty-five stickers.

 

Labels for foreign drink sold on the Australian market and the ten-cent recycling deposit has been paid. Lo, whack one on something and have it recycled: nuclear waste, political dissidents, cardboard boxes. Yvette has a use for these Disappear Stickers but prices determine best use.

That market is Saperavi.

'Heeeeeey. Pedro's back.'

An inner-suburban pub, starting to quiet down whilst also edging towards fighty, bursts into mirth. Saperavi heads to the bar and pays for a round and then double it for Pedro. Said Pedro is taking selfies with a dozen glazed-smiling dudes under leathery wings, no homo. Pedro has fully recovered, as proven by smugglings to and from the Ōoku. They brought back goodies.

The Sacred Sword, or Sword of Exorcism, is a sword that fucks mononoke up. The downside is that every use requires a mystery to be solved and said mysteries do not stack. As a previous owner put it:

 

The upside is that when mystery is done solved and mononoke are in process of being fucked up, shit is wild.*

Q: Who the fuck wants this junk? A: Someone with an empty desk. Someone with disposable income to spend on impractical bad-assery. Someone with their finger on the pulse of local hauntings.

That market is Ryan.

 

*And the fact that I cannot find the fight scene on YouTube, glorified plagiarism machine of yor, pisses me off.