Isla, Along for the Ride, I Guess

"We've always been here. Because of you, truest love," sang the voices inside me.

Without me.

I watched myself from across the room. Holy mother of goblin nards. Is that what I look like in a trance? I was lit up like a calavera on a Lite-Brite board. And moving. I could see myself moving. My body swayed and swayed like an unmoored ship in a storm, then suddenly straightened with a spine cracking snap. But I couldn't feel it.

I mean, bet I would in the morning, but I certainly didn't now. Couldn't feel anything. A cool numbness engulfed me from head to toe.

"The fuck," I said.

Nobody responded.

Everybody at the table was staring at me. Well. You know, not me, me. My body. What I was beginning to suspect, was my possessed body. Which was... uh... new for me. Can't say I'd ever found myself this side of the summoning circle before.

"Greg?"

I waved a hand in front of his face. The air was soupy and thick. Greg just stared, mouth agape and transfixed on my glowing form, fingers threaded tightly through mine. Not, like, my fingers. My body's fingers. Across the table. I reached down—felt like trudging through a choppy sea, invisible waves beating back my best efforts to swim forward—and tapped the back of Greggy's hand with a finger.

Pixie dust! I could hardly feel the pressure of his hand beneath mine. No texture of his smooth skin. No hint of either a chill or warmth. Just. Nothing.

I pressed down harder.

Nada. No reaction. Not good.

"Hey," I said to my body. "Get out of here. Séance is over. I'm pulling the plug."

She—they—whomever was piloting my skin casually flipped my hair back and smirked right at me. One eye black as the endless void and the other—oh, come on, the borrowed one was visible like this? All fucked up and gray?

Okay, I admit, outing what I thought were a few seamless piece substitutions aside, I looked fucking sick.

Taking my bones for a joyride, though? Not cool.

"We've been watching you, lover. Since the days we died," my body said, just totally, and aggravatingly ignoring me.

That bitch.

"Cheap charlatan!" wailed Dmitri. "Tis Rosemond, my truest love, I summon. Stand, er, waft aside pesky wenches!"

My tongue clicked.

Three voices answered. "Don't you remember us? You brought us here. Told us you loved us. All the praises you sang!"

And then a singular, birdlike voice tweeted out alone, "I was the berries, wasn't I?"

"Possessing of glorious will and boldness," a second responded, timid as a mouse, barely above a whisper, dropping my gaze into my lap as she did.

Then another, louder, alto-like woman's voice, leaned my body deeply back into her chair, so sharply I worried she'd give me whiplash. "What was all that freaky deaky 'bout my nipples?"

Sloane snorted. "Ain't this some shit."

"Right on, sister," that same voice responded.

Oh, this was heckin' weird. No bueno. I did not like this.

"Who're you?" Greg said. "What've you done with Isla?"

"Yeah, bitch," I yelled at myself. "Who invited you?"

I gave myself a look. I knew the look. The one where my eyes rolled as if to say: 'you did, skank.'

Well fuck you too, body.

Enough was enough. This was my show. I flung myself across the table, arms wide and ready to tackle these squatters right out of my skin.

Annnnd passed right through myself.

Are you shitting me? I could slide across a glass table, somehow drift through the bones atop it, and phase through my own skin like this was some Harry Potter bullshit, but the floor could hold me? Because I straight up crumpled onto the ground behind my body's chair.

And I—she—they—my body­ didn't even blink.

The voices in me rolled my neck as if to crack it. "Oh, sugar bean," sang that twittering one. "Your bearcat's just taking a little snoozy right now. Don't you worry, everything's jake."

"I am not taking a little snoozy!"

My body beamed at Greg. Literally. The glow of my bones intensified as I looked at him, grinning like a literally possessed lunatic. Wasn't a cute look.

He narrowed his eyes. "Nah, Pearl, everything is not jake. After my last night at Dmitri's gin mill I got home and discovered a light fingered somebody lifted a fiver from my wallet."

"Look at you, gumshoe! Knew you'd finger me," (ha! Look at Greggy squirm!) "eventually. Looking spiffy as always, by the by. Don't suppose you got some dough for the bar? Since you missed me so much."

"Missed you like a kick in the teeth."

"Bet Curtis owes you some cabbage, eh? I know you two took bets which of the club cats I was canoodling."

"Ye wagered on my personal life, Gregor?" Dmitri hissed.

Greg was a gambler? Hm, kind of made sense. He sure took a gamble on me.

I crawled around the table to crouch between myself and Greg. "Busted," I whispered in his ear. Was that a shiver that just ran through him? Or just a grimace?

"Fanging hell, Dmitri, you drained Pearl!"

The voices threw my head back and cackled. Candle flames flared for a moment. When they spoke, it was as one: "Dmitri! Kill us? Don't be a bunny! Dmitri didn't kill us! Ain't that bananas, Rusti!"

The deepest voice inside me responded with a snort. "That's a trip alright."

"Pearl and Rusti? Well fuck me in half," snickered Sloane. "I know who you are. Dmitri's still got your fucking letters."

"Language!" gasped the timid voice, barely above a whisper.

"Oh, come off it," I, me, the real me, snapped back. "You've clearly never been in my fucking mouth before."

"What letters?" Greg said, tearing his gaze off Christmas-lawn-ornament-me to look at the others. Damn. He totally would've laughed at that mouth joke.

Across the table, Dmitri looked, dare I say it, sheepish. He avoided his wife's sharp gaze. "You read my private correspondence?"

"Only more than twenty years ago."

One of the spirits inside me whistled. She leaned in close to me. Well, technically Greg, but my own face hovered only inches from me as she whispered in my guy's ear, flickering and fading with every inch she moved.

Oh my goblin tits, was that a zit on my chin?

"Dmitri was most ardent to confess his undying affection. The centuries he pined to be reunited with me. I was his wife in a past life. His truest love. Reincarnated to—"

"Close the shades, Agatha," said the one I think was called Rusti. "You know that was all bunch of bull. Ain't none of us ever been reincarnated before and we sure as Shirley ain't being recycled now."

"Hush, trollops!" yelled Dmitri; he turned to Sloane, who'd been eyeing him in disgust. "They mean naught to me! Frauds and harlots! These thots abused my aching heart and abandoned me to wallow in solitude, absconding in the daylight never to return! The nerve of them to show their achingly beautiful essence in my home again!"

"Seriously?" said Julian. "You believe the ghosts were scamming you, but not the barista?"

The vampires ignored him.

"I stayed through all your lonely-hearts club batshit and you still managed to throw your dart shaped cock at a fresh one," Sloane said.

Greg was still. Eerily so. Those blue eyes trailed my out-of-control limbs like a hawk. Or a shark. Or a psycho stalker serial killer. And his jaw was clenched so, so tight. His grip on my hand, my physical hand, had grown so fierce my fingers were turning plump and purple.

"Greg?" I said. "Darling, I, uh, am thinking I may have given you some bad advice. I know, wild, right, coming from me? But hey, babe, if you could hear me, maybe, uh, maybe you should let go of my hand. Break the circle. Maybe? Kind of jonsing to end this chat pronto and that'll usually do it."

Fangs dug into his bottom lip.

"You've been dishonest with me, Dmitri," Greg seethed, voice a feral, core shaking growl. "I don't like that. Just how many more Rosemonds have you seduced and misplaced?"

"In all fairness, my man," Rusti laughed. "I was totally in it for that immortality deal, you dig? Just never made it. None of us made it to the wedding, did we?"

"Cool, yeah, okay, so nobody can hear me, huh?"

I stood up and kicked my own shin under the table. My body didn't budge, my foot passing right through myself. For a moment, I caught my own eyes. Hollow and judgmental. "Oh, you can see me, can't you babes?"

The shades inside me pursed my lips.

I moved to the shelf of lit candles. Blew on them. Hard. Puffing my cheeks and practically spitting. No dice. Flames stayed lit. Okay, so that didn't get me back in my body. What next?

"Ladies," Greg said. "If Dmitri didn't kill any of you. How did you die?"

"She did it."

I spun on my heels. "Who!"

"Who?" asked Greg.

"Rosemond, that whore!" That soft, timid, mousey voice shrieked.

Plot twist.

Agatha stomped my feet, shaking the bones on the table. One of the thorny chalices on the bar cart burst, spraying bits of crystal and gold all over Julian's back. He flinched and swore and kind of, sort of, looked like he was rutting against the table leg too (I mean, whatever gets you off, I guess?). Tried tugging his own hands out of his masters' grips, but neither Sloane nor Dmitri released him. Or seemed to care.

"Aye, chillax, Agatha."

"Apologies," Agatha released a shaky breath.

The ladies jerked my neck and shoulders in all directions as they conversed.

That could not be good for my spine.

Also pretty sure the capacity limit on my meat bag was one thanks very much.

"If nobody here," Julian heaved, his attack on the table slowing, "is actually Rosemond reincarnated, then, how'd she kill anybody?"

For once my thoughts aligned with this jackass. That was an intriguing question. Rosemond would have to be one heck of a powerful haunt to stretch herself across the veil and into the corporeal realm to commit murder. I mean, it's not that it doesn't happen. Plenty of horror movies out there are truer than you're comfy with believing. But when it does... there's a reason the premise of haunted houses falls solidly under horror.

"It was early morn," Agatha spoke, voice returning to her apparent customary softness. "Dmitri had fallen into slumber after a long night of our—" a bright shimmer blossomed on my cheeks. Guess that's the closest a ghost gets to a blush. Agatha cleared my throat. "I wished to take the air and watch the sunrise. The gardens were lovely then. The rose bushes in full bloom. My family planted them, you see—"

"Boring," piped Pearl, "skip all the small talk, will you, Aggie?"

Agatha huffed. "Fine. I fell into an open grave."

Silence stretched across the table.

"Cool story, sis," I snarked in my own ear.

"To which Rosemond's pallor spirit so cruelly lured me!" she whined. "I saw the lady, hair red and billowing, dressed in the white of her finest gown, strolling amongst the gravestones. I thought she an intruder, but she did not turn to me as I called after. I followed her across the gardens, stepping exactly as she stepped so as not to rip my own nightdress on the thorny roses—see, I was giving context, Pearl—but as I stepped to follow her over the path across a headstone, well, I fell beneath the ground. She laughed as the dirt collapsed atop me, suffocating me to silence."

"Hop skip and jump a hundred years," My body convulsed as Pearl took over. Troll tits, I was going to be so damn sore when I got back to myself. If I got back to myself. "I'm minding my own bees wax, just having a smoke one morning out the top window, when I see it too. Gave me the willies the way this paper-thin sheba floated through the yard. Thought I must've drank too much the night before and went to shut the window. Jumped right out my own skin when the ghost appeared in the room and bam! Out the tower window I tumbled. Got all covered up in dirt, just like our girl Aggie."

"Yeah. Popped out for a joint. Saw a ghost. I'm thinking, groovy a ghost, when a chunk of that crypt out there toppled off the roof and onto my head. You can guess the rest."

"That seems..." Greg started. What was he thinking? Far-fetched? Unreal? Impossible for a ghost to have such physical dominance on this plane?

"Seems pretty fucking similar to what I saw," said Sloane.

The ghosts split my face into another toothy smirk. "And she almost claimed you too."

"She led me to your gross ass love notes."

"She led you into a pit to rot. Like she did to us." Again, they loosed that dreadful laugh. A warble in my throat suggested they were making me hoarse. Cool. "Joke's on her. You'd already been turned."

"I wasn't dumb enough to go to some white ass vamp's home on a first date."

"Oh? You just let him drain you in the back of a nightclub then? Between sets on your pole?"

Sloane seemed to squirm uncomfortably in her seat. Shots fired. These babes did not hold back. Heck, if it wasn't for the fact they were holding my body hostage I'd be living for all this spilled tea.

"She protected me," Dmitri declared, nodding. "My Rosemond."

The living, unliving, and the restless dead all groaned in hauntingly exasperated unison.

Dmitri gave no fucks. "Even from beyond the grave my truest love's loyalty is fierce! She beheld the deception these rotting quims preyed upon my vulnerable husk of a heart and rescued me."

"You convinced me," snarled Sloane. She tried to yank her hand free of Greg's, but he kept a hold firm. Damn it. "I was twenty-fucking-years old, and you came at me with this reincarnation batshit. You preyed on me, you rancid cheese bag. How you going to explain that one away?"

"As a mistake. I upped the fuck."

"The term is fucked up, my Liege—you know what, fuck it," harrumphed Julian. "No matter how hard I try to protect you, you keep making the same mistakes over and over and over. You don't listen to me, Master. You're upped fuck. The both of you."

Julian stood up.

Both Sloane and Dmitri tugged his arms, slamming him back into his seat.

The trio then erupted into a blast of overlapping shouts and arguing to rival the breaking of a thousand violin strings over the subtle notes of werewolf claws scraping down a chalkboard on a Sunday morning.

Greg pressed his eyes tightly shut. I could see his jaw tightening. That tongue rolling around over his sharp teeth.

"Know thy place unworthy servant!"

"Nah, he's right, all this shit's fucked! I'm tired of it. Aye, ghosts! Bring me Rosemond on the line. Skank said she could do it. I dug up bones and shit for this. I want to talk the nasty cu—"

"She's not here."

"Don't fuck with me!"

"She's not here."

Dmitri puffed out his chest. "My true beloved is missing, Sloane. Her soul has returned to this earth. This is why Gregor is here! To find her!"

"She's not here," the ghosts whispered.

Uh, hey, was I the only one who noticed the wind kicking up around here? Or caught the stench of smoke and sulfur seeping into the room? Or the way those shadows in the corners seemed to leer at me? No? Nobody? Balls.

Smokey tendrils from the shadows seeped like oil along the walls and ceiling and floor. They oozed and inched their way closer to me. To me, me, not my body me. Murmurs of the dead and whatever other ghouls resided in the Netherworld echoed throughout the room. They were coming for me.

See, this is why I don't leave my little door open for this long.

"Cut the shit and just admit the bitch has never, and will never, be rein-fucking-carnated," said Sloane. "You fooled us all with that jawn for long enough."

"Ye's jealousy is unbecoming, woman. Our union was a fling, as they say. My love for Rosemond is as undying as I. Her spirit is not, and cannot, be present here if she is alive on the mortal plane!"

I tried tapping Greg's shoulder again. He didn't notice. Phased right through him. Boy seemed like he was barely paying attention to the chaos at the table anymore. He bit his lip and furrowed those bushy brows in an adorable show of concentration, evidently deep in thought. Not so deep he couldn't ease up on his grip, though. I noticed my body's hand was still clasped firmly in his.

That was kind of sweet, how steadfastly determined he was to keep me anchored.

"Ugh, Greggy, come on, please hear me. What's going on up in that cute head of yours, huh?"

I snapped my fingers in front of his eyes.

He blinked.

Woah.

"Hot damn. I couldn't get into her apartment without permission," he muttered. Greg shook his head afterward, as if surprised he'd uttered that aloud. "Pearl?"

My neck turned to him. Us. Slow. Too slowly. The angle seemed unnatural. My glowing face hung in a scowl. I couldn't tell if Void-Eyes over there was glaring at me or Greg.

"How long has Rosemond been gone?"

My body shrugged. "Sugar bean I don't even know how long we've been lollygagging here. Hours? Days? You tell me."

Greg's shoulders fell.

Dmitri flung himself against my shoulders, shaking my body roughly. "Where is she now! Tell me where my beloved has gone."

Jeez, was everyone trying to scramble eggs my brain today?

An unchecked snarl rose in Greg's throat.

"She's gone."

"That's not good enough!"

"Dmitri, your hand, pal," said Greg. "Hold on to her or else we'll lose the line!"

"Yeah, uuuh, actually, Dmitri," I shouted. "You can let go now. Just drop it. It's fine. I'll be fine."

"Go ahead, husband, drop it and leave poor Lily the fuck alone."

At the mention of Lily's name the room shook. Flames surged on the candles. Rosemond's bones vibrated. Oh, and my body jolted up from the table. It rocked as my knees kicked it. The chair flung backwards, seemingly of its own accord, cracking against the wall.

A rough snap ricocheted through the room as my hand twisted Greg's wrist into an impossible angle. Yeesh that had to hurt. Boy held on, though.

As the chaos erupted, I ducked into his lap, my arms looping around his neck. The shadows wormed their way closer to me, leaving inky stains on the walls and air and chandelier and Julian's suit in their pursuit. Curled between Greg and the table, even if he couldn't see or feel me, was as close to the center of the room as I could get. And so it felt the safest. Just, you know, solely based on distance. Not at all to do with the comfort of Greg's chest rising and falling with every unnecessary breath, even if I couldn't really feel it.

I couldn't feel the wind swirling around my body now either, only watch as it blew my discarded gloves off the table. I levitated. My body floated a foot or more off the ground.

I've never done that before.

Sweet!

"You'll never see Lily again," sang Pearl, Agatha, and Rusti in their bizarre harmony.

"Why?" Greg asked. "What happened to her?"

Okay, this was getting good. Threat of impending doom aside. Really wish I had some popcorn. And, you know, the use of my own mouth.

The ghosts nodded my head across the table. Directly at Julian. "He knows."

Oh. Well.