I Knew You Thru and Thru Last Thursday

“I talked to one.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.”

“No, no you didn’t.”

“I did, Liss, I did.”

“God. I’m going to vomit,” Melissa said to her friend Collette. Her best friend. The one she had the sick fascination with.

Melissa and Collette were ghosties. ‘Ghosties’ are people who can become intangible and walk through solid objects. About 35% of all humans are ghosties. To them, walls just mean you have to hold your breath a minute. Melissa and Collette sat gabbing in their favorite coffee shop, Hemming Way, Collette with a triple espresso and Melissa with mango-mint iced tea. They both wore summer dresses. They both loved summer dresses. They both worked as Managers of retail stores that let them wear summer dresses all the time if they wanted. Ghosties tended to like freer, lighter stuff. Ghosties sort of had a freer, lighter attitude about life. For them, very few physical obstacles were much of an obstacle at all, and violence was the least of their worries, so long as they saw it coming and could change to intangible in time.

“Did he try to touch you?” Melissa asked.

“I lied to him. I acted as if I were a ‘living.'” Collette replied. Ghosties were as much ‘living’ as non-ghosties, but jealous people who couldn’t go intangible referred to themselves this way and ghosties, for the most part, did not begrudge it to them. After all, their lives were so much harder. They had so much more to fear. “He wouldn’t have tried to touch me anyway, Liss. That’s not what they like.”

What she referred to, what disgusted Melissa so much, were lurkers. Lurkers are living (usually) who have a sexual fetish for ghosties. What lurkers do (this is creepy) is stand around busy sidewalks during rush times and force everyone to walk around them. Only, some ghosties won’t walk around a person in their way. They’ll just pass through them. There’s a debate in ghostie world about whether or not passing through strangers is rude. Some won’t do it on principle. Some will. Some who usually won’t are in a very big rush sometimes and then they will.

“What did you say to him?” Melissa asked.

“I said I was a reporter. I asked him if he were a lurker. I already knew he was a lurker, of course. I’d seen him at it a dozen times. I just put on business clothes and a hat and made myself up a bit different so I’d look more like a living and went and talked to him.”

“God.”

“He said he was. A lurker, that is. He was one of those shameless ones - no excuses. I asked him if it didn’t worry him that it pissed off other livings that he just stood about in their way, too.”

“What did he say?”

“His eyes got this far off look. Far, far off. I wanted to cry or something. Liss, it was so gross.”

“See! How can you talk to them?”

“Right. Right. Well it wasn’t a big deal. Okay, I guess it was. But I didn’t think it would be, you know. Blech! I feel a little sick.”

“Fuck, Collette. You’re a nutty bee-yotch. You know that? I mean, you talked to one!”

“I know! What’s my problem?”

“Anyway.”

“Anyway. He said to me. He said it was worth it.”

“Do they have jobs? That’s what I’ve always wanted to know. They’ll just stand there every day for like two hours and I’m like, what? Are you all bartenders?”

“And he pointed to a woman selling frozen icees across the street. He said she’s one of us, a ghostie, you know?”

“Yeah?”

“He said she was in a real rush last week and she’d passed through him the week before.”

“So what? What’s the big thrill? You can’t even feel it!”

“He said, ‘I knew her.'”

“‘I knew her’??? What, like biblically? Fuck these creeps.”

“He said he knew her, knew her thru and thru.” Collette’s face got a blank look, too. She gazed off. She was thinking to herself that she had always thought you couldn’t even feel it, but maybe not? Maybe Collette was missing something. Melissa looked down into her iced tea disgusted and didn’t see the look on her best friend’s face. She looked up again and straight at Collette but by then it had passed. Now Collette grinned sardonically and said, “You know, some of them will pay you to pass through them!”

“Bite me, C.” Melissa said.

“I’m just saying you’re always complaining about high rents.”

“Bite it wherever you like, honey. Bite! Bite me and gnaw away!”