Page 26 of Unalive On Air

I’m more overwhelmed than I’ve ever been in my entire life, especially now that a very recognisable face has just sailed through the wall into the room, only she’s a lot younger than she was inside my head. Mid-thirties at most.

“I only know of Imogen,” I say, pointing to the famous actress. The one whose murder I’m here to solve. “But I don’t know anyone, really.”

“Cool beans. Yeah, we call her Jeanie or Auntie Jeanie. Because her real name is Je—”

“Jean Johnson,” I interrupt. Being dead is weird. I feel out of breath, and yet I’m not even breathing.

Imogen, or Jeanie, is five foot two, five-three at most, meaning that if I stood next to her, I’d actually be taller than someone for a change. She’s wearing silky monochrome polka‑dot pyjamas with a matching eye mask perched atop her black bouffant, and immediately my detective brain knows she was probably in bed, or at least getting ready for bed, when she died. Not, as the papers would have me believe, out for a midnight cliff-top stroll.

“Fucking hell!” Jeanie yells, drawing out the F bomb in her drippingly posh accent. She glances over at my body. “What a bloody mess. That’s the worst one yet!”

“What about Josh?” Peter the magician says. “Josh was pretty gory. Additionally, he was fifteen, so morally it’s worse. This guy’s middle-aged.” He points at me with a flattened palm. “Mid-fifties? And it looks like he’s enjoyed life’s many comforts.” He lowers his hand to my belly.

“Hey,” I pipe up. “I’m thirty-nine.” I ignore the casual fatphobia.

“Were thirty-nine. You were thirty-nine, darling. You’re dead now,” Jeanie says. She lifts her shoulders up to her ears and heaves out a great sigh. “Who will solve all our murders now?”

A woman, early twenties, Black, with closely cropped hair answers. She’s wearing a tartan mini skirt, boots that look like something a comic book villain would wear, and a see‑through black T-shirt with sticky black Xs over her nipples. In short, she’s a rock star, and if I had to make an educated guess who this is from my pocket list of Paragon deceased, my money would be on Pixie. “I don’t see why Gary can’t still solve our murders just because he’s dead. What do you always tell me, Jeanie?”

Jeanie sighs again. “You don’t need a body to get shit done.”

“Exactly. You don’t need a body to get shit done.” Pixie triumphantly crosses her hands over her chest. “Gary’s the best of the best. We all know that. He’ll have this solved in no time.”

I decide I like her.

A guy wearing an ill-fitting black hoodie, even iller‑fitting stonewashed jhorts, and holding a microphone stuck to a two‑metre‑long pole rolls his eyes and shakes his head. I seem to be the only one who notices the gesture. Or perhaps this guy’s simply the type of person people have learned not to engage with. From the way the rest of the ghosts give him at least three to four feet of space, I think I know which it might be.

Fine, he doesn’t like me. I’m used to not being liked. If my ExorSquad overalls were made of pockets, I still wouldn’t find a fuck to give.

“That’s Stove,” Trystan says about the boom operator, but he moves on to the next ghost quickly enough to confirm my earlier suspicions. “And that’s Pixie Maynard.”

Contrary to how intimidating she looks, Pixie smiles and waves. “Hey, sorry they smoked you too, but welcome to the weirdest family you’ve ever been part of. And I mean ever. I’ve been in bands my entire life. Drummers and roadies got nothing on these guys.” She has a soft, soothing US American accent. A sense of melancholy settles deep in my stomach. She died so far from home. Is she trapped here now? Can souls travel?

I smile—well, grimace—because I have no idea how to respond to that. As an only child to absentee parents, the only real family I’ve ever known was my grandma.

“That’s Camille,” Trystan says. “They use they-them pronouns.” He looks at Camille. “Did I say that right?”

Camille nods, and Trystan punches the air. I guess most of the ghosts here died before the turn of the century, and the notion of non-binary folk probably seems somewhat exciting and new.

“You are ExorSquad, no?” Camille says, in a French or Francophone accent. They click their tongue at me as though I’ve made a rookie mistake, and I guess they’re not wrong. “The world is small. I too am ExorSquad. Ex‑ExorSquad.” Camille points to the logo on the chest pocket of their navy‑blue dungarees. It’s what I assume is the same logo on my overalls, but theirs looks like it’s been stitched on by a caffeine addicted squirrel working its thirtieth hour of overtime at the logo‑sewing factory to support its twenty-odd squirrel babies. “You know how the saying goes: fuck around and find out. Well, I fucked around, and now I guess I’m eleven months into finding out. We are all huge fans of yours. It sucks you died too, but it’s very nice to meet you. You look nothing like I pictured you would.”

I nod, can’t even manage a polite smile, and turn to the last ghost in the room.

“And that’s Josh,” Trystan says, pointing to a lanky, pimply kid who’d slunk in almost unnoticed and is now lingering beside the wall furthest away from my festering corpse.

Josh looks up from his phone—difficult to tell what model from this distance but possibly an iPhone 8 (does it even still work in the afterlife?)—and grunts. Typical teenager. Doesn’t want to participate in meeting the new ghost in town and yet won’t miss out on it.

I have nothing to say to Josh, who seems less than impressed with the newest recruit, so I turn my back to him.

“I must say,” Jeanie booms in her practiced theatrical exuberance. “You’re awfully blasé about being so recently deceased.”

“Am I?” News to me, I guess, but then I’m never sure if what feels like panicking to me looks like shutting down to others.

Camille nods. “It’s true. I definitely wasn’t as calm as you, though I was very . . . how you say, frisky.”

“Dude,” Trystan says. “When I found out I was dead, I was a wreck for weeks. Just wandered around the halls crying and moaning for hours and hours.”

“Same.” This time it’s Pixie. “Grief is a bitch. Especially when it’s grieving your own life.”