Page 42 of Hot Ghost Summer

The same thing happened today. Theo hadn’t wanted me with him, and I hadn’t wanted to follow, but the moment he left the flat I’d been defenceless against whatever external power insists I stay close.

Theo groans. Instantly, all my attention is on him.

Now that he thinks he’s alone, he’s no longer hiding the damage to his face. Standing upright, he gently prods around his swollen eye socket and split lip.

My anger surges, and the lights flicker. Once.

Fingertips still on his lip, Theo pauses.

He’s stupid. And reckless.

Dark brown eyes, his right ringed with the vivid purple of fresh bruising, snap to the overhead light. For a frightful moment, the image of him looking up at me overlays with a desire I’d once had to see him on his knees.

“H-Hollis?” he croaks.

I don’t answer him. What would I say? Why would I express concern for his injuries when they’ll heal, but I never will?

Theo swallows, and that tattoo on his neck bobs. Baby. Murderer. Captor.

Besides, I’d been there when it’d happened. I hadn’t seen—there isn’t enough EMF outside at the farm for me to discern more than vague and foggy shapes—but I’d heard. Two grown men he’d taken on with no regard to his own safety. Typical for him, that hot-headed, impulsive behaviour. A side of him I know too well.

I narrow my eyes at his split lip. Minor. A couple of days where it’ll smart if he opens his mouth too wide. Smug satisfaction floats through my neural network—I’ve wanted to find a way to shut Theo up for a while, maybe this’ll do it.

He lets out a deep exhale and reaches for the shower gel. Not bothering with a sponge or a loofah, he slaps the soap against the firm flesh of his chest and works it into a rich lather. Iridescent suds cover the dark lines of his tattoos. Most of his body is decorated, I saw this morning when he strode through from his bedroom in the nude—the large gothic-style numerals on well-defined abs, the dinosaur riding a skateboard, the cowboy hat, the crown, the sea turtle, and countless others.

He turns away from me, and the corded muscles that construct the planes of his back flex as he washes.

I shouldn’t be watching.

I can’t look away.

Why him?

But I know why. I know what I am.

A poltergeist.

And Theo is my agent. My murderer is my target.

I’d been so intently focused on him at the moment of my death that the fixation resonated through to the afterlife with me. It’s a fixation that has the potential to destroy me twice.

In human form, he’d led me to a premature death, and as his poltergeist, he has the power to condemn my soul. Our relationship is organically parasitic. The emotional connection between us is toxic by nature, but it’s me who’ll twist and deform over time, and me whose world will shrink until all my senses are attuned only to him.

I’ve never come across an account of a poltergeist surviving with its faculties intact. Eventually, Theo will consume me entirely.

He pivots back around, fingers buried deep in his hair and chin raised toward the stream as he rinses out shampoo. I watch the suds fall, moulding over the slicked curves and ridges of his ribs. His hands soon trail after them, chasing them down his body and into the drain by his feet.

Wasted. Much like the day I spent chasing electrical currents and roaming Wi-Fi signals into the national grid.

No matter what I tried, where I entered the system, nor the strength of my conviction, all of my efforts were in vain. The spark gaps were too large for me to jump, and each attempt felt like being sucked through a vacuum. One that anchored me back to him.

I know what this means.

I can’t leave.

But I also know the strength of this obsession won’t fade over time. It won’t be redirected, and neither can Theo destroy it—regardless of what he thinks. He’s committed to helping me move on because he naïvely assumes I’m either lingering without a purpose, or that my attachment to the realm of the living can be resolved. Alas, unless he himself is resolved…

The bathroom light flickers and the water pressure drops. Could I?