Showdown

Spunk rolled out of bed and was in the bathroom pissing before he had a solid coherent thought. Wonder if comms are back up. Was the thought. It soon was usurped by, Damn, this piss feels good.

The next thought he had was an odd, compelling one. Let's talk to that fucking horny ghost. Intentionally. He fought with himself for a while, but eventually realized it was either on his terms or the ghost's and he didn't really like the ghost's terms all that much. So his it was.

How does one summon a ghost, though? Spunk wondered as he brushed his teeth and wandered into the bedroom to put some clothes on. It hadn't bothered him outside of the shop, but its remains were in the shed behind the parking lot. The shed that was nearly obliterated by the attack yesterday.

I guess I could talk to it in the shop before we open. He thought as he pulled on a shirt. And if that doesn't work, I can threaten to set its goo phase on fire. That might get it talking. Next was his pants. Then again, it might kill me with its fancy electric current thing.

He grabbed a morning bar from the kitchen on his way out the door. I should definitely call its body in though. The radio said that I should. And who knows, maybe it'll clear up the haunting for me. ... Or it'll be tortured. Can you torture goo?

His boots crunched against the sandy gravel lot as he wound his way around the slatted metal of his storefront. He unlocked the door and stepped in, remembering to latch it firmly as he walked by, since the door was busted. Add that to the to-do list for the day.

"Amalyn, are comms back up?" He asked the store, which immediately lit up in response.

"Good morning, Peter." Her sweet, angelic voice came through the intercom. "You have a missed message from Harold. Would you like me to read it to you?"

She didn't answer my question directly. Weird. Spunk thought. Bug fixes would be coming for that. "Sure." He said to the computer.

"Hey man, comms are back up and I'm just calling to see if you made it home safe. You're probably already in bed so just shoot me a message when you wake up, otherwise I'll swing by the store early to double check." Harold's voice sounded tired, but not all that worried.

"Amalyn, can you please respond to him and say, I made it home safely, thanks for checking. Come in at normal time, for me?"

"Yes, Peter. Your message has been sent."

Spunk thought hard about his next steps. He had an hour before the store opened -- it was plenty of time for him to try to talk to the ghost, and be rescued if something went wrong. He didn't want to warn the ghost that he was going to try something, but he wanted to make sure that he had a safer way of dealing with it.

"Amalyn..." He trailed off, realizing that the ghost could probably hear every word he was saying. He didn't know if it could see or read in its ethereal state. "Open up your console for me. I'd like to give you some written commands."

"Right away, Peter." She said, and he walked behind the front counter to the terminal. He set an alarm to call Harold in ten minutes with an urgent message if he didn't cancel it. He also turned on her back up generator - just in case. He hit enter.

"Confirmed." Her voice echoed across the store and he smiled. Having a super computer was... super.

His final step was to get a chair and wheel it into the center of the store, away from sharp objects or other things he might hit his head on. No more standing and fainting for him. He was upgrading to first class.

Feeling incredibly silly, Spunk spoke out loud to the empty store.

"Hey, ghost. Lizard man. I want to talk to you." He remembered too late that the ghost had not appreciated his nickname. "Sorry, I forgot. .. Scaffold? Is that your name?" He strained to remember. "Snaffle?" He tried again, with no success. The room was still empty, and he still felt like an idiot.

"Saffold." He said suddenly remembering. He was confident. "Hey, Saffold." He shouted. "We need to talk!"

He wondered, as he waited, if the missionaries had set up yet, and if they could hear him shouting nonsense in his store before it was even open. Would it make him appear better or worse to them?

"Saffold..." He tried a sing-song voice. Still nothing. "Alright, listen then. If you can hear me. Your buddies just dropped a whole lot of bombs on this planet, and they're looking for any evidence of your race in response. I'm legally obligated to hand your body -- what's left of it -- over to the auth---" A woosh of cold air slapped him in the face and he inhaled sharply. Yup. That got his attention.

He spun in his chair slowly as he waited for the ghost's blue haze to crystallize into a form. He was going to try very hard not to black out this time.

"Welcome, welcome." He said graciously as the reptilian lidded face appeared before him. "Glad you could make it. So, like I was saying..."

"You must not give my body to your people." The ghost was nearly shouting, or in the very least, sounded like what Spunk thought a ghost shout would sound like. "They will defile it."

"That's accurate." Spunk said. "But you're really starting to piss me off -- no offense -- with all of this fainting you're making me do. So I need to know -- what's your deal, and how can we help you move on to, uh, better things?"

The ghost looked confused for a moment, and then some sort of ethereal realization hit him.

"I've made... I've hurt you?" He said incredulously. Spunk nodded.

"Yes. I had bruises on my back when you gave me that vision. And I nearly hit the wall with my head last time we talked." Spunk was matter of fact about it, but was slowly realizing that the ghost was more idiot than malevolent.

"Oh." It said. Like a simple "sorry" was too much for it, or not in its vocabulary. "I did not intend that. I am still... I am stronger now, in this form, than I was before." It waved its ghostly appendages as if trying to communicate meaning. "I will try not to... I assumed it was a human thing."

"Napping in the middle of a conversation?" Spunk asked, his turn to be incredulous. "Really, dude?"

The ghost looked contrite. Spunk decided to let it go.

"Well, anyway. Your people. Dropped bombs. On this planet. I have to know. Does this have anything to do with you being here?"

The ghost looked left and right as if searching for an escape route. Apparently that emotion was a cross-species thing.

"So... yes?" Spunk ventured a guess and the ghost shrugged its little reptilian shoulders. Spunk could barely read the porno titles through its form. "Do... you want to fill me in? So I don't die?"

"I am..." Spunk felt his vision begin to fade.

"No, no!" Spunk shouted. "With your words. That shit is how you're trying to kill me." He felt his vision go suddenly clear again.

"It is hard not to feel." The spirit said slowly, as if the words pained him. "But I will try. Please let me know if it happens again."

"Sure thing." Spunk leaned back in his rolling chair, fixing his arms across his chest like a dad waiting for his late child to walk through the door.

"We are... meant to... mate. At a certain age. I am of... the royal family Hurontyik. But I have not wanted to move on since it means death to mate."

Spunk's vision was still clear, but he could tell it was taking a lot of effort for Saffold to share his story.

"So let me guess." Spunk offered. "You're the prince -- or whatever, it doesn't matter. Your family wants you to mate with some other royal person and you don't want to. You delay and delay and then you run away to Epsilon Five?"

The ghost nodded. "Yes. But not quite. When I left they... got me. They... turned on my aging process. Against my will. And I didn't know until..." It spread its arms placatingly. "I changed. In your shop. And then... here we are."

"And now they're searching for you, I take it?" And the ghost nodded again. "So what happens if they find you here?"

"The bombs were probably a warning." The ghost said. Spunk's vision started to tunnel a little and he coughed.

"Calm down." He choked out as his vision continued to shrink. "It's happening again."

The ghost looked scared for a moment -- or so he thought, through the tiny slit that was left of his eyesight. The tunnel opened up into the fluorescents of the shop once more.

"If I had been in my last form, the bombs would've probably been meant to... shame me out." He said. "But I can't go anywhere in my current phase. Not quickly."

"So what happens now? Will they know you're goo?" Spunk asked.

"They will think that I am either here and still hiding, bringing dishonor to my family; they will think I have turned too early and may send a search party; or they may decide that I have fooled their tracking systems and begin searching elsewhere."

"So... you have no idea what's going to happen." Spunk said. The ghost didn't reply.

"Cool. Cool." Spunk said. "So how do we... end this fiasco we're in?"

"I must die." The ghost acknowledged, and Spunk felt sick to his stomach.

"Holy fucking hell!" A shout came from behind Spunk. Spunk's heart jumped into his throat as he saw panic hit the ghost's face. He spun in his chair to see the sex toy inspector, Marcie, standing at the threshold. His vision dimmed quickly as the blue haze lifted from the store. His last, parting thought was a small prayer that he wouldn't hit the floor head first.

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