“The Ghost Business”

T. Christopher Gorelick is a mortgage underwriter by day, and by night he’s usually sleeping. He aspires to become a professional writer. Here are the opening pages of The Ghost Business, his soon-to-be-complete cross-genre sci-fi/humor novel. This is his first time in print. I didn’t do it. That’s what I told the cops, and it was the truth. Then how did all these corpses get so raped and murdered? They demanded an answer and I didn’t have one. It wasn’t as if the corpses were just a little bit raped and murdered; they were totally and thoroughly raped and murdered all the way through, heads removed, and there was a bunch of them, stacked ceiling high on my mattress at the McRonald House orphanage. The cops wanted answers. It was my 13th birthday, I was a legal adult, and my bags were packed. Months earlier I had won a full scholarship to the CHUDD Institute out of the video crane machine at Pizza Holocaust, the one next to the Sandwich Holocaust in the mall. I checked the box next to my desired program of study—telekinesis—and mailed in the form. A few months later I turned 13 and I was itching to get on the road. CHUDD Institute, here I come, or so I thought. Thirteen years at the McRonald House orphanage was enough to drive anyone screwy, and not just a little screwy, screwy all the way to the core. Besides, they weren’t just any random 13 years out of the middle of my life; they were my developmental years, zero to 13. Those are important years. Those are the years your brain forges the synaptic pathways through which it will spend the rest of your life filtering your perception of reality. If you’re lucky you spend those years with a father and a mother. Father teaches you how to burn down a forest to collect slow-meat. Mother bakes delicious slow-meat pies for dinner, and you’re not to leave the table until you’ve eaten every last scrap of slow-meat on your plate. You’ll need all those burned vitamins and crispy minerals to grow up big and strong. Sadly, my developmental years saw too few delicious slow-meat-pie dinners, and burning down forests was something I had to learn all by myself. I grew up on a steady diet of McRonald Corp. Nutrient-Free NutriGruel—which is made mostly from ground-up space-roach skeletons, so Government.gov requires McRonald Corp. to include “Nutrient-Free” in the name. Nutrient-Free NutriGruel could explain my less-than-average IQ, or not. What do I know? Also, my spine is shaped like an S thanks to a childhood spent sleeping on an old mattress draped over a broken tractor radiator. I admit my developmental years were a time of lack, but like we used to say at McRonald House, turn that upside-down frown upside down. Besides, it could have been worse. Ratzo Finklestine slept on a gym bag filled with golf balls, and he had a cleft palate that stretched to his earlobes, and he was almost completely blind, which is probably why the nuns never let him win the orphanage’s yearly cleft-palate surgery lottery, which was totally rigged and just a popularity contest anyway. I had it much better than Ratzo Finklestine. Poor Ratzo didn’t even have an upside-down frown to turn upside down, just teeth and gums. Also, I had the CHUDD Institute in my future, or at least I did until that ceiling-high stack of raped and murdered corpses turned up on my broken-tractor-radiator mattress. And what a stack of raped and murdered corpses it was. Police Chief BetaTron6000 said that of all the stacks of decapitated corpses he had seen in his 200 years as a cop, mine was the most impressive—never mind that I had nothing to do with it. The cops counted 99 corpses in all, including such prominent citizens as superhero Captain Pectorus PhD, thespian actress Veronica Beresford, rogue congressman Miles “Nip Slip” Hubert, and romance novelist Jane Manitoba, all Apple City locals. Also in the stack of decapitated corpses they found the remains of the Space Unicorn, a unicorn from outer space, a magnificent creature, but without its head it just looked like a dead white horse. My stack of decapitated corpses had it all: a leprechaun, a Chinese mafia boss, a high-class call girl working her way through college, a professional gunfighter, a bearded wizard, a lingerie model, a spaceship captain. Like I said, my stack of decapitated corpses had it all. There was just one problem, it wasn’t my stack. “I was in the orphanage gift shop,” I told the cops. “I was saying my good-byes to the Zalconni sisters.” The Zalconni sisters were conjoined twins, conjoined at both the head and the hip. Clare, the one on the left, had always been sweet on me, but I had a thing for her sister, Kim, the one on the right. Most of the genitalia was on Kim’s side. “Let me get this straight,” said Police Chief BetaTron6000. “You wander on down to the orphanage gift shop to say your good-byes to your lady friends.” “That’s right,” I said. “When you return 15 minutes later there’s a stack of murder-rapes 99 corpses high on your mattress.” “You know as much as I do, Chief,” I said, and I shrugged my shoulders. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a bus to catch. I’m enrolled at the CHUDD Institute.” I tried to squeeze my way between two cops, but they didn’t budge. “Well now, the CHUDD Institute,” said Police Chief BetaTron6000. “That’s impressive, Buddy.” He was clearly impressed. “But I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stick around until we get this whole thing sorted out.” “Can’t do it, Chief,” I said. “I’m itching to get on the road.” I reached down the back of my pants and itched my crack to prove it. “Besides, someone must have seen who did this. I share this room with 600 other orphans.” “There were no witnesses, Buddy. It’s spaghetti and movie night. Everyone is in the auditorium watching spaghetti westerns and eating spaghetti.”

“Then talk to the Zalconni sisters. I was with them the whole time.”

“You mean those Zalconni sisters?” said Police Chief BetaTron6000, and he pointed to the middle of the stack. It was the Zalconni sisters, minus their heads. They were raped and murdered, as raped and murdered as any other corpse in the stack, maybe even more, raped and murdered all the way through. “Saint Peter,” I cried. “This is awful.” With the Zalconni sisters in the stack, I had no alibi. Worse yet, someone miscounted—no doubt thrown off by the Zalconni sisters’ shared parts. It was an even 100 raped and murdered corpses stacked ceiling high on my mattress, and nobody likes an even number. The trial was short and to the point. The prosecuting attorney was a gorilla, literally. He was a 700-pound gorilla in a three-piece suit and tie. I didn’t have any money for a defense attorney, so I filled out the free-attorney form at the Government.gov website. First name? Buddy. Surname? I didn’t have a surname; the nuns never bothered to give me one, but Sister Mary Margaret use to always call me “dick hands” on account of my hands were always in my pants, so I went with that. Dickhands. On a scale of one to ten, how much sleaze do you require in your attorney, one being the least amount of sleaze and ten being the most? I figured more was always better, so I clicked on ten. The day of the trial, my attorney arrived late. “I’m your attorney,” he said. “What’d I miss?” We shook hands. His was cold and wet. “How old are you, kid, about 11? Bum me a smoke?” He looked at my file. “Holy Mother,” he said. “You raped all those people?” His eyes glazed over. “How was it?” he said. He looked over at the jury. “What a bunch of dogs.” He laughed. “Woof. Woof.” Then he turned his attention to the prosecuting attorney’s table. “Is that a freaking gorilla?” His jaw dropped. “I’m not going up against that,” he said, and he left. I was without legal representation and the trial had already begun. Ten might have been too much sleaze. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” said the gorilla, “I give you exhibit A.” He pointed at my old mattress from the orphanage. It was covered in blood. “I call Mr. Buddy Dickhands to the stand,” said the gorilla. As I approached the stand, the gorilla threw some magic dust in the air that turned everything black and white. It also forced me to walk in slow motion and added some very sinister background music to the courtroom. When I sat down, the music stopped and color returned to the courtroom. “Objection,” I cried. “Overruled,” said the judge. The gorilla seemed very pleased with himself. “Is that your mattress?” said the gorilla. “It was,” I said, “when I lived at the orphanage.” “And is that your blood?” “No, sir, Mister Gorilla.” “Well, then, whose blood is it?” When I opened my mouth to answer he stuffed a banana down my throat. I almost choked. “Can you tell me what letter I am holding up?” said the gorilla, and he held up a giant letter R. “It’s an R,” I said. “Well, I know that,” said the gorilla, “but what sound does it make?” “Rrrrrr…” “A gorilla makes a great…” “Ape,” I shouted. I love finishing other people’s sentences. “Rapist says what?” said the gorilla. “What?” “Exactly,” said the gorilla, and he winked at the jury. This went on for about an hour. The gorilla would ask me a question, then stuff a banana in my mouth before I could answer. During intermission he attached a sign to my back that read, “Kick me. I’m a rapist.” The judge decided to allow it. The gorilla stopped using my name and instead addressed me as Rape Crazy Rape Killer. I objected but the judge overruled me. “Which do you enjoy more, murder or rape?” said the gorilla. Neither murder nor rape seemed enjoyable, but I wasn’t sure how to answer. The question confused me, so I picked the one I thought was the least awful. “Rape,” I said. The jury gasped. “One last question, Rape Crazy Rape Killer,” said the gorilla. “Do you like grapes?” “I love grapes,” I said. It was the truth. Grapes are awesome. “And can you spell ‘grapes’ without ‘rapes’?” said the gorilla. I had to think about it for a moment. “No,” I said, and I hung my head. The jury clamored with outrage. The judge sent the jury into a back room to decide my guilt or innocence. “Take as long as you need to decide,” said the judge. The jury returned 15 seconds later. “Not guilty,” said the head juror. I jumped up in excitement. “Oh, wait,” said the head juror. “Which one means he did it?” “Guilty,” said the judge. “Yeah, that one,” said the head juror. The courtroom exploded into a chorus of cheers. Cameras flashed and people congratulated each other. The gorilla did the Super Bowl Shuffle right in the middle of the courtroom. Then he shook my hand, said it had been a pleasure working with me, and climbed out a window. I was escorted away in handcuffs. I never saw the gorilla again.