Jonathan Sims

There it is again. 'The rulebook' Lisa keeps hearing about. It's kind of hard to know which rulebook to use when she barely even knows what fucking game she's playing, but he moves on, goading her, before she can point that out. What he says, though, how he says it, makes her queasy.

"Actually, it might, Smartass," she snaps. "You have no idea what it feels like to try to step off your haunting place. It fucking hurts. It hurts a lot." She tries not to remember how badly, the way it had knocked her down, knocked her out, and she'd woken up exhausted on her bed again.

But even she has to admit that the guy might have a point. She has met one other ghost who wasn't trapped in her haunting place, who told her that they weren't just ghosts here anymore. She looks at the curb like it's an animal that's just waiting for her to get too close.

She sighs, hugging herself. "Look, you're not the first person that's told me the rules are different here. But forgive me if I'm not jumping at the chance to be Gullible Gabby, or whatever."