Chapter 5 Flesh for Fantasy #2
When Micah looked back up, Cosmo was gone. Soft Cell abruptly stopped, Micah’s quickened breath filling the silence.
“He obviously screamed because you put your hand on him,” the customer service operator drawled. “Poor thing’s probably forgotten what human touch feels like.”
Micah erased a smudge from his sketch of the operator, then continued on her hair. “You said you have bangs, right?”
“Yup.”
She’d said she had “big hair,” and he couldn’t help but picture her as Dolly Parton. “I didn’t think it would be possible to even touch a ghost.”
“Well, you never tried before, did you?”
He wasn’t sure how to answer that. Cosmo’s tube of lipstick sat on the drafting table in the same spot it had occupied for the past three days.
That the curtain ring he’d found in the tub was a physical object made sense…
he supposed. It was a part of the apartment.
But why lipstick belonging to a ghost was just as real and solid and didn’t disappear along with Cosmo was perplexing.
Shouldn’t it be just as ghostly? Which led him to a strange thought he still wasn’t sure what to do with: after the bathroom mirror shattered, he’d thrown out a handful of makeup and cosmetics that didn’t belong to him.
He’d presumed they were his ex-girlfriend’s, even though they didn’t seem like Courtney’s style.
But what if they were Cosmo’s? He could certainly picture Cosmo wearing something as daring as chartreuse eyeshadow.
Maybe those cosmetics and the lipstick now sitting on the drafting table had always been here, overlooked when Micah moved in and something Cosmo still liked to use even in death.
He felt bad for throwing the others out.
Sketches of the ghost hung on the wall in various poses, showcasing his angular jaw, his halo of dark curls, his sweater hanging off his shoulder.
The messages and kiss print had disappeared from the mirror; only Micah’s half of the conversation remained.
The recording on his phone was definitive proof, but if he shared it with people he knew or posted it on the internet for it to be sensationalized, then it would no longer be an experience he got to keep all to himself.
Right now it was something intimate just between him and Cosmo.
And, well, this random operator, who he could speak freely to and then never hear from again.
She said something into his earpiece.
“Sorry, what?”
“I said, ‘he’s cute, huh?’ Wish I was haunted by a flirty young thing who left kisses on my mirror.”
“Do you think he was flirting?” Micah wasn’t sure why he was even asking. Cosmo was dead, and Micah had scared him off anyway.
“Well, duh, honey. He’s been starved for affection for years since his tragic death, and he latched onto you because you’re kind and handsome and he gets to watch you walk around your apartment in your boxers.”
This was a mistake. The operator was turning this conversation into her own personal fan fiction. “You’ve got it all wrong. I wear briefs.”
“Bet you have a six pack.”
He glanced at his soft gut. She’d described herself for her sketch, but she probably didn’t want the same amount of truth from him. “I don’t think he’s going to come back. Thought I’d be happy about that, but…”
But he couldn’t get Cosmo out of his head.
Cosmo was a person – or had been – who’d intruded into Micah’s studio.
The ghost’s appearance hadn’t brought the same fight-or-flight response that normally came with someone walking into Micah’s place, though.
Which was confounding, because Cosmo could manipulate objects and had at least a partially solid body.
He could hurt Micah just as easily as a mortal intruder.
Easier, even. But for some reason, Micah wasn’t afraid.
“Get a… What are those things called?” the operator said. “The board game with letters and a little pointer that the ghost controls?”
“Ouija board. The pointer is called a planchette. But I don’t see how that would be any different than communicating via mirror. He doesn’t want to talk to me.”
“Write him an apology. Or get him some flowers. Do guys buy other guys flowers? Or play the music he likes.”
Micah groaned. He was not summoning Cosmo back with Soft Cell. “I’m thirty-eight. Too old to be buying a twenty-seven-year-old flowers.”
“Technically, he’s thirty now, right? You said he’s been dead for three years.”
“Okay, but…” Did ghost logic work the same as vampire logic? A never-aging appearance, but mentally and emotionally they were far older?
It didn’t matter. What he needed to do was forget about the whole experience and get on with his life.
Things were improving – he was nearly done with the stupid grass on the client’s landscape painting; there was no more music at two am.
; no sudden noises that threatened to be intruders; and placebo or not, that piece of rainbow obsidian beneath his pillow every night and the sachet hanging off Comedian in the closet brought him a modicum of comfort.
None of that was a replacement for the way his life had been before the assault, but it was still something.
“Thanks for chatting with me. And for letting me draw you. I should go now so I’m not holding up your line,” he said.
“Oh honey, it’s a slow night. I’ve got plenty of time to hear about your hot ghost.”
He pursed his lips. “I appreciate that. Getting late for me, though. Maybe I’ll try out one of your suggestions tomorrow.”
“Well… Alright.” The operator sounded like someone said her favorite soap opera had been canceled. “Good luck. If something develops, you can for sure call me on this line. Ask for number forty-six.”
“Right.” Not that she would need that with her running head canon. “Goodbye.”
After pulling out his earpiece, he hung the operator’s sketch on the wall with the others.
Forget about him. That’s all there was to do.
Micah’s studio was his alone again. Everett was proud of him for the small steps he was taking toward living normally again, and he could continue that by finishing this commission.
He needed to send out more job applications and submit his portfolio to other galleries, but every rejection was a harder kick to the gut, and it was difficult to summon up the motivation to keep trying.
He shut off the lights and climbed into bed, then opened his phone, finger hovering over a folder of social media apps.
After detouring down to his photo gallery instead, he opened the video of Cosmo.
Skipping to second twenty-three, he advanced frame by frame.
“Fog” wasn’t the best term for the substance that Cosmo leaned out of, but it was hard to describe it any other way.
His upper half assimilated from nothing, soft sprays of agitated particles fringing his terminated torso.
Second twenty-seven: his reflection’s eyes half-closed, pink lips pursed as he leaned toward the mirror.
Second thirty-four: Micah’s hand on Cosmo’s exposed shoulder.
Second thirty-six: Cosmo turned at three quarters, wearing a wry smile.
Micah had already touched him at that point, so why was he still smiling? It wasn’t until second thirty-eight, when he locked eyes with Micah, that his expression shifted.
He hadn’t expected Micah to be able to see him. That was it, wasn’t it?
After rewinding to second twenty-seven and lingering on Cosmo’s pucker face, he hit play. “Desperate” thumped through the phone’s speakers. Desperate for love and attention.
I like keeping you up.
Cosmo was still accomplishing that whether music was playing or not. Micah opened the internet and typed “Lemon Disco death Cosmo”; he was met with articles about a cartoon show and the popularity of Cosmopolitans being on the decline.
Maybe Cosmo wasn’t his real name. It would help if Micah knew how he died. But those articles sometimes didn’t mention the person by name at all.
He typed “Lemon Disco artist death.” The first hit was about a seventy-eight-year-old quilt-maker. Nope. The next result was an investigation into the death of an avant garde ceramics artist–
The phone sagged in Micah’s hand. He knew her.
Had. Had known her. He’d attended an art show with her, where they’d discussed their exhibits and how hard it was to get featured.
She’d mentioned with disgust that the director of a now-defunct gallery had not so subtly suggested that if she could perform a certain talent other than clay throwing, he’d consider her submitted portfolio.
Micah had never been asked to suck someone’s dick to get into a gallery, thank god.
He skimmed the news article about the woman’s death.
–found asphyxiated in her bathtub, the tie from a decorative shower curtain knotted around her throat.
“Christ.” The police were questioning suspects at the time the article was written, but another internet search suggested they’d never arrested anyone, and the case had gone cold. How awful.
Sitting up, he flung off the covers, then picked up the shower curtain ring on the drafting table.
Before it appeared, there’d been a loud jangling, like the rings clanging together as the curtain was ripped down, then a hard thud.
Had the same person who killed the ceramics artist killed Cosmo? Strangled him in the bathroom?
No, no. That couldn’t be the case. Ximena would have known about that. Even so, Micah couldn’t help checking the deadbolt and window locks.
He sat on the bed, his traitorous imagination conjuring up an image of Cosmo in the bath, candles melting down the sides of the tub and wet spirals of hair clinging to his cheeks as he leaned back and shut his eyes.
Then a dark shadow in the doorway. Cosmo wouldn’t notice; he was listening to Soft Cell and thinking about his current work-in-progress or ice cream or a lover.
Fishing wire dangled from the intruder’s hand.
Micah bunched the sheets, his heart hammering. Just an ordinary day, then your entire life destroyed in an instant. Micah hadn’t died, but he knew too well how that felt.
The intruder would stride into the bathroom and snatch Cosmo by the hair.
Cosmo would shriek, he’d splash, fight back.
He’d grab the shower curtain for leverage, but it would rip off the rod, and he’d fall, cracking his head on the edge of the tub.
Blood would run into the bath water. The intruder would loop the fishing wire around Cosmo’s neck and pull tight–
Tears fell onto Micah’s leg, and he realized he’d balled the sheets so tightly in his fists that his hands were cramping. Shallow breath whistled through his nose. He pulled the rainbow obsidian out from under his pillow and squeezed it.
Maybe Cosmo had started visiting Micah because he realized their trauma was similar.
And his fright upon Micah seeing him had been some kind of post-traumatic reaction.
He didn’t want to come back because he was afraid.
But what if Micah was the only one who could help Cosmo move on to some better afterlife?
Talking with a therapist about the shit Micah had been through had been awful, but the idea of doing it with the ghost – with someone who’d experienced something kindred – didn’t seem so bad, especially if it was helpful.
Crossing into the bathroom, Micah erased his messages from the mirror, uncapped his marker, and wrote:
Here if you want to talk