Prologue
E
Being a ghost has its challenges.
I don’t remember much about my life, or the kind of man I was when I was alive. There are a few tidbits I know, but how I’ve come to know them, I couldn’t tell you. Some of it is instinct.
For example, I know I like women and wine and despise shellfish. Why shellfish? Instinct. Those wiggly things have way too many legs.
Not in my mouth, thank you.
I’ve been a ghost for as long as I can remember, but I’ve had two very different roommates.
Despite their refusal to tell me who I was in life, I’ve gleaned some crumbs of knowledge from their reactions to my questions along the way.
Devi called me “E.” She really hated me, that one.
And I hated her right back—even though she made me constantly hard.
A ghost erection isn’t something you want to deal with. It’s there, and you want to stroke it, but hey, you’re a ghost.
That was my life with Devi, a permanent, maddeningly useless ghost-erection. But I’m back with Mabel for the time being. What a relief.
The two women exchange my lantern back and forth every couple of decades like I’m some kind of odd trinket they have no real need for, and yet can’t get rid of.
Mabel is a much better roommate, but the old witch is cuckoo.
Speaks to the wind and prays to the moon like they might actually drop by for dinner.
And she watches way too much daytime TV.
My ghost brain got fried somewhere between the soap operas and the shopping channel—I’m now an expert on evil twins and vacuum cleaners, but I couldn’t tell you my own name.
So I’m “E,” the amnesiac ghost.
You don’t need to know much more than that to form an opinion of me, because who cares about ghosts, really?
Whoever I was when I was alive, the guy’s dead now. Gone. Buried six feet under.
I was a devil, though. That much is obvious.