“Dipshits” by Kirsti MacKenzie

“My husband made me a promise, once,” she says. “He said, if I go first I’m gonna haunt the shit out of you.”

I am a giant Kirsti MacKenzie fan. I’ve been lucky enough to publish a handful of her shorter pieces on HAD, and got to blurb her super fun debut novel, Better to Beg:

“…conjures a literary Behind the Music that swept me up and sucked me in until I was moving through my days thinking about The Deserters alongside so many real-world bands.”
—AARON BURCH, author of Year of the Buffalo

All that said, “Dipshits” is probably new favorite MacKenzie yet.

It starts in a room, mid-scene and mid-confusion, the narrator waking up and not knowing what is happening in a way that reminded me a bit of Brian Evenson. A comparison that will always grab my attention. From there, the story unfolds, weaving and dancing through genres without me ever quite noticing while reading, all while feeling so always and purposefully itself. I don’t even want to say too much more — there’s such a joy in discovering the story as you read, but I will loop back to where I started and say:

I’m such a giant Kirsti fan, first and foremost because of her fun, confident, uniquely Kirsti voice, and this story has it in spades (all while also doing something that felt new, in my reading of her work), and I am just so excited to get to share this one with you all!

—Aaron Burch

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image by Pancho Muñoz

“Dipshits”

There’s a doctor, a nurse, and a security guard in the room. They don’t seem surprised to see me awake. The security guard stands at the door, as though there’s any chance in hell I’d be getting out of this bed to leave. I thought my wife would be here but it’s just them and one other guy, a guy I’ve never seen, sitting in the visitor’s chair. Young guy, blond, sharp blue eyes, vaguely Scandinavian. He’s smoking.

“But this is a hospital,” I say.

He frowns at me.

“Never mind him,” says the doctor.

He steps forward, pulls a bottle of whiskey from his coat, two tumblers pinched between his fingers. He plunks them on the little table. Pours two fingers of whiskey in each.

“Things aren’t looking good,” he says.

“No shit,” I say.

I take a long sip of the whiskey. For some reason it doesn’t burn my throat.

“My wife,” I say. “Where’s Katie.”

“You’ll see her soon,” the doctor says.

The Swede ashes his cigarette, looking bored. He irritates me. He sits by the window, sunlight catching his blond hair. Holds the cigarette with three fingers, like a joint.

“Who the fuck is that,” I say.

“We’ll get to him,” says the doctor, “but first.”

The nurse steps forward with a clipboard. There’s a neat stack of papers, with three pages flagged for signature. She hands me a pen, looking nervous. The security guard behind her stares at The Swede. He looks just as irritated with the guy as I am.

“We need some signatures,” the doctor says.

“Insurance,” I say.

“Something like that,” he says.

I flip through the paperwork, scanning the forms. I can’t read them, they’re unintelligible. The words blur together, making me nauseated. The sunlight glaring into the room grows brighter. It rings halos around the doctor, around the nurse, even the security guard, but strangely not The Swede.

“You have to sign,” blurts the nurse.

“And if I don’t,” I say.

“You really should,” says the security guard.

Suddenly there are screams outside in the hall. Dull thumping at the door.

“You made a promise,” says the nurse.

“Three promises,” corrects the doctor.

I can’t take my eyes off The Swede. Sunlight explodes around him but he remains a darkened shadow. The screaming seems to freak everyone else out, but not him. The doctor drains his whiskey, pours another. The nurse chews her manicured nails. The security guard leans back against the thumping door, arms folded. The Swede snaps his fingers at me once, twice, three times.

“Sign the damn form,” he says. “For Katie.”

Something inside me relents. I want to punch this guy in the face, put his teeth out around Katie’s name, but I can’t get up to cross the room. And there’s something in the way he says it—authoritatively, like he knows something I don’t—that convinces me. He’s the only one in the room not losing his shit, besides. I take the pen and scribble my signature.

“Three times,” says the Swede.

I flip to the next and sign, then flip and sign again. Everyone looks relieved but The Swede. My feet start tingling. When I look down, my feet are disappearing, then my legs, my knees. Panicked, I slap at my legs as if that will do anything. The doctor shoves my tumbler at me, whiskey sloshing at the sides.

“Drink up,” he says, “you’re going to need it.”

Everything goes black again.

~*~

Katie’s bawling. She’s standing in the corner watching them remove tubes and wires from my body. The Swede’s next to me with his hands in his pockets. This is where we land when I wake up and I’m trying to hug Katie and say I’m right here look at me but The Swede slaps a hand across my chest before I can get to her.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t touch her.”

“That’s my wife,” I say. “She’s—“

“If you touch her it will fuck her up,” says the Swede. “You’re not ready.”

I want to swing at him but I’m stopped by the sight of myself in the bed. Bloody, motionless. When I look down at my hands and legs and chest I look normal, like I used to. I step in front of Katie, trying to block her view of the nurses turning the machines off, the drone of the flatline sound gone silent. She looks right through me, red-faced and snotty, struggling to breathe.

“You get it now, right?” asks The Swede.

~*~

We pile into an Uber because our car is totaled. The Swede sits in the passenger seat. I sit in the back next to Katie. She’s still crying, and clutching a bag of my stuff. The Uber driver doesn’t say anything. He’s banging Hindi pop on the stereo. When he drops her off at the apartment she stares at the door, then crumples slowly on the front step. I sit next to her while The Swede lights another cigarette.

“You get used to it,” he says, after a while.

“Passing through stuff?” I say.

“Waiting,” he says.

I wanna reach out and touch her but I don’t. She’s got a cast on her wrist. Her hair is all messed. I used to tug it gently when I wanted her attention. She pulls her phone from her purse and scrolls to my mother’s number.

“Hi,” she says in a small voice. “There’s been an accident.”

The funeral home looks like the inside of a colonoscopy, with the walls painted pink, with gold gilt everything, fucking cherub statues, and a mural on the ceiling that’s like a low rent Sistine chapel. The funeral director has a stringy combover and tries to talk Katie into turning my ashes into a diamond for an egregious price.

“You want me to buy a dead husband diamond?” she asks.

“We can make multiple gems,” says Combover. “For the same price.”

“To what? Put him in a watch? Dead husband Bond weapon?”

“Most women make a set,” says Combover. “Earrings, pendant. Very tasteful.”

“What about a big one,” she says. “Can we make him into that thing from Titanic?”

Even the Swede cracks a smile.

More people come than I ever expected. They take turns sharing stories about me. When it’s Katie’s turn she goes up to the little podium and stares everyone down, squinting. She points at someone.

“Mark,” she says. “You owe us fifty bucks on that Ravens game. I see you, you cheap bastard.”

The room erupts. Katie smiles, waiting for the laughter to die down. Her lip quivers.

“My husband made me a promise, once,” she says. “He said, if I go first I’m gonna haunt the shit out of you.”

Next to me, the Swede snaps his fingers. Just once.

“I don’t know if I believe in ghosts,” she says. “But I believe in him. He wasn’t perfect—he was often a giant moron—but he was my moron, and he always kept his promises.”

The room is silent. My mom blows her nose loudly.

“Can’t believe I’m about to say this,” she says. “But baby? If you’re here? You need to make it really obvious.”

She pauses, looking around. I wave my hands over my head, screaming HEY I’M RIGHT HERE! The silence in the room becomes uncomfortable, embarrassing. I rush the stage, swiping at floral arrangements and oversized pictures on stands, my hands passing through everything futilely. The Swede tackles me to the ground, surprisingly strong for someone so tall and lanky and dead.

“Not yet,” he says.

~*~

There’s a little wake at our apartment. All our friends take turns hugging my mom and Katie is drunk out of her mind. I trail after her as she cleans up after everyone. The Swede is parked on the arm rest of our couch, listening to people talk. He ashes his cigarette into empty solo cups.

“Where are we,” I ask. “Are we in limbo?”

“Not exactly,” he says.

Katie brings a tray of shots into the room. Everyone gathers and picks a little plastic cup, even my mom. Katie stands in the center of the room, swaying unsteadily. The Swede catches my arm, flattens us against the defunct little fireplace across from her.

“Love you forever,” she says.

Everyone takes the shot. The second Katie is done with it, The Swede smacks a photo of us on the mantle. Shockingly, his hand doesn’t move through it. The frame lands with a small crack. Katie is the only one who sees it. She blinks, shakes her head.

“That one’s for free,” he says. “Your turn, next.”

The Swede was right about the waiting. We spend a lot of time watching Katie cry. It’s horrible. Sometimes she is on the phone arguing with insurance people or banks or utility companies, people that don’t have any sympathy that her husband is dead. Sometimes she is on the phone with my mom. I sit on the other end of the couch and strain not to touch her when she’s curled up, sobbing. The Swede sits on an armchair across from us, hands folded on his stomach.

“Why are you here?” I say one day.

“I can’t leave,” he says.

I stare at him.

“I lived here before you did,” he says. “Killed myself. There are repercussions for that.”

“Repercussions,” I repeat.

“For crossing over,” he says. “I was—how would I put this—assigned to you.”

“Me,” I say.

“You’re soulmates,” he says. “That’s the only reason you’re allowed to still be here.”

I want to cry but nothing comes so my face just tingles uncomfortably.

“I always thought it was haunted,” I say.

“It is,” he says. “Sometimes I get bored.”

Cupboards left open. Drawings on the fog in the mirror. Things out of place. Little stuff, just enough to make you pause. One morning our shoes were lined up at the door.

“She used to blame me for that shit,” I said. “Call me a moron.”

“You’re welcome,” he says, laughing.

Katie’s eyes look bluest when she’s stoned, or when she’s crying. She scrolls her phone, sniffling. Curls deeper into the cushions. She’s drowning in an old football jersey of mine, the collar filmy with trails of her snot.

“How’s she gonna know it’s me?” I say.

“You have to get creative,” he says.

image by Pancho Muñoz

First thing I do is fart. I will tell you it is not easy to fart, as a ghost. The mechanics of it are intense. When you’re alive you think about holding the fart in, about keeping it to yourself. When you’re dead, it takes all your effort and concentration to expel anything, much less have it register beyond your astral plane. Tears, farts, burps. Took me weeks to learn. The Swede lifts his leg and farts on command.

“C’mon,” he says. “Focus.”

“It’s hard,” I whine. “I’m not working with much.”

“This was your idea,” he shrugs.

Katie has been taking long baths. She used to do this when I was annoying her, or when her tummy hurt. She puts lavender bubbles in the water and sits until her skin is clammy. We stand outside the door because I feel it’s important to give her privacy, in the bathroom, and because The Swede and I got into a big fight when I asked about the ethics of being a ghost, the ethics being did he give her privacy or did he stare at her boobs?

“They’re nice,” he said. “Of course I looked.”

I punched him.

“Good,” he said, rubbing his jaw. “You’re learning how to manifest.”

“What the fuck do you mean,” I shouted.

“One day,” he says, “you’re going to be able to touch her. You didn’t put your hand through me, you connected. You’re gonna learn with objects. Then her.”

“Is that allowed?” I ask.

“If she doesn’t freak out,” he says.

When the bathtub drains, I squat. I only get one shot at this. I’m stressed out that I’m gonna miss it and I’m straining and I can hear Katie grab the towel from the door, hear her squeezing the last of her lotion onto her legs, I’m straining and straining—

“I can’t,” I whisper.

The Swede stares.

“HELP,” I yell.

He winds up and clocks me with a right cross so hard I see stars, but it does the trick. I let one loose so loud and awful I’d be surprised if the neighbours don’t smell it. Katie opens the door and passes through as we jump out of the way. She takes a few strides down the hall and stops. Backs up, sniffing the air. She used to tell me my brand was a biological weapon, worse than mustard gas.

“Oh my god,” she mutters.

“Please,” I say. “Baby it’s me.”

She scrolls frantically through her phone, dialing a number.

“Hello?” she says. “I could be crazy—”

I hold my breath.

“—but I think there’s a gas leak in unit 3B,” she says. “I know it’s late, but could you send someone?”

Second thing I do is send her dogs. She used to tell me that I had big dumb retriever energy, so I tell the Swede my plan to send her as many retrievers as I possibly can. He stares at me like I am a fucking moron.

“Man,” he says. “Do you know how hard that’s gonna be?”

“No,” I said. “I send her enough retrievers, she’s gonna know it’s me for sure.”

Katie goes on long walks through the city. We trail after her, taking in the sunshine and flowers and bees and trees and things. Cyclists and baby strollers pass through us. It’s getting less weird. It winds me, feels like a full body burp. The Swede cranes his neck at the bum on a lady jogger. Katie’s hair sways gently in the sunshine and I can’t take my eyes off her.

“I wish I’d done more of this,” I say sadly.

“What,” he says.

“Walks. She used to invite me all the time.”

“You have all the time in the world, now.”

We approach a dog park, just where I remembered it was. When a man with a big brown Labrador passes us I step in front of the dog, waving my hands wildly. His ears perk and I start herding him toward Katie. When he spooks The Swede steps in, ooogie-boogie oogie-boogie hey boy over here boy! And wouldn’t you know it, the dog scoots under Katie’s feet.

“Hey, sweetheart.” She bends to him and he laps at her face. “Hello, handsome.”

“Jesus,” says the owner. “I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay,” says Katie. “What’s his name?”

“Booth,” says the guy. “But everyone calls him Boof.”

She turns her face up with a big smile. The guy returns it. Hey, he’s kind of—shit—

“Is he kind of,” says The Swede. “Like, good looking?”

“No,” I whisper. “Nononono. Shit.”

Boof keeps lapping at Katie, sitting nice for her, offering his paw. The guy laughs and bends down to her height, ruffling Boof’s ears. Shit, shit, shit. Panicking, I start running around to different dogs, herding them, spooking them, oogie-boogie oogie-boogie, sending them in their direction til there’s a mess of shepherds and doodles and ankle biters and a giant mastiff. They knock the guy over and he topples onto Katie and now they’re tangled up laughing. Boof is no help whatsoever.

“Fuck,” I say, “get off her! That’s my wife!”

“You are a fucking moron,” says The Swede.

~*~

This manifesting shit is tough. I have to concentrate really, really hard to hold or move anything. Even then, I can only move it maybe an inch. We can only practice at night. The Swede explains that you’re not supposed to upset the environment or whatever, so there is a lot of sitting around during the day. Mostly this means listening to virtual work meetings or phone calls with my mother or watching bad reality TV. On Sundays she watches football and eats pizza like we used to. She cries and cries and I can’t do anything about it, so I sit on the other end of the couch and cry with her. I can’t help it. The Swede watches us, amused.

“You’re mirroring,” he says.

“What the fuck are you talking about,” I sob.

“Soulmates can do it. You’ll figure out why that’s important later.”

“You’re like, the worst genie of all time.”

“Guide,” he says. “Not genie.”

When Katie goes to bed we practice. I put my hands through the remote and stacks of books and flower pots and keyboards and glasses of water. The Swede smokes cigarette after cigarette and barks instructions at me til I get furious and manage to knock something over, which makes him laugh, which makes me angrier. Getting angry seems to be the key.

“Not getting angry,” he says. “It’s the intention.”

“Can’t you just do it for me?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “One day I’m not gonna be here.”

Something about that makes me incredibly sad. The Swede is a prick but he is funny, in a dry way. He rubs my back when Katie and I are crying so hard we can’t breathe. When Katie gets hit on in coffee shops he makes fun of the guys and fucks with them, slapping coffees out of their hands or knocking ball caps off so they look stupid. We see other ghosts around but he is the only one that’s my buddy, I guess. I refuse to admit any of this to him.

“You’re going about this the wrong way,” he says.

I follow him into the kitchen. There is one particular cupboard that used to get left open all the time, the one Katie blamed me for. He pulls it wide open like it’s nothing.

“Back to basics,” he says.

“You couldn’t tell me this weeks ago?” I holler.

We spend the whole night at work. He barks at me like the drill sergeant from Full Metal Jacket and makes me angry and when that doesn’t work he does impressions of Katie’s coworkers to make me laugh and when that doesn’t work he tells me that one day Katie’s gonna go on dating apps and I’m gonna have to watch her fuck some loser and get her heart broken and that works, that works, holy shit does that work. By the time the sun rises I’m exhausted. Every single cupboard in the whole kitchen is open. It’s a small kitchen, so not a lot of cupboards. But every last one.

“You are a fucking asshole,” I say, doubled over, heaving.

“Proud of you, man,” says The Swede.

Katie staggers into the kitchen and the same thing happens that always happens. She runs straight into the open cupboard. Slaps a hand to her smarting forehead and hollers.

“BABY,” she yells. “I KEEP TELLING YOU—”

She stops herself. Something like recognition passes over her puffy, beautiful face.

“Oh my god,” she whispers. “Are you here?”

The Swede reaches over her head and slams the cupboard closed. Katie and I drop to our knees, laughing and crying.

I thought Katie would want to hear from me all the time. The Swede told me to go slow. But I am never more than three feet away, and I figured she would want to know that, so I used up all his tricks. I left sloppy hearts in the fog on the bathroom mirror. She wiped them away and got mad. I lined up her shoes next to the bed. She tripped on those and got mad. I opened the cabinet again and again, but she only bonked her head and got mad. One day she punched the cabinet door shut and yelled FUCK OFF. She called my mom crying.

“I think I’m going crazy,” she said.

My mom’s voice came in low waves, like a Peanuts parent. Wah-WAH-wah-wah.

“No,” she said. “I’m not going to do that.”

But one day she breaks from her usual walking path and heads to a little woo shop, the one we always used to pass on the way to the grocery store. She asks through gritted teeth to see a medium. A stout woman with fried hair leads her into a back room lit with salt lamps. It’s bare but for a table lined with crystals and a worn deck of tarot cards. Katie sits across from the woman and The Swede and I stand in between them, next to the table. I’m vibrating so hard I could rip thirty ghost farts.

“Don’t get too excited,” says The Swede.

The fried woman spreads a bunch of cards. One of them is a spooky looking card with a reaper riding a white horse. The card is labelled DEATH.

“That’s me!” I cry. “I’m dead!”

“Now,” she says, “don’t get too worried. Death doesn’t always mean literal death.”

“No,” Katie says impatiently. “I’m here because my idiot husband died. I think he’s haunting me.”

“I am!” I yell. “I am!”

“Hm,” says the fried woman. “No, dear. I’m afraid he’s passed over.”

“NO,” I yell. “I’M RIGHT HERE.”

“That doesn’t mean we can’t reach him though,” says the fried woman. “He’s got a lot to tell you.”

“TELL HER I LOVE HER,” I yell. “AND DON’T GO ON TINDER.”

“He says he loves you,” says the medium, “and that you should move on.”

“TELL HER WE’RE SOULMATES,” I yell. “WE CRY AT THE SAME TIME.”

“He says he’s in a better place,” says the medium, “he made it to heaven.”

“I’M LITERALLY RIGHT HERE,” I yell. “ON EARTH.”

“About that,” says The Swede. “She’s not wrong.”

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT,” I scream.

Katie folds her hands on the little card table. She bites her tongue because she doesn’t believe in any of this. But she’s trying, I can tell. We used to argue about ghosts and god and heaven and hell and she always thought I just had a hangover from my Catholic upbringing, but I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t believe that this life is our only shot. We’ll see, she said.

“Can you tell him something for me?” she asks.

“Sure,” says the medium.

“Tell him,” she says, “I am fucking pissed that he left me. And if he had the balls to come back, he’s going to have to do better.”

The medium pinches her fingers together and raises them to her temples. She closes her eyes and pretends to really concentrate. Then she picks up a big hunk of quartz and presses it to her forehead. The Swede doubles over laughing. I’m so angry with this fucking grifter that I rip the mother of all ghost farts. Katie wrinkles her nose.

“Do you have a gas leak?” she asks.

image by Pancho Muñoz

Katie stops pretty often on her walks. She stops to smell wild roses. She films bees in the flowers. She pets dogs. She talks to the old guy who always parks himself on the bank of the canal and waves at people. She watches the fishermen and kayakers. The Swede and I follow at a respectful distance. His hands are shoved into his pockets.

“What did you mean,” I say, “about heaven.”

“It’s not, like, a place,” he says. “It’s here.”

“What about hell.”

“Also here.”

Katie bends to examine a brush sweeping up the bank. She crouches low and watches. Sure enough, a little family of rabbits emerges from the bushes. They have little twitching noses. My wife is Snow White, and I never went on any walks with her. My heart is full to bursting with love and ache and regret.

“You made her another promise,” he says. “On the day you got married.”

“In sickness and health.”

“No,” he says. “Think harder.”

“You’re a shit genie. Can’t you just tell me.”

“You decided together. In bed.”

I stare him down. He has a half smile on his face. He’s as real to me as anyone else on this bike path, real as the cyclists and joggers and pedestrians and pets. There are other ghosts around. Some of them look really happy. They wave to us when they pass. Some of them look fucking miserable. They huddle under bridges and cry on park benches. Like real people. I’m straining to remember and my eyes water. Katie sniffles behind me, still watching the bunnies.

“There’s no elsewhere,” he says. “Only here. Heaven, or hell. We get to wake up, every day, and decide.”

It hits me, then. I drop to my knees next to her. She stretches her hand to the rabbits, and so do I.

“What did you promise her,” he says. “Four things.”

“Reading, writing, dancing, fucking,” I say. “Heaven on earth.”

He snaps his fingers.

~*~

I start with books. I can only do the book trick once a week, so I wait for Saturday mornings. Spend all night straining to turn the pages until I can find the best stories. Ones about love and grief and funny ones, ones that will make her laugh. The effort is horrendous, because pages are hard to flip. I leave the books spread open on the kitchen table. The first one is really obvious, one of my favorites, that old Carver about the cake for a dead kid.

When she finds it she frowns, shakes her head. But I smile and she smiles too, in spite of herself. I trail after her, watching her read. When she finishes we cry together. She marks another story, leaves the book splayed on the kitchen table. I can barely wait til she goes to sleep. It’s a story she used to say drove her nuts, the one about the guy who makes his wife lose a bunch of weight to impress a couple of idiots at a diner. The Swede helps me turn the pages. We sit at the kitchen table and I read out loud to him in the dark.

~*~

The Swede says I can’t write to her. It takes more coordination than we have ability. When have you ever seen a message from a ghost that didn’t look like a murder threat? Even if it is something well intentioned like I LOVE YOU or I MISS YOU or DID YOU SMELL MY FARTS?

So I start leaving a pad of paper and pen next to the open book. At first she doesn’t get it and starts scribbling grocery lists or to-dos. I take the pad and tear the lists off. One morning she finishes a story, slams the book down on the table, and scribbles

I’M SICK OF VONNEGUT AND HEMINGWAY FIND ME A LUCIA BERLIN

Which takes a lot of effort, because I never read Lucia Berlin back when she bugged me. The Swede turns the pages and I read out loud for a whole week until I pick the one about the emergency room notebook, hoping she’ll understand.

I can’t write to her, so I sit at the end of the bed and tell her stories when she goes to sleep. I tell her about the first time I saw her, how her smile made my heart explode. I tell her about the first time I kissed her, how she stopped me and said if you start that you better never stop and I knew I’d marry her just as soon as she’d let me get the words out. I tell her about the morning I rolled over and said this is it, today’s the day, and she got excited because she always wanted to elope. We picked the rings and took shots of bourbon and careened into the courthouse and we promised and we promised and we promised and I am sorry, baby, I’m so sorry that I am big dumb asshole who didn’t do a good enough job when I was alive, but all I have is time now. I will be here telling you stories until the world goes dark.

The Swede and I have been working on The Big One. He tells me after we do The Big One that I am contractually obligated to let him go. I don’t know what this looks like without him, because you cannot google how to be a ghost, and I am going to miss my buddy. I thought The Big One was the “fucking” part of my promise but he says no, absolutely not, I know you are stupid but are you fucking insane?

“You can barely fart,” he says. “Ejaculating would kill you.”

“Good point,” I say.

“Plus it’s weird.”

“Right.”

We practice in the living room. Streetlight pours in from the window and it passes through us as we dance. It’s hard to do without music, so he hums. He is insistent on good form because my girl is not easily impressed. We may only get one chance. She doesn’t know about the mirroring. The Swede says she will either like it, or she won’t. I am more nervous for The Big One than any other day of my life, including the day she saw my penis for the first time. We don’t touch each other while we sway because he says I have to learn how to dance without touching.

“You’re just worried you’ll get a little crush on me,” I say.

“Fuck you,” he says, laughing.

“Is it weird to say thank you? It’s hard to learn how to be a ghost. You had to learn on your own.”

He shrugs. “I was motivated.”

“Where are you going when you leave?”

“Back,” he says, simply.

We practice and practice. When we are tired we sing songs and jump around to keep ourselves awake. We take turns humming. We stop and fight because we are horribly out of tune and never know what song the other one is trying to make.

“Back,” I say. “To someone?”

“I hope,” he says.

“Is that why you did this?”

“Yes, but it depends. On you.”

“Me.”

“One day, my girl’s going to die,” he says. “And I don’t know if I’m going to be there or not. I’m in the balance.”

“Oh,” I whisper.

“I had to watch the two of you live here and be so in love and I hated you for a long, long time,” he said. “They told me about the soulmate thing. I didn’t believe it—”

I trip over my feet and come down hard on his toes. He boots my shin.

“—but I thought well, if these dipshits can do it—”

“You pulled all those tricks,” I say. “So she’d believe in me.”

“You had to decide,” he says. “Both of you. It wasn’t a guarantee.”

I pull away from him. He looks at me sadly, shot through with streetlamp glow. And I see it now—there is a version of him clouded in dark, one that he’s fighting. The same sadness and rot we see in the ghosts curled under bridges, crying on park benches.

“Why’d you kill yourself?”

“I didn’t think anyone loved me.”

I bite my lip, trying not to cry.

“If we pull this off, I can go,” he says. “And I can be with her. I can spend the rest of her life pulling little tricks, trying to prepare her. Maybe she’ll know it’s me, maybe she won’t. I’m stuck in the balance until she decides.”

“That depends on me?” I whisper.

“One day, you’re going to be in a hospital room,” he says. “And she’s going to wake up. You’re going to have three minutes to get her to sign some papers.”

“And if she doesn’t?” I ask.

“You get the rest of Katie’s life,” he says. “But then you’re stuck with me.”

The third signature.

“In hell,” I say.

He snaps one last time. Then he shoves his hands into his pockets and looks away. I should be angry with him, but I’m not. He played his tricks even when he hated us. Believed, even when he had no reason to. He’s the only reason Katie knew I was around. He gave me more time. I throw my arms around him. Big, dopey hug. He goes stiff, then relents.

“Why me?” I say.

“You are a giant moron,” he says, “but you always keep your promises.”

We have to wait weeks, but the chance comes. One morning she is cooking breakfast over the stove. She shuffles her playlist and taps the spatula against the frying pan. I wait until a good one comes, one she will recognize. Full of joy. When this one came on I used to stop what I was doing. I’d kiss her knuckles across the front seat of the car. Or I’d get on a karaoke stage. Or I’d drag her to the middle of a dance floor. Or I’d climb into the shower, fully clothed, and throw my arms around her.

The Big One.

My best shot.

I stand behind her, trembling. The Swede says this will only work if I muster all the intention I can, like the most love anyone’s ever felt in the whole history of love. It’s not hard. Her hair’s shining in the morning sun. She’s wearing my football jersey. There are little dimples on her bum from where the fat sits just right. I’m so fucking happy to be near her.

“I said a slow one,” says The Swede, panicked. “What are you doing.”

“Making it obvious,” I say.

I start moving my hips back and forth like the guy does in the music video. The famous one. The one everyone knows. Her hips start moving too. I’m so close I can touch them. But I don’t, not yet. Maybe one day.

“What the fuck,” she mutters.

I start swinging my arms, like the guy does in the video. Kind of cheesy. Her arms start swinging, too. I spin around like he does, and she spins with me.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh!”

It doesn’t really matter if I go to hell. If this is all I get, I could go now and be happy. We flail around our kitchen while the eggs burn, while The Swede watches with tears in his eyes, while the fire alarm starts beeping, drowned out because she’s turned the volume up, up, up. I’m not touching her but we’re in perfect time, because it all moves in perfect time, when you’ve got heaven on earth. We smile real big because we know what’s coming. The best part of the song. I sang it when I was happy to see her. We open our mouths wide and throw our heads back and holler it, the only prayer we’d ever agreed on—

HEYYYY, BABY!

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STORY:
Kirsti MacKenzie (@KeersteeMack) is a writer and editor in chief of Major 7th Magazine. Her debut novel, BETTER TO BEG, is out now. She recommends this SSL story by Sheldon Birnie.

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ART:
Pancho Muñoz, or @greenpotion, is a mexican artist said to be born from the ashes of a cursed playstation 1 controller.

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Next Tuesday, we’ll feature a bonus interview with Kirsti about this story.

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