The House Specialty

The dark, cavernous space, the bar that went on and on for years, is thick with ghosts. Sometimes, she throws them into oil, has a big fry-up.

Some taste like meringues, slightly burned around the edges. Others taste as bland as despair, a taste that is no taste, except that it sinks deep inside you and goes on forever. And some taste sour, like the breath of a drunk, the sweat of a drunk.

She moves through the space with a butterfly net, a cloth tea strainer, anything she has on hand, and traps the wisps, throws them in.

They look better fried. Corporeal is a good thing to be, when you haven't been for so long.

And when the others start to shuffle in, the dead ones still on this side of the veil, she offers them her fried ghosts, the house specialty. Take your pick, she says, luck of the draw, she says.

You never know what you're gonna get, Forrest Gump's mama says.

Sometimes she melts chocolate over them. Sometimes she flavours them with beer. Sometimes she serves them up with a side of chips.

No two quite the same. Saunter up, take your pick, ghost to taste, ghost of a taste, ghostly aftertaste, and whathaveyou.

They file in, weary, dead-eyed, chew the treats mechanically, and breathe.

Still breathing.

That's something.

And sometimes this world makes sense and they matter and have a reason for being.

But if they did, they wouldn't be here.

Anywhere but here.

These are for the deadends, the no-hopers, the ones who have just a little way to go.

These are the ones you hear about, read about, but never see.

And so they shuffle into this halfway house, poised between living and the opposite of it, coming from nowhere, going nowhere.