Having a Blast Off
The Story of Ghost Law | Chapters 17 + 18
Chapter 17
When I awoke (awakeneded?) Scary was dragging me through the back yard toward the giant rocket ship.
“We did it,” I said drowsily. “We escaped.”
I pumped my fist into the air. Part of me wished Halifax could see me now — free as a bird and on my way to the moon. He’d feel like a big jerk, probably.
Scary grunted. I got the strange feeling she was beginning to not like me.
“I am beginning to not like you,” she said.
I thought back on all the other people who had said this to me. Chuck. My college roque team. Berger. Freys. Doctor Scholls. Cal Ripken Jr. Cal Ripken Sr. Calvin Ripken of Fort Worth, Texas, no relation. Every Subway sandwich artist I’d ever known (excluding Gale, whose shift ended early).
I used to think it was a problem with them. But now, as I went through this long list of people who didn’t like me, I was beginning to realize it might be because of the way I’m always “telling it like it is.”
I remember the first time Julianna-Anne, my ex-love, said she didn’t like me. It was on our first date. We were waiting to go on a Ferris wheel and I was yelling at the ride operator because I thought he’d cut me in line. Of course, when he’d explained that he was the ride operator, it was obviously an elaborate ruse to get ahead of me. He called his manager, who banned us from the fairgrounds after I told him he reminded me of an iguana.
A barber once told me that he felt relationships were like chewing gum — a burst of juicy flavor at first, but a gradual realization that the taste would only get worse and worse with each subsequent chew, and that it would inevitably end up wrapped in scrap paper at the bottom of a garbage can, or smooshed into a blackened blob on a busy sidewalk.
I couldn’t help feeling afterword that maybe this was how Julianna-Anne viewed our love — if it was love — when she said her farewell at that Red Lobster. I also couldn’t help feeling it was time to find a new barber who didn’t talk so intimately with me.
In either case, I got the feeling I needed to reflect and change my ways. But I kept putting it off and putting it off. And here I was again, a year later, being dragged along through the crab grass of life by someone who could barely stand to look at me.
“I made a deal with Twilge,” Scary said, ignoring my offer to hit me in the arm so we’d be even. “I’m going to supervise your moon trip. If you succeed, I’ll bring you Shucky and Mr. Crackers back and cut open all three of your brains and win back my honor in the eyes of the scientific community. The community won’t be able to ignore me with such rare brains on my hands.”
“And if I fail?” I asked, feigning interest.
“You won’t fail,” she said. “I’ll see to that.”
I really wish I had paid more attention to what she was saying at this point, but I was just too excited about going to space to care much. I was picturing the look on Halifax’s face when I showed up with Shucky and Mr. Crackers and their legal acumen. I’d have my house back in no time, restoring my family’s honor and, more importantly, rubbing my haters’ faces in it.
Scary picked me up and tossed my limp body into the rocket ship, and as I flew through the air, I felt a security in my future at last.
I had a rocket ship to the moon and a dead brain surgeon with a sketchy past to guide me there. She was the Rudolph to my Santa, and as my head hit the hard, cold metal of the rocket floor, I let out a “Ho, ho, ho.”
Scary came up soon after and looked at me.
“Phlegm,” I said, a bit out of it by this point. Then she punched me in the arm.
Chapter 18
Independent space travel always seems like a good idea until you’re in the homemade rocket and the countdown begins.
Truth be told, the rocket seemed a lot larger from the outside. The insides were akin to crawling around in a refrigerator — and not the kind with an automatic ice cube dispenser — I’m talking the freezer-you-keep-out-of-sight-in-the-basement kind of freezer.
But unlike a refrigerator, the heat inside this vessel was sweltering. It wasn’t long before I was drenched in sweat — even more sweat than I’d entered it with, which was a lot. I kept trying to crack a window, which would make Scary yell and give some really long lecture about oxygen that I couldn’t make heads or tails of.
To make matters worse, the ship was packed to the gills with Marlboro cigarettes. Not immediately clear why. Perhaps it was some sort of ancient survival instinct that kicked in, but I immediately started eating them. At this point in the journey Scary tried to sedate me again, but I was too slippery for her to grab and I made it into an airduct where she couldn’t get me. She eventually gave up and left to begin the liftoff procedures.
I won’t bore you with the details of intense, risky space travel. Suffice it to say that we were on the ground and then there was a lot of shaking and loud noises and wetting myself and then we were on the not-ground.
Seeing the atmosphere interesting, I guess. So this was the thing people at parties were always telling me I was “ruining.” If you ask me, it didn’t seem that great to begin with. Just a lot of gasses and colors that nauseated me.
As we skyrocketed toward the sun, I heard Scary cursing and yelling a lot in the pilot’s seat. The cursing was sometimes interrupted with loud, ominous beeping sounds and Scary screaming, “Oh fuck! I’m going to die! I’m going to die again!” Still, I found something about her piloting vaguely reassuring, and I weirdly ended up having another one of the best naps of my life.
When I woke up again (Sure have been sleeping a lot. Am I depressed? Skin has never looked better), we were floating among the stars, just like I dreamed we would.
I looked down from the vent and saw Scary sitting on the floor of the common room now. She was still jittery from the rocky takeoff and trying to calm herself down by chewing one of the Marlboros. I slithered out of my vent and sat down next to her and gently reminded her that I had a birthday coming up and that I hoped she hadn’t forgotten to pack a present for me before we left.
Scary let out a long, unencouraging sigh. I had a feeling I was in for one of the worst birthdays of my life until another thought struck me.
As I mentioned, the space craft was cozy. It had a cockpit, airducts, a common room, a storage compartment and only two sleeping quarters. It occurred to me that we’d have to double up if we were going to bring back those moon fellas to win my house back from Halifax. I hoped they wouldn’t mind my chronic popsicle toes. I also wondered aloud if there were any boardgames we could break out for the trip back, like Monopoly, Lord of the Rings edition.
Scary let out that sigh again and said she didn’t know, but that she’d give anything for the chance to light one of the thousands of cigarettes around us right now.
This seemed like an opportune time to tell her about the lighter and gasoline can I’d smuggled aboard in my luggage. But her reaction afterword led me to believe it maybe wasn’t the opportune time. It’s hard to read people sometimes.
“Are you out of your mind?!” she asked. “You brought gas and fire on a spaceship?!”
Technically, I explained, she did. It had been in the Hello Kitty shoulder bag she’d thrown aboard while prepping for the flight. I made a point of bringing them along in the event that Madam Twilge decided to stab me in the back and I needed to burn us all alive. By the time Madam Twilge had stabbed me in the back, of course, I’d forgotten all about them.
Scary started to look panicky again and I suggested she have a cigarette.
“OK,” she said, ignoring me and getting up and going toward my shoulder bag (which was not a purse, by the way). “OK, I just need to remain calm and store this somewhere safe until we can get rid of it.”
She opened it and was confronted by an unsettling sight: 36 bottles of canola oil. I winced. Those were meant for my eyes only.
“What is this?” she said.
“Canola — ”
“I know it’s canola oil! Where’s the gasoline?”
“Oh, that.”
I scurried up into my vent and pulled out my gas can and lighter. I’d snagged them discreetly during takeoff in case the vent got dark and I needed to make a fire. Unfortunately, I’d fallen asleep before I had the chance.
I scrambled back down from the vent and held out the items as if to say, “Here they are!”
“OK,” Scary said, sweating even more profusely now and looking nervous as flipping heck. “Just — just stay there. Don’t move. I’ll — I’ll come to you and get it.”
“Nonsense,” I said. “I’m a gentleman. I’ll come to you.”
Then I stepped forward, completely forgetting that I’d tied my shoelaces together moments earlier to practice my boxing stance like Rocky in Rocky.
As a consequence, I guess you could say I “tripped” — and the gas, I guess you could say, “flew across the room.”
The next chapter of Ghost Law drops July 5. Catch up on past episodes here:
