I Should Have Read The Fine Print When I Agreed to These Experiments
The Story of Ghost Law | Chapter 12
Find the previous chapters of Ghost Law at this link.
The experiments the following day of my contractual capture were less than fun. For one thing, they made me get up at like 6 o’clock in the morning. Who does that?
The breakfast was uninspiring. Toast? Really? The renown fortuneteller couldn’t have foreseen that my favorite breakfast is sausage? I was really beginning to wonder what was in all those documents I signed, especially because when I tried to leave the goblin guard kept standing in my way and saying, “You’re goin’ nowhere, punk.”
The first test wasn’t so bad. They made me take the S.A.T. The old nerves came back and I remembered how badly I wanted to impress my parents, to be the first one in our family to take the test without eating any of the paper. Instead, I’d eaten the pencil.
This time around I was a little more composed, however, and I saw a chance to redeem myself. Afterword, Madam Twilge said she was very impressed by my score, even though I’d just written the word “gallbladder” over and over 400 times. She said it displayed something significant about my psychology, and that it was much more interesting than her goblin’s results, which were average. This point made the goblin guard kind of moody, and I enjoyed bringing it up to annoy him.
The next tests involved a series of potions to see if they could make me even smarter, but all they did was give me a big red butt like a baboon. Madam Twilge insisted that my butt was like that before I came there, but I knew better. Anyway, it was a long day and I was starting to wonder if I would ever get to the moon in a timely manner.
“When am I going to the moon?” I asked them as the goblin carried my limp body to my cell for naptime.
“When your contract is up,” Madam Twilge said casually. “Three years from now.”
“Three years?! Jeepers creepers!” I said, rustling like leaves in the wind. “I can’t wait that long. How many more tests must I endure?”
“Well, we want to try out an invisibility potion…and we want to get that mole on your left shoulder checked out…Oh, and of course tomorrow we’ll be cutting your brain in two.”
“Wait, hold it right there — I have a mole?”
“Relax, little minx. Madam Twilge will take great care of you,” she said slyly. “And don’t forget, this is all in the name of science. Madam Twilge’s findings could help prevent ghosts from setting foot in a ranch-style home ever again. All we need to do is figure out what exactly makes you so hauntable.”
By this point the goblin had laid me down in bed and tucked me in so tight and snuggly that I could barely wrap my arms around my teddy. I’d never thought of myself as “hauntable.” I’d always just figured my family was unlucky. But maybe it was the same thing. I tried to speak, but my eyelids were so heavy from the cucumber slices.
“Get some rest now,” Madam Twilge continued. “We have a netherworld-renown surgeon coming for the operation tomorrow and Madam Twilge wants you to make a good impression.”
I laid in bed awake for a long time after they left, wondering if I should try to escape or something. Maybe having my brain cut in two wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe it’d make me twice as smart, like having two brains.
I suddenly missed my brother Chuck. He’d always been a good judge of people. He’d know what to do. I missed my parents, too. They’d be rooting for me right now. Maybe they still were, somewhere out there, beyond the moon and the stars and the darkness.
There were a lot of maybes that night, and I’ve always been grateful for maybes — a world without maybes can be as cold as outer space.
Read the next chapter of Ghost Law: The Journey To Reclaim My Childhood Home Through Due Process here:
