Quid Pro Quo, Bro
The Story of Ghost Law | Chapter 11
“You moron. Haven’t you been listening to a word I said? They don’t want you there,” Madam Twilge explained, after I’d asked her to help me get to the moon to see Shucky Frazer so he could teach me “ghost law” to get the ghosts out of my childhood home. “And why are you giving me all this exposition? I told you, the door to the moon is closed and your money won’t change that.”
“Listen, you always said I should believe in myself — ”
“What? When? Are you having a stroke?”
“ — So that’s what I’m going to do. You said yourself that these guys might hold the keys to getting my house back, and also that you didn’t want me using your restroom and that I should go use the McDonalds down the street. I have to try.”
“What makes you think Madam Twilge could help you?”
“I told you, I believe in fate. Also, that big rocket ship in your backyard.”
“OK, and what makes you think Madam Twilge WOULD help you?”
I held up my money again (not sure why she wasn’t understanding this), but all it bought me was her laughter.
“Alright, kid,” she said after she finished choking on her grapefruit. “Madam Twilge will take you to the moon, but you must agree to undergo a series of experiments and tests.”
“OK, but, uh, can we do them in, like, a couple days?”
“Not drug tests. No. The simple fact is, very few people have been haunted by ghosts as long as you. Madam Twilge is interested in the effect it has had on you. Might get Madam Twilge published in The American Journal of Spooky Medicine.”
Great, another fame seeker. Still, she must have foreseen that the only thing I like more than being at the center of scientific poking and prodding is the chance to have a disorder named after me. And the chance to defeat Halifax and take my home back by storm loomed too large to just walk away from.
“Alright, Twilge, you have yourself a deal. Let the experiments begin!”
“OK, but put those back on. I didn’t tell you to take anything off.”
Madam Twilge then produced a series of forms and documents and I signed them all without really reading them. Not very sensible lawyering, I’ll admit, but I was in a bit of a rush to get to that moon.
Once I finished signing everything, it took a little while for her evil laughter to die down. That didn’t seem like a very good omen, but it was also kind of contagious. Before I knew it we were both doubled over guffawing in her office.
I was still laughing when the big goblin guard showed up to escort me to my cell. He wasn’t laughing, so I decided to tickle him. He was like, “Cut it out,” but I kept at it and soon all three of us were laughing and giggling and it was the most fun I’d ever had.
Then the goblin threw me in a cell.
I was like, “Hey, don’t I get a phone call?”
And he was like, “What? No.”
And I was like, “Are you sure? I can’t even use my own cell phone?”
He laughed so hard there were tears in his eyes and Madam Twilge nearly swallowed her false teeth.
As they closed and locked the heavy cell door, I stretched out on my cot, still holding in giggles, and slowly drifted off to sleep. In my dreams, I was floating among the stars.
The Story of Ghost Law will continue…after these messages…
