DELETED SCENES -- The Unbinding -- Original Chapters 1 and 2

 

Chapter 1

I'm sure I saw a few ghosts when I was a kid on NyQuil, but those were written off as fever dreams. You take codeine cough syrup, and you may see some shit.

I don't remember any ghosts until the ball game with my Dad.

I don't have many memories with my dad, but that was among my most memorable.

Dad fed me sips of his Busch Light as the Daytona Tortugas went into the final inning. I didn’t care about baseball, but Dad was home for a few weeks and wanted to take me out for my 14th birthday.

The beer smelled like saltwater barf, but Dad beamed as he passed me the cup. Even with the river breeze, the Florida heat beat down. My Rick and Morty tee clung to my back, hair stuck to my head. Three colas and two hotdogs showcased my teenage girl specialties: eating, sweating, and hating my mom.

It was hot, the lights were bright, the people were in good humor, I was out of school hanging with my dad, so I slugged four giant chugs from the cup. I grimaced and shook my head, burped hugely. Dad slapped me on the back and laughed. He told me to finish it and he'd get another.

I did.

And about 30 minutes later the entire stadium was swoomy and funnier than it used to be. I hollered for every play and threw my hat around. It was surely the best day ever.

Until I saw the crane on second base.

There was a strange dimming in my ears, like the stadium was on speaker instead of live. The air felt thick, electric.

"Dad, they're going to run into that bird," I said standing in my chair.

"What?" my dad asked, leaning forward. He made a fist and belched lightly into it.

On the second base plate, knee high to the player covering the base, a big white and black bird preened itself. I could almost hear the ticks of its talons on the plate, as it turned slightly.

I shook my dad's arm and pointed. Dad squinted and stilled before shaking his head.

"Dad! There's a bird right there!" I screamed, half-jumping half on his back. His beer poured into his lap. He cussed and stood as the crowd cheered, leaving me in a half-piggy back.

The batter swung, and hit the ball with a resounding crack, and ran to first, and the guy who'd been on first sprinted to second, on a direct path to the giant white-and-black bird. I didn't really know what it was. An Osprey? Shit, I should have paid attention in biology.

"The bird! Stop the game! Move! He's going to hit him, dad!" I screamed. "Stop!"

My screams joined the wild mob chanting "go."

He did.

 The man rounded second, passing cleanly though the bird, and continued to third. The batter slid into second, right into the bird.

I squealed and jumped as Dad sort of grabbed me and set me on the ground.

"Hey, kid, are you ok?" he said over the roar of the crowd.

The bird should have been a splatter mark and feathers.

If the bird hadn't been see-through.

A ball player lay on his face under the lights. The bird grew from a two-foot high Osprey to a prehistoric terror. It looked unbothered by anything in the stadium and completely ignored the player at its feet.

My eyes goggled out of my head when the giant bird took an elegant step through the player, its long reptilian feet disappearing into the player's head and back as he stood and wiped his hands on his dirty pants.

The beers swished in my stomach with the hotdogs, as the heat punched into my head like a pulse. The crowd spun and I tripped and fell against my dad.

"Don't you see the bird?" I asked.

"Whoa, Andy, whoa, I think it's time to cut you off, kiddo."

"Dad, the bird," I said, pupils wobbling as the bird opened its wings, and stared directly at me. "The bird."

Dad was rubbing my back and telling me to just sit down when it made one lonely cry and flapped its wings. As the giant osprey left its shadow on the field, I leaned over and puked up three cokes, a beer, and two hotdogs on my dad's lap.

It was the last time we ever went to a ball game.

It was not the last time I saw a ghost.

 

Chapter 2

"Andy come and wingwoman me," Stella begged.  “I want Jack to see me and know I don't miss him."

"Honey, I love you, but I hate bars," I said.

Stella was applying elaborate sparkly eyeliner in our tiny bathroom. I needed to pee. That would have to wait. When Stella was doing her face, nothing else was getting done.

"It's not a bar-bar, it's a club. Dancing, and talking and shots," she said, opening her eyes almost inhumanly wide to attach lashes that were spidery. They gave me the creeps when she left them in the bathroom.

"I don't…"

"...drink, I know, I know," she said. "Can't you just come and fake it til you make it? Please?"

I sighed and closed the fairy smut I was reading and banged my forehead against the bathroom wall.

"Please? Jack was out last week with the bitch he was doing when we were exclusive," she said. "And he looked so… so smug."

"How can you tell he was smug?" I asked.

Jack was a ballsack. For reals. Smug after what he put Stella through was not cool. Also typical.

"He walked up to me, looked me up and down, winked and introduced me to his girlfriend," she said, doing something to her cheeks with a fat waxy brown crayon. I think it was contour? Who knows.

Her eyes bored into mine.

"His. Girlfriend," she said.

"The hell? Why didn't I hear about this before now?" I asked.

"Well it was last night and you had to work," Stella said, smooshing a sponge in the brown lines on her face. "I need a man to make out with on the couch next to that small-dicked two-minute manwhore. But until I can pick one up I need a buffer."

She turned to me, her giant blue eyes perfectly outlined, and her mass of red hair foaming like a second personality.

"Please?! I'll pay the uber, I'll pay the cover, I'll buy shots…."

"I don't…"

"I'll just drink yours too," she said. "Just, please?"

"If I go through this tonight, will you go to the psychic fair in St. Cyperian tomorrow?"

"Do I have to be up before noon?"

"I want to get there at 10."

"You like that shit?"

I shook my head, "No, but I got a flyer that gets me a tarot reading for $20. I have nothing on my TikTok reels but tarot readers. And they’re creepy and hypnotic and I just want to … see one."

"You're such a cute weirdo," Stella said. She dramatically rubbed her temples and nodded.

I sighed and nodded. She squeed and pulled me into the bathroom for a titty bump.

An hour later, I was decked out and on a dance floor wearing Stella's clothes and Stella's makeup. The shirt was too big, and the skirt was too tight.

I wiggled back and forth in my white tennis shoes as Stella threw her hands up and danced like she was possessed and it was an exorcism. Men circled around us, each looking for the opening to jump in and grind on her ass. I moved behind Stella and grabbed her waist, so she backed her ass up to my crotch.

I meant it to look like we were not interested in the sea of penises. Like we were good with just each other. But girl-on-girl grinding in a club is apparently the universal signal to all men that "these women want you."

Who knew?

"I need air," I yelled to Stella. I grabbed her hand and escaped the mob of jeans-clad dicks trying to rub against us.

"Ohmygod I loooveee his song, Andy," she whined.

"I. Need. Air."

I dragged her to a bar at the far end of the club and ordered water. She ordered two blow jobs. I didn't take one.

"Why don't you just try?" she whined.

"Listen, I hallucinated and puked after just one beer once, and it just sort of soured me. It's not my kind of fun," I said.

"You have to try puking on more things," Stella said as she bent over the bar, took the shot glass in her mouth, and emptied the whipped-cream concoction with no hands.

"It wasn't the puking," I muttered against the straw in my water. "It was the way it looked at me."

"Damn, babygirl gets it done," the bartender yelled as Stella slapped the bar and swirled her tongue around the second shot glass. Stella took the second shot and high-fived the bartender.

She found a random guy to kiss as Jack walked up, which made her happy. She lost track of the guy, which also made her happy.

Then she broke four nails when she fell in the bathroom, which made her freak out.

"Oh fuck, I have herpa-syphal-aides! Help! Help! Oh god!" she screamed. "I touched the floor! I'm going to get a flesh-eating vag disease!!"

I saved her hair before she joined the chorus of pukers on either side.

Between her sobs, she told me she loved me. I patted her back and sighed.

"I got you Stella-bella," I said.

A woman with green hair yelled at us to hurry the fuck up so she could pee, and that somehow revivified my sweet Stella.

"Bitch, you want some of this?!" Stella yelled, attempting to stand.

I yelled over my shoulder. "She's drunk and doesn't mean it."

A stall next to us opened and thankfully green hair went into it.

Stella giggled and leaned her head on my shoulder. I braced because she smelled pretty pukey.

I washed her up in the sink as best as I could and we Ubered home.

She passed out against the toilet clad only in her underpants.

I don't know why she thought that looked fun.

But now I had a wing-woman for the psychic festival.

Stella moaned, and I shivered, like a left-sock-stealing goblin walked over my grave.

It was a walk around a cute little town in good weather, and a tarot reading.

What could go wrong?