“Place the sachet and the obsidian there.”
“Alright.”
She nodded, then clanked down the stairs in her platform fish tank shoes. He couldn’t imagine her walking very far in those things. The one time he’d done drag, he’d nearly broken his ankles.
The potent scent of incense still hung in the air as he walked back inside. He let it fill his lungs and bathe his insides as he headed to the closet and dug out the box. His stomach clenched as he pulled out a ceramic replica of Maurizio Cattelan’sComedian. Just looking at it summoned up memories he’d tried to bury much deeper than a closet was capable of. The sculptureofComedianhe’d had before was probably still in some police evidence locker downtown.
For some godforsaken reason, Everett thought buying Micah a replacement was a perfectly appropriate birthday gift. Micah had wanted to hurl the fucking banana across the room. Instead, he’d thanked Everett, insisted it would put his studio back the way it was supposed to be, then shoved it in a box.
After finding a screwdriver, he screwed the sculpture to the closet’s back wall – a spot where he wouldn’t have to look at the horrible thing – then draped the sachet over the top and slid the door closed.
5
FLESH FOR FANTASY
Micah - Present Day
YOU LOOK FABULOUS
Micah blinked at the message on the mirror. The previous phrase had vanished nearly a week ago, and this one looked so fresh that the marker wasn’t yet dry. He swiped his hand through the words and his fingers came away stained mint green, though that didn’t erase the phrase.
He wouldn’t ever call himself “fabulous,” but there was a certain refreshment to his face that hadn’t been there in some time. It helped that there hadn’t been any Soft Cell at night recently, but apparently hoping that meant the ghost was gone was too much to ask. Though Déjà’s cleansing had kept the ghost away for days, Micah’s studio no longer smelled like sage and lavender. As silly as it was, he kept the chunk of rainbow obsidian under his pillow. That he felt fresh and upbeat this week was a placebo effect surely, but maybe that was okay.
No matter what Déjà had been right about, the idea that these mirror messages were coming from himself, and that he’d manifested a random shower curtain ring in the bathtub, was ludicrous. He had a rowdy ghost, and it was too bad Grandma wasn’t here to tell him what to do about it.
He could get herbs of his own and hang potpourri everywhere or burn a shit-ton of it so often that Ximena wouldbe convinced he was a complete stoner. But that didn’t seem like a long-term solution.
He traced the letters on the mirror, trying to imagine the hand that wrote them. Slender fingers or thick and sturdy? Wide palms or delicate and narrow? Prominent knobs of knuckles, ropy veins, freckles, or scars? Did Cosmo bite his nails or wear polish or chunky rings?
Trying to imagine the ghost’s appearance almost felt like drawing the strangers he randomly called.
Fishing a dry erase marker from a drawer, he wrote beneath the ghost’s message:
And what doyoulook like?
After staring for a moment and praying the ghost wouldn’t appear in the hallway as a half-decayed corpse, Micah left the bathroom, then stopped at the closet, pushing away his button-up shirts to reveal the replica ofComedianscrewed to the wall. The potpourri sachet hadn’t melted the duct-taped banana or eaten into it like acid. No evidence that Déjà’s magic charm was destroying the evil that the sculpture embodied. But looking at it didn’t come with quite the pain that it had before.
He closed the closet, then peeked into the bathroom and did a double take at the mirror:
VERY FUNNY??
Micah’s confusion of what the answer meant momentarily overshadowed the fact that the ghost hadreplied. He was communicating with a dead, twenty-something tenant named Cosmo. Who needed the latest iPhone when you had a supernatural medicine cabinet?
He walked out of the bathroom, ran a hand through his hair, then walked back inside. Didvery funnymean Cosmo thought he looked funny? Or the concept of him looking like anything at all was funny because he no longer had a body? Maybe once you died, you lost all concept of who you’d been, the life you’d led, and what you looked like. That was depressing.
The people Micah called, like Darryl, were sometimes reluctant to describe themselves in an honest manner, or they used padded language that skirted around their insecurities. But Micah always meant it when he said all bodies were attractive. The human form simply was. That concept had always been easy to apply to others, but far harder to attribute to himself when he spent his teens struggling with the incongruence of his inner and outer self. His body hadn’t been bad or unattractive, it just wasn’t the right one forhim.With hormones and surgery, he’d reached a place of acceptance, though.
His face with its scars that refused to fade to white… not so much, but he’d had them less than a year. Maybe in time they too would be something he’d come to accept.
He pulled the cap off his marker and wrote beneath Cosmo’s message:
You’re beautiful
Maybe Cosmo would think that was funny too, but if he’d forgotten what he looked like in life, someone needed to tell him.
He stared into the mirror, waiting for letters to form. This needed to be recorded. It would be better evidence than any so far. Maybe convincing enough to show Everett. He hurried out of the bathroom and snatched his phone. By the time he made it back, there was already a reply:
XOXOXO
