Ghosting

"It's happening again," I say, and fling the newspaper in her direction.

Lara fumbles to catch it from her spot on the couch, and when she does she doesn't even bother to look down at the paper.  She just clutches it in her hands and stares at me with her large brown eyes.  "What?"  She asks.  Doe eyes blink.

"They're going on about ghosts.  Again.  Just read the paper."  My voice is stiff, stiffer than usual.  All of this sudden talk of ghosts and things - it rubs me the wrong way and makes me realize once again how closed-minded the general public is.  

They don't understand dead things and so they decide all at once that they have to go swarm them.  

Unfortunately, nosiness is human nature, and though I personally haven't had enough contact with other humans to really understand them, I know that much of them don't have the type of experience I do with ghosts.

I wish they'd just learn that what they don't know won't kill them, but what they try to learn just might leave them gutless on the floor.

I move my chair closer to the hotel room's heater.  It's freezing in here.

"Another killing?"  She asks after reading the first few paragraphs of the article.  It made the front page, of course.  'Ghost' killings always do.

I nod.  "Yep."

She shakes her head and scoffs, staring down at the paper in what I presume is disgust, and reads the headline out loud.  "'Michael Burgess, 24, Burns To Death In House Fire.'  They just assume that it was a ghost?  For all they know it could have been an electrical short.  He could have burned his birthday cake.  Humans get stupider every day."

Trying not to take offense at that, I glance at the celing for a second and raise my hand to rub at the short hairs on the back of my neck.  "I don't know.  Why were we in that hospital last week?"  I pause.  Had it even been last week?  I can't seem to remember - Time is a distracting thing.

"Because of that woman and the-"  Her mouth closes suddenly and she tilts her head towards me, slaps the paper down on her crossed legs, and points with a pale hand down at the front page.  "You actually believe this?  You actually think that a ghost is killing people?"

"Could be."

"Ghosts can't kill people."

I shrug loosely, glancing again up at the celing.  "And before that woman we never considered that ghosts could ever appear to people in dreams.  But now we know that they can."

"That wasn't a ghost," she snaps.  "That was an angel."

I laugh lightly, probably a rude thing to do in this situation, though I can't help myself.   "Angels don't exist, Lara."

"Yes they do.  Technically I'm an angel.  One of the angels of death, but still."  She shoots me a poisonous look before picking the paper up and reading for a moment more.  "Every person in this town is so stupid!  I can't stand this - How about we just leave humanity to their little 'ghost' problems and let them all just die off eventually?"

I try my hardest to exclude myself from 'humanity'.  "And what would we do, then?  You still have to guide the spirits.  It's your job."  The question is slightly redundant.  We have had this conversation before, and I already know what she is going to say, yet somehow I feel like I'm daring her to let the words leave her mouth.

"I don't know."  She says.  "I could drop my job.  Being a Reaper is no fun anyways.  And the two of us... we could move on?"

There are the words I had been expecting.