Best Served Cold

Internal Dialogue

Note: Listening to some of my boyfriend’s theories after he watched Ghost a few times. I will end up borrowing them with permission in the next few chapters. Also, I rewrote this chapter like 3 times trying to get it right, I hope it’s ok… Also The characters are owned by MysteryBen and Artsy

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            The quick, brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Foxes can achieve speeds of 50 kilometers an hour. Foxes are omnivorous and tend toward rodents, birds, small mammals, and certain fruits, tubers, grasses. They’ll never outfox the fox.

            “Don’t fall apart now!”

            Pick up sticks. A game commonly used among children who enjoy making a mess. Can transition to tinker toys for engineering. Lincoln logs for architects. Xylophones for future music majors. 52 pickup, or was it 54 pickup? Cards or sticks? Fetch the stick, Foxy Loxy.

            “Arthur!"

            A cat-o-nine tails is a punishment but a fox-o-six tails is running around fighting a lizard and it’s supposed to be alright. Vivi’s blue and I’m two people and the dog’s not a dog and I’m falling all the time and it hurts.

            “Arthur…”

            Roses are blue and Lewis is purple and dead but not dead and the wires are crisscrossed and shorted sparking mad mad mad mad mad we’re all mad here.

            Arthur’s thoughts raced, whirling and careening around inside his skull with dizzying speed, rolling faster and faster as they collected bits and pieces of other thoughts on the way. He felt the cave floor beneath his body, but could he even be sure of that? A moment ago he’d been held in a giant mouth, and now a blue cloud was shaking him and a purple haze inside was trying to tell him not to fall apart.

            He couldn’t hear the blue cloud, but he could hear the purple haze that permeated his chest and head. How he knew it was purple, he wasn’t even sure, but it seemed to be pushing him to do something, or maybe not do something.

            Do it yourself, you have control, just leave me alone.

            The haze continued pressing. It seemed to be something the haze couldn’t do itself. What could the haze possibly not do for itself at this point? Why was Arthur even there anymore? The purple haze could just take over forever for all he cared.

            “NO.”

            The word slammed through the corridors of his mind and out of his mouth, breaking through the incoherency.

            “LISTEN.”

            That was what the purple haze wanted? Listen. He supposed he could listen, there wasn’t much else he could do. Listen to what?

            “Listen to a story.”

            Bedtime stories. Little Red Riding Hood. The Three Little Pigs. They both had a wolf in it. Maybe the Fox and the Sour Grapes.

            “Oh gods, Arthur… Once upon a time there was a stupid, stupid ghost.”

            Ghost in the shell. Turtle in a half shell. Shell gas station.

            “And the stupid ghost thought he’d been killed by his best friend. He thought he’d been killed over the girl they loved. And he got angry, because that’s what he does, he gets angry and screws everything up by not getting all the facts.”

            Screws. Bolts. Nuts. Nuts and fruit. Fruitcake.

            “So the stupid ghost planned his revenge. He failed the first time, because the girl saved his best friend’s life.”

            There’s a fox and a lizard and they’re tap dancing to the music in my head. The blue cloud is so soft. Why is the blue cloud raining?

            “So he tried again, and this time he tried to drive his friend crazy because he was so, so angry. He was so angry he forgot the good times they’d had together, and the times his friend helped him in really bad binds, and the fact that his friend would never do something like that. He ignored the missing pieces because it felt better to be angry, because angry is a safe place.”

            Safe place sounds good right now, the ceiling’s full of swords falling, falling, falling.

            “And then he tried to find the friend and kill him, but he found a bunch of things that were all wrong. There was a flashlight that wasn’t broken. His friend was scared, and wouldn’t go alone into the dark without a flashlight. There was a snack half-eaten. The friend would never leave food unfinished. There was a notebook with a note in it, saying the friend knew the ghost was coming for him and that it was okay.”

            Lizards will eat us like little skittle snacks skitter skittles like little jacks.

            “And the ghost knew something was wrong, so he went and he found his friend had been stolen, and a stranger was inside him. The ghost had to know what was wrong, because he was finally starting to realize he didn’t have all the pieces. It took him this long because he is a stupid ghost.”

            Ghosty ghosty in the dell, how long are we locked in hell?

            “So the ghost tricked the stranger into leaving, then got inside of his friend to see all his memories. He saw that it was the stranger that had really killed him, the stranger wearing his friend’s face. He saw how much his friend suffered during the year, and in the last week… and in the last day. And he saw…” The voice choked off for a moment, and Arthur’s eyes filled with tears that were not his own.

            Rain rain, go away, come again another day.

            “…he saw his friend talking to his body and his memory in the graveyard.”

            Dust and ashes, dust and ashes, everything is dust and ashes.

            “And the ghost realized he was a very, very stupid ghost. And he tried to protect them both from the stranger, but it was too late. Then the friend’s pet came, the pet that wasn’t really a pet but a fox. And the fox is going to save the stupid ghost and the friend from the stranger, but Arthur you have to pull together. PLEASE Arthur!”

            King Arthur started off as a Squire, not even a squire, nobody liked him, and suddenly he became a King somehow with a lovely Queen. How does the story end?

            “I don’t know Arthur, but you have to hang in there with me! Vivi’s here, I’m here, Mystery’s fighting for us. You can do this!”

            I’m tired and it all hurts and everything is fuzzy around the edges.

            “No, Arthur! ARTHUR! DON’T YOU DARE!”

            I don’t want it to hurt anymore.

            The warmth blazed all around him, soaking the fringes of his tattered soul.

            “If you fade out I’ll find your ghost and haunt your ghost all the rest of my days, DON’T YOU FADE OUT NOW, DO YOU HEAR ME!”

            Hee hee, Lewis made a joke…