You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please) Read online

  “Oh, right, the yoke. What’s that again?”

  “The wheel.”

  “Yes, yes... er...”

  “The round object,” she clarified.

  “Right, and-”

  Then the airplanes collided. The Flying Trashcan 2 was sent spinning sideways as the force of the impact ripped off several of its many wings. Its engines began to sputter and rumble wildly while the cabin burst into flames. Metal panels ripped off the sides of the fuselage and the nose and went flying off into the air while hoses popped and wrenched apart, sending fuel and grease spurting through the cabin. Doors popped open and high-speed air roared past the passengers as the Flying Trashcan 2 tumbled and fell. Part of the aluminum skin of the aircraft sheered off entirely and suddenly Brian could see the other plane, the one with “Bob’s Plumbing” written on the side, looming large as life above them, flaming and flailing, crippled in the air as cargo leaked from its bay. As it jolted back and forth, the Flying Trashcan 2 began to disintegrate. Though the cabin remained intact, fire was rapidly spreading through it from the back, burning the carpet and the upholstery and climbing towards the ceiling as the tail sheered off and went flying past them.

  Nathan’s salad was wrenched out of his hands. He grabbed at it but missed, and it went careening off into the atmosphere.

  “I was eating that,” he complained. Maybe it was just the sauce talking, but he’d thought it was very good.

  Meanwhile, Brian was staring around at the disintegrating aircraft, the climbing flames, and the copy of the magazine he was reading (now turned to “Death from crash probably prolonged, painful rather than instantaneous”) in abject, wild-eyed terror. He started to gibber wildly and scream.

  “What’s the matter with him?” Nathan asked, frowning at Brian.

  “He is having a panic attack, probably because he is reading about horrifically dying on an airplane while actually being on an airplane that is both crashing and on fire,” Travis said calmly.

  “Can’t we help him?”

  Travis shook his head. “If only we had an aero-literary thermopsychologist!”

  Brian continued to scream horribly.

  The flight attendant fought her way to the microphone, staggering to the appropriate panel before depressing the button that turned on the speakers throughout what was left of the Flying Trashcan 2.

  “Due to an unforeseen collision, we are currently experiencing some minor crashing. The pilot has turned on the crashing sign. Will all passengers please return to their seats and fasten their seat belts? Thank you.”

  Meanwhile, in the cockpit the pilot was wrestling with the controls, struggling ferociously to pull back on the yoke as the aircraft plummeted. Brian continued to scream, while Travis made a disappointed noise.

  “This is exactly why I don’t believe in flying,” he commented to Nathan.

  “We seem to be crashing,” Nathan agreed.

  “Don’t worry,” the pilot shouted back. “We’ll be okay as long as the cupholder holds!”

  It was at this point that the cupholder broke.

  “Noooo,” the pilot screamed, and the plane started to plummet perilously downwards towards the outskirts of Dead Donkey.

  Nathan continued to sip at his water.

  “I have a good feeling about this,” he commented. “Things are going well.”

  “I think that may be the special sauce talking, Nathan,” Travis said as he stared unconcernedly out of the gaping hole in the canopy at the whirling ground below.

  Brian had passed out from fear and started choking on his own unconscious screams.

  Debris from their own airplane and the other aircraft whipped perilously past them, but even inside the hurling jetstream, the captain unfastened his belt and powered his way to the back of the cockpit.

  “I have to try to repair the cupholder,” he shouted at the dog. “You try to land the plane, Rex! Land plane, Rex! Good boy! Land plane!”

  The dog panted happily and pulled back on the yoke.

  Nathan felt the plane shift underneath them and straighten out somewhat, but they were still going more straight downwards than straight and level, and Nathan vaguely remembered that you were supposed to land a plane in the latter of these two possible orientations. Meanwhile, the pilot had produced a pair of wirestrippers and was frantically removing the rubber coating from the wires that connected the motorized cupholder to the plane’s battery. He puzzled over a particular pair of wires.

  “Red or blue, red or blue,” he said, biting his lip. “Damn it. One of these is wired to the cupholder and the other is hooked up to the plane’s self destruct, and I can’t remember which is which.”

  Since Brian had passed out from fear, Travis felt it was his responsibility to lodge an objection in Brian’s place.

  “Why don’t you know which one is the self destruct?” Travis asked. “I thought you rebuilt this plane yourself.”

  “I was pretty drunk at the time,” the pilot answered, then puzzled over the wires for another moment. Finally, he shrugged. “Well, if I wanted to live forever, then I would have remembered to pack my parachute,” he said, and cut the red wire. There was a crackle and the pilot pressed it against another stripped wire with his hand.

  The cupholder whizzed to life.

  “I’ve done it,” the pilot declared. “I’ve restored emergency power to the cupholder, but I have to hold this wire in place or we’ll lose it again. You have to land the plane Rex! Did you hear me? Land plane, Rex! Land plane! Good boy! Land plane!”

  Rex pulled back on the yoke and the aircraft leveled out further. Through the missing section of fuselage, Nathan could see that they were fast approaching a relatively flat, paved length of ground on the outskirts of the city. No obstacles were visible immediately in front of them. Though Nathan didn’t know this, this was Dead Donkey Zoo. There were no visible structures in the zoo because the zoo had paid an arm and a leg for transparent animal cages. In fact, there were no animal cages in Dead Donkey Zoo, and the animals politely stayed inside their enclosures to spare the zookeepers the embarrassment of admitting that the contractors had just pocketed the money and scampered off without building anything at all. This was very advantageous for the passengers and crew of the Flying Trashcan 2 at this particular moment because buildings make for very poor landing sites.

  Nathan watched the looming ground happily.

  “Landing gear, Rex!” the pilot was shouting. “Landing gear, boy! Cut speed, Rex! Cut speed!”

  Rex pawed the landing gear button and there was a brief, mechanical hum as the wheels descended. He strained back on the yoke and the aircraft leveled further. In fact, what was left of the nose was now pointed up. They were pelted by debris as the other aircraft, still collapsing above them, showered them with shower heads.

  The Flying Trashcan 2 screamed towards the zoo. Beneath them, animals scampered away from the impending impact. Squirrels abandoned their nuts and buried themselves. Bears retreated to their bear caves, in which they had built their bear bomb shelters. Tigers hid in the pouches of kangaroos. Meanwhile, the aircraft was leveling out.

  “Land plane, Rex!” the pilot continued to call. “Flare, Rex, flare! Flare, Rex!”

  Rex pulled further and further back on the yoke and the nose continued to drift upwards. Then, there was a horrible squelching noise as they had their first contact with the ground and metal strained against pavement - the plane’s belly was scraping against the access road that was supposed to be reserved for visitors. Since no one ever visited Dead Donkey Zoo after an incident with a little boy and the rhino, no one, not even trapped tourists or underpaid zookeepers, was present on the road. The Flying Trashcan 2 groaned and shook and sparks flew underneath the aircraft’s belly as the plane slid, kicking up gravel and tar as it went. The fuselage began to spin again, the remaining engines breaking off and flying across the tarmac like toys. Beneath his feet, Nathan saw the metal frame of the airplane, red with heat, peeling off and throwing hot
shrapnel. They skidded and slid and lurched sickeningly. Then there was a bang and everyone was flung considerably forward in their seats.

  Then there was silence.

  Rex barked.

  “You landed the plane,” the pilot said joyously, then started to scratch the dog behind the ears. “Who landed the plane? Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good doggy? Good plane landing doggy, good doggy, yes you are.”

  Rex barked happily.

  Travis splashed a cup of water in Brian’s face. Brian looked up and around blearily, then stared out the torn canopy and out at the road they had landed on.

  “We survived?” he croaked in disbelief. “We didn’t crash.”

  “The dog landed the plane,” Travis said unblushingly.

  “How come the dog can land the plane and you can’t?” Brian demanded of the pilot, regaining his former sense of bureaucratic outrage. He undid his seat belt and hopped to his feet indignantly.

  “Look, I know how to take off and he knows how to land,” the pilot snapped back. “It’s a division of labor.”

  Rex barked again.

  The flight attendant had picked up the microphone and very unnecessarily started to speak over the intercom.

  “Due to a change in our flight plan, we have made an unscheduled stop here in Dead Donkey Zoo rather than our final destination of New York. Please proceed to the emergency exit indicated by your flight attendant and prepare to de-plane by means of the emergency slide. Once on the ground, wait for the crew to join you, as they will assist you in hitchhiking the rest of the way to New York. Thank you for flying with us on the Flying Trashcan 2. We realize you have a choice in airlines and we would like to apologize for again crashing the plane-”

  “That was a landing,” the pilot shouted. “We’re alive and everything.”

  Rex growled in agreement.

  “-for crashing the plane-” the stewardess persisted. “-and we hope you will choose to fly with us again in the future.”

  “Fat chance,” Brian muttered as the flight attendant lowered the emergency slide from one of the exits. Rather than an inflatable ramp, it was a water slide. Nathan went first and jumped down it, shouting “wheeeeee!” as he went.

  The moment he hit the ground, he was confronted by a very unusual animal. It was called an equiclops.

  Travis quickly followed him down the slide and peered at the creature suspiciously.

  “What is that?” he asked.

  “An equiclops,” Nathan said, reading the nearby zoo placard.

  An equiclops is a twisted and terrifying mythological Dead Donkey animal that has the head of a horse and the body of a horse. It is different from a horse because it has nothing but scorn for humankind and emits a malicious snicker whenever anything bad happens to the humans around it. This is the only way it is different from a regular horse. Therefore, the only way to distinguish between an equiclops and a horse is to gather several humans together in front of the suspected equiclops and whack them ruthlessly with a baseball bat. An equiclops will giggle, while a regular horse will merely watch dispassionately. The Dead Donkey zoo keeps an entire warehouse full of baseball bats and useless people, like politicians, around for this reason. Sometimes the zookeepers volunteer to hit them even when there aren’t any equiclops around.

  Right now, the equiclops was snickering.

  “Oh, shut up,” Brian said irritably. He was having a very bad day and losing much of his professionalism and dispassion.

  “That was fun,” Nathan said cheerily as he dusted himself off. “I told you I had a good feeling about that.”

  It was at this moment that Nathan found out the hard way what the equiclops was snickering at, as several different things happened to him at once. First, the amphetamines in the airplane secret sauce, combined with the slapdash job that Dr. Vegatillius had done repairing Nathan’s body in the first place, put far too much stress on the blood vessels running through Nathan’s brain. He started to have a stroke and collapsed to the ground twitching (both because he was having a stroke and because he felt like it).

  Second, the inhabitants of the badger enclosure of the Dead Donkey Zoo, into which the Flying Trashcan 2 had crashed, proved not to be so enclosed after all. They crossed the imaginary fence separating them from the rest of the zoo to express their agitation with the aircraft’s passengers for wrecking their home. The lead badger did this by jumping onto Nathan’s face and mauling him horribly.

  Third, it transpired that the Bob’s Plumbing aircraft the Flying Trashcan 2 had hit in midair had been carrying a humanitarian aid delivery of emergency bathtubs to the city of Dead Donkey to provide to the unwashed masses, who were getting extremely ripe and rancid. Although the Bob’s Plumbing plane had banked up in an effort to avoid crashing, it had ultimately broken up in midair and the cargo was subsequently being scattered across the zoo. While this was good news for the animals who would soon have brand new plumbing and bathroom fixtures to enjoy, it was very bad news for Nathan, since a bathtub came careening out of the sky and crushed him and the badger.

  There was another long silence.

  “Damn,” said the pilot, who just arrived behind them. “I depend on repeat customers.”

  Rex howled in despondency. The equiclops chuckled harder than ever.

  Brian and Travis stood over Nathan’s corpse for a moment and surveyed it.

  “Well, he died the way he lived,” Travis said with a shrug. “Badly.”

  A moment later, a man in overalls with hunched shoulders and a dejected look on his face arrived, huffing and wheezing. He took one look at Nathan’s body and hung his head in shame.

  “Aw, did I arrive too late?” he asked. “Then again, I’m not really paid enough to be on time.”

  Chapter 19

  Nathan had considerable experience simultaneously dying of a stroke, being mauled by a badger, and crushed by a bathtub. He didn’t know it, but he was actually the world expert on the subject. Had the Dead Donkey University known, they would have given him a degree faster than he could blink and started filling out a Nobel Prize in Death application on his behalf.

  Unfortunately for Nathan, Dead Donkey University was not aware that he had ever been crushed by a bathtub, mauled by a badger, and concurrently died of a stroke, even though the first time it had happened was on their premises. (For liability reasons, Dr. Vegatillius had shrewdly failed to tell anyone about it and buried Nathan’s body in an unmarked grave in the university graveyard).

  So Nathan knew there was no doctorate waiting for him where he was going. Instead, all that awaited him in the afterlife was a visit to the processing station for people who simultaneously died of bathtub-stroke-and-badger attack, which was run by an unfriendly and dispassionate bureaucrat named Jeanne, just adjacent to the station for affairs dealing with Travis Erwin Habsworth. Jeanne was a severe, gray-haired, older-middle-aged woman who wore a mauve blouse, not at all to be confused with the frumpy woman, who ran station #4 and owned a snowglobe and wore a hideous orange sweater. Nathan was not thrilled with the idea of seeing either one of them at the moment, but as with so many events pertaining to death, he didn’t really have a choice.

  There was an infinite, unending blackness. To be perfectly frank, Nathan was getting a bit tired of infinite, unending blackness. He had been through it so many times that he’d started to see infinite, unending blackness when he closed his eyes at night. It was a bit like one of those B-rate tourist destinations or movies with a twist to it. Good the first time, but you wouldn’t want to visit it everyday.

  Standing on the vast plane of nothing, Nathan heard a loudspeaker chime. Then a mechanical voice said:

  “Station Number 8+2i, please.”

  Nathan frowned. Was that a station number? He’d never heard of it before.

  Then it occurred to him that he was in hideous, terrible pain because the badger (briefly taken aback by being crushed by a bathtub), had come with him to the afterlife and again started mauling him. These thing
s always take a few seconds to register with Nathan. He screamed.

  Meanwhile, the world materialized around him. Nathan was standing in front of (or more accurately, painfully collapsing to the ground in front of) a large desk piled high with forms. It looked exactly like Jeanne’s or the frumpy woman’s desk, except there was a younger man behind it wearing a tie with a single-windsor knot and he had perched a stuffed parrot on the apex of his unstable pile of forms. When Nathan appeared and started to scream, he yanked a form from the top of his pile and shoved it towards Nathan.

  “You are dead. Sign here please. Name here, type of badger, type of stroke, type of bathtub, signature.” The man said all this without looking up. He thrust the form over to Nathan, who was still writhing around on the ground struggling with the badger. After a few seconds, Nathan managed to get the badger off of his chest and held it in his hands. While it writhed ferociously and occasionally swiped at him with its claws, drawing blood, since they were both dead all of their injuries healed immediately. With the struggling badger tucked under one arm, Nathan managed to snatch up the form. He couldn’t sign it, of course, but he glanced over all the particulars - badger, stroke, bathtub.

  “Where’s Jeanne?” he asked as the badger snarled at him and tried to decapitate him.

  “Jeanne?” the man asked in confusion. “She runs the Desk for People Who Died of Badger Attack While Simultaneously Having A Stroke And A Bathtub Fall On Their Heads.”

  “Isn’t that where I am now?” Nathan asked, looking at the form that had the boxes “type of bathtub,” “type of badger,” and “type of stroke,” on it.

  “No. This is the Desk for People Who Died of Badger Attack While Simultaneously Having A Stroke And A Bathtub Fall On Their Heads While Also Dying In A Plane Crash.”

  “But I didn’t die in a plane crash,” Nathan objected. “I survived the plane crash, then was mauled by the badger, died of the stroke, and was hit by the bathtub.”

  The badger snapped its jaws in agreement.

  The man stared at Nathan blankly, then snarled.