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Kevin Tran had really expected more from the afterlife. He remembers reading about Hades and Hamistagan and the happy hunting grounds in mythology. He wrote a very good paper for AP English (which absolutely did not merit a minus following his well-deserved solid A) which compared and contrasted Chaucer's, Blake's, and Goethe's views of Heaven and Hell.
Once he discovered that he was a prophet of the Lord, Kevin had wondered what the permanent retirement plan looked like, considering that death seemed to appear on the breakfast table with greasy eggs and stale toast every morning. He didn't really expect to be delivered via a chariot of fire like Moses. Nor did he see the likelihood of being swept up by a whirlwind and carried off toward his eternal resting place.
It had never once crossed his mind that he would spend his postmortem days in his old bedroom at his mother’s house, gold farming out of sheer boredom.
Kevin would be sitting at his desk, if he could actually sit. He would probably be drinking a Red Bull out of habit, if he still needed to drink or to have energy. His mom would have brought him a healthy snack, using her visit as an excuse to chide him for taking an entire hour away from academics to goof off on a video game. But Kevin doesn’t eat anymore; he doesn’t go to school anymore; Linda certainly doesn’t berate him anymore.
So Kevin stands in front of his laptop, pecking the hotkeys and moving the mouse by way of ghostly telekinesis. Back when he started gaming again, Kevin played strictly via EVP, sending himself into the hard drive and manipulating the game through will alone. It was heady, having that kind of power, but watching the game play mirrored on the inside of the laptop screen was more than a mindfuck. He had already been embarrassingly out of practice as it was; running in the wrong direction during dungeon crawls was mortifying.
He still uses EVP for the simple stuff, like typing in chat and switching tabs. Kevin had tried using it to operate Ventrilo, but soon tired of his fellow gamers cursing and yelling at “Hawking”. (If he was going to be compared to a brilliant theoretical physicist, he’d prefer it be for his genius cosmological theories and not his computer-generated voice.) Now, though, he’s so good with his ghost-granted powers that he can run a party of four via LAN. He doesn’t have to PUG anymore, which is nice, because he manipulates the controls so quickly that he’s been accused of being a bot on multiple occasions.
Unfortunately, that means a lot of waiting around for new expansions to drop, because he finishes everything in a matter of days. Hence the gold farming. After all, Kevin had promised himself that, someday, he would bring home the kind of paycheck that would allow him to support his mother in her old age.
He certainly wasn’t going into politics any time soon, and he felt dishonest hacking into other people’s accounts or making false ones, but selling fake money? That he could do. Granted, it was still morally ambiguous, and caused false inflation in the in-game economy, but gamers were going to find something to bitch about regardless, so at least it meant he could sleep at night.
Well, if he slept. Once a prophet, always a prophet, it would seem. He’s even still translating code.
Kevin expects tonight will be no different than any other night. He’ll stand here for five or six hours, gold farming on two desktops, running one of his level ninety characters with a group that pays him to play on the third, and watching Netflix on a sad, endless loop on his laptop.
And then his Skype window dings.
“‘queen celeste would like to add you on Skype,’” he reads aloud. “Great.” Kevin clicks the accept button while simultaneously pulling up the Notepad file where he keeps his non-solicitation speech.
queen celeste: hey is this kevin
Kevin closes the Notepad. He hasn’t used his real name online since he became a prophet. Kevin minimizes the chat window and considers his options. He could just ignore it. There are a lot of Kevins in the world. Skype dings again while he calculates the possibility of coincidence.
queen celeste: please let this be kevin
queen celeste: i cannot take being hit on by any more pretend lesbians today
queen celeste: the last one claimed to be a dryad and was actually a forty year old man
Kevin can absolutely sympathize with that, so he answers.
Advanced Placement: Who are you?
queen celeste: charlie
queen celeste: its charlie im sure dean mentioned me
queen celeste: unless he was being a complete nerf herder and never talked about his little sister
queen celeste: im honestly betting on nerf herder
Advanced Placement: You mean Dean Winchester?
queen celeste: oh thank god its you
queen celeste: hacking with evp is way harder than i expected it to be and im getting kinda tired and drainy
Advanced Placement: So you’re Charlie Bradbury?
queen celeste: one and only
queen celeste: i think
queen celeste: you never really know if you have a doppelganger or an au version of yourself until its far too late
Advanced Placement: Are you dead?
queen celeste: no i just naturally generate evp and look up deceased prophets
queen celeste: obvs i am dead
queen celeste: how are you punctuating and capitalizing i cant figure it out
Advanced Placement: They got you killed, didn’t they?
Advanced Placement: Regarding your question, lots of practice. It took me a few months to get the hang of it. Takes time and effort; you can’t have been dead for long, so don’t rush it. You’re already typing pretty quickly, and that’s the hardest part to figure out, especially when you’re reading it all the wrong way ‘round.
queen celeste: omg i know its like the twilight zone
queen celeste: or maybe xfiles
queen celeste: deft not the matrix because i sure as shit wasnt offered an opt out
queen celeste: but yeah they got me killed and i didnt even get a goddamn tshirt
Advanced Placement: Don’t feel bad; I didn’t even get a thank you.
queen celeste: actually i kind of ran off unprepared by myself so
queen celeste: i mean i play video games i should know better
queen celeste: totes ooc for me
queen celeste: and i died last week
Advanced Placement: You’ve already got EVP manipulation down?
queen celeste: computers are what i do kevin
queen celeste: ada lovelace is my patronus
Advanced Placement: That’s seriously impressive.
Advanced Placement: Sorry you’re dead.
queen celeste: you think id have at least earned an extra life
queen celeste: i killed a lot of goombas
Advanced Placement: The only ones who get extra lives are the Winchesters.
queen celeste: yeah why is that
queen celeste: were winchester proximate does that not mean anything
queen celeste: i even wore plaid
queen celeste: seriously my outer layer options consisted of shirts that were plaid or slightly plaider plaid and hoodies
queen celeste: youd think plaid was the new black or something
Advanced Placement: I was hand-selected by the Word of God to be a prophet and I’m still here.
Advanced Placement: As far as the plaid is concerned, you have no one but yourself to blame.
queen celeste: true that
queen celeste: i don’t know i just feel kind of cheated
queen celeste: i thought hunting was going to be more magical and adventurous
Advanced Placement: Didn’t you go to Oz?
queen celeste: yeah never follow strange fictional women into mysterious portals you will live to regret it
Advanced Placement: Kinda would have to be alive for that to work.
queen celeste: oh
queen celeste: being dead sucks even more than hunting
queen celeste: though i kind of already miss hunting in a weird way
queen celeste: the research was fun
queen celeste: i got to keep my own hours
queen celeste: plenty of exercise
queen celeste: endless amounts of fantastic wifi which i didnt even know was an optional feat
queen celeste: do you ever miss the life kevin
Advanced Placement: No. Just life itself.
queen celeste: man you are kind of a debbie downer
Advanced Placement: I can’t imagine why. Maybe it’s because I had dreams and aspirations before I was tapped to decipher tablets for the rest of my life. Or maybe it’s because I was captured by the King of Hell and then escaped and squatted in a church off the radar for a year while Sam was off pretending to be normal and Dean took a field trip through Purgatory. Or maybe it’s because the brothers Winchester finally came looking for me and then suddenly everyone wanted to play target practice with the prophet. It might be because I was confined to a houseboat for a year while I slowly went insane and lived on hot dogs. It might be because my mother disappeared and I was confined, again, to an underground bunker. Or, hey, it might just be because I’m dead, which, I would like to point out, is only because the archangels that were supposed to protect me were also killed by the Winchesters.
Kevin closes the Skype window angrily and returns to gold farming. As nice as it is to have another Winchester casualty to talk to, being reminded that he’s dead hurts. Ninety percent of the time, he can convince himself that he’s psychic and just doesn’t like to sit. Right now, chatting with Charlie, Kevin feels just as uncomfortable being forced to face his new reality as his mother must.
Kevin watches a little orange circle bounce impatiently on the taskbar next to his virus scanner, his eyes drawn to it instead of his gnome. He sighs and reopens Skype; it’s easier than feeling guilty later for ignoring Charlie now.
queen celeste: ...
queen celeste: ...
queen celeste: thats rough buddy
queen celeste: though technically cas killed one of them
queen celeste: dean really needs to put a ring on that
queen celeste: one that isnt holy fire
queen celeste: you know he called cas pal the other day
queen celeste: i just want to pull him aside and tell him he broke my queerdar years ago hes not fooling anyone
queen celeste: boy is a multicolored slinky waiting to rainbow
Advanced Placement: Regarding death by Castiel versus death by Winchester, it’s the same difference.
Advanced Placement: Regarding the rest, I honestly don’t give a fuck.
queen celeste: before i might have been willing to play matchmaker from beyond but now
queen celeste: i guess im more in your camp than anywhere else
queen celeste: id say they could all go to hell but that seems sort of redundant
queen celeste: you mentioned your mom how is she anyway
Kevin pauses to consider the question, because if he’s being honest, his mom just… Isn’t. She’d never say it, but Kevin knows that she regrets bringing him home. Having Kevin there is just a constant reminder that he’s dead. Linda might as well live alone since she cooks for one, shops for one, lives and breathes and sleeps for one. She also told Kevin that he looked just like his father.
Now, she looks at him, and tries to forget them both.
So Kevin stays to his bedroom mostly. He always comes down on Tuesdays; his mom has a peculiar affection for Gordon Ramsay yelling at people, so they watch the increasingly-implausible reality of Hell’s Kitchen and, for an hour, they’re a family again. Linda calls Gordon a kindred spirit, Kevin accuses her of having a crush, and they laugh and clap and yell at the television together.
Kevin used to come down for dinner, but after a while, it only made her cry. They didn’t go visit family for Thanksgiving or Christmas, because Linda would have had to leave him at home. They observe all holidays and birthdays, but never celebrate them.
Most of the time, Kevin’s not sure which of them is actually haunting the house. He feels like they live in a persistent state of mourning, a never-ending graveside service that can’t find its way to the wake, except Linda never even got the closure of burying her son. Instead, his living tomb is just upstairs.
She can’t grieve, because Kevin has passed, but not past.
Advanced Placement: She’s as well as can be expected.
queen celeste: that bad huh
Advanced Placement: Yeah. Sometimes the Winchesters leave their victims alive.
queen celeste: ...
queen celeste: ...
queen celeste: damn son
Advanced Placement: I might be a little bitter.
queen celeste: you might be a lotta sarcastic
queen celeste: but i get it
queen celeste: my mom was in a vegetative state for years because i couldnt stand to see her die you know not when dad was already gone and there was nothing i could do about it
queen celeste: i felt like it was my fault she was broken and if i just kept her around long enough things would be better
queen celeste: like if i clapped my hands hard enough shed be okay again
queen celeste: but sometimes you have to let go
queen celeste: i couldnt move on past being that scared twelve year old that got the call about her parents being in a crash until i let her move on
queen celeste: when we die we should be allowed to be dead
Advanced Placement: But we have nowhere else to go, Charlie.
queen celeste: oh so the bifrost is hella broken
Advanced Placement: It’s pretty badly fucked, yes.
queen celeste: what about bobby
queen celeste: can he not get us into the heaven beta
Advanced Placement: Nope. Beta’s over. We’ll have to wait for launch, assuming it ever makes it out of beta.
queen celeste: ugh and then itll be all buggy and well probably glitch half way through ascending
Advanced Placement: What, you think Bioware runs heaven?
queen celeste: well its either that or blizzard and bioware has better graphics so my fingers are crossed
queen celeste: okay but seriously how are we getting off planet because i am living in this right wingers pda and his opinions are kind of starting to freak me out
Advanced Placement: How did you end up there?
queen celeste: i was in the free wifi cloud at a starbucks and panicked
Advanced Placement: Alright, but how are you not attached to something like I am? Most ghosts are bound to an object. My soul was apparently a big fan of my dad’s ring that I never, ever wore.
queen celeste: kevin i told you computers are what i do
Advanced Placement: Charlie, what are you?
queen celeste: apparently the internet
queen celeste: or at least part of it
queen celeste: idk its all a little ghost in the shell to me but if this ends with me fighting an android with a tank then were golden ponyboy
Advanced Placement: So then why are you stuck in a PDA?
queen celeste: because this asshole had the internet turned on by accident and turned it back off and now i cant get out
queen celeste: please send help
queen celeste: i know soooo many things about the duggars that i never wanted to
Advanced Placement: If I knew how to leave, then I would have left already, Charlie. Trust me.
Party intheback has added Party intheback
Party intheback: ¿qué pasa, amigos?
Advanced Placement: Oh. Yay. Another one. Who is this, Charlie?
queen celeste: is he not with you
queen celeste: oh no are you another fictional british romantic genre relic from my young adulthood
queen celeste: is2g if youre a hyde or a westenra im just going to give up and fade away into this joel osteen motivational playlist
Advanced Placement: Victorian.
queen celeste: what
Party intheback: damn, you guys are just an ice cold bucket of giggles.
Advanced Placement: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was first published in 1886. That makes it a late-Victorian era novel.
queen celeste: oh hey kevin look
queen celeste: party also speaks sarcasm the language of your people
Party intheback: i am quite the cunning linguist, friend.
Advanced Placement: That is the most overused play on words.
Party in theback: [citation needed ]
queen celeste: i enjoy languages
Party intheback: not your type, darlin’.
queen celeste: rats
Party intheback: besides, if you really want to play jeopardy! with the big kids, prophet, then you oughta know that jekyll & hyde is a gothic novel and thus, regardless of publishing date, can fall squarely in both periods.
queen celeste: those supernatural novels were absolutely false advertising
queen celeste: why is there no one in this universe for the smart cute lesbian
Party intheback: your move, kevin.
Kevin steps back from the laptop like he’s been burned. He throws his hands up reflexively. Charlie’s appearance had unnerved him, but he’d at least heard of her before. This “Party intheback” character is a complete unknown, not to mention that they had somehow gained admin power over the chat. Kevin’s gut tells him to shut off the laptop and never power it back on. This has “case” written all over it.
His brain, however, demands answers. Kevin needs to know how these people keep finding him so he can put a stop to it and go back to his normal routine of solitude, misery, and quiet desperation.
Much like life, Kevin finds that the chat has moved on without him.
queen celeste: why does dean get all the action he has like negative self-esteem
queen celeste: i mean the one time i get on base
queen celeste: with an actual fairy no less
queen celeste: in bust the blues brothers
queen celeste: seriously who the hell maxes out their cockblock tree
Party intheback: well if it makes you feel better, red, i know a psychic up here who is all kinds of interested in you.
queen celeste: um
queen celeste: deets please
Party intheback: she’s a 5’7” long-haired brunette who loves the ramones, flirts unashamedly, and has a terrible soft spot for nerds of all shapes, sizes, and sexes.
queen celeste: i believe her to be very relevant to my interests
queen celeste: although spoiler alert im kind of dead so that might be a dealbreaker
Advanced Placement: “Up here”? Where are you? Also, as you called me prophet and know my name, who are you?
Party intheback: i am at the roadhouse, compadre, previously of nebraska, currently of heaven.
queen celeste: holy shit
queen celeste: youre ash
Party intheback: in your wires and at your service.
Advanced Placement: What, like Evil Dead?
queen celeste: omg how have you of all people not read the winchester gospels
queen celeste: like there should be a book of you by now shouldnt there
queen celeste: but hes like hunter macguyver
Advanced Placement: Supernatural isn’t my genre.
queen celeste: worst
queen celeste: prophet
queen celeste: ever
Advanced Placement: Okay, so you’re “Ash,” and you’re apparently important, but why are you here? Scratch that, how are you here?
queen celeste: i am so disappoint kevin solo
Party intheback: man, i have got to introduce you to socrates. the two of you would just sit around questioning and snarking at each other like happy little self-righteous clams all goddamn day.
Party intheback: as to your question, i am here because i have my network set up to catch instances of “winchester” mentioned on the internet. “winchester” gets brought up, and wham, bam, and thank you, ma’am, i get a blip on the scanner and go check it out.
Advanced Placement: Any instance?
Party intheback: nah, i set it to automatically filter out gun sites and nra forums and the like. i used to wind up in some very interesting chats with states’ rights militias and lynyrd skynyrd fans. made some hair-positive friends.
Advanced Placement: But why would you be searching for “Winchester” at all?
Party intheback: in order to keep track of all the hunters those poor bastards get killed.
Advanced Placement: Ah. You’re yet another casualty of perfidious familial codependency, then?
Party intheback: yeah, but i’m cool with it. i live more now that i’m dead then i ever did alive.
Party intheback: anyway, i wanted to make sure all the hunting types stayed connected up here and were able to travel back and forth between heavens. it’s especially important now that the stairway’s cracked.
Advanced Placement: There are different heavens?
queen celeste: how do you literally know nothing jon snow
Party intheback: ^^^
Advanced Placement: Metatron forgot to include the Prophet’s Guide to the Galaxy on the tablets, okay? Sue my non-existent estate.
Party intheback: is he always like this?
queen celeste: so far yes
queen celeste: can we speed this up i hopefully have a blind date
Party intheback: pro tip, little lady; never refer to the pamela as a “blind date”.
queen celeste: oh
queen celeste: oh this is pamela from the books pamela
queen celeste: oh god oh god oh god i had a dream just like this when i finished reading dark side of the moon
Advanced Placement: Alright, so, taking all of this at face value and not asking questions like I probably should, why are you here, Ash?
queen celeste: except i was alive and had way better game
Advanced Placement: You can’t have just dropped by to gloat. Although, given the past several years, that would be the most probable scenario.
Party intheback: i am here to get your crabby butt out of middle earth.
queen celeste: also scarlett johansson showed up
queen celeste: it was fanfic-worthy
Advanced Placement: How?
queen celeste: hey! look! i dashed!
queen celeste: i can punctuate!
Party intheback: okay, well, the universe is essentially a giant computer. you’ve got your hardware, like rocks, trees, dirt, water. and there’s the software, which is all your animals and people and shit.
Advanced Placement: And?
Party intheback: all software has a code. and if you can code it, you can hack it.
queen celeste: #%&*$
queen celeste: see? cursing!
Party intheback: jesus, you’re adorable. the pamela is going to eat you for breakfast.
Advanced Placement: That’s your plan? You’re going to hack us into paradise?
queen celeste: i am officially the most important meal of the day.
Party intheback: no, no, no. that would be impossible. i’m going to hack the veil and pick out your souls.
Advanced Placement: How, exactly, is that any less impossible?
queen celeste: wait, so we’re easter eggs?
Party intheback: yeah, that’s all a soul is, after all. benign code hidden within a larger program. you don’t need to include an easter egg to have a playable product, but it sure does make the game more interesting.
queen celeste: so you can’t hack us because there’s no “us” to hack. we aren’t player characters anymore. we’re… i don’t know, partially-rendered blades of grass in the hidden cow level.
Party intheback: exactly.
Party intheback: more or less.
Advanced Placement: So how does this work?
Party intheback: well, the windeadster virus already tracked down your location, so all i have to do is start the download. theoretically.
Advanced Placement: What do you mean by “theoretically”?
queen celeste: do you need a definition, tran? i really doubt ash has had a chance to try this.
Party intheback: that would be a correct assessment.
Party intheback: but the theory is sound. i’ve been working the numbers since kevin got wasted. ran it past the turing and everything.
Advanced Placement: You mean Alan Turing?
Party intheback: yeah, he runs a mage thief. fuckin’ multiclassers.
queen celeste: omg, you game with alan turing??
Party intheback: unfortunately. uptight bastard.
Party intheback: doesn’t help that the gygax insisted on running 2nd ed.
queen celeste: great. even in death, there is no escape from thaco.
queen celeste: …
queen celeste: …
queen celeste: IS GARY FUCKING GYGAX RUNNING YOUR CAMPAIGN
queen celeste: ARE YOU IN HEAVEN OR ON THE HOLODECK
queen celeste: oh, hey, caps! awesome!
Advanced Placement: How do you know all these people?
Party intheback: i hooked up the network so everyone could get the afterlife they bought into. you know, the one where you sit around smoking a jay with marley, ginsberg, and queen victoria.
Party intheback: still lookin’ for the bobby, though. i think i’m gonna need some extra hunter hacker muscle on that one, red, if you’re game.
queen celeste: i am always down for a sidequest.
queen celeste: hey, do you think nimoy would roll his eyes if i fanboyed at him?
Advanced Placement: Maybe a little.
queen celeste: i can live with that.
queen celeste: well.
queen celeste: you know what i mean.
Party intheback: look, you and the prophet say the word, i will hit this button, and—theoretically, mind you—you’ll be here in time for roll-off.
Party intheback: you in on this, tran?
Time stops, again, for Kevin Tran, because this is it. This is the way out he’s been… Kevin hesitates to use the term praying, as he no longer does that, but strongly hoping for seems apt. But now, with salvation at hand, he hesitates. He has no real guarantee that his leaving will help his mother heal. For all Kevin knows, Linda will withdraw further into herself once he’s actually gone. He can’t damn her to the unknown, not after everything he’s already put her through.
Advanced Placement: I can’t leave Mom.
queen celeste: but you said she was miserable!
Advanced Placement: She is! And I am! But who’s going to take care of her? She’s going to be here all by herself. The house is paid for, but gold farming’s paying for the rest.
queen celeste: okay, one, kudos on your intense dedication to screwing false economies. two, can you not just continue your operation from a new, more celestial, less morose locale?
Party intheback: plus heaven has an untrackable ip. you won’t have to keep randomizing.
queen celeste: and she doesn’t have to be alone. jody is apparently collecting people.
queen celeste: in an uncreepy way.
queen celeste: what i mean is she’s giving ex-hunting teens and hunter-adjacent adults a new start, and she could probably use a hand.
queen celeste: so far it’s her and two teenage girls, plus the occasional overly-excitable law enforcement galpal.
Party intheback: and if the linda ever wants to talk to you, you’re just a skype chat away.
And Kevin knows that, in the grand scheme of things, that distance will be closer than they are now.
Advanced Placement: I can be ready by 9:15pm.
queen celeste: any reason for the one hour and thirty-seven minute hold-up?
Party intheback: it’s tuesday.
queen celeste: is that significant?
Advanced Placement: It is for Mom, Gordon Ramsay, and me.
Advanced Placement: Will 9:15 work?
queen celeste: yeah, i think i can bounce around with this jerk long enough for you and your mom to ogle cute British chefs together.
Advanced Placement: Chef singular.
queen celeste: so you do think he’s cute?
Advanced Placement: I mean
Advanced Placement: I
Advanced Placement: Dammit.
Party intheback high fives the charlmeister
queen celeste: it’s good to know that the radar works beyond the grave.
Advanced Placement: I’m dead. My sexuality doesn’t matter anymore.
Party intheback: hey, dude, we’re dead, not erased.
Party intheback: we’re in the outbox, not the trash can.
Party intheback: unless you’re worried about channing finding out.
Advanced Placement: No, Channing had a crush on him, t
Advanced Placement: …
Advanced Placement: Is she with you?
Party intheback: nah, thought i’d let you do the honors and link her in when you got here.
queen celeste: aww! romance isn’t dead.
queen celeste: actually, it’s hella dead. still super sweet.
Advanced Placement: I’ll be back by 9:10.
* * *
Kevin appears downstairs behind the couch promptly at five-’til-eight. Linda turns from her seat to look up at him with a smile on her face, just like always.
“How are you, Kevin?”
“I’m…” Kevin rolls the word around in the space his mouth once occupied, testing its unfamiliarity. “I’m good,” he finally says, and Linda’s eyebrows jump.
“Tell me another one,” she says.
Kevin rolls his eyes, but laughs just the same, because it makes her laugh, too. “I got some new information today, and… Well, you’re not going to believe this.”
“Kevin,” begins Linda, “I was possessed and later kidnapped by the King of Hell, an angel regularly texts me pictures of cats, and my son is a ghost. I think I can manage to suspend my disbelief.”
He frowns. “Which angel?”
“Castiel,” Linda replies as she reaches for her phone on the coffee table in front of her. She scrolls through her inbox while she talks. “He’s such a nice young man.”
“Mom, he’s, like, a billion years old.”
“Whatever, he’s nice. He calls to check up on me once in a while. Plus, everyday,” she says, holding up her phone for Kevin to see, “I get these.”
Kevin looks at the text. It’s a picture of a shaved cat.
“‘Dean assures me that this is quite humorous,’” Kevin reads, “‘but I don’t believe the cat feels similarly. I hope you are well today.’ I had no idea any of them cared.”
“Well,” she says, putting the phone back on the table, “he told me that he feels guilty since his charges got you killed and it’s his father’s fault you were there to begin with. I think he just needs someone to talk to.”
“So, what, you’re playing mom to an angel?”
Linda smiles, a little sadly. “You hardly need me now, Kevin. We both know you’d rather be in heaven. And I don’t blame you,” she continues, stopping him from interjecting. “If I had to be dead, I’d rather move on, too. It has nothing to do with love and everything to do with belonging. I understand that.”
If Kevin could breathe, he’d remember to do it now. “A hunter contacted me about half an hour ago. He thinks there’s a way.”
Linda nods, like she was expecting it. “You do what you need to do, honey. I’ll be alright.”
“You know I…” Kevin swears he can feel tears, and wonders if crying as a ghost is like phantom limb pain for the living. “You know I love you, Mom, right?”
Linda’s tears are real, but so is her smile as she gets up from the couch and comes around to stand in front of him. “I love you, too, Kevin. I always will. And you will always be my baby, no matter where you are.”
She hugs Kevin; her arms pass through, and she winds up hugging herself.
“Oops,” says Linda with a huff akin to a laugh. Kevin levitates and wiggles a Kleenex at her, and she actually laughs. “I know we don’t see each other much, but I am going to miss you, kiddo.”
Kevin smiles and says, “I know,” even if he hadn’t been sure until she said it.
“Now, come on.” Linda walks back around and takes her usual spot. “Don’t want to miss the recap.”
He wouldn’t for the world.
* * *
queen celeste: so are we good to go?
queen celeste: i sent jody a text with your mom’s number and told her to call.
Advanced Placement: Yeah. We’re good to go.
Party intheback: then let’s get this party started. red, you’re up first. you ready, darlin’?
queen celeste: you have no idea. push the button, frank.
queen celeste is away
Advanced Placement: Is she there?
Advanced Placement: Did she make it?
Advanced Placement: What’s happening?
Party intheback: OMG, Kevin, you have got to try that.
Party intheback: Ray and Mr. Electrico were right!
Advanced Placement: …
Advanced Placement: Charlie?
Party intheback: Obvs!
Party intheback: Come on, get up here so I can punch you in the arm.
Advanced Placement: Why would you do that?
Party intheback: Bro fist bro test.
Party intheback: I need a bestie. Tag, you’re it.
Advanced Placement: I will try to curb my enthusiasm.
Party intheback: You love me and you know it.
Advanced Placement: Just pull the lever, Kronk.
Party intheback: Wrong leverrrrrrr!
Advanced Placement: WHAT
Party intheback: Just kidding. =^_^=
Advanced Placement is away