Mercy

Standing before Billie Joe’s deceased teenage lover, I was at a genuine loss for words. Sure, I’d greeted him, expecting some awkward form of strained pleasantries to be exchanged between the pair of us, but no such conversation occurred. All that transpired was a silence so maddening I wanted nothing more than to scream again and potentially draw Billie Joe and Jakob out from inside the house. I had a feeling their presence would be cause enough for Frankie to flee, yet my tongue had become a lead anchor within my mouth, dragging me deeper and deeper into the infinite depths of ambiguity. Only Frankie could possibly take hold of the rope and put an end to my anchor’s steady plummet, though a curious sense of delight had settled within the eyes of the ghost and grew with each passing moment of silence. He was thriving off of my fear, my descent into miserable confusion, and drinking it in with the vehemence of a drunk. I was so lost in that wicked grin of his that I hadn’t given much thought to how abruptly the child formerly known as Phoenix had stopped crying.

“ Aw, whassamatter, hoss? Ain’t seen a spook before?” Frankie giggled, pushing himself off of the rotting tree to commence in a promenade so exaggerated that he was practically skipping. With the addition of a hand on his hip and his free hand dangling almost majestically beside him, he was the goddamn epitome of a flaming faggot. I imagined his partaking in the demeaning charade was meant to insult me into lobbing a heaping order of knock it the fuck off in his face, but that anchor tongue of mine simply wouldn’t budge. Not even when the kid batted his eyelashes and blew me a kiss was I able to bark a highly anticipated fuck you! at him. He pouted when I remained mute.

“Don’t take it personal. I’m just yankin’ your chain,” he explained. I felt the inside of my mouth loosen, yet the capacity for producing words was still beyond me. I noticed a parallel between Frankie’s mannerisms and dialect to the old bastard’s, and I wondered without much interest if he too hailed from a state where the percentage of obesity skyrocketed just as steadily as the temperatures. His lack of eloquence and the abundance of raw filth oozing from his mouth, however, brought me to disregard the thought entirely. He was nothing like Billie Joe, and I would have bet handsomely against his drawled version of the word sugah being able to turn me on like the old man’s. Frankie’s pout vacated his features momentarily as his smirk reappeared, mischievous and determined for something sinister.

“I ain’t a Southie like Peach, Sug. I’m a city boy, just like you,” Frankie clarified despite how I hadn’t asked the question aloud. His mind-raping abilities had just about the same batting average as Billie Joe’s, both leaving me a sulking, defeated mess each and every time they knocked me out of the park. Even his salacious enunciation of sug managed to send an electrifying jolt down my spine and a similarly stimulating throb in my nether regions much like the old bastard’s sugah had. I felt my face growing hot as I realized I nearly got hard for a ghost. Frankie giggled once he’d fully perceived my embarrassment, and suddenly I could visualize him grasping the limitless rope which kept my anchor-tongue in a continuous downward spiral. With his hand clutching the imaginary rope and the anchor held idle in the air, I found myself able to ramble out a decent sentence.

“W-who’s Peach?”

Frankie’s powder-blue eyes sparkled at the inquiry as he responded, “It’s what I used to call Beej ‘cause he’s from Georgia. Betcha he ain’t told you that, huh? Oooo, call him that when he lets you back inside! That’ll really fuck with his head!”

“No it won’t. He’ll already know that I know,” I groaned, abhorrence for Billie’s supernatural abilities resurfacing more powerful than before.

“Cheer up, Buttercup, I got us a solution to that. I know how much you hate him bein’ all psychic ‘n’ shit, but bein’ dead gives me my own special brand of mind tricks. See, I been ‘round long enough to’ve figured out how to beat the system,” he explicated, voice unnaturally deep to add his own quirky twist to the mounting importance of his undead existence.

“And how’s that work? What system did you beat?” I demanded, gooseflesh spreading about my body despite how desperately I wanted to hear his explanation in its entirety.

“Well, y’know how there’s those people like Peach who can see spooks whether they want to or not?” he began, gazing eagerly upon my hesitant visage as he waited for me to either nod or shake my head. I assumed by spooks he meant ghosts or spirits, so I nodded my head to clarify my understanding. Frankie beamed at me prior to rambling, “Alright, so Peach has never seen me. I didn’t want him to be able to ‘cause I was worried it’d drive him completely wacko. He suspects I’m still hangin’ ‘round, but he don’t know for sure. Since he’s s’posed to be one of those who can see me whether I want him to or not, I managed to beat the system…but that’s not all. If I want it bad enough, I can make anyone see me. Like you. You ain’t psychic, Sug, but you can see me now clear as day. Neat trick, huh?”

Frankie wore a juvenile expression of achievement which was difficult to ignore. Look, Ma! No hands! was the impression I received once he’d finished the jubilant recount of his masterful victory over the unwritten paranormal policies, though I couldn’t help the sense of foreboding which crawled about my flesh, spreading as abundantly as the goose bumps which already speckled it. What if other, darker spirits knew of his disregard for their rules? Would they be angry with him? Would they harm him or condemn him for his blatant rebellion? I was promptly engulfed in a profound feeling of concern for Frankie, and when his grin was met with nothing but my deepening frown, his face fell.

What’s wrong, Ma? Don’t you like your present?

“Isn’t what you’re doing dangerous?” I pressed, feeling more and more like a parental figure as our discussion wore on.

“Prob’ly, but you want him out of your headspace, don’t you?” he shot back, impish smiles replaced by semi-defiant scowls of rejection.

“Yes,” I sighed, eyes wandering up to Zombie to see if his bloodied paws were still clinging to the same decaying tree branch as before. They were, and he was observing the happenings below as if he understood every damn word that had been uttered.

“‘S’what I thought. Now don’t wig out or nothin’ when I touch you or this won’t work right,” Frankie commanded, vaporous form gliding towards me with hands outstretched.

I cringed in spite of myself, bracing for something cold and unpleasant to caress my trembling form. All the movies and books and television shows with supernatural themes liked to make you believe that any encounter with a ghost was like being kissed by a frozen fog, but something in Frankie’s touch was gelatinous. His hands collided with my face, and instantly I felt as though I was being stroked by an amorphous wad of something that wasn’t quite liquid, but it wasn’t quite solid, either. It was chilled plasma, and though it was the oddest sensation I ever endured, it wasn’t exclusively unpleasant. Frankie was painstakingly gentle with me. The way in which his face contracted in the utmost care and concentration made his tenderness undeniably clear, bringing forth a ghost of a smile to flicker across my lips. In his own odd little way, Frankie believed his mystical voodoo was going to protect me from Billie Joe, and when the determination written deep within his furrowed brows was taken into consideration, I believed it as well. His plasmatic touch held a certain amount of reassuring voltage, after all.

Once his hands had finished in tracing patterns about my head and torso, Frankie stood on tiptoe and placed an affectionate kiss on my cheek before whispering in my ear, “Peach ain’t the helpless old bastard you think he is. You gotta watch your back. I mean…just lookit what he did to me.”

The cool gelatin of his touch rapidly increased in temperature as he began to backpedal away from me, and by the time he released my shoulders I was sure my skin had been burned. Biting my lip to keep from shrieking aloud in both discomfort and astonishment, a very different spirit stood before me. The true Frankie had no distinguishing features, and his flesh was either charred black or had been entirely burned away on every inch of his body. Areas which should have been covered in clothing were adorned with melted fabric or were simply clothed with nothing at all. His lips were missing, and the skin which should have been encasing his jaw was brittle and crackling away as his mouth opened and closed, struggling to speak. The bones of his jaw and his teeth shone bright white amidst the blackened remains of his body, and I wondered if the flames hadn’t been able to wreak havoc on them as well before they had been put out. His gaping mouth was almost too much to bear, and knowing that it had been Billie Joe, Peach, who had burned him alive made it even worse still.

Did the old bastard want me nice and crispy too, or did he have a more malicious intent in store for me?

“Look alive!” the burned Frankie gasped one last time before disintegrating completely into a harmless pile of ash in front of me. A disturbance from above ripped my gaze from the ashes to the revolting tree, and I could make out Zombie’s limping form scuttling down the trunk to scamper into the forest. The wind picked up yet again, though the mirth given off by the sound of the leaves rustling in the distance was far greater than a sardonic giggle. Oh, no…that time around, they were an all-out, earsplitting uproar of malevolent laughter.

Look alive! they mocked.

I clutched the noiseless child closer to my body only to finally realize with a terrifying pang that he’d been still for far too long. Not even a dribble of drool could be seen leaking from the corners of his mouth.

The infant was dead, and the skin of his back had been all but charred to the same degree as the ghost’s.

Whether it had been intentional or not, Frankie had killed Phoenix.