This Place Is Haunted, Possession by a Ghost

My mom's one of those people who're dumb enough to leave a few hundreds in a cookie jar so I took it and used it to buy an Xbox and some video games for me and Ricky. After buying all the stuff, I head back home, where Ricky was waiting for my return by the front door.

"These games okay?" I ask him, showing them to him. He shrugs.

"I never had an Xbox," he tells me. "But we can try 'em."

"My dad had an Xbox, so I would play it before me and my mom moved," I tell him.

I hand him the games as I bring the Xbox to the TV. I carefully take it out of its packaging shit slams plug it into the TV and bring the remotes to Ricky.

"We're gonna make our profiles first," I tell him as I turn one remote on, putting the over to the side.

I make my account and avatar and let Ricky make his, making sure he knew how to do it. He gives me my controller back and I sign back into my account before helping Ricky with his.

"What game do you wanna play first?" I ask him. He stares at the game cases again, giving me the opportunity to appreciate how fucking cute he is. I don't get to do it much because he turns back towards me a second later.

"I had a friend who talked about Halo often," he says. I smile.

"Alright," I answer as I reach for the game. He hands it to me and I move to put the game in the Xbox, sitting back down after I do it.

"I'll teach you how to play."

<><><>

We've been playing for a few hours when my phone rings.

"Alright, Rick, you may kill my player if you see it, since your score is kinda pathetic," I chuckle, earning a whine from him.

No, seriously. He has like three kills, I have twenty-two.

I answer the FaceTime from Balz.

"Hey! What's up over there?" Balz greets me happily. I smile down at the screen.

"Playing video games," I answer him, showing him the Xbox controller. I toss the controller down, accidentally pulling the trigger, and I throw a grenade at the wall, it bounces off, explodes, and I die. The narrator says "suicide" in that deep voice, and now my score is twenty-one. Ricky laughs at me and I frown.

"Ah, I see what's going on," Balz mocks, smirk on his face.

"Yeah, I'm playing video games with my best friend in Washington," I tell him, a tad bit irritated.

"Sure, sure," he continues anyway. "So who's there?"

"It's Ricky," I answer.

His eyes widen a bit.

"So you actually befriended him? Tell him hey for me!"

"Rick, Josh says hey," I tell him as Ricky kills me in the game. I glance up at the screen, eyes wide as I hear that deep voice go "gained the lead- lost the lead".

"OH MY FUCKING- YOU HAD LIKE THREE KILLS HOW THE HELL DID YOU GET MORE THAN ME THAT QUICK?!"

"You let me," Ricky smirks.

"Oh? Well I'm gonna get you now," I warn him as I grab my controller.

"HEY RICKY MY NAME IS JOSHUA BALZ BUT YOU CAN CALL ME BALZ!!" Balz shouts when I don't introduce him like he had asked for me to.

"Hey," Ricky answers quietly, very shy about talking to new people.

"He said hey, he's really quiet," I tell him as I spot Ricky. Ricky turns around and sprints towards me, and that's when I notice he has a sword. Before I know it, he slices me and kills me.

Ricky and I kill each other several more times while I talk to Balz until I get tired.

"I'm gonna go to bed. Ricky, can you keep Josh company until he goes to bed?" I ask, and he shy nods. Ricky turns the Xbox off and I give him the phone. He keeps the camera facing up towards the ceiling so Balz doesn't see him.

"Uh..." Ricky starts awkwardly.

"You're gonna have to start the conversations with him, Balz. He's insane shy."

"Oh. Well, what kind of things do you like to do?" I hear Balz ask as I walk up to my bedroom and get ready for bed.