A Lilac Date

She summoned herself out of oblivion and dreadfully whirled around Nate like the slow currents of water circling a dirty sink. Nate tried his best to ignore that her feet were actually turned backwards and were missing four toes in total, and the toes that remained expressed their solidarity with missing toenails. He also tried to look past her short, ginger, porcupine-esque hair that was rustling like iron chains thumping against thick metal sheds in the middle of a maelstrom. He also avoided reminding himself that it was 3 a.m. on a cold night and he was buried in superfluous layers of a hideous pink sweater. In the attic of his newly bought house, Nate adored the freckled, charred face in front of him that had a disfigured tongue sticking out, and eyes raging red like an apple squirming with green worms. When she sprung her hands apart and her yellow talons loomed over Nate, the black shroud that fell over her body wavered fiercely. “Ahhhhhhhh!” she screeched. It was then that Nate pulled out the rose flower he’d kept hidden in his pocket. He extended his hand forward and noisily dropped down to his knees. a

“I love you,” Nate said to the ghost. “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

The ghost was surprised just as much as the spider hanging by a white wisp from her nose. Her dead face appeared even more dead than it was because in her hundred and seventy-five years of ghosting, no one had once dared to ask her out. It reminded her of life. She remembered having a life once. And a name that started with J...Julie? That’s it, she thought to herself. What was it that she used to do? She didn’t remember much except that there was an incident where her husband had died in some meaningless war. Oh, and also the minor fact that she’d decided to drown herself. Was that when she’d become a ghost? Or was it in the asylum after some innocuous cop decided to save her?

“Uhmmm,” Nate blabbered, pointing at his red flower.

“I like lilacs,” the ghost’s hoarse voice responded. There she went, surprising herself, yet again. She hadn’t spoken much in her entire ghosting career. Usually, her voice was restrained to shouting and grunting. There was also threatening to kill people, although the Ghost’s Guild did not allow for murdering, and those threats were merely whimsical ways to terrify people. Since it was usually just her own grunts that she’d heard for over a century and a half, it was nice to hear words pop out of her mouth again.

“I can find lilacs,” Nate said, rummaging through his pockets to pull out a verdant stem that had once belonged to a lilac. He scoured his pocket to pull out a few recovered petals and then reached into the depths of his sweater's pocket to pull out a tape. He handed over the taped lilac flower to her with a smirk as he said, “I came prepared.” Prepared indeed he was. If one was curious enough, those pockets treasured not just butchered pieces of lilacs, but also sunflowers, lilies, peonies, irises, and a little bit of weed.

“Why?” the ghost asked Nate as his mind flashed back to the one summer night, two months ago, when he knew he’d fallen in love with her. Nate had been tossing around in his blankets like tumbleweed tumbling in the wind when Julie's voice had come purring after him. It was the end of a bad hair day and Nate was wondering why all the poets and writers were affixed with describing the beauty of the moon or their backyard cherry trees; why was no writer interested in depicting the struggles of a bad hair day? There was so much dust in his hair that instead of sleeping, he rubbed his head over and over again until his nails were smoothened out.

“I’ll quit my job and become a writer,” Nate said to himself.

“Oh, and what will you write about?” Nate replied to himself with a heavier voice.

“Bad hair days, and how everyone in the office is mean to me. They are unnecessarily aggressive. I already have most of my writing written down in my head. Of course, I have yet to write them down in a notebook, but the first step to becoming a writer is to think. Thought I have,” Nate replied to his reply to himself.

Then suddenly, a chill drew itself over his bed. “Nateeeeeeee,” Julie had drawled, and Nate she had smitten. It was the most wonderful way someone had said his name, after all. Of course, this was because this was the first time in three years since he’d moved to California that anyone had said his name at all. They usually called him ‘dipshit’, ‘rascal’, ‘stupid’ and a lot of other nicknames that bordered the peripheries of every possible insult. Julie had called Nate by his name. He spent every night since then being driven mad by the tune of his name dancing in her hauntingly, beautiful voice.

As Nate’s mind wandered back to the present, he saw Julie throw away the black shroud she wore. He now saw her in a white T-shirt with blue, slim-fit yoga pants. She was the most beautiful ghost that he’d seen. And Nate had seen plenty of ghosts. He was sure his boss was a ghost. And his dog was surely possessed by a devil. There was also seeing himself in the mirror every morning, and a plentiful of people could attest that Nate’s appearance was very ghostly. So, yes, between his boss, his dog and himself, Julie was the most beautiful ghost he'd seen.

“What kind of date?” the ghost asked.

“A coffee…a coffee date,” Nate nervously stammered. She’d been trying to haunt him all this time, and only now was Nate actually shaking in her presence.

“I cannot have coffee,” she complained.

“What can you have?”

“Blood sometimes, but the best source of nutrition is fear,” she said, now nodding. “Five hundred calories per thirty seconds of high-pitched screams. My dietitian says that we need around five thousand calories per night.”

“Well, I could start screaming for you,” Nate said as he dropped his jaw and started howling at the top of his lungs. It sounded like an owl hooting, but also a bear growling. And when he’d finally finished, the ghost’s pallid cheeks reddened. The feeling of being in love extended both ways now.

“Pick me up tomorrow at 3,” Julie said, blushing.