Sex With Ghosts

Jeremy Vale, sat at the island in the kitchen, looking down at another rejection letter. It would go into a box with the other rejection letters. Marvel. DC. Funimation. It was discouraging when even the Japanese didn’t want manuscripts for his new superhero because, as captured here in a rare hand written rejection, “Way too sexy in style. Too much Sex. It’ll never get past the American censors, and they are now our primary customers. Insufficient violence. Insufficient melancholy and social angst. You have a reasonable idea and a nice artistic style. Stay away from the puns. We don’t need another Sean Connery meets Dead Pool. Also, the general rule of thumb is that publishers tend to ignore solicitations, and promote from within, or people they find. Get your stuff out there and be discovered. If there is any public resonance, you’ll get there.”

This was actually one of the most personable rejections he had ever received. The Japanese publishing people were actually nice, but hearing his work was ‘too sexy’ from a nation that sells used women underwear in vending machines stung like no one’s business.

A Victorian Secret model brought him a cup of coffee, setting it on the desk. She leaned her butt against the island, and sipped at her own coffee. He didn’t know her name. He probably should have known her name, as often as she had ‘visited,’ but he never asked and she never gave it.

“Don’t be so down,” she said. “The world is your oyster.”

“I know,” Jeremy said. “I don’t know why this bothers me. If a person isn’t melancholy, despondent, or aggressively vengeful, you get whited out. I have everything I could ever want, except a voice.”

“Aww,” she said, hugging him. She kissed the top of his head. “I hear your voice.”

“Yeah,” Jeremy said.

He took his comic book, ‘The Manfestor: Manifest Destiny,’ and placed it into a new envelope, complete with a self-addressed return envelope, his letter head and sales pitch, and prepared it for the next agency on the list.

Jeremy scooted his chair back and stared at his super model ghost. She smiled. He reached out and drew her to him, his hands on her hip. She giggled, set down her coffee, and came to his lap. For a ghost, she was solid real. Her lips pried his lips open with eagerness, her hands cupping his face. Her tongue pushed into his mouth. Her mouth covered his and she sucked, taking his breath away. His eyes were open, focused, and she stared back into him. The chair had no arms, so it was easy for her to straddle him. His hands went to her bare thighs and went to the small of the back, encouraging the rhythm of her grinding. Her nighty was transparent. Her breast flattened against him, leaking out of the nighty. Her hands fell to his lap and freed him. She rose and came back down taking him into her. She was a magical creature who can discern the workings of his mind, and she always orgasmed before she let him cum.

Jeremy sat breathlessly, gazing into her eyes. She smiling, kissing him softly in the afterglow. He closed his eyes, accepting the softness of her lips. He didn't wish her away. Wishing made ghosts more tangible, especially trying to wish them away. The way to dissolve a ghost was to stop thinking. It was difficult to stop thinking when he was still hard and inside her, wanting, but with his eyes closed, he went to place of quiet zen like ambience, and then, she was gone. He knew it because of the subtle shift of weight allowing the chair to rise and the smell of ozone. He stood and redid his pants. He picked up the envelope and walked away from the kitchen, which was incomplete. It was as if it were a television set in a studio. The set was bright, the ‘studio’ was dark. He took the envelope containing the manuscript out the ‘studio’ door and placed it into the mailbox. He pushed the flag up.

From outside the ‘studio,’ it became clear it was not an actual studio, but a private airplane hangar. The neighboring hanger had a small apartment and the owner was sustained through renting out his hangar space and his work as a licensed aircraft mechanic. A Cessna was coming in for a landing, slight crab, then at the last moment straightened and touched down, and disappeared as the plane went down the curve of the runway, no bigger than a two lane road, and then back up. The sky was a morning dark blue, the sun still not visible from this perspective, thought likely above the horizon. This was a different blue than the window inside suggested.

He imagined the people on the Cessna were going for pancakes. The Beacon had some of the best pancakes one could ask for. People flew in from all over just for pancakes. Hicks Airfield was a tiny place, on the outskirts of Fort Worth, sitting between Alliance Airport and Denton Municipal. If you weren’t a pilot, you probably never heard of it.

Jeremy smiled at the plane as it came off the end of the runway and started the track back. He went back inside. He went back into the breakfast set and looked out the window. There was blue sky and a yard that was not the actual view. He was no longer disturbed by this. He had ceased trying to understand this. He stretched out his hands, closed his eyes, and the set disappeared. His hanger space was empty, except for shelves. Shelves containing thousands of catalogs. There was an apartment loft, which he used to shower and change, and kept most of his ‘keeper’ stuff.

He lit a candle and proceeded to one of the shelves, set the candle down, found a car magazine, tore out a page, and studied it. The candle offered a bit of a flicker to the image. He closed his eyes. When he opened it, the car was no longer in the image. The actual car was in the middle of his hangar.

He grabbed one of a dozen backpacks. He grabbed the blue one. He went and opened the hangar door, sliding it open just enough to permit the car passage. He went to the car, tossed his backpack to the passenger side floor, got in, and powered it up. It came to life and he drove it to the hangar door, easing it out. He got out of the car, pulled the hangar door to, and got back in the car. He drove away. Morning sun was now visible above the far hanger.

No one seemed to notice him. It wasn’t that they were ignoring him. He could come up to anyone, have conversations with them, usually innocuous, unusually mundane. No one ever asked about the variety of cars he had access to. No one asked about the planes he flew. They knew him well at the Beacon, where he ate most of his meals. But people tended to avoid him. There was a weirdness factor to him that gave him a level of anonymity. It wasn’t so good that he could walk into a bank and steal a million dollars and walk out. But it was good enough that he could walk down the street, or through a mall, and people would not see him. He had to be careful not to walk into folks because they didn’t see him until they bumped. They would look at him, confused and then realize an accidental trajectory, apologize, and slip away back into the ocean’s night of people. ‘Keep swimming, keep swimming.’

He touched the dash and a song began to play. Jain – ‘Come.’ He drove to Denton, parked his car illegally near the UNT campus, grabbed his back pack and got out. After about three meters, and several blinks, the car was no longer there. He didn’t look back to confirm it had gone. All things go. His things went faster than most.

He was early for class. He was always early. This aided the anonymity factor. He came in and sat in the back, while most folks found other places to sit. The classroom held about three hundred people. There was usually half that attending. This particular professor was popular due to incorporating iconic sci-fi into his quantum physics lectures. There was more than one class with Star Trek in the course title. Jeremy had made friends with a Professor Chilton, who wrote the academic book, ‘Star Trek: Visions of Law and Justice.’ He and Chilton had set and played guitar together for a year or so, before the professor moved. All things go.

The professor was writing an equation on the board. Jeremy pulled out a notebook and turned to the next blank page. He jotted the formula down, and then began doodling. The class began. A few stragglers came in and found seats. Questions. Jokes. Some laughter. Hard math. Philosophy. And before too long, the class was over, and other than the original formula he had jotted down at the beginning, the only thing on the page was the doodle, which was nonsense, repetitive, mandala kind of gyrations.

Jeremy found his hand going up. He never raised his hand. He never asked questions. His hand went up. In doing so, the anonymity thing was broken. People who were starting to get up settled back. A silence fell. An uncomfortable one, like a crowded cafeteria going silent. The professor recognized him. He was now committed.

“Um, sorry,” Jeremy said, trying not to sustain eye contact. “But how do you get around the Mott Problem?”

The professor seemed surprised. Actually pleasantly so. He considered. “It’s not really a problem inherit in the math, but a perspective based, counter intuitive result that can be canceled out by applying the Klein constant.”

“Which, just invokes the Klein paradox,” Jeremy said. “Taking us full circle.”

“It’s not a real life dilemma,” the Professor said.

“Perhaps,” Jeremy mused. “But then, why do math at all? Maybe constants aren’t constants. Why have an order of operation if we’re just going to ignore the results?”

The professor was suddenly less enthusiastic about the question. He seemed flustered. “Your point?”

“We agree to an order of operation. Was it derived out of a fundamental mathematical nature, or was it arbitrarily chosen due to a preference in philosophy?” Jeremy asked. “If the latter, there can be no agreement on final answers, and if I show my proof it’s just as worthy as anyone else’s answer. Do Martians have the same math as us?”

“So, now you want to talk aliens?” the Professor asked.

“It’s a metaphor,” Jeremy said. “Would any hypothetical being discover the same principles of math regardless of their position in the Universe? Are constants always constants, or just regionally constant?”

“What’s your name, son?”

“Jeremy,” Jeremy offered, a little sadness because he would likely not be able to attend this class again. Once anonymity was broken, it tended to stay broken. All things go.

“Hypothetically, if the virtual particles could be captured and manifested into a conglomerate particle or molecule, how would one go about sustaining it indefinitely? What keeps regular matter from decaying?”

“The observer principle…”

“Sir, please. You have identified yourself in all of your published work as a being a confirmed materialist, so if you rule out consciousness as the fundamental aspect of reality, the hard problem of measurement defining reality would be a contradiction of your paradigm,” Jeremy interrupted.

“I don’t know,” the Professor said, offering a hands up gesture, palms open. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No,” Jeremy said, saddened further. “I am not challenging you just to be a dick. I wanted an answer. Even a wrong answer. An argument that leads us to synthesis of a new paradigm. Something tangible I can work with that doesn’t lead to another damn paradox.”

“I share your lament, Jeremy,” the Professor said. “Come by my office. Let’s talk. Class dismissed.”

Being close to the door gave Jeremy a quick exit.