1.

It’s that kind of a moment. Like I’m existing in a sort of in-between space. It’s just a sliver of a moment. A nanosecond. You’re standing on an overpass and thinking about all the wrong turns that you made. The mistakes. The regrets. The big and little things that add up to make your life miserable. You’re standing there having every single thought about every single thing. It’s a big moment but it passes so quickly that you hardly notice that you were thinking at all. You’re not in real danger. Or so you suppose. The day is sunny and bright. The sky is that blue that makes your whole body—your whole soul—ache. The clouds are fluffy and beautiful. But it’s just enough, I guess, for a little ray of something sinister to slide inside that momentary crack.

That’s how she found me standing there, my mind both blank and full at the exact same time.

“Olive! Is that you?”

Because suddenly she’s there. This person I barely remember. Suddenly there are a lot of people there. The bridge that had been blissfully empty before, which was why I had stopped, is now brimming and bustling.

She is standing in front of me, shading her eyes from the bright sun. The light looks strange on her, like she’s bedazzled, or like the reflection of the river is playing tricks with her clothes. She’s either my age, or a bit younger. She has that “could be in her teens or in her late twenties” kind of ageless vibe about her. I notice she is wearing a Scoops uniform. I had worked at Scoops when I was a teenager.

“It’s me! Amber. From work.”

“Amber,” I say. “Oh, Amber.” It takes me a minute to recognize her. But it was her. That girl who was the assistant manager and was a few years older than me that summer between 10th and 11th grade, and whose life seemed so exciting compared to mine. She was in college and didn’t have a curfew, or parents, or have to do summer school like I did because she had failed math. She had her own apartment and an older boyfriend and a car. Closing the shop with her was always full of her stories of dudes she’d done by the boardwalk, or wacky hijinks she’d gotten up to with her friends, or tales of the rock shows that she’d gone to that I couldn’t because my parents wouldn’t let me.

“It’s so great to see you here!” Amber says enthusiastically. “I think it’s been a while.” 

I remember that while I loved her stories, and wanted her life, I always hated her late-night shift perkiness. But she was the assistant manager. She was my boss.

“Do you still work at Scoops?” I ask.

I thought to myself that maybe I should see if they were looking for staff. I needed a job. I’d been fired earlier in the day, and for the whole morning until that moment on the bridge it felt like my life was over. I knew it wasn’t. It was just my first big real job out of college at a design company and the bitter bitch Gen Xer boss said that I wasn’t performing up to corporate standards because she could never find me at my desk. That I was always missing, even though I was practically chained to my desk and it’s not my fault that she came by whenever I was in the bathroom or in the mini fridge getting my sandwich. It’s not my fault that she couldn’t recognize me, even when I threw her a little wave from my desk. Greta, that bitch, said I had to learn my place. That I had to work hard and earn recognition. That she was sick of how lazy my generation was. Which pissed me off because I had worked my butt off. It wasn’t my fault that Greta couldn’t see it.

What did she know anyway? Greta, the team leader? Whatever she had done to earn her way up the ladder hadn’t worked for her. She was a frazzled middle-aged middle management horror.

“Oh! Did you need a job?” Amber asks, even though I hadn’t mentioned it. It was like she was reading my mind. “I’m going to a job interview right now! You should come!”

My phone buzzed. I glanced down. It was my boyfriend. He was breaking up with me over text. He was explaining to me that I was too absent for his liking. That I didn’t offer enough of myself. That I was always disappearing. Even though I reached out to him a million times a day.

How can he say that I disappear when I am always right here and available?

“Amber, I think I just want to be alone,” I say. “I’m having a really shitty day.”

“I think you’ll like this job,” she says. “I’ve been doing it for a while at a different company, but this is the big agency.”

“I was thinking that maybe I’d start trying to find a job tomorrow. That today I’d just go get day drunk or something.”

“I remember how good you were at Scoops,” Amber says. “You always could look at someone in the line and pull out exactly what was wrong with their lives, what upset them most, and what flavor would make them better or worse.”

“That was just a game we played,” I say. That game where you make up stories about strangers and pretend to know what they are keeping secret from even themselves. “That was just for me and you.”

“I say it’s a skill. I think you should come with me.”

She says it in such a sing song way that I feel I can’t say no. But I worry that maybe it’s a cult thing and she’s trying to recruit me into a pyramid scheme or something. 

“Really? I mean, don’t I need to apply?”

“It’s a testing center and then if you pass you get the job, so maybe just come along?” 

I’m trying to figure out how to say no, but then I think, sure. Why not follow her? What do I have to lose?

“Lead the way,” I say.

Amber claps her hands together and then turns to cross the bridge, talking a mile a minute, just like she did back when I worked with her, about dudes, and hijinks and shows as we head towards the building, one I’d never noticed before, on the corner of Fifth, just off the water. It is an art deco building, the kind that bursts with style. Parts of the copper roof have gone green. There are flowers and details molded into the pattern of the building face. There are pleasant, bold color swatches framing the windows. There are some gargoyle rainspouts on the corners.

“I thought this was a parking lot,” I say. “How have I never noticed this building before?”

It bothers me that I had not been able to see something so beautiful.

“It’s kind of amazing what we don’t see, right?” Amber says. “That’s something that I’ve really been learning about.”

Amber is staring at me. Her head is nodding up and down like she’s come to some kind of conclusion, or as though she’s agreeing with someone who’s not there. It feels judgey but also, I can tell that she’s admiring something about me and she’s about to tell me what it is that she sees.

“You were always a little bit invisible, even if you were dynamic with me on our shifts,” Amber says. “That’s why I could never promote you to head scooper. When I brought your name up in the managerial meeting, no one remembered who you were!”

I flinch. Like she is poking at a wound I have inside.

“I’m just quiet, I guess,” I say.

“Oh! Don’t get me wrong,” Amber says. “That’s a skill. Being quiet, but alive.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I guess so.”

As we head towards the double door entrance, I can see that there’s a line queuing up to get into the edifice. It snakes all around the corner of the building. It’s folks from all stations of life. People in nurse’s uniforms, janitors, police, waitstaff, casual wear, military, corporate suits. Some are probably there ‘cause it’s around lunch time and they are looking to get a better gig. I like that the whole thing seems equitable. Like anyone can stand a chance of getting this job, whatever it is.

The line goes quicker than I expect, and in the blink of an eye we are right at the sign in desk.

“I don’t have your name on the list,” the woman says. She’s in a perfect vintage 1950s outfit. I’d wager she goes to Rockabilly shows and lives the whole 50s lifestyle. 

“Oh, she’s with me,” Amber says from the other side of the desk. “She needs a job.”

“She’s supposed to be on the list,” the woman says.

“I really need a job,” I say. “I’ll do anything.”

The woman shrugs. “Suit yourself,” she says and waves me through the metal detector.

“Ouch,” I say as I pass through the detector. I feel as though a thousand needles are pricking me and it makes me feel a bit nauseous as I pass through to the other side. A light goes off and two guards come out and menacingly walk towards me.

“She can’t be here,” they say. “What is she doing here?”

“She said she wants a job and that she’ll do anything,” the 1950s receptionist says. 

“She’s with me,” Amber says.

The two goons look at each other and have what seems to be a long silent conversation with each other. Or maybe they are listening to instructions. Finally, they shrug and recede back to the shadows in the walls or wherever they came from.

Amber claps her hands together. “I knew it,” she says. “I knew you had what it took.” 

We follow the calligraphed handwritten signs to the testing room, which is set up like a classroom, full of wooden desks whose tops are covered in long-ago-etched graffiti consisting of names, dates, and small illustrations of terrible teachers. One of them looks like the summer school math teacher I hated. There is a large testing book on each desk. There are some sharpened pencils on each desk as well. We all sit down. The old face clock on the wall is ticking very loudly. A proctor walks in wearing a suit that makes him look like he’s an adman from the 60s. Everyone sits in unison upon his arrival.

“Begin,” he says. Everyone in the room flips their testing book open at the exact same moment. I don’t. I take a moment because a chill comes over me. It’s like everyone around me suddenly looks not quite right. The floor seems to dissolve, and I’m worried for a moment that I’m going to fall through it into an endless screaming pit. I close my eyes and grip the desk, feeling the etched grooves of all those names of people that sat here before me.

“Is there a problem?” the proctor asks me. “Do you need to go back?” All eyes in the room lift from their exam books and look over at me. Their eyes look dull, as though they are not really seeing me. Just like I’m always unseen even though I’m there. It makes me feel defiant. I am here God damnit I want to shout. But I take a deep breath, shake my head to indicate that I’m fine, and flip my own book open and begin the exam.

The questions are not what I am expecting. They give me no indication of what skills I’m actually being tested for but are more like a psych evaluation. Do you feel dissatisfied? Do you have trouble letting things go? Do you feel overlooked? Do you hold a grudge? Do you seek revenge? Are you attached to certain places? Do you like playing pranks?

I just kept saying yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Pages and pages of answering yes.

When I close the book, I am the only one left in the room and I feel lighter. As though the weight of all of my years of feeling like a disappointment are gone. I’m sure that they will classify me as unstable, but I don’t care. It feels good to just be honest and bring all my inner turmoil out to the light.

I feel the proctor staring at me.

“It’s about time,” he says. “You got the job ten hours ago. You’re already late for your first gig.”

He hands me a piece of paper with an address on it handwritten in a barely understandable cursive.

“What am I supposed to do?” I ask. “What’s the gig?”

He just looks at me with his deep recessed eyes and shrugs. Before I turn away, I realize that actually he has no eyes. It’s as though they’ve been plucked out. But then I think, no, that is just a trick of the light.

I make my way through the now dark building, which has the feeling as though everyone has abandoned the place. It should have felt spooky, but it didn’t. What was spooky was that when I open the door to the street, the building behind me disappears. When I turn back to get another look at it, it is a parking lot.

“There you are!” Amber floats over to me. “You took forever!”

It takes me a second to process that Amber is actually floating and shimmery. I realize what I thought had been a chocolate stain on the front of her apron was in fact blood from a wound. Not only that, but I can see right through her.

I put my hand out to touch her and my arm passes right through her body.

“You’re dead,” I say.

“I don’t like to think of myself that way,” Amber says. “I have a lot of anger about it.”

I show the address to Amber.

“What am I supposed to do? What is this job?”

“It’s a haunting.”

“I’m not a ghost,” I say.

“Well, you got the job,” Amber says. “So, I guess you are?”

But then, for a second, I’m not one hundred percent sure that I’m not actually dead. I have to think about myself on the bridge and wonder; did I jump and not know it? I wouldn’t do that. Everything sucks, but not like that. I pinch myself. It hurts. I breathe in and out. My lungs fill up and when I exhale there is a mist from the night air. I jump up and down and land firmly on the sidewalk. I do not float.

“I don’t know how to haunt,” I say.

“I guess you probably do,” Amber says. “You should just try it.”

I can tell that she wants to go. Or maybe it’s that she must go. She’s being stretched and pulled towards a point behind her. I can feel a tug at my core as well, but I don’t shrink and then blink out like she does.

“So…I gotta go. I’m being called to my spot. See you after work? Just like old times? We could go to a show and cause some trouble. You’re old enough now.”

Amber winks out of existence, and I am standing alone on the street. I can feel myself being pulled, but I do not have the luxury of a non-corporeal body. I am real and alive and living in this world. I look down at the address on the piece of paper. It’s all the way across town and I have to get there fast. It feels so urgent, so I start to run, and head to the nearest metro station and descend into the abyss. Anything that moves me in the direction of the address is a relief to this unnerving pull.

 

2. 

It’s late night and the train is not full. There are some drunks on there. And there is a ghost. I know it’s a ghost from the needle and rubber tie still around her arm, the rat bite marks all over her, and her blue, blue lips.

“Get off the train,” she says. “This is my spot. I’m the ghost here.”

“I’m not a ghost,” I say.

“Sure, you are,” she says. “You’re the walking dead. If you weren’t we wouldn’t be able to talk.”

“Hey! Hey you!” I kick the drunk who is nodding off in his seat.

“What the fuck?” he says.

“Do I look dead to you?”

“You’ll be dead if you don’t stop kicking me,” he says.

The ghost of the woman on the metro is buzzing about me like an angry bee. Yelling and screaming. She’s zapping from side to side, teleporting, or something. The lights in the car flicker on and off. I ignore her, because I’m trying to ignore how sick I feel from not yet being where I’m supposed to be. Irritated the ghost starts punching the drunk or whatever it is a ghost does to punch, until he pukes uncontrollably. The drunk is now scared.

“Help me,” he says. “Help me. I’m seeing things. There’s a woman with no face staring at me.” 

He’s pleading with me as I hang onto the pole trying to keep it together. I have to get to that address, or I will die.

“No,” I say to the drunk. “No. You put yourself here.”

“I’m hallucinating, man,” he starts to cry.

“No,” I say. “You’re not. You should listen to that woman. You know who she is, don’t you? She is screaming.”

The ghost looks at me, realizing that I’m on her side.

I’m feeling really sick, so I slide down the pole and sit on the floor of the metro car. The bouncing on the tracks makes me feel better. The drunk’s eyes are fixed on me. He doesn’t want to see the ghost, so he is looking at me. Because I am alive and standing in the light. The ghost is calm now. She is sipping up all of his fear while he’s not looking and it’s energizing her. It’s calming her down. She’s finally figured out how to haunt him.

“Make her go away,” he says. “I can’t do anything about it now.”

“No,” I say. “You’ve got to stare at her. She’s your goddamned sun. She’s going to burn you with her honest feelings about you, and you’re going to listen. Look at her.”

The announcer announces the next station and I pull myself up and make my way to the door.

“Don’t leave me with her,” he says. “I can’t handle the truth.”

“You made your bed,” I say. “Sleep in it.”

And as if by command, he looks at the ghost and then immediately he slumps in his seat and is asleep and the ghost lays on top of him until she disappears, now coiled inside of his ear, whispering, and it is clear that he is in the throes of a nightmare.

 

3. 

I arrive at the apartment complex. It’s in a nice neighborhood, near a nice park, but the apartment, settled between some stand-alone craftsman houses, is ugly and dilapidated. It looks sad. The windows sag. There are stains on the faded cracked bricks. The drought resistant front yard looks as though it is struggling. Even the moonlight can’t cover up the patheticness that hangs over this place. I look at the card and see that I’m supposed to go to apartment six. 

I wonder who lives there.

I walk up to the dirty double glass door entrance and try the door, but of course, it’s locked. I wonder how I will get in. There are buzzers. I suppose I could ring one and hope someone just buzzes me in. Or I could wait for someone to enter or leave and slide in with them. I could take a rock and throw it through the glass door, but I know that won’t work because I can see the shatter proof webbing threaded through the glass.

On the third floor, a light goes on and I look up at it. It’s 3 a.m. so it’s gotta be someone who can’t sleep. Instinctively, I know in every cell in my body it’s my mark in apartment six. Suddenly, I am outside the window and looking in, hovering, as though I knew how to float myself. I can see a woman hunched over the kitchen island with a cup in her hand. Her hair is a mess. Her sweatpants are faded and full of holes. The house looks lived in, threadbare, neat piles of papers and magazines and books spilling off of tables and shelves in haphazard ways. There are baskets with unfinished knitting projects. There is a television on with no sound. The woman puts her cup down and pulls a blanket from the back of the chair over her shoulders.

I move in closer to the window and as I pass through it, it makes a knocking sound. Like a tap tap tap. I see her shoulders rise at the sound like it startles her and she turns around towards the noise I just made. She is staring right at me but does not see me, so she is not surprised. 

I am.

It’s my bitch boss Greta.

Seeing nothing in front of her, even though I am right there, breathing loudly, Greta relaxes again and kind of mutters to herself. I walk around the apartment, feeling what I’m supposed to do. Ghost things. Knock a few magazine piles over. Touch a lightbulb to make it flicker. Moan. I do these things, but Greta takes it in stride. And I realize that it will not work. She will not be afraid if I rattle chains or make her home feel spooky because the truth is everything about her life is spooky. It’s spooky that she is living in such a small way. That at work she parades around as though she’s got it all together, but I can see that she’s eating poorly and that she’s unhappy; that she’s a ghost in her own life.

I watch her as she settles onto her couch, gets a hot flash, changes the streaming service she’s watching, lays sidewise curled up in a ball, and watches something until her eyes finally close and she drifts off to sleep. I sit there all night, trying to figure out how I can do my job. But I draw a blank. What could possibly scare her?

In the morning, her alarm goes off. She showers, downs a bunch of vitamins, eats some oats, puts on her office clothes, grabs her keys, and heads out the door. I follow her as she does her routine: a stop at a coffee shop where she smiles, clearly recognizing the barista who obviously does not remember her, and orders “my regular!” The barista, having no idea who she is and what she usually orders, gets the order wrong, and while Greta mentions that it’s wrong, she doesn’t cause a fuss, she doesn’t ask for a new one, she just sheepishly brushes it off as though it doesn’t always happen, but I can tell that it does. Greta takes the metro and tries to wave cheerily to some people that I can tell she sees every morning, but they only avert their eyes at her eagerness for contact. She bounds up the subway stairs and heads into the office building, flashing her badge to Dirk, the security guy, who could not care that she’s there. She presses the button on the elevator and just before the door opens on the fifth floor, she takes a deep breath and puts what I guess is her game face on.

“OK people, it’s a brand-new day,” Greta says as she claps her hands in that annoying way to motivate everyone in the open office. They look up at her and pump their fists in small ways to indicate to her that they are with her but also that they just want her to stop. She gives some guy a compliment on his shirt. She gives a shout out to another person on their design roughs from yesterday but says that they could do better and to dig deeper. She makes sure to point out that it’s another gal’s birthday and that there will be cake in the breakroom.

Greta then goes into her office and sits at her desk, turns on her computer, and starts going through her emails. I am standing in front of her, the sun streaming into the office, looking at the small smile on her face and it hits me.

The biggest demons you wrestle with live in the light. Right where you can see them. I can’t haunt her at home, in the dark, in the shadows of her sadness and quiet. She’s already haunted. But here in the office, with the lights on, where she feels safe, I can do the most damage.

I stick my hand into her computer. I just slide it in and suddenly everything flickers on the screen. I begin to ruin her day.

“No, no, no,” she says. “My report!”

I’ve made sure that everything is lost. I start to twirl until I am a tornado, and there is electricity sparking off me. I see the hairs on her arms raise and she gets a shock while banging the side of the computer. Her hot coffee is now ice cold. She can’t seem to shake the moaning sound I’m making that no one else hears. She can’t concentrate. She walks all around the office with her ear cocked trying to identify where the sound is coming from. I won’t stop. I moan right beside her.

“You alright, Greta?” someone asks her.

“Fine, fine, there’s a noise, do you hear it?”

Everyone says no.

Greta goes to the bathroom, stands in front of the mirror, and splashes water on her face. I make myself appear behind her so that when she lifts her face, she sees me in the mirror and screams.

“Oh my gosh, you scared me,” she says as she turns around to face me.

I say nothing.

“Wait. Didn’t I fire you?”

“Did you?” I ask.

“You can’t be here,” she says. “I’m going to call security.”

She pulls out her phone.

“Am I here? Or do you just feel guilty?”

“What?” she asks. “You gotta go.”

The door opens and someone comes in. I disappear. Well, not really, I just lean into the fact that no one ever seems to see me when I’m in a room.

“Hi, Dirk, I have an ex-employee who’s made it upstairs and I need her to be escorted out of the building. She’s here in the bathroom with me can you send someone up?”

“Who are you talking about, Greta?”

Greta waves to me, but I’m not there to be seen anymore.

“Who?”

Greta looks up and looks around, surprised that I’m not there. She looks destabilized. Unsure that I even existed. She hangs up the phone. She straightens her suit. She walks back to her office. I am standing there for her to see. I fade in and out so that no one else sees me except her. Greta’s fear is rising. She’s questioning her sanity. I can feel her fright and each time it rises, I know that I am doing my job right.

I do this every day for weeks.

I don’t limit myself to the usual things, like strange sounds that serve to terrorize whose origins can’t be identified. I start to change small words in her emails, not enough that she would see, but in strategic enough places that she starts to get a reputation for being inappropriate. I also redeliver emails to her from her deep past so that she has to relive all of the things that didn’t work out in her life. I sour all her food and make it rot so that she can never be sure if there will be bugs or maggots or if she’s imagined them.

Then I work on getting revenge for myself. I float up all the good work that I’ve done that she always claimed to never see. It’s always the first document in a folder. She’s constantly being forced to see how much I really did. And of course, I make myself appear in every reflective surface so that she is always haunted by my face.

“What do you want from me?” she whispers. “Just go away!”

“Who are you talking to, Greta?” her employees ask. And she feels too ashamed to answer that she is talking to me.

 

4.

I get the email a month later. Greta wants to meet me for a coffee or a drink. My choice. She wants to talk. I agree to meet her at a very hip place in the arts district.

I get to the place early, staking a spot at the bar. I order a dirty martini. I make sure to sit facing the door so that I will be the first thing that she sees when she comes in.

She enters and her eyes lock with mine and I can see that she’s trying to remind herself that I am real and not unreal. I can tell that she’s been losing sleep. She’s dropped twenty pounds. She comes over to me and takes off her coat and slides onto the stool next to me.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” she says.

“I was surprised to hear from you,” I say.

“I’ve just been thinking a lot about you and how we left things and I feel that maybe there are some unresolved issues that we should get closure on.”

“Oh,” I say. “Interesting.”

“I would like to apologize if you felt I was harsh in my assessment of your work when you were with the company.”

“I did all the work that I was assigned,” I say.

“Perhaps there were some things that I overlooked,” she says. “I’ve been noticing some traces of the great work that you did.”

“I worked really hard,” I say. “I think I’m good at whatever job I’m given.”

“How are you set for work now?” she asks with a false concern. “Are you doing alright? Because I would like to say that I will give you a good recommendation if you need one.”

“Oh, I have a new job now. It’s really good. It’s all about connecting with people.”

“Is it in design?” she asks.

“I design curated experiences for individuals,” I say. “It’s actually very rewarding.”

“I’m glad to hear you are doing alright,” she says. “I’ve been feeling a bit guilty.”

“No need to,” I say. “I’m thriving.”

I can sense that she’s nervous talking to me. She keeps touching my arm to make sure that I’m really there.

“But how are you?” I ask her. “Lola told me that you lost the bid you had everyone working so hard on.”

Greta takes a swig of her drink and then signals the bartender for another.

“Have you ever been haunted by all the things that you did in your life?”

“I had a moment like that the day you let me go,” I say. “But I found a way to exorcise myself from those demons.”

“I just can’t shake the thought that my life is fucking with me.”

I hear a bell ring and I get that I’ve done the job. I’ve haunted her to the point where she is haunting herself.

“I have to go, Greta. It’s time for me to get back to work. I think we’re done here.”

She looks taken aback, but so beaten down that she looks like she thinks she deserves my shortness with her.

 

5. 

I go to the bridge and as I cross it, I see the art deco building. I see the line up of the dead queuing up to apply for haunting jobs. I cut straight to the front of the line and go right up to the receptionist.

“I want to see the manager,” I say.

“No one sees them,” she says.

“I have an idea about how to revolutionize our industry,” I say.

“Hauntings have been the same for eons,” she says.

“Sure, but all living humans are savvy to that now. We mine the dark for the jump scares, but we all know the vocabulary of the night terrors. It doesn’t work anymore.”

“And you have a plan to modernize hauntings? You have the solution?”

“Let me talk to the head honcho,” I say.

The woman cocks her ear as though she’s getting a message. Then she looks up at me and waves me through. She points to a quaint old elevator that has suddenly appeared at the end of the hall.

An elevator operator opens the gate for me and then pulls on the lever and we go up and up and up and up until I’m sure we’ve passed the moon. The gate pulls open and I walk into an office where Amber, in her Scoops uniform, is sitting with her legs up on a big wooden board table. Surrounding her are twelve spectres. I can see that they are from different eras of human history, all with the very thing about them that would scare a person most in those times. They are all shimmering and faceless and should be frightening. They do not frighten me.

“Amber,” I say.

“I knew you were a good bet,” she says. “My colleagues said I was wasting my time, but I knew when I saw you on that bridge that you’d have something to offer the company.”

“I do,” I say. I go to the window and open the blinds, letting the sun stream into the room.

“You have to make all a person’s regrets and ghosts live in the light. You have to make it so no living thing can run away.”

Amber begins to clap. The spectres rattle their chains and moan. They are resistant to change.

“Trust me,” I say. “There’s nothing more frightening than high noon.”

“Send out a memo,” Amber says. “Tell all the ghosts to bring the horror from night to day. No more hiding in the shadows. We face our marks in their brightest hours of life. They will not be able to dismiss us as a thing that goes bump in the night. Now, let’s all get to work.”

The spectres turn towards the bright day, and one by one release themselves into the air, floating through the window.

Amber pushes a new piece of paper towards me.

“Your next assignment,” Amber says smiling.

I look at the address. It was that of the worst teacher I ever had in high school. The one I complained about that whole Scoops summer to Amber.

I smile.

“I thought you’d like it,” Amber says. “I always wanted to give you a promotion.”

Amber goes to the window to survey the city. I join her and look out where I can see a flood of ghosts streaming in from everywhere descending on the city at lunchtime.

It’s a beautiful warm spring day. The sun is out. The sky is blue. The birds are singing.

And then the screaming begins.

 

(Editors’ Note: “We’re Looking for the Best” is read by Erika Ensign on the Uncanny Magazine Podcast, Episode 55B.)

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