This one almost didn’t happen. It’s been a long day. Started with toilet troubles and fasting and then a lot of use of said toilet ahead of a procedure tomorrow. Focusing and writing a story on top of it all hasn’t been easy. So, here goes…

“Why am I here again?”

“I need your help,” Edgar said sheepishly.

“We’re in your bathroom with lit candles. If you want to do a Bloody Mary thing, I’m right out because that kind of stuff–”

“No, no,” Ted interrupted. “We live in California and this is an apartment – you think I’m really going to have open flames? These are LED candles. I’ve got haunted food poisoning.”

“Haunted food poisoning? You’ve got to be kidding. How do you know it’s haunted?”

Ted screwed up his face and strained. Suddenly he unleased an enormous fart, but while it started with a bass note, it modulated into “Bbbbbbbbbbbbboooooooooo!”

“That’s… that’s ridiculous.”

“Right?”

“Whoa!” Edgar fanned with his left hand and held his nose with his right, “Did something die up your butt?” 

“See! Haunted!”

“Man,” Edgar started, “How’d this happen?”

“I ordered GrubHub from a ghost kitchen. Like with real ghosts”

“I just saw a YouTube video about those… So… what? We light candles?”

“That’s the beginning of this ritual,” Ted explained. “Now we’ll use this,” he brandished a Lysol aerosol can. 

Edgar looked at the can, “Sage and Lavender scent? For reals?”

Ted sprayed the can around the perimeter of the circle he had chalked on the ground – the toilet was at the center. 

“Okay,” Edgar said, “So, let me ask again. Why am I here?”

“I need you to chant while I… uh, exorcise it.”

“Look, we’re friends and all, but… I draw the line chanting while you drop a deuce.” 

“I’ll close the door – you can be in the hallway. It should still work.”

“Fine, fine. Are you ready?”

“Yeah,” Ted said. “Candles, sage… I’m ready. Here,” he handed Edgar a note card, “go outside and read this as I…”

“Right, I got it,” Edgar said, closing the door behind him. 

Ted dropped his pants and sat on the toilet. From behind the door, Edgar began chanting “The power of Charmin compels you!” over and over. 

A strain and then a moment later, a splash. He stood up, made the sign of the cross over the bowl, and said, “Begone, foul beast!” He pushed the lever to flush it down and cried, “Go away from the light!” and watched as the water swirled and carried its foul effluence down the drain. “It’s done!” he called to Edgar. 

“Wow,” Edgar said opening the door. “That is one Spooky Dookie!  

The gray SUV sailed through the intersection without slowing. He didn’t get 100 meters before the blue and red lights on a police cruiser lit up the night and the rear-view mirror of the SUV driver.

“License and registration,” the officer asked the driver as he came up alongside the SUV.

“Sure, okay, officer. Is there a problem?”

“You ran that stop sign at the intersection back there.”

“Wait, what? There was no stop sign…”

“Sure is. It’s a four way stop. Take a look.”

The driver stuck his head out his window and craned his head around towards the intersection he’d just came through. Sure enough, he could see the silver octagon of the back of a stop sign. “What? I swear that wasn’t there a second ago!”

“Well,” the officer said, “It’s not like the stop sign jumped out of the bushes all of a sudden.”

The driver sighed in defeat. “I guess…”

The officer watched the SUV drive off as he finished his paperwork on the stop before backing back into the pullout. He got out of his cruiser and walked to the stop sign.

“Thanks, Eddie.”

The stop sign rattled acknowledgement.

The officer let a silence pass. “It’s been five years, Eddie. Who would have guessed after that drunk driver T-boned your cruiser you’d be inhabiting this particular stop sign?”

The stop sign rattled agreement. Pause. The stop sign rattled sadly.

“Yeah, Eddie, I miss you, too.”

The stop sign rattled in anticipation.

“Yeah, I hear them coming, too. Shall we?”

The stop sign rattled and then the branch of the shaggy tree right next to the stop sign moved over completely obscuring the stop sign.

“I’m so glad you learned how to do that, Eddie. It helps.”

The stop sign rattled the branch camouflage.

The officer walked back to his cruiser to wait.

Everett opened a blank document in his word processor software. He moved his mouse over to the button in the upper right for SADIE and clicked.
“Hello, Everett,” the modulated voice said. “The Smart Automated Dictation Interface Editor or SADIE is ready to go. Shall we start?”
Everett appreciated how far this technology had come. “Okay, SADIE, start dictation.”
“All right, Everett, I’m online. Start dictating when ready.”
Everett sat back in his desk chair, hands completely off the keyboard and mouse. He picked up his double Old Fashioned off the desk and started telling his story. “I don’t remember when I first thought about the most endangered mammal on the planet, comma, the riverine rabbit of South Africa’s Karoo desert, comma, but once I heard about them I was captivated…”
He continued, watching his words appear as text on the screen word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph.
SADIE broke into his dictation at one point. “Everett, I believe that last sentence is a fragment.”
Everett furrowed his brow. He knew it was a fragment – it was a fragment for effect. “SADIE disable grammar correction.”
“Grammar correction disabled. Please continue.”
And he did.
A few paragraphs later he stopped. “SADIE, move the last paragraph up above the previous paragraph.”
Everett watched as the last paragraph moved graphically above the previous paragraph.
“Where do you want to start again?” SADIE’s electronic voice asked.
“At the end of the next paragraph – after ‘and so I went to the desert.’ New paragraph.”
The cursor moved to the indicated position. “Please continue,” SADIE instructed.
“I had asked my wife, Leslie, if she would accompany me to study these elusive creatures. She said she wasn’t interested. Had I known she would die while I was in the remote desert field camp, I never would have gone.”
“That’s a bunch of horseshit!” Leslie’s voice came across the speakers. “You know you murdered me!” On the screen the words “That’s a bunch of horseshit. You know you murdered me!” spelled out on a new line as Everett dropped his Old Fashioned.