Stop Ghosting Me.
A Black Comedy in the Style of Detective Noir.
Chapter One: The Job.
I wasn’t doing much that morning – just watching a fly bounce off the window. Dumb bug was stuck and too dumb to quit. I knew the feeling. Eventually, I opened the window and set it free – figured one of us should catch a break. I glanced at my phone and pretended it was going to ring.
It didn’t.
That’s when she walked in – like a question I didn’t want to know the answer to. Red hair, mid-thirties, tight dress, tighter lips. Her hips were swaying to a silent rhumba. I couldn’t hear the music, but my eyebrows were doing the cha-cha-cha.
She pulled out a chair and sat down without an invitation. This was a woman who meant business – and not the legit kind. She smelled expensive, like saffron and sin. Her earrings caught the light, blinding me with rainbows.
Let’s just say she had my full attention.
I spoke first. “You sure you got the right office?”
“Is your name Mr River?”
“Just River, Sunshine.”
“Then I’m in the right place, Mr River.” She cast me a look that could have stripped paint. “I’ve heard you get results – and prefer to play by your own rules.”
She opened her purse and pulled out her cell phone. “You see, Mr River, my husband won’t stop texting me.”
I blinked. “I think I’m missing the point.”
She put the phone on the desk and nudged it my way.
“He’s been dead for three weeks.”
“Ah.” Didn’t see that coming.
I offered her a cigarette, and she took it.
I struck a match and held it out.
“No thanks, I don’t smoke,” she said, and tucked the cigarette into her purse.
Her left eye was smiling at me. The right one was glaring.
I leaned back in my chair and waited for the part where things started to make sense.
“What does he have to say, this dead husband of yours?”
“See for yourself.” She unlocked the phone and slid it towards me.
I slid it back.
“Don’t do technology,” I said thinly. “Don’t trust it – and it don’t trust me. Just read ‘em.”
“Very well. These are from last night…”
“We need to talk. Please.”
“Why won’t you answer me?”
“Please call me.”
“Why are you ghosting me?”
She looked up, waiting for my reaction. “He thinks I’m ghosting him. Ironic wouldn’t you say?”
“That’s it? No threats, no scams, no demands. Just desperation, plain and raw?”
“So it seems.”
“You sure he’s dead?” I asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t make fun of me, Mr River. I’m in no mood for games.”
There was a chill in her voice – not sharp, not angry. Just flat. Like a fridge door left open.
I struck a match and lit up a smoke, more for the theatre than the nicotine.
“Okay,” I said. “Have you tried calling?”
She gave me a look that said she had – and hadn’t liked what she heard.
“I said I wouldn’t do it again, Mr River. But you need to hear it for yourself.”
She tapped the screen.
Speakerphone.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
Then – click.
No voice. No static. Only silence.
And then I heard it – faint, broken sobs – the kind you make when you think you’re all alone and your life has fallen apart.
I put the phone up to my ear.
The sound was close, yet dull, like he was inside a box.
“OK, that’s weird,” I admitted.
“Oh, we’re just getting started, Mr River. Try calling from yours.” She pointed at my pushbutton desk phone. “If it still works.”
“It works just fine,” I said, lifting the receiver.
She called out the number. I hit the digits.
No ring, no delay, just an immediate tone, followed by the message:
“The number you have dialled is not in service.”
I set the receiver back in its cradle.
Didn’t say a word.
Just looked at her.
Her expression didn’t change – like she’d seen that reaction before.
“It doesn’t work from any other phone,” she said.
She looked at her phone on the desk like it might explode.
“But mine gets through. Every time. And it’s always the same – the crying. It even sounds like him.”
She took a breath. Smoothed the creases in her skirt. “And then the texts start up all over again.”
She leaned in. “At first I thought someone was messing with me, but now…”
“Now?”
“Now I think it’s really him. Calling from beyond the grave. I don’t know where to turn.”
“This ain’t Ghostbusters, lady. But I think they’re in the Yellow Pages.”
Her eyes began to mist, but she didn’t look away.
“You don’t have many friends, do you, Mr River?”
That made me smirk. “No, and I plan to keep it that way.”
Then the first tear slipped. I can’t stand it when they cry.
“Alright, then,” I said. “But why me?”
“I can’t exactly go to the police, can I?” She opened her purse, pulled out a tissue, and dabbed her eyes. “My dead husband keeps texting from a disconnected number.”
“You’ve got a point. Okay – how long after he died did the messages start?”
“A few days after the funeral. About three weeks ago.”
“Anyone else have access to his phone?”
“No. Just me.”
“Where is it now?”
“I put it in the coffin with him.”
I raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“It was... symbolic,” she added. “He was never without it. It just seemed… well, fitting.”
“Could anyone have grabbed it before it went in the ground?”
“No. I watched it go in.”
I nodded slowly. “Who might want to mess with you? Friends? Enemies? Someone with a grudge?”
“No one I can think of.”
“His name?”
“Harold. Harold Roach.”
I nodded.
“Alright, Ms Roach.”
She flinched. Not much – but enough to make me wonder how long she’d been trying to shed the weight.
“You may call me Kitty,” she said, looking at her hands.
“OK, Kitty. What did your husband do?”
“Finance. Private equity.”
I made a face like that explained everything. “Rich?”
She hesitated. “Comfortable.”
“Who got the inheritance?”
That took the shine off her tone.
“I did, Mr River.”
“Anyone annoyed about that?”
“No. Why should they be?”
“Family?”
“Yes. A sister. I don’t want you talking to her, Mr River.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s unstable. Certifiable, in my opinion. Harold cut her off, and for good reason. The last thing I want is her stirring up a load of nonsense. If you open that door, you’ll drown in ten types of crazy and still come up empty. I mean it, Mr River. Don’t contact her.”
I raised another eyebrow.
She clearly doesn’t know how I operate.
“Alright,” I said. “Was he seeing anyone else? Women, men, exes with long memories? Was he clean? Crooked? Anything you forgot to mention – affairs, dodgy deals, pills that didn’t come from the pharmacy?”
Her face shifted – offence, then disbelief. Clearly no one had spoken to her so directly before.
“That might be how people behave in your world, Mr River, but I’ll have you know my husband was a respectable man.”
“I don’t care what world you live in, Ms Roach. I’ve been in this game long enough to know everyone’s hiding something. If you want me to dig, don’t act surprised if I get dirt under my fingernails.”
She stared at me. Long. Cold.
“Dig all you like, Mr River. But if you find any dirt – it’s come off your own shoes.”
She got up to leave.
“One more thing,” I said. “How’d he die?”
She didn’t flinch.
“Pills and whisky. He’d been diagnosed with, well... something serious. He was a proud man, Mr River. He wanted to go out on his own terms.”
The words were clean. Too clean. Like they’d been polished, over and over, until there was nothing left to catch on.
She turned at the door.
“Just find out who is sending those texts – and put an end to it. Use whatever means you must. I’ll make it worth your while.”
She left the same way she came in. Frosty.
The room was colder – and it weren’t because of no ghost.
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