Page 233 of Psycho Gods

“Finally, they’re gone,” Sadie said. “Now we can—what were we doing again?”

“Talking about highly classified secrets,” I whispered conspiratorially.

“Well, then get on with it.” Sadie clapped. “You said we had an emergency that we needed to solve. Let’s do it.”

She clapped again in my face.

“Really?” I asked.

She clapped as fast as she could.

I fantasized about a friendless, lonely existence.

“Did you hear that?” a doctor asked, their shadow pausing outside our door.

Sadie whispered in a spooky voice, “Thisss isss a poltergeist, you didn’t heaaaaar anything or I will haunt youuu.”

I smacked her arm.

She hit me across the face and her nail took a chunk out of my cheek.

We both raised our arms and smacked at each other as fast as we could for five minutes.

“Don’t worry.” She wheezed between laughs as she put her talons down. “No ghost would want to haunt you. You’d haunt them.”

A male soldier screamed, then started sobbing uncontrollably, and the doctor outside our closet ran to assist him.

“Pussy,” we both said at the same time.

It wasn’t funny, but postbattle delirium had set in.

The closet was exacerbating our instability; however, there weren’t many quiet places you could meet these days and not have men watching you like perverts. We were making do.

“That’s actually part of the reason I dragged you in here to talk,” I said as I tried to calm my racing heart.

Sadie stopped laughing.

Awkward silence expanded.

“You’re a pussy?” She asked.

“The other part.”

“Oh,” she said. “If I’d known you actually had a ghost problem, I never would have mimicked one. What do you need me to do? An exorcism?”

I smacked her. “That’s not a real thing.”

She punched me. “Do not disrespect the time-honored tradition of violently extracting ghosts from people.”

“What are you going on about?” I asked.

Sadie shrugged, “That’s for me to know and for you to find out—be gone, evil spirit.”

I huffed. “It’s not a ghost issue. I’m in good standing with the poltergeist community. I meant the haunting part.”

Needles clattered like Sadie was playing with them. “I’m not going to lie, I have no idea what’s going on right now. A part of me thinks I don’t want to. Spell it out like I’m stupid.”

It was only on account of our friendship, and the fact that I loved her like a sister, that I refrained from a sarcastic reply.