Doomed

^{DECEMBER 21, 12:41 P.M. HAST} Another Loved One in Jeopardy!

Gentle Tweeter,

“So why Jesus?” asks the luminous blue ghost of Mr. K. “Why did you fall for Jesus?”

My thumbs twitching across the keys of my PDA, I shrug. At the time I was on the cusp of puberty. I was eleven years old with menarche barreling down on me like a speeding bloodmobile. Meaning: my first menstruation. Meaning: Menarche is not some Old Testament who’s-it. Any morning I expected to wake up with some huge burden of mammary glands attached to my chest. Thickets of hair would be sprouting in all of my secret places, and I’d be rendered a hormonal zombie. Time and time again, I’d seen it happen at my Swiss school. One day girls would be spunky, brainy flat-chested superheroes, and the next day they’d be simpering Miss Sexy Sexpots.

“So why Jesus?” asks Mr. Ketamine’s ghost. We’re two ghosts sitting in the main salon of the megayacht, keeping watch over my conked-out mom. The blue of Mr. K’s spirit matches exactly the blue that my tongue sees when I eat crushed ice. Not that I get to eat anything, not anymore. Not that I’m shedding any pounds, either.

Continuing to keyboard, I explain that my parents are little more than their physical appetites, their recreational drugs and casual sex. They’re just hungry carnal stomachs forever consuming. By dating Jesus, I wanted to sidestep all of the blood and spit and sperm that seemed to loom in my immediate future.

To CanuckAIDSemily, thanks for the heads-up. Reading your latest text, I say, “Fie! Gadzooks!”

Mr. K’s blue ghost says, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s my cat,” I say. “It’s Tigerstripe.”

CanuckAIDSemily tells me that Satan is nosing around Hell, asking everyone whether they’ve seen an orange-striped tabby. He’s offered a reward of one hundred full-size Mars bars to whoever can capture Tigerstripe and turn him in, no doubt for Satan to use as a hostage against me.

Yes, Gentle Tweeter, I did once attempt to flush Tiger down a toilet at the Beverly Wilshire, but that was only after he was dead. And that’s different, because I loved him.

Mr. City, he looks down on his earthly body, sprawled there on the floor. His scabrous, pocked face. His mangled ears and nose. “I wish I were dead.”

“No, you don’t,” I say.

“Dead and rich,” he says. Even his ghost has crooked teeth, leaning together in some places, missing in others, teeth like the ruins of Stonehenge and approximately the same lichen colors.

I text, asking whether anyone has seen Tigerstripe, and whether anyone is hiding him. This might sound like a case of misplaced priorities, but I’m less worried about Satan getting his mitts on my parents than I am about him flaying the lovely fur off my pet pussycat. Just the idea makes me Ctrl+Alt+Frantic.

“I want to be dead and in Heaven,” says Mr. K’s ghost, “and making love to Sahara. Did I ever tell you about Sahara?” The ketamine must be wearing off, because Mr. K’s already pale blue ghost is fading.

According to CanuckAIDSemily, Satan has released my prisoners from the Swamp of Partial-birth Abortions. Hitler, Idi Amin, Elizabeth Bathory, they’re all set free to terrorize the occupants of Hell once more. Caligula, Vlad the Impader, and Rin Tin Tin, they all have special orders to seek out one special little orange kitty.

Overhead, I can hear propeller blades chopping the Pacific air. It’s the unmistakable sound of the Gaia Wind setting down on the deck above us. Not looking away from my PDA screen, I pause. Without making eye contact with Mr. K’s ghost, trying to sound Ctrl+Alt+Nonchalant, I ask, “Did you and my papadaddy talk at all… about me?”

Mr. K’s flickering blue silhouette, barely there, nods.