Edgar Allan Poe and Abe Lincoln in Sex Toys ponder the afterlife and commit suicide

Ghost Abe Lincoln and ghost Edgar Allan Poe are friends. At first, they were supposed to be an odd couple. You will see them passing through the harbor of the kingdom of the dead to stroll along the wide and peaceful river. Everyone knows Lincoln’s ghost as Abe and nothing more, and Poe’s ghost as EAP.

Abe is tall and thin, and walks with a jolt, which allows EAP, who is short and bent-legged, to maintain the perfect pace. They were attracted to each other because both had passed away — or in the language of the place, the First Dead (FD) — before their time.

“Say it, EAP,” Abe wondered aloud one day, as did their usual constitution. “When is your FD again?”

“At the age of forty, you rotten. Before what should have been the center of my life. Not that there are no goddamn heroes. There is no superhero as big as Abe. A few more years, a little more time, hell, maybe a good journalist, and I won’t have to count on all the glory after death. Because the bad thing about that…”

Abe would laugh and slap his friend on the back, his ghostly hand brushing over EAP’s ghostly ribcage. But that’s thinking that counts. In addition, intelligent ghosts like these tend to favor updated vernaculars from the land of the living. Keep a young person.

“Nice, pretty,” Abe will remark. “So let us talk about the works you plan to write. Your time has not been shortened so cruelly. “

EAP likes this to some extent. It’s his favorite way to talk about himself. To do the things he didn’t do, which he could have done. That he told himself he would do, before his First Death, but he continued to ignore it. Usually he’s very frustrated and can’t do anything but put things on hold.

“Okay, right. So you know ‘Cask of Amontillado’? “

“I know it with pleasure.”

“So what I’m going to do, after the alcohol juggernaut gets sealed in the wall, well, I’ll push things up a notch. Like, it sucks for him and it’s scary that he’s going to die in there, but he’s drunk, there’s not much air, he’s going fast. Could be even worse. So I’ll have this monster inside, half this big rat, half this man, and he’s eternal, and can give eternal life to the one he has. can torture. The idea that he would give eternal life to the drunkard was sealed in it by his enemies. And then it would be the two of them in this horrible, classy space, with no room to move, sealed forever, together, this guy and the rat monster. “

“Cooling the marrow.”

“Thank you.”

“You can experiment with that. When you write. When next you write. “

Abe is referring to what happens after you die if you write well, as EAP can, and believe what you have written. You put your ghostly hand on your ghostly parchment, and whatever you set out to do will come true, if you truly believe in its completeness. You can write it, or someone, right into your life. Your death.

“I don’t know,” EAP warned, though he was rarely the cautious type. “I don’t know if it’s wise to play with it. I’ve been playing around with some entertaining hobbies. They are keeping me quite busy.”

“Are they alleviating any of your sadness?”

Abe and the EAP are also friends, it should be noted, on the basis of their respective recessions.

“Gentle. They’re a bit tired.”

“Tell me more,” Abe demanded, sounding a little nervous.

“Early. When next we go for a walk. Since we’ve already reached the last embankment. We seem to be going faster these days, Abe.”

“That’s us, EAP. A handshake for you”—and their fists brushing each other—“and we’ll visit soon”.

EAP was lacking for what was to come, more or less, three days, although timing was difficult to measure. When he joined his friend, outside the gate, he was already haggard. Shadows of smoke were heavy under his eyes. They mostly walked in silence, and at the final embankment, the EAP, in a moment of desperation, invited Abe back to his home.

“Since I dare not say what I have been through, it could have been wiretapped,” he claimed. EAP is quite popular with his fellow ghosts, and when a group of them hear something particularly ghastly or gruesome emanating from his lips, chants of “EAP EAP EAP!” going up and down the smoky streets. He’s not in the mood today.

Once they have settled into what the locals call chez EAP, the ghost begins its story.

“So I’m back on the dating site, and I’m so depressed at this point, and honestly I’m so upset, that I just want to look up anything real. Of the substance. You meet idiot after idiot, and if you can handle all the ridiculous text, you still have to deal with people who know nothing about anything and speak the same six clichés. . ‘I can stay or I can go out.’ OH. Terrible achievement. ‘I like Netflix and chill.’ Do you know how many idiots say that? ”

“Um… a lot?”

“Yes, a lot. So what’s there for me? Learned, understood, passionate and aspired—”

“Strange?”

“Hmm. Yes, I suppose strange things, and also strange. At this time. So I just say things like, ‘Oh, you sound so interesting, and you’re a little submissive,’ which often makes them compliment themselves more, and then go into their submission level. they, or want to be. Fairly resistant to failure. What are you doing?”

“Records.”

“Don’t write this sequel.”

“Okay…”

“So I’m talking to this ghostly woman. Smoke. ”

“Haha.”

“I think you like that. And she wanted to film me herself, show me how she went. I was startled for almost three days at that point, trying to suppress my sadness—”

“You’ve definitely coated this place.”

“No. Not released. I want to look forward to something. It can be difficult to have something to look forward to. Either way, she said that her fantasy is having a daughter and a father. And I’m a good writer, I can give her some ideas, and then she’ll use them and film herself. I gave her the ideas, and she he followed.

“Let me tell you, it was so wrong and hot. She’s working there on her own, index finger on her ghostly clitoris, but never really touching it, like she’s itching something super fast. But she said things like, ‘I know you and I don’t get along very well, Dad. When I hold my head high outside your door at night, I never hear the sounds I love to hear when I listen and touch myself in the hallway. I want to make you feel comfortable if I don’t. Is that wrong? Can I give you this video to check if you like me this way? We don’t have to tell anyone if you come into my room at night. In a way, I’ve been in your penis before—”

“Damned.”

“I know, don’t I? ‘And being up there and having it in me seems to be the right thing to do.’ And from then onwards. This was so hot that I broke EAPer. “

“Is not!”

“I did. Indeed.”

EAP wrote a story about a masturbation-obsessed man, whose problem manifests in the form of a three-legged member – known as EAPer, in the story of the same name – born of the human of him and eventually kills him. So EAPer is made real, and EAP will sometimes stick it with himself for maximum pleasure, when he is most depressed and it takes him this long to feel anything, which in That context, after all, is not interesting.

“Can I borrow it again?” Abe asked.

“Make sure. Next time you have your truck, we’ll put it in the back.”

“But why not say this on the street? You’ll get a lot of EAP-tastic hymns on this one. “

“Really. But that’s because of what happened after that. After the end of the carnival finally made me commit suicide – ironically – I decided to write. And I wrote a story, in which there was a person. smelly but also wonderful, kind, funny and stable woman. It’s hard to get all of that in one person. And because I wrote it, and I have complete confidence in her, she came out into the world. But I didn’t write enough either. So there were other things as well. Which I didn’t take into account. And I struggled with the memories.”

That’s almost always a problem with these writing endeavors. What one creates appears and becomes reality, but with it everything from before the person was written. The previous memories, the joys, the pain, the hopes, the dreams, the dreams went up in smoke.

“Where is she?” Abe asked. “Is she here now? Can I go?”

He was trying to be funny and lighten the situation, but his joke failed. He put his ghost hand over EAP’s ghost knee.

“No, she doesn’t. She was all that, but, of course, the problem was what she told me a long time ago, which I now know, that she would leave at some point, possibly. Unannounced, because I’m sad, she’s still sadder, and while I may have to deal with many things, if I drink enough, she may face less. I really didn’t know how to end the story, so I picked it up later, and I hanged myself on the bridge. So that’s my to-do list for now. ”

“Well, it’s as simple as that. We can solve that problem easily. ”

EAP and Abe went down to the river again. At the top of the bridge, a line of smoke flies over the top of the EAP. He saluted Abe and jumped towards the water. The smoke wouldn’t hold back, and so he didn’t recoil and start rising, as with a standard chuckle.

He stood up, shrugging.

“Well, that didn’t work.”

Abe has had some experience in these matters, has successfully hanged himself several times, which he has never shared even with the EAP, his own sadness is so great that the idea of ​​moving His puffy lips on the subject made him think again. river jump.

Abe has a can of steam. When you spray steam with steam, the new steam makes the first vapor hard, solid, unbreakable. Some spray was sprayed on the mist vine around EAP’s neck, a salute rang out, EAP jumped, and this time he died again. It was painful, but only physically, he thought, as his neck retracted, more appropriate than the other ways.

A few days later, Abe went to EAP’s place to return EAPer.

“Hey, Abe.”

“What’s the matter, EAP?”

“Have you all EAPed out?”

“You could say so. Making peace since the most recent death? “

“Guess so.”

“How many are there now?”

“Do not know. Everything blends.”

“It must be raining outside, so I can’t walk. We can try writing a story together until it becomes clear. Don’t you want to add ‘The Raven’ and have a part two, where Satan emerges from hell to protest the copyright of the poem, saying that he himself wrote it one evening in his Fire Kingdom? That could be good. ”

“I don’t know if we want to put another demon in everything.”

“Yes, my friend. We can just sit and work with EAPer. It’s in the truck. “

“I should really clean it up.”

“Okay, let’s take it to the car wash. You can eat a piece later. Want to eat a piece? “

“Yes, I can eat.”

“Okay. It’s cold.”

Excerpted from Colin Fleming’s eighth book and sixth volume of the novel, If you [ ]: Fabula, Fantasy, F**kery, Hopepublished by Dzanc, all rights reserved.