Fumes

Fumes

Myrtle was bored, in the skull-thumping way that when she was alive had meant she had better find the cordial Grandmum had sent. Nothing was worse than cherry-mint cordial, but at least it had dulled the fiftieth repetition of I am a young lady; in the hope of heaven I will refrain from reading French novels during chapel. Myrtle had missed out on the hope of heaven, of course, right along with the hope of growing out of these ugly eyeglasses. Or perhaps her real soul was up among the lilies now. Myrtle didn't miss it. What she missed was the ability to entertain herself properly. She had been in and out of the prefects' bathroom, she had yelled and moaned and sobbed, but the prefects this year were either pale and shivering ninnies or else possessed of an antipathy to bathwater, and the girls of today had learned not to enter Myrtle's lavatory. Sorry lot. Even sweet little dark-haired Harry hadn't come visiting recently. Myrtle loved nothing more than shrieking so that he nearly jumped sideways-- in a quiet, self-composed sort of way, he was very Britishly heroic, was our Harry Potter-- into the arms of his best friend Ron. Darling, really. Myrtle adored watching them squirm. Unfortunately they were gone now, and Myrtle had had nothing to do for days but watch the bathroom tiles quiver through her robe.

Except-- except that Myrtle heard a distinct clinking sound. Some stupid first-year trying to summon an image of her true love in the sink, no doubt. Well, Myrtle would soon put a stop to that. She held her breath for a minute, and then let out a patented blood-curdling shriek.

The clinking continued unabated. The youth of today had no respect for an artist. Myrtle sulked for a while, but it really was dull, sulking without an audience. Plus you couldn't hold a truly superior pout against the sound of someone humming "We Three Kings" in that characteristic "It's actually April but I learned all the words to this song when I was five because of the stone-cold tomb, isn't that exciting?" sort of way.

Finally Myrtle gave up and seeped out of her stall for a moment, just to have a look. She knew immediately this was a mistake. The room was wreathed in thick brown smoke, so that Myrtle could hardly tell where it left off and her own wispy form began. Kneeling in the center was a woman (clearly an adult, she had no right to be in the students' lavatory) whose frizzy brown hair appeared to have been cut with a dull pocket-knife in a cave at midnight. Her robe was tight in all the wrong places.

"Hello," said the woman. She had a distinct and twanging American accent. "Would you like some coffee?"

Myrtle drew herself up in full transparent splendor and said, with as much disdain as she could muster, "No. I am a ghost."

"But coffee is life's blood!" The woman grinned fiendishly. "I guess maybe you're beyond that. My name's Judy. What's yours?"

Myrtle whispered, "I'm Myrtle," then, putting all her energy into a blood-curdling shriek, "What on earth are YOUUUU doing in my bathroom?"

"Making coffee, of course. These English house-elf things you have look at you like an alien when you ask for anything but tea. Can you scream like that again? That was cool."

"Get out of my lavatory, unfeeling brute!" sobbed Myrtle, as loud as she possibly could.

"Dude. Want a cup of coffee?"

Myrtle saw that this person was nearly as stubborn as she was. Unfair, really. The least she could have done was yelp a bit. "I can't . . . I can't have coffee since I . . . perished."

"Well, I'll pour you a cup anyway. Life blood, you know. You're getting more solid already."

The woman was right. Pieces of Myrtle's robe were beginning to droop under the influence of gravity, and she could no longer see the wall through her hand. Myrtle didn't entirely care for the change; ghost-state was, if nothing else, slimming. "Why couldn't you cook in some other place?" she demanded. "And what are you doing at Hogwarts anyway? Shouldn't you be off chasing cowboys or something?"

"I don't know about the whole cowboy gun thing. I always wanted, like, a big sword. Or maybe I could be someone like in Six-String-Samurai, only I'd have to learn to play guitar and I never could sit through a piano lesson when I was a little kid."

The woman was mad. Or else using some sort of obscure American code. She did have rather an attractive nose, though. It turned up at the tip. If Myrtle were still in misty form, she thought, she would nip at the nose very quickly and then whisk upstairs to the prefects' lavatory. Unfortunately she felt far too solid to make a rapid escape.

The woman was still talking, oblivious to Myrtle's confusion. "The problem with piano lessons is that you always have to play these really perky girly tunes. About rowing boats. Do I like granola? Do I care about boats? Had I ever seen a boat? Was I a little hippie child running around in braids?"

No, Myrtle thought. Obviously this person had never braided her hair in her life. Very likely she hadn't even brushed it.

"You know, braids can actually look kinda hot," the woman continued. "But you have to be really pale and have them be thick, like rope and all that, or you can put them in a crown if you're a girl. Not Princess Leia, though, she looked kind of silly although I'm sure the heroin didn't help. Or was that later? Heroin does go well with the pale look. I bet you would be really stunning on heroin. Have you ever tried it? Did you do the whole ritual with the spoon?"

"What on earth are you talking about?" cried Myrtle.

"Well, you, of course. Your coffee's evaporating. Want some more?"

"No!" Myrtle screamed. "I do not want your coffee. I want to know what you are doing here!"

"Oh, I got hit by a bus."

"So?"

"So I bounced."

"You bounced?"

"Yeah, I bounced. Then a bunch of people showed up and said this was most inappropriate but I didn't seem to be a Muggle anymore and I would have to be educated. They were very serious. Kinda boring, even with the cool outfits. Then I decided to come here because I had, you know, guilt money and stuff. And this place looks like a movie."

So this was an insane ex-Muggle in need of remedial education. Myrtle sighed. Why couldn't she have ordinary impressionable women with nice noses in her bathroom?

"Wow, that's a really cool sigh. How do you get your breasts to heave like that? I never could."

"You stand in front of the mirror and practice." Myrtle had the sudden feeling that she had just revealed a trade secret.

The woman turned to the mirror and attempted to sigh. "Nope, doesn't work." She was right, actually. Her breasts only wobbled, where Myrtle's rose and fell dramatically. Well, maybe the trade secret was safe.

Myrtle felt a dark desire to make the woman's breasts wobble some more. Maybe if she screamed at just the right pitch?

"WHYYYYYYYYY?" shouted Myrtle.

"Because?" said the woman. Her breasts were frustratingly stable. "Here, I'll pour you another cup of coffee. You've soaked up most of the fumes now."

The woman was right yet again. Myrtle felt that her body was almost solid. So solid, in fact, that if she poked in just the right place, the woman's flesh might yield to the pressure, instead of Myrtle's ghostly hand passing through . . . It was a once-in-a-deathtime opportunity. Myrtle poked, and prepared to flee.

Something was very wrong. Not only was Myrtle incapable of rushing away like a whirlwind, which she had rather expected, but her feet felt as if they were bathed in glue. She seemed to be sinking into the floor.

This was clearly unacceptable. Myrtle opened her mouth, preparing for a proper hour-long bout of sobbing.

"Dude," said the woman. "Now you're stuck you're going to have to kiss me." She leaned close to Myrtle. Her teeth were slightly uneven. Myrtle wanted to lick them.

Myrtle had just time to sob, "You glued me to the floor, you arrogant illiterate--" before the kiss was upon her. It was warm, warmer than she'd felt in years, and almost as steamy as the prefects' bathroom.

Perhaps, thought Myrtle, I will take to haunting this person's classes. Without my robe.