Page 67 of Unalive On Air

“What’s she doing?” I ask, sidling up between Trystan and Camille.

Camille answers. “Gathering her emotions.”

“She’s making herself annoyed enough to flick the light switches on,” Trystan says.

“Fuck them ALL!” Pixie suddenly yells, smashing her hand out in front of her and tripping the switch.

One by one, lights burst into action overhead.

Pleased with herself, Pixie strides over to the group. “They’re not all pointing in the right direction,” she says, looking up. “But it’ll do. So, Gary, as the band newbie, what instrument would you like to play?”

“Uh . . .” I glance around. Am I being pranked? I see no instruments, and even if I did, as ghosts we’d have no way to pick them up and play them.

“Unless you want to do vocals?” Pixie says.

I scrub my fingers through my moustache. “I don’t know if anyone else has noticed this, but we’re all dead. Pretty sure if we had the ability to play music, we lost that with our lives. Regardless, I can’t play any instruments, and I definitely, definitely can’t sing.”

“We don’t actually play real music,” Trystan says. “But I dunno, I think this is more fun.”

“Maybe we should show him rather than trying to explain it,” Jeanie says. She claps her hands together. “Right, places, everybody!”

Peter ushers me to the side of the stage. “Have you heard any of Pixie’s songs?”

“What was the name of her band?” I ask.

In the centre of the stage, the rest of the ghosts fan out.

“Sex Pigs from Hell. Stupidest name ever for a band, but—”

“Oh my god!” I know that band. Fifteen-year-old me loved that band. Their music was the perfect backdrop for my adolescent outrage. The exact blend of feminist, anti‑establishment, anti-individualism commentary mixed with all the whiny “no one understands me” lamentation of an emo teen struggling in an adult world. “I loved Sex Pigs from Hell.”

“God, not you too,” Peter says, taking a wide sidestep away from me.

Pixie smiles. “Song request?”

Embarrassingly, I can only remember the name of their most famous tune. “‘Incarnadine.’”

“Obviously,” Stove says gatekeeperishly.

But Pixie doesn’t seem to mind. “Yes, dude!”

I make a mental note to borrow Josh’s phone one day. If it connects to the internet as he said it does, I can probably google the rest of Pixie’s back catalogue to remind myself of the songs and lyrics. A thought occurs to me. I scribble it down on my paper, which is blank again, and shove it into my pocket . . .

Can I solve these murders with online searches???

I turn my attention to the ghosts.

Stove hands Pixie his mic.

She brings the wind muff up to her mouth and speaks. Though she’s shouting, so her voice is louder, it’s not amplified by technology. “Thank you all for coming!” she says to presumably just Peter and me.

Peter walks down the steps and takes a seat in the front row of the stalls. It’s impressive, largely because he’s sitting and I’m not sure I’ll ever learn how to do that again, but also because the fold-down seat isn’t even folded down. Essentially Peter’s sitting on air.

I follow him but stand in the central aisle.

“Give it up for your band,” Pixie says. She turns around. “Tonight we have Stove MacLeod on drums.”

Stove holds pretend drumsticks above his head and I clap.