Page 86 of Unalive On Air

“I need to find a way to watch Angel. I know his funeral home is outside most people’s boundaries, but I’d like to try.” The worst thing that can happen is I end up evanescing into Jeanie’s room, but since I want to chat with her alone anyway, I’m willing to take that risk.

“I’ll take you to see him,” Jeanie says, with the confidence of someone who knows my boundary lines won’t extend that far. “But only if he stays here.” She looks at Peter. Everyone else looks at Peter. Peter pretends to be offended, but I know he relishes being excluded.

“We can come, though, yeah?” Josh says, in his whiny teenager voice.

Jeanie thinks about it for a second. “Fine. Whatever. But we’re going right away.”

Josh is the first of the seven ghosts to evanesce. Which is strange to say the least, because even though he’s technically the youngest, he’s not the newest. That would be me, followed by Camille.

“Alright! I made it about six metres farther than last time,” he says, moments before his body dissolves. It’s like candy floss in the rain, or an effervescent pill in water, or my ability to think straight when Trystan is near me.

“I was curious what that looked like.” I stare at the spot where Josh stood only five seconds ago. The imprint of his long limbs and lanky hair is silhouetted against my retinas.

We push on. There are about four fields between the hotel and the town, and I could pop off at any moment.

Camille is the next to vanish with a double‑devil‑horns gesture, then Pixie—“Catch you on the flip side”—proving to me there’s no pattern or reason to the boundary lines.

As we float through field after field, I’m aware I could disappear soon. I’ve been dead for two weeks. In theory, my boundary shouldn’t be this wide.

“What does it feel like? When you evanesce?” I ask no one in particular, yet I’m secretly praying Trystan answers.

He does. “It’s . . .” He gives a sideways glance to Stove, and a smirk follows. “It feels kinda nice. Like . . .” He draws up closer, leans his head down until he’s at my height. “Feels a bit like coming.”

My body’s still moving forward, but my thoughts have frozen.

“Only not as intense as that. More like . . .” Trystan does a half-snort kind of laugh. “Have you ever been in a situation where . . .” But he bites his lip and doesn’t finish the sentence.

“It feels like,” Stove interrupts loudly. “When someone’s giving you a BJ, but they pull off your cock just as you’re about to come, but you still come anyway, only it’s not as good as it would’ve been if they kept sucking for a few more seconds.”

Trystan raises his hand and inhales deeply, readying himself to argue, but evidently changes his mind. “Actually, yeah. It’s a lot like that.”

I force a word out so that neither of them think I’m weird. “Okay.” But it’s nothing more than a breath.

Daydreaming of Trystan in those scenarios whilst alone in a secure space with my dick in my hand is one thing. Daydreaming of them in broad daylight as Trystan walks beside me and the most antagonistic guy I’ve ever met is completely another. I can’t risk arriving at a funeral home with a raging boner.

Luckily, Jeanie comes to my rescue. “Boys, always so bloody lewd with you.” She turns to me. “Gary, it’s like a sneeze. A gentle whole-body sneeze.”

Jeanie doesn’t see the silent laughter Trystan and Stove hide behind her back. Stove has ghost tears running down his face, and the freckles on Trystan’s cheeks have blended into the newly formed blush.

I’m desperately trying not to imagine what Trystan’s orgasm expression looks like, and though these overalls probably do a great job of hiding the evidence, I’m too frightened to look down in case I draw attention to myself.

“One time,” I say—sort of shout, actually. “I sneezed so hard I threw my back out for a week.”

Trystan and Stove both burst out laughing. Even Jeanie looks over her shoulder and offers a half‑bemused tongue click.

“Real sneeze or uhhh sneeze?” Stove asks, making a sex noise.

“Real sneeze, sadly. I was on the sofa the whole time. Couldn’t get up. Couldn’t do anything.”

“Once, whilst surfing in Indonesia, I broke a rib,” Trystan adds. “Yeeww, it was so painful. I almost lost the championship that day. That’s how bad it was.”

But Stove’s no longer the only one laughing.

“There was a world of difference between living you and living me,” I say.

A second later, Stove evanesces. “Bye, losers,” he says, and now it’s just Jeanie, Trystan, and me.

I expect at any moment I’ll disappear into nothingness, or Trystan will, but against it all we keep going. We pass a small, old-fashioned shepherd’s hut nestled into the gorse. We pass through a directional crossroads sign on a footpath and narrowly miss a group of ramblers, and we walk by a cluster of cows. The bovines lift their heads and follow our trajectory as we go.