Climbing into the back of the hearse, Muse sat down on the long black leather bench on one side. She had no idea where they were going, or why. She was slowly getting used to Isaac keeping things like that to himself. Victor flopped down next to her in the seat and turned sidewards, stretching out with a pleased groan and plopping his legs across her lap. He folded his arms behind his head and rest backwards against the back door of the hearse. Muse looked at Victor with a raised eyebrow and only got a flashy grin in return.

“Well look at you two - getting’ all cute ’n shit,” Mal snorted. “Like two cute ‘lil undead cuddle bugs.”

“Oh, can it Mal. You know he’s just being an ass,” Muse replied.

“I have long legs, and I need somewhere to put ‘em. Besides. It’s like a five freakin’ hour drive to this damn job.” He shuffled, settling further into the seat. “Hey Boss - are we getting a hotel up there or are we driving back tonight?”

“Depends fully upon how long it takes to complete the task at hand. We will probably be driving back,” Isaac said without turning his head from the passenger seat to look at the vampire. He had his head down and seemed far more interested in the book in his hands than any sort of conversation.

Victor groaned. “Fine… But you know how I hate sleeping in that damn body bag in the hearse - I always wake up all stiff and with weird bruises on me.”

“Can’t imagine where those come from,” Eric said with an evil grin. Victor opened his eyes, looked at his brother and reaching over the gap between the seats, punched him hard in the thigh.

“Ow! Damn it, man!” Eric punched back.

Victor blocked the punch. “Oh, sorry toaster-boy, what’d I do, dent your hard drive?”

Eric’s second attempt at a punch landed, and it quickly escalated into a full-blown wrestling match. Muse yelped and ducked, moving across the aisle and sitting next to Mal to get away from them.

“I’m sitting over here, now,” Muse said through a laugh and watched the two blondes thump around in the back of the van, punching and kicking at each other - Victor now had Eric in a headlock and appeared to be dead set on noogie-ing his brother into submission. Muse had to admit, it was fun watching the boys go at it - it made her wish she had siblings growing up. Yes, they were fighting, but they both had grins on their faces.

“Pro’bly a good bet, there, Blue.” Mal chuckled deeply and watched the two boys fight and shook his head - tsking in the back of his throat and looking down at the ghost next to him. “They’re nothin’ but amateurs.” The big man ruffled her hair. “Me? I’m a pro.”

“A pro at what, breaking things?”

“You got that right, honey.”

The hearse pulled over on the side of the street, the tires crunching in the gravel as it slowed to a stop. Everything was darkness to the normal eye. They were apparently in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night. As Muse got out, she noticed that Isaac was the only other one who exited the car.

“What’s going on? You ditching me on the side of the road like a puppy?”

Isaac was seemingly building up a tolerance to her constant sarcasm. Damn. “No. But you are staying here. You have a separate objective while we attend to another job.”

“Right.” She had drawn the short straw without knowing it. “So what’m I doing?”

“About a quarter mile up this highway is a dirt road that forks off into the right into the woods. At the end of it is a house. You are to haunt the man who lives there.”

“Haunt. Are you kidding me? You want me to haunt someone?”

“You are a ghost, that is what you do, is it not?” Isaac said with a tone that Muse suspected was his attempt at being funny.

“Aha. Ha. Ha. And what keeps me from just tearing ass out of here?”

Isaac responded by tapping a spot on his chest, a clear reminder of the necklace he wore.

She put her palm over her eyes, coming to the sad realization that it was pointless. She was going to have to do this one way or another. She threw her hands up in the air. “Fine. Who am I haunting?”

“His name is Aaron.”

“Right… Haunt a guy named Aaron. Do you have anything… specific? I’ve never haunted someone before.”

“You are to make him believe that there is something out to get him - something unnatural. That his life is in danger.” Isaac began picking at his cufflinks, straightening them. He had a way of speaking to her like she wasn’t actually there like he had already progressed from their conversation to the next thing on his to-do list. As far as she knew, he probably had.

“Right. Got it. House. Aaron. Haunt. Spooky-danger.”

“Good. Have fun,” Isaac said with what could have been mistaken for mirth in his voice. He climbed back into the hearse. Muse was left standing there watching the tail-lights of the vehicle as it drove off. Without the headlights of the car, darkness soon enveloped her.

Great. I really do feel like a puppy. She vanished and floated down the road, covering a good deal of distance. That was one of the few benefits of being dead. When you had no body to tote around, it was easy to move quickly. She had figured this out a few years into her being a ghost when she was trying to catch up to a car. At first, it was a little alarming, but she had slowly adjusted to it. Now, it seemed second nature. Darting along the side of the highway, she moved over rocks and around trees and eventually found the dirt road.

Well, she assumed it was what she was looking for.

The if-you-could-call-it-that road was comprised only of two muddy tire ruts that wound through the woods and out of sight. What the hell, might as well check… Turning, she headed into the woods with the tire ruts as a guide, moving deeper into the blackness of the night. There was no moon, and the light of the stars did little to help her see. But that didn’t bother her any.

The glow was good enough.

Everything living, human or otherwise, gave off a glow. Trees gave off different colors depending on the season or if the tree was about to die or not. Or at least, that was her best guess. It was very early spring, and the trees were not quite yet ‘awake,’ so the glow was more of a muted greenish-grey color. It was that same glow that served as the light she needed.

The road rather abruptly dumped her into a clearing. There was a battered, beaten-up old Jeep in front of her. Mud clung to the tire treads, but the mud had clearly dried long ago - it hadn’t been moved in a while. Across the uncut grass in front of her was a large two-story house, looking unkempt, but not what she would call derelict. The paint was chipping, but nothing seemed broken. The only noise she could hear were the crickets in the grass around her.

All but one set of windows were black, the last flickering with the dim familiar bluish dance of a TV set. Floating through the door, Muse was expecting trash, beer cans, flies. She expected the redneckish exterior to match the interior.

To her surprise, the room had barely anything in it. A large sofa was the only piece of furniture, the springs long since battered past their straining point. The floor was hardwood, parts of the lacquer worn away in paths from walking. A sofa and a TV. That was it. Literally. Freaking weird.

She would have jumped if it weren’t for her decided lack of a body, as the man she presumed to be Aaron walked into the room. He was huge, not the size of Mal, but close. He was just under seven feet, muscular, and broad at the shoulders. She looked at him in shock. He was shirtless, in just a pair of long grey sweatpants. That wasn’t why she was agog.

His body was almost completely covered in scars. All the way across his stomach, up to his neck and down his left arm. The thin lines of cuts crisscrossed over his body, and up onto his face. His left eye was completely white, and one particularly large scar went down through his eyebrow and across his eyelid and down his cheek at an angle. His hair was chestnut brown and fell around his face in curls and waves. It looked like it hadn’t been cut in ages, and whoever had cut it last hadn’t done a terribly even job.

Muse could only watch, still shocked, as the man crossed the floor with a beer in his hand, flopped onto the sofa, and resumed watching the TV.

Em. Christ, Muse thought to herself as she took in the sight. What the hell happened to you?

She watched the man for a while, trying to think of some explanation for the strange scars that he had. That brought her around to wondering why Isaac wanted him tormented. That, unfortunately, brought her back to the reason she was here. She was supposed to haunt him. Looking around the room, she tried to think of something to do. Think, Muse, think. You’re a ghost. This is what you do, isn’t it? Oh!

The TV would work. Drifting over it, she reached into its circuits. Her inherent ‘charge’ started to mess with the screen, causing the image to flicker and start to change colors abruptly. It buzzed, sending a strange sensation through her, but she dealt with it.

The man on the sofa snarled and stood up and walked up to the TV. Muse had to move quickly to get out of the way as he thwacked on the side of it with a massive hand. Grunting, he walked back to the sofa and sat back down.

She decided to give that a rest for now. She wasn’t exactly excited about tormenting the man, but she had to. She really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of Isaac’s wrath. She felt guilt pluck at her as she meandered out of the room. It’s not like the guy clearly hadn’t put up with enough crap in his life. That is if he didn’t give those scars to himself. If he did that to himself - what the hell are you supposed to do to scare him? It was true, she didn’t know that he was actually a victim. Maybe he was a bad guy. Good, make excuses. That’ll help, she remarked to herself as she floated around the house looking for inspiration.

All of the rooms were completely empty and barren. No furniture, no pictures, nothing. Only four rooms had anything in them, and even then she’d hardly call them ‘furnished.’ The living room, the bathroom which had scattered necessities, the kitchen with the same bare-minimum items, and what she presumed was his bedroom from the mattress laying on the ground, a single sheet and single pillow laying on it. A few piles of clothes were strewn around the room.

Who is this guy? Muse stopped as she picked up a little brown book - a journal it seemed. She was about to open it when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs. Shit! Muse quickly dropped the book and floated over to a corner. Yes, he couldn’t see her, but it wouldn’t be fun for either of them if he stepped through her.

Aaron walked into the room and tiredly ran a hand through his hair. She watched as he went over to his mattress, the journal having caught his attention. Swiveling his head, he looked around the room for a moment. She froze as he looked right at her, and didn’t know why. It was silly, but she didn’t know who she was dealing with, after all. Whoever he was, he apparently couldn’t see ghosts. Apparently giving up, he flopped down on the bed. She waited a good long while until his breathing started a slow rhythm before she went to work.

Aaron woke up with a snort as he heard a strange noise. Opening his eyes, he shook his head to try and clear the daze. It took him a long time before he realized it was the sound of his TV set downstairs blaring static. He wasn’t alone. Shooting up to his feet, he tore downstairs. He would find who had broken in and teach them a rather valuable lesson.

Skidding into his living room, he stopped and swiveled his head around. There didn’t seem to be anyone. “Hello?” he asked the room and got no reply. But the TV was on, and he certainly didn’t leave it that way. Walking up to it, he flipped it off and let out a low sigh. Well, better safe than sorry. Turning, he went through the house checking all the locks on the doors and made sure that every window was shut.

It must have been a fluke. Or maybe he was wrong and he had left the TV on. The more he thought about it, the less he actually remembered what he had done. He was so sure when he first thought about it, but now he was very much less so. Funny how that happens. He shrugged it off and trudged up the stairs back to his room. Exhaustion tugged at him as he flopped back down on the mattress. Just as sleep was about to come back to him, his eyes shot open.

The TV was buzzing.

He got up and very nearly flew downstairs, his nerves on edge. He was ready to pound whoever was there into the floor. But once again, there wasn’t anyone - just him and the offending piece of electronics, the latter letting out a sputtering stream of static and white noise. Walking over to it, he didn’t bother to turn it off. He yanked the cord straight out of the wall.

Another circuit inspection of the house, and with nothing to show for it, he went back upstairs. He laid down on his stomach and punched the pillow a few times to get it into the correct shape. His eyes didn’t stay shut for long this time.

The TV was buzzing.

Impossible. That was impossible. That couldn’t be. Sitting up in disbelief, he stormed downstairs and, sure enough, found the goddamn thing on. He walked over to it and switched it off. Maybe he had just dreamt unplugging it. That was possible, he very often had vivid dreams. He swiveled the TV on its stand and reached behind it - and his hand came away with the plug. It hadn’t been plugged in.

He shook his head and felt his breath quicken. He ran a hand through his long hair and pulled on it. Letting out a low groan, he felt fear start to pluck at him. Dropping the cord, he began to back away and up the stairs.

Not again. Not this. Not now.

There was nothing else he could do right now. Maybe this was all just a figment of his exhausted mind. This time he shut his bedroom door and locked it, just to be safe. For the fourth time, he went back to bed. For the fourth time, he started to fall asleep.

For the fourth time, he was losing his mind.

‘You’ll be saying wow every time you use this towel! It’s like a chamois! It’s like a towel! It’s like a sponge!’ roared the TV. He shot up to his feet and screamed, staring down at the flickering box that was now sitting in the middle of his floor, completely unattached to anything. The door was still shut and locked. How?!

“No, no, no…” he moaned. He opened the window, and tentatively walked over to the machine, wondering if the freak of a man on the screen that was avidly trying to sell him something was going to leap out of the screen at him. Picking up the TV with one hand, he walked over to the open window and lobbed it outside. It landed on the ground with a loud crash as the glass shattered.

He couldn’t keep himself from shaking. He walked over to a corner of his room and pressed his back against the wall. Sliding to the ground, he sat there, his knees bent. Sleep wouldn’t come back to him tonight, he knew. So he did the best he could.

He waited.

The days went rather uneventfully as they could when one spends one’s time haunting someone. She continued tormenting the poor man - sometimes rearranging items in his house, sometimes doing more malicious things like writing messages on the bathroom mirror in the steam from the shower. She began to take pride in some of - in her opinion - her finer moments of inspiration. Like when she managed to pick him and his entire mattress up one night and drag him, without waking him, through the woods and leave him on the shore of a lake a mile and a half away. She was never quite sure how strong she was - she just always seemed to be as strong as she needed herself to be.

Muse floated around Aaron’s house one morning, thinking of a new way to harass the man. She tried to convince herself that it was harmless pranking, or some kind of game. Yes, he scared easy, but she wasn’t hurting him. Right? It saved her from being around Isaac and getting into who-knows-what kind of trouble.

She floated from room to room idly as Aaron sat, eyes locked on the wall across from him, exactly where she left him the night before. If he wasn’t breathing, she would have been sure that he was dead. She stayed there and watched him for a moment, and frowned inwardly. Dude, I’m sorry. I really am. Muse floated through the kitchen. If the scarred monster of a man that she was tormenting was the psychopath she had guessed him to be, she doubted he’d be sitting in a corner having a panic attack. And how long am I supposed to keep up on this? Isaac just said ‘haunt him.’ When should I go back? If I’m going back…

She started throwing things around in the kitchen, knocking over pots and pans, taking the kitchen knives and flicking them at the wall hard enough that they stuck three or four inches into the drywall. She heard footsteps tentatively walking across the floor upstairs. Ooh, that got him moving. She continued the racket until she heard him start to round the corner. She held a pan in mid-air and waited just until he appeared in the kitchen and then dropped it.

Aaron watched the pan clatter to the floor. He gripped the doorframe so hard that his knuckles turned white.

“No,” he moaned. “No… Lies!” Aaron staggered back away from the kitchen, nearly tripping on himself. Muse heard him fly up the stairs and heard his bedroom door slam shut. That left her standing there, wondering what that was all about.

Lies? What lies?

Muse woke up the next morning and found Aaron not where she had left him. She poked her head outside and saw that the beat-up old Jeep was gone. She floated inside and went about re-arranging all of the clothing piles in his room into no real particular order and then flipped his mattress up against the wall. Waiting downstairs in the living room where she saw a new TV sitting on the stand. She had to laugh. Men and their priorities.

Muse screamed audibly as the phone rang. Laughing at her own jumpiness, especially when she was the one doing all the haunting, she took form and walked to the kitchen. It felt good to actually walk for once. Muse stood and watched the phone as it rang for a while, then stopped… then began to ring again. Shrugging, figuring ‘What the hell.’ Muse picked up the receiver.

“Hello - Muse’s farm slaughtering services - you pick ‘em we stick ‘em. How can we help you?” she drawled cheerily in her best fake southern accent, tapping into all those years of working retail.

“Inventive,” Isaac’s voice came from the other end.

“I try. How’d you know I was going to pick up?”

Isaac ignored her question. He was in a mood. “You are not progressing in your job as fast as I’d hoped. I’m beginning wonder if you’re doing anything at all, or if you’re even trying.” Muse was wondering what the hell she did wrong.

“Look, dude - I’m doing the best I can! Short of having demons crawl out of his wall and attempt to eat his face off I don’-”

“Precisely.”

“What?!”

“Aaron is stubborn, and correctly convinced of his own insanity. Go as far as you can. If you do not succeed by tonight, I will have to… reexamine your methods… personally,” Isaac replied, haughty and detached. Muse narrowed her eyes and gripped the phone harder, nearly cracking the white plastic in her hand. What the hell had gotten into him?!

“Isaac I-” she snarled as she listened to a dial tone. Growling she slammed the receiver down on the hook and floated upstairs. She floated and began - as usual - to sulk about Isaac’s mistreatment of her.

Why the hell does he treat me like this?! I swear to the Gods that someday I’ll have that stupid necklace and I’m going to tear him apart piece by ever-loving piece!

It wasn’t until well after dark that Aaron returned. He went to the kitchen to put the food away in the kitchen and wandered upstairs. Seeing the disarray of his room, he shut his eyes. He let out a long trembling breath before walking in, placing the mattress back on the floor, picking his pillow off of the ground and curling up on the thin slab of fabric and springs.

Isaac wants a demon? Fine!

He liked books. He liked books because they brought him to other places, other times. He could lose track of hours, sitting here reading. This one was one of his favorites. He had a pension for anything with dragons, wizards, and elves. He had read this one many, many times over. Parts of it seemed to mirror his own life, others he wished would mirror his own life.

Aaron sat in his bedroom on the second floor, resting against the wall. He turned a page and was about to pick up a new chapter as he stopped abruptly, gripping the book in both hands. He felt his blood run cold as something began to pound viciously on the other side of his bedroom wall. He stood up and whirled around, unable to do anything but stare.

He shrunk away from the wall as the pounding got louder, dust from the cracking drywall raining to the ground. Larger cracks started to form, and still, Aaron found that he could do nothing but watch in shock. It wasn’t until a huge section of the wall snapped free and skittered across the floor that he found the will to move.

He ran. He heard as the noise somehow followed him, now pounding on the underside of the floor. Wood splintered and cracked behind him as he ran as fast as he could.

All he knew was a huge something in the floor was coming straight at him, splinters flying in all directions. Aaron turned, trying to see what it was that was following him. He should have looked where he was going, he realized, as his momentum carried him into the railing on the ledge that overlooked the second floor. It wasn’t hard for his momentum to carry him through the ill-cared for railing.

“No!” he heard someone yell, although it barely registered.

The old wood gave way suddenly under his weight, cracking and splintering as he began to fall. Time hung for a moment as he crashed to the ground below, then seemed to speed up as pain shot through his body. It hurt worse than it should have, worse than just the impact of the ground. Something was very wrong. Looking down at himself, he felt a rush of nausea as he saw a large splintered piece of wood, stained dark red with blood, that stuck through his lower midsection.

“Yes! Hello, 911?” he heard from another room. That was weird. He must be watching some silly ER show. Too much beer, maybe rum, left the TV on. Silly. There was no one in his house, certainly not a girl. The voice came again. “I’m… I’m in this house and this guy… he fell from the second floor, he has a piece of wood through him. He’s bleeding… he’s bleeding really bad. No, I don’t know the address - it’s this dirt road off of route six. Please, send an ambulance!”

Aaron knew he was about to die. Touching the wound, he lifted his hand to see it coated in thick red blood. It hurt, but he was ready to die. He had been ready to die for a long time. Shutting his eyes, he waited for it to come. Suddenly he felt a small pair of hands gently touch his arm. He opened his eyes weakly and looked up at a pretty girl with blue hair and a good deal of eyeliner. He suspected that the grim reaper probably didn’t look like a goth punk. Then again…

“Wh…”

“Aaron! Hi! Stay with me. Please. Hi. I’m a friend. I swear I am. You’re going to be okay, the ambulance is on its way.” The girl was obviously terrified. He watched as she tried to give him her best smile.

“Who the hell… are you?” Aaron croaked out. He struggled to focus his one good eye on the girl.

“I, uh, my name’s Muse… a pleasure to meet you, just… really bad circumstances.”

Aaron groaned quietly in pain, feeling the muscles in his leg spasm. He had no idea why this girl was here, and he felt kind of bad for her. She would have to watch him as he bled his life out.

“Why do you care?” he asked her quietly.

“I’m not going to let you die.”

“You should.”

“That’s a horrible way to think.” Muse looked down at him with fear, panic, and sadness in her eyes. Muse was an odd name. Oh, well. He wasn’t going to care for much longer anyway. “Death doesn’t solve anybody’s problems. It really doesn’t. Trust me, I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Just - Just trust me. Hey, what’s your favorite kind of ice cream?”

“What?”

“Seriously, what’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” she asked with a lopsided smile.

“Rocky road?” he replied incredulously after a long confused pause. He was glad at least that if he had to die, he was hallucinating someone nice. Weird, but nice. With a sudden lance of pain, he pulled in a hiss through his teeth.

“Cool. We’re going to play a game. It’s a really fun game, I promise.”

Aaron blinked away the pain to stare at her like she was nuts. “What…”

“It’s called ‘let’s not die right now.’ It’s great. Do you know how to play?” Muse piped, nervousness making her voice crack. “It’s really easy. It only has one rule. You don’t die. That’s it. The prize is a big bowl of rocky road ice cream.”

“You’re… trying to convince me to fight… for my life… with ice cream?”

“Look I’m really new at this whole ‘let’s save lives’ thing. Gimmie a break,” she almost pouted.

Aaron began to laugh quietly but stopped as it sent a sharp spike of pain up his spine. That spike of pain made the whole world start to go blurry around the edges. It was just easier to shut his eyes, as the world was getting too dizzying to watch.

“No. Don’t do this. Stay with me.”

Aaron sighed quietly. “At least you’re really pretty…”

Muse laughed and bit back tears as she clutched his hand. “See? That’s funny! Life is funny. Don’t- Aaron!”