Smith's Monthly #23 Read online

  Eve was fairly certain her face was bright red.

  Jewel and Tommy were both laughing.

  “That’s the problem we called you here about,” Jewel finally said.

  “I can see no problem at all with climbing all over that hunk of a man,” K.J. said. He looked at Eve. “Is it dreamy to be riding with him in his masculine patrol car with all the leather seats and the wonderful tools of manhood?”

  She blushed again and laughed. “It is dreamy, yes.”

  “I knew it would be,” K.J. said, clapping his hands. “Just knew it. You are one lucky ghost, girl.”

  “I think so,” Eve said.

  “So,” Jewel said, between laughter. “How do they go about having sex?”

  K.J. looked at Jewel, then back to Eve with a sly grin on his face.

  “Oh, girl you are a fast mover, aren’t you?”

  TWENTY-TWO

  EVE FIGURED HER face was about as red as it was going to get, so she smiled at K.J. Then said, “Do you blame me?”

  “Oh, my, not at all,” K.J. said, fanning himself.

  Eve thought Tommy was going to fall out of his chair laughing.

  Jewel was trying to hold it together enough to actually get an answer out of K.J.

  Eve was really starting to like this crazy ghost of a boss.

  “So, what is needed,” Jewel asked, “for these two to have sex? Real sex.”

  “Passion,” K.J. said, “but with that hunk of a man, I doubt that is your problem, is it?”

  “It is not,” Eve said, smiling at him. “And it is not his problem toward me either. We both want this, but both of us are so new to our worlds, we have no idea how to go about that part of a relationship.”

  “Like two teenagers in the backseat of a car,” K.J. said. “The fumbling is half the fun I am told.”

  “All I remember is the fear and the worry and the sweating,” Jewel said.

  Again, Tommy just laughed and shook his head.

  Eve hadn’t had any experience in back seats of cars. And her first sexual experiences hadn’t been that rewarding, actually. And her sexual experiences with her loser of a husband hadn’t changed that. So with Cascade, she was hoping for a little more.

  Actually, a lot more.

  K.J. looked at her. “You ever read the fine short story ‘Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex’?”

  Eve shook her head. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  Again Tommy laughed and Jewel just looked at K.J. with a stern look.

  “No?” K.J. asked Eve. “For the better, since even though Cascade is a superhero and someone can put a hand through you like Kleenex, the situation in the story does not apply.”

  Tommy had to catch himself from laughing himself off his chair. If they hadn’t been ghosts, everyone in the place would have been staring at them.

  “K.J.,” Jewel said, pretending to put on a stern face. “This is a serious problem that these two young lovers are trying to solve.”

  K.J. was laughing with Tommy at his own joke, but finally nodded and took a moment to catch his breath.

  Eve was going to have to look up that story just to see why they were laughing.

  Finally K.J. looked at both Jewel and Tommy. “I will teach you all a very nifty trick that none of your team knows yet, but that might come in handy at times.”

  He glanced around, clearly to make sure none of the live customers were watching, even though none of the four of them could be seen. Then K.J. reached forward and picked up the Keno ticket holder in the center of the table.

  Not just the ghost element of the ticket holder, but the entire holder.

  Then he set it down on the table with an audible click, smiling.

  “Damn,” Tommy said. “How did you do that?”

  K.J. pointed to his head. “Just as we do all of our skills. I just imagined it.”

  “So we can cross over into the real world without controlling a person to do it for us?” Jewel asked, clearly as stunned as Eve was feeling.

  “Within limits,” K.J. said. “As far as I know, a normal human can’t see us no matter what we do. Something about light and things I didn’t understand.”

  “Cascade can see me fine thanks to Reanna,” Eve said.

  “Makes sense because he’s a superhero,” K.J. said, nodding.

  K.J. then stood and indicated all three of them should follow him over to a planter filled with artificial plants that divided the buffet from a small lobby at the top of an escalator.

  “Put your hand through the plants,” K.J. said to each of them.

  They all did.

  Eve had gotten used to walking through things and not feeling a thing. She actually kind of liked it.

  “Now,” K.J. said, “Imagine your hand is solid enough to move a plant leaf.”

  Eve used what Jewel and Tommy had taught her about imagining being in different places and just being there, and floating, and so on. All of her training had been on using her imagination. It seemed that ghosts felt like they were part of this world, but were not really, so then had what seemed like powers to jump anywhere they could imagine or float places, or make others do as a ghost wanted.

  Ghosts felt like they were tied to this world, but actually were not, thus their imagination had to break them free.

  Eve focused that same imagination energy on making her hand solid and touching the plant leaf.

  And suddenly she could feel the leaf. Not the ghost element of the leaf, that had a certain feel, but the actual artificial leaf.

  It moved under her touch.

  Jewel and Tommy had the same success.

  “Wonderful! K.J. said, clapping his hands like a teenager happy to see someone.

  He turned and went back to the table. As he did, Eve watched him study the room to make sure no one was looking, then he pulled out a chair that was tucked in too close to the table.

  Not the ghost part of the chair, but the actual chair.

  To any live person watching, either in the restaurant or on a camera, that chair must have looked like it had moved by itself.

  Jewel, Tommy, and Eve tried to move a chair, but even though they all could feel the chair’s surface, they couldn’t get enough grip or energy to move it.

  “This takes time and practice to learn,” K.J. said as they all sat back down.

  Then he turned to Eve. “But I have discovered over the years, after many pleasurable nights in my oversized hot tub with wonderful and very-much-alive superheroes who could see me, the practice is very much worth the effort.”

  Eve was again convinced she was blushing.

  “That’s how you and Madge from the diner did it,” Tommy said, smiling.

  Eve figured he was clearly talking about an event before she had died. She would ask later.

  “A fella doesn’t kiss and tell,” K.J. said, laughing.

  Jewel just laughed and shook her head.

  “If I can make my hand solid to touch something,” Eve asked, “can I make other parts of my body solid as well for Cascade’s touch?”

  K.J. smiled and fanned himself again with an imaginary fan. “With practice, Mr. Hunk Cascade can feel any part of you that you would want him to feel.”

  Eve was about to jump up and down for joy.

  She smiled at Jewel and Tommy. “Thank you both.”

  Then she stood and moved over and kissed K.J. solidly on the cheek.

  “And thank you,” Eve said to K.J. “And now I need to go do some practicing on Cascade’s wonderful and very masculine body.”

  “I think I might have the vapors just thinking of that,” K.J. said, again fanning himself.

  She laughed and jumped back to Cascade’s apartment.

  He was stretched out on the couch, sound asleep. She knelt by the couch and then gently touched his face.

  The light stubble on his cheeks felt wonderful against her hand.

  He stirred as she brushed his cheek again. He smiled and opened his eyes.

  �
�That felt wonderful,” he said, looking into her eyes.

  “It did,” she said.

  “How?” he asked.

  “I’ll explain it all later,” she said.

  Then she stood and stripped off her clothes as he watched intently. Quickly she was standing in front of him completely naked and enjoying his look.

  All he could do was stare.

  Finally he said, “You are so beautiful.”

  She imagined her hand firm and reached out for his hand.

  “Come on,” she said, actually feeling his hand solidly in hers as she pulled him to his feet. “We have some practicing to do.”

  “What kind of practicing?” he asked, smiling.

  “The best kind,” she said. “The very best.”

  And with that, Eve was convinced after just an hour of practice that they would live happily ever after together.

  Only one small problem.

  She was dead.

  But it seemed that was a problem they could now live with.

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  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA Today bestselling writer Dean Wesley Smith published far more than a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres.

  At the moment he produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the Old West, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and a superhero series starring Poker Boy.

  His monthly magazine, Smith’s Monthly, which consists of only his own fiction, premiered in October 2013 and offers readers more than 70,000 words per issue, including a new and original novel every month.

  During his career, Dean also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds. Writing with his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch under the name Kathryn Wesley, he wrote the novel for the NBC miniseries The Tenth Kingdom and other books for Hallmark Hall of Fame movies.

  He wrote novels under dozens of pen names in the worlds of comic books and movies, including novelizations of almost a dozen films, from The Final Fantasy to Steel to Rundown.

  Dean also worked as a fiction editor off and on, starting at Pulphouse Publishing, then at VB Tech Journal, then Pocket Books, and now at WMG Publishing, where he and Kristine Kathryn Rusch serve as series editors for the acclaimed Fiction River anthology series.

  For more information about Dean’s books and ongoing projects, please go to www.deanwesleysmith.com, www.smithsmonthly.com or www.fictionriver.com.

  Thank You!!

  I would like to thank the following wonderful people who support my blog and my work through Patreon. Your support is very important to me. Thanks!

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  Table of Contents

  Introduction

  Fighting the Fuzzy-Wuzzy

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  Husband Dummies

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  A Golden Dream

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  An Easy Shot

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Last Car for This Time

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  On Top of the Dead

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  The Yellow of the Flickering Past

  ACT ONE: A YELLOW OIL MESS

  ACT TWO: THE UNLAWFUL CHRISTMAS ARGUMENT

  ACT THREE: A YELLOW TINGE

  Heaven Painted as a Cop Car

  PART ONE

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  PART TWO

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  PART THREE

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  PART FOUR

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  Subscription Information

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Information