Is It Wrong To Pick Up A Ghost At My Ex-Girlfriend's House?
Flash took a deep breath, regretted it as he gagged on the smell, then rang the doorbell to Sunset’s apartment.
A minute later, Sunset opened the door. “Flash? What are you doing here? And why do you look like you’ve just been hit by a bus?” She stared down at him for a moment, then wrinkled her nose. “And reek of beans. Let me guess. Twilight?”
“Not exactly?” Flash let out a long sigh, and tried to ignore the pain from his swollen eyes. “It’s kind of a long story. I’ll tell you, but the short version is that I really need a place to stay for the night.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow, then nodded and stepped aside, holding the door open. “Sure. You can crash on my couch. Just use my shower first.” She paused, then glanced outside once more, eyes narrowed. “This is isn’t some weird setup for a scheme involving, I don’t know, beanis delivery dogs is it?”
Flash stared blankly. “What? No, I… why would you even ask that? Is that seriously something I should look out for?”
“Nevermind,” Sunset grumbled. “You’ve only been working at Beanis Inc. for a week now. And to the best of my knowledge, you haven’t even had sex with Rainbow Dash yet. Congratulations, you’re setting new records already.”
“You know, every time you talk I’m starting to have deeper and deeper regrets.”
“Welcome to my life.”
Flash followed her inside, and was hit by a wave of nostalgia. How many summer nights had he spent here, teaching Sunset how to play guitar, or watching terrible movies together? Life had seemed so much simpler than. Not much had changed. Same stains on the wallpaper. Same smell. There was a new TV, some extra lights around. A lot more pictures.
Several framed “Employee of the Month” certificates.
“I’ll find some spare clothes for you,” Sunset said. “I have a sneaking suspicion those ones will need to be burned. So, what happened?”
With a sigh, Flash tugged at his jacket. “Yeah, probably. Anyway, you know that can of bean defense spray? Or Self Defense Datanis or whatever it's actually called?”
Sunset winced. “Don’t tell me you—”
“I didn’t use it myself.” Flash shook his head. “But it turns out, if you leave a can of pressurized and apparently volatile bean fluids in direct sunlight for, oh, let's say an hour it reacts violently.”
“Great.” Flash could see the mental calculations already whirring through Sunset’s head. “Remind me to call some chemical disposal companies before HQ explodes.” Sunset paused, then a slightly manic look flashed in her eyes. “Or maybe I’ll just forget. You know.”
A shiver ran down Flash’s spine. Best to ignore that. “Funny thing you should mention disposal companies. As soon as I managed to stop screaming and crying I stumbled outside, and in like five minutes there were a bunch of guys in black vans and biohazard suits everywhere. I didn’t even call the police, since I left my phone inside. Which is incidentally, why I didn’t call ahead to warn you.”
Sunset looked over her shoulder and grit her teeth. “Yeah, turns out leaving your phone behind can often lead to all sorts of unexpected consequences!” She raised her voice oddly for the last two words, as if she wanted someone else to hear her.
Nobody responded.
“Right…” Flash took a few steps towards the bathroom. “I couldn’t actually get them to say who they worked for. It was weird. Anyway, I can’t get back into my house for a few days, or any of my things. So, thanks for letting me crash. I’m gonna go take that shower now.”
“Anytime.” Sunset took a deep breath, then sighed. “Sorry, I’m just a bit stressed. Job and all. I’ll order a pizza, we can kick back a few beers and relax. It’ll be just like the good old days.”
A faint flutter rippled through Flash’s heart, and he mentally stamped down on it. This wasn’t about getting back together with Sunset, or anything weird like that. They were just friends. Just nostalgia pangs, that's all.
The bathroom was just like he remembered too. Same big fluffy towels. Same bottles of mane and tail shampoo. At least that made a lot more sense now.
After fishing a disgusting snarl of yellow and red hair out of the drain, Flash stepped into the shower and let the ecstacy of hot water wash over him.
Five minutes later, he figured he should probably get around to actually washing, instead of just standing around and luxuriating. He squirted a big gob of horse shampoo into his hands, and—
“Hey, cutie.”
Flash blinked. Had he just hear something? He poured some water out of his ear, then strained to hear something over the roar of the shower.
There it was again. It sounded like someone giggling.
“Sunset?” he called out. “Is that you?”
The lights flickered, which wasn’t too odd. The wiring in this building was crap. But no other response came.
Flash let out a long sigh. Maybe he was just hearing some things. That self defense bean spray had some mild hallucinogenic properties to it. It seemed like it wore off quickly, but maybe some had kicked back in while washing it off.
Or hey, maybe the apartment was haunted. There always had been a few odd things happening here and there.
After a bit more indulgence, Flash turned off the water and stepped out. He grabbed a towel, patted himself down. He went to wipe off the mirror, then frowned.
👉 👌🙏
Some odd symbols had been wiped into the fog. Presumably something Sunset had sketched there previously. It didn’t make any sense to him, but maybe some sort of Equestrian saying to psyche herself up in the morning?
After a moment of consideration, Flash sketched his own symbol in the mirror next to it.
😁
A breeze rustled past him, probably from the vents. Though it almost sounded like someone whispering, “Score!”
Dressed in a spare pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that was a little too small, Flash made his way into the living room and flopped onto the couch. Still uncomfortable, but familiarly so. “I dig the new TV. Guess all that bean crap pays off every once in awhile.”
Sunset came out from her kitchenette, pizza and beer in hand. She passed a plate and a drink to Flash, then joined him on the couch. “Actually, I had that TV from before Beanis started. Christmas gift from Twilight, when we first became friends.”
Flash raised an eyebrow. “She got you a 72’’ 4k TV as a Christmas gift after knowing you for less than a year? That seems… well I mean it's cool, I guess. But I’d find it hard to accept, personally.”
“Yeah.” Sunset sighed and leaned backwards. “Twilight has some problems with conceptualizing the value of money. Or with a sense of scale, or proportion. Or any sense of boundaries or basic human decency.” She groaned, and rubbed at her forehead. “This is all crazy, right? You see it too, right?”
“No, I’m with you there, don’t worry. It’s all pretty crazy.” He reached for his beer, then frowned. “But you’re still here, doing it. And for whatever reason I’m getting on this train too.”
Sunset turned to him, an odd expression on her face. “Yeah, I guess I am.” She shook her head, than grabbed her beer and held it out. “To being a little bit crazy myself, I guess.”
“A little bit crazy.”
They clinked their cans, cracked them open, took a drink, and exhaled in unison.
“Nice,” Flash said, after a belch. “Though drinking beer on your couch doesn’t have quite the illicit thrill as it did when we were underage.”
“I’ll sacrifice the illicit thrill for not having to buy beer from dudes on the street corner like a freaking drug deal.” Sunset chuckled, then fished around in her couch for her remote. “Hey, come on. Let’s watch some terrible movies on Netflix and forget about beans for awhile.”
Flash grinned. “Sounds like a plan.”
It was the most fun Flash had had in ages.
They watched terrible movies, ate popcorn, yelled at the TV, told corny jokes, laughed. At some point Sunset busted out her guitar, and they had an impromptu jam session, singing songs from the bands they used to like in high school. The kind of songs he’d be embarrassed to bring up most of the time, but still knew all of the words to.
Eventually, as the night ran down and the beer ran dry, Sunset brought him some extra blankets and pillows, and retired up to her loft. A part of Flash wished she would invite him to join her, but it was a silly fantasy. She’d never once shared a bed with him, even when they were dating. It was all over, and they were coworkers now besides. Not like that fact seemed to stop anyone else working at Beanis Inc. from humping like rabbits, but Sunset was different. She’d always been different.
Dreaming a little couldn’t hurt, and thoughts of Sunset filled his mind as he drifted off to sleep.
The dreams that did come were fuzzy and indistinct, but at some point, they involved a beautiful girl with red and gold hair, coming to him in the night. Whispering in his ear, and looking at him with a smile that could melt steel. She crept down his body, tugging his sweat pants off and—
Flash’s eyes snapped open, and he gasped. The room was pitch back, and he lay there, hard as a rock. His pants were around his ankles for some reason. Had he been sleep masturbating? Was that even a thing?
Something cold and wet ran its way up his shaft, and Flash let out an involuntary groan.
“Sunset?” he asked, his voice loud in the stillness of night. “What are you—”
“Sssh!” A feminine voice replied in a harsh whisper, followed by a tittering giggle. Then soft lips wrapped around the head of his cock, and any objections fled from his mind.
Flash moaned, and reached down to curl his fingers in her hair. Only he missed and grabbed his thigh somehow. His hand felt cold. He frowned, then tried again, only to grab his other thigh. "Uh, Sunset? You down there—heyo!"
Something tickled him somewhere he'd never been tickled before.
His pancreas. Or at least some organ in the general vicinity. He hadn't paid much attention in anatomy class.
A slimey tingle slithered about inside of him, filling him with sensations no mortal was meant to experience.
It was actually kind of hot.
"H-holy fuck," Flash grunted. "Is this some kind of, nnn, horse magic thing?"
The only response was a lewd slurping sound, and continued organ fondling.
There was no way this was going to last.
“Fuuuck,” Flash moaned, his voice raising an octave. “I can’t last much… I’m gonna!”
The light flicked on.
Flash came with the most intense orgasm he’d had in his entire life.
“What the fuck!?” Sunset screamed.
Flash wasn’t sure how long he lay there in the afterglow, stars swimming through his vision. It felt like hours, but must have only been seconds. When he finally focused again, he could see Sunset staring down at him from her loft, her face a mask of rage.
Wait. “Sunset?” Flash asked, his voice somewhat slurred. “How did you get…”
Flash looked down.
A transparent young woman looked back up on him, a sheepish expression on her face that suggested having been caught in the cookie jar, while also looking triumphant.
Apparently the cookie jar in this metaphor was his dick.
“Hello!” the ghost said, and waved. Her hand passed through the couch as she did so.
“Gyaaagh!” Flash screamed, and scrambled backwards fast enough that he fell off the couch in a tangle of limbs, pants around his ankles and semen dripping from his eyelid.
“What the everloving shit, Somnambula!” Sunset growled. There was a tinge of real, deep anger in Sunset’s voice, that Flash hadn’t heard since the before times. “I could’ve gotten an exorcist to banish your ancient ass anytime but no, I let you stay out of the rapidly diminishing goodness in my heart! And you repay that by sexually assaulting my guests?”
The ghost—Somnambula’s eyes widened, and she looked between Sunset and Flash with confusion and horror. “I… sexual assault? No, of course not! I communicated my intentions to Flash earlier this evening, and he agreed enthusiastically!”
Sunset stopped dead in her tracks, and the full force of her gaze fell on to Flash. “Is this true?” she asked, her voice cold enough to shatter steel.
“I, uh…” Flash licked his lips, sweat dripping down the back of his neck, along with other awkward fluids. Hands sticky, he shuffled his pants back up, so he could at least pretend to be decent. “I think I may have missed a step in this conversation here.”
Somnambula turned to him, her lips pursed. “But I did! It's hard for me to communicate in the daytime, so I looked up modern hieroglyphics on the IN-TER-NET. Then I spelled them out for you on the mirror.” Somnambula held her hands in the air, and the same symbols appeared between them in ghostly light. “It spells out, ‘let’s fuck later.’ Then you wrote, ‘hell yeah baby gimme dat ass’.”
Flash stared at the completely serious expression on the face of his impromptu ghostly lover, and couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing, cradling his forehead in his hands. “Holy crap,” he wheezed. “I think there’s been some sort of… ridiculous misunderstanding. Guess you were right, Sunset, crazy shit does just kind of happen around here, huh? But you know what, it’s fine. Honestly, that was amazing. The weirdest thing ever but like… wow. No harm no foul. I kind of needed that really. Somnambula, right? Thanks.”
“Anytime!” Somnambula beamed. “Sorry if I was a little too forward. You’re really cute though, you know? Reminds me a bit of my late husband, Flash Magnus! You have his jawline.”
“That’s, uh.” Flash cleared his throat. Probably not something to think too hard about. “Anyway, all's well that ends well, right?”
Silence hung in the air, oppressive.
“Uh, Sunset?”
Flash looked up.
Sunset stood on the stairs, trembling, fists clenched. Tears brimmed in her eyes, and she looked like she had that day years ago, when Flash told her he was breaking up with her. “No, it’s not okay,” she hissed, starting down the stairs. “It’s not okay, Flash, for you to get a blowjob, from a fucking ghost, on my, fucking, couch!”
“Woah, woah.” Flash stood up, holding his hands up placatingly. The effect of the gesture was somewhat diminished by the drying cum on his cheek. “Look, it’s fine, really. Haha, crazy dumb shit happened. Sure was stupid. Oh hey, put some more money in the jar. Come on, this is all old hat for you.”
“There is a line. And this crosses it!” Sunset slammed her fist into the wall. It fit perfectly into a pre-existing dent that Flash had seen her make years prior. “This is my house. My sanctuary, my shelter where I’m supposed to be able to get away from it all. Somnambula on her own was at least manageable, but apparently when you throw my ex-boyfriend into the mix with an ancient Egyptian slut, you get a cross-afterlife fuckfest and ectoplasm all over my goddamned ceiling! You…” Sunset’s voice caught in her throat, and she shivered. “You were supposed to be normal. We were here, just being normal, human beings. And now…”
Somnambula shrugged and shook her head. “I really don’t see what the big deal is. I—”
“Shut it!” Sunset whirled on the ghost and advanced, finger pointing. “When I’m through with you, whatever hell you came from is going to pale in comparison.”
Something about the viciousness in Sunset’s voice made the hairs on the back of Flash’s neck bristle, and old instincts from countless old fights began to rise up in him. “That’s enough, Sunset,” he barked. “I know you’re upset, and I’m sorry, but we all need to take a deep breath and calm down here. Just because you’re jealous doesn’t give you the right to—”
“Jealous!?” Sunset shrieked with the tone of someone who was exactly that. “What, exactly, am I supposed to be jealous of here?” She gestured derisively towards Flash, then snorted. “I don’t even know why you’re bothering, Somnambula. He’s a terrible lay.”
Flash sputtered. “We never even made it past second base!”
Somnambula tilted her head. “What’s second base?”
“And funny thing about that,” Flash growled, stepping forward. “Whenever I mentioned taking things a little farther, you looked at me like… you look at the beanis. Fuck, is that really what you thought of me back then?”
“I…” Sunset bit her lip. She took a deep breath, then screamed. “Fine! Fuck it, I don't care anymore! Fuck all the ghosts you want, Flash, I’m out.” She turned, stomping towards the door and grabbing her jacket.
Flash blinked, following her progress. “Out? Hold on a second, this is your house, Sunset. Where are you going?”
Sunset laughed, manic desperation tinged in her voice. “I don’t give a shit anymore. Keep it, it's yours! Your house is all covered in bean juice anyway, so you probably need a new one. Have fun fucking your ghost-great-great-grandma! Enjoy the ghost herpes!”
Sunset slammed the door behind her. One of her Employee of the Month certificates fell off the wall and shattered.
Flash slumped down into the couch and buried his face in his hands.
“She’ll be fine.” Somnambula stretched, then floated in close, draping her arms around Flash’s shoulders. “So, you wanna keep going?”
Flash turned his head, and looked into the ethereal eyes of a beautiful young-old woman who was probably his distant ancestor.
And he discovered, to a sense of growing horror and self loathing:
That he really, really did.
Flash shambled into work on Monday morning, having bought a new uniform earlier. He hadn’t gotten much in the way of sleep, and had developed some rashes along parts of his body. Probably a delayed allergic reaction to the bean juice he’d come in contact with.
As he made his way through the hallowed halls of Beanis Inc, he heard voices coming from up ahead. One of them was Sunset’s, and he breathed a sigh of relief. At least she was okay.
“You don’t understand, Sunset! This could be really bad!” Twilight said, her voice carrying farther than she probably meant it to. “We don’t know who those people were, and they’ve probably got samples of my top secret formula! What if they reverse engineer it?”
Sunset sighed. “First off, that’s paranoid. Second, even if they did, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Luckily, it was an unstable formula—big surprise there—and we need to revise it. I guess.”
Flash rounded the corner, and found Sunset and Twilight talking in the main lobby.
Sunset turned, saw him, then stiffened. She looked like she’d slept in an office chair. “I, uh. Have some reports I need to go get done. I’ll follow up with you later.” Then she spun and power walked down the hallway, before anyone could object.
Well, he probably deserved that. Flash sighed, and continued shuffling forward.
“Oh, Clash! Just the man I was looking for!” Twilight said, her smile all neat and professional. “Can you stop by my office around noon? I want a full report of the incident with the self defense spray. Of both the men who came to your house, and the effects of it on you as well.”
“Uh right. Yes, Ma’am.” Flash stood up straight and saluted.
Twilight nodded, then left him there alone.
Flash leaned against the wall, idly scratching himself.
“Psst.”
“Huh?” Flash turned to see that Rainbow Dash had sidled up to him. “Uh, hey.”
Rainbow Dash grinned and raised her fist. “Nice.”
Flash blinked, but slowly raised a fist, and got a fist bump in return. “Uh, okay?”
“I knew you had it in you, man. I recognize that look! You totally got some, am I right?” She clapped him on the shoulder, hard.
It was difficult not to wince, but he managed. “Yeah, I guess. Kind of.”
“My man!” Rainbow Dash leaned a little closer, and threw an arm around his shoulder. “Listen,” she whispered. “I know how things can get a little, uh, itchy afterwards sometimes. But I’ve got your back, bro. Don’t sweat it.”
Without another word, she slipped something into his palm, then disengaged, whistling to herself as she strolled down the hallway.
Flash watched her go, then looked at what she’d given him.
A tube of Vagisil.