Super Serial

Ziglar Ghostshade was well aware that if he hadn’t captured the most heinous serial killer of his time, he’d be rotting in prison.

“I know you’re in there, Mr. Cannoli!” shouted the debt collector, banging on Ziggy’s apartment door. “This is the third time I’ve been here. You owe my client over $30,000.”

Ziggy ignored him, waiting in silence. The collector's client was MediGen Labs, a sub-corp that added addictive substances to children’s medicine in order to boost their profits. As far as Ziggy was concerned, they could swallow their money and choke.

The collector pounded a few more times, but with diminishing interest. Ziggy waited for the sound of receding footsteps and the familiar whoosh of paper sliding underneath the door. It didn’t take long.

“More bills for Graham Cannoli?” Gio asked, slumped against the corner of the kitchen.

“He’s been racking up a few.” Ziggy stooped to pick up the bill. He tossed it unopened into his overflowing trash can. If history was any indication, he still had a few months left before MediGen cranked up the heat. When that happened, ‘Graham Cannoli’ and his medical debt would disappear forever, and Ziggy would start over in a new apartment with a new pseudonym.

“How many times are you planning to do this?” Gio leaned forward, wincing from the deep purple bruises on his ribs. “You won’t get away with it forever. Eventually, someone will outsmart you and you’ll have to go back to being Ziggy.”

“I can’t go back,” Ziggy said, moving to the chipped porcelain sink. He rustled up a mostly-clean bowl from the stack of dirty dishes. “We’ve been over this.”

“You have to,” Gio murmured, his dark eyes flashing. A thin rivulet of blood ran from his ear, dripping onto the sticky linoleum.

Ziggy’s stomach lurched. This isn’t real, he reminded himself, averting his gaze. He shuffled through his pantry until he found a few packets of instant oatmeal. He dumped the contents into his bowl, added some tap water, and watched the concoction bubble in the microwave. It looked like a pile of albino goat shit.

“Slop for the pig,” he muttered when it was done cooking. He threw in a handful of stale raisins and a chunk of rock-hard sugar before setting it down on the plastic tray that served as his dining room table. He sank into his threadbare camping chair and poked at the congealed lump, cringing at the squelching sound the spoon made as it dipped beneath the surface. If he didn’t force it down, he’d be hungry all morning, but nothing could make it anything other than what it was—gluten-free ass paste. 

He glanced at the bent metal cupboard where he stored his only remaining bottle of GlutoBlock.

“Don’t even think about it,” Gio said. More of his blood dripped onto the floor. 

“That shit is $5,784 a bottle.”

A thick knot formed in the pit of Ziggy’s stomach as he pushed himself to his feet, pressing his fist against the tightness in his chest. “Think about what?”

Gio growled low in his throat. “We’ve been together for twenty years. I know all your tricks. That money is almost a third of the travel expense to Ipanema Beach. You’re supposed to be saving. You promised.”

Ziggy pulled on his ratty wool coat and scuffed leather boots, trying not to look at the rosewood urn perched on the rusty end table or the poster of the famous beach he’d tacked to the wall above it. Dark memories edged against his decaying barrier of sanity. He grabbed the GlutoBlock from the cupboard and stuffed it into his pocket. He needed fresh air. 

“You’d better not be going to that bakery again,” Gio warned as Ziggy retrieved the bowl of oatmeal mush, tossing it back into the sink. “I mean it. You spent eighty-one dollars there last week.”

Ziggy clenched the edge of the countertop until his knuckles turned white. “You’re not real.” This time, he said it out loud. “This is all in my head. Red Judas killed you. You died three years ago.”