“Dead men tell the best tales”

Liam sat at his desk and read over the writing prompt several times. Nothing at all came to mind.

“Shit.” he said to no one in particular.

Usually he was oozing with creative ideas, mostly terrible ones but that’s besides the point.

Writer's block was a totally new experience for him.

He started to free write, letting the words tumble from his fingertips in a cascade of gibberish that would have made sense to a blind madman.

“The light of the eve of the shipwright famously had another but the way that he said it was like a thing that could happen even if you tried to prepare and then wasn’t ready its ok just seance with the dead Liam.”

He stopped typing, reading and re-reading the mostly nonsense. Had he meant to type that last bit?

He started again and found his fingers moving against his will.

“Hi Liam, my name is Gestalt. I am a 16th Century poet and wish to share a tale with you so that you might win your stupid little competition.”

Liam was dumbfounded, somehow. Some way, his keyboard was channeling a dead man's spirit. Whatever. If it won him the competition who cared! This wasn’t cheating right?

“Gestalt, please share your most harrowing tale with me.” He wrote on the mostly empty google doc.

Again the spirit took control of his hands and started typing at a furious pace.

“I once possessed you and murdered an entire family. It was quite fun, but I feel bad that the detectives are coming to arrest you today. That’s why I’m going to help you to win this writing contest.” Gestalt typed.

Was… was he getting heckled by a ghost? He wasn’t sure what the spirit wanted but he could feel it was benevolent.

“You didn’t murder anyone, I would have seen it on the news.” he typed.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

“You can’t really be sure though?” Gestalt typed.

“Come on man. I know you didn’t murder anyone, I can feel your presence… and you feel like a pussy.” Liam typed.

He frowned at the sentence, hoping he wasn’t pushing the ghost too far.

“Ha! I’ll show you how much of a kitty this ghost is boy. You’re coming with ME.” as the last word was typed Liam felt a strange pulling sensation, as if someone were trying to pull his brain out of his body through his nose.

He sneezed and the world went dark only for him to wake up as a ghost in what looked like renaissance era France. He was on a cobbled street and people walked around him paying him no heed. He tried to speak to a few people but it seemed that they couldn’t see or hear him.

That was until a large fellow wearing a tophat walked by, he was wearing a monocle and had a thick black bushy moustache. He looked directly at Liam and winked, then gestured for him to follow.

Guessing that this was Gestalt, Liam followed the ghost through its own memory of France. He took in the sights and sounds, marvelling at how real everything felt. He could smell the freshly baked bread, fighting a losing battle against the latrines in the streets as people both took their morning shit and breakfast within metres of each other.

He saw Gestalt come to a halt as he faced down a wagon, and drew a sword. Gestalt had been dressed like a gentleman and his long coat had covered the sword from view until now. Three men exited the wagon immediately and all drew swords themselves.

“Matthieu, où est mon argent.” Gestalt spat at one of the men.

In return they rushed him with their sabres. Gestalt answered with a deflection and a beautiful pirouette, neatly slashing the shoulder of the first assailant causing him to drop his sword as he cried out in pain.

The other two were more intelligent and circled around to attack him from opposite sides. Gestalt parried a couple of their blows and backed up to a wall so that he only had to fight on one front.

Although Gestalt was smoother and obviously the better athlete out of the men he was quickly overpowered by the pair and one of the men ran his sword down the length of Gestalts, flicking in a neat circle at the end of the stroke to disarm the frenchman who raised his hands in surrender.

While the two lackeys accepted the parlay the boss who had been cut on the arm regathered his sword and stalked up to Gestalt with a thunderous expression.

“Voici votre paiement.” the man said as he ran his sword through Gestalt's chest.

Gestalt, to his credit, took the blow and remained on his feet - simply staring his opponent in the eyes and replying.

“Tu n'as aucun honneur” before he hung his head, dead.

The ghost of Gestalt appeared next to Liam with both hands raised in a universal sign for “SEE?”

Liam nodded and gestured over his shoulder with his thumb, the Frenchman clicked his fingers and suddenly he was back in his room, hunched over his laptop. The tale written out in front of him.

At the end of the story was a simple author's note from Gestalt.

“Daddy didn’t raise no bitch.” it said and Liam raised his eyebrows.

A haunting with attitude, he surmised.

“Where did you learn english?” Liam typed.

“The internet. Mostly YouTube.” Gestalt answered.

Great so he had a poltergeist that thought it was a memelord.

“And what particularly brought you to me?” he typed.

“Well I can only possess a relative. So it had to be you.” Gestalt typed.

Liam thought for a moment before typing another reply.

“I don’t know if that story will be good enough to win the competition, do you have any tales where you actually triumphed at the end?” he asked.

“Nobody likes a happy ending. They think they do, but the audience doesn’t know what it wants. Despair is such a powerful emotion.” Gestalt replied.

Arrogant as hell, Liam thought to himself as he shook his head.

“Ok well, what’s your saddest memory?” he asked the ghost.

“Ah, for that. We must go to the war.” Gestalt said, and the sneezing sensation returned.