Put Another Soul in the Jukebox, Baby
by Samantha Dunne
Suze killed me on a Tuesday. I started haunting the bitch that Wednesday. Stealing my boyfriend and my life? Not okay.
She’s the reason I woke up drenched and bloodied, hovering over my lifeless body as it floated down the swamp. Pools of loose intestines purled around it as alligators gnawed through the flesh.
Not my best look. It’s almost like she wanted Steve Livingston to be repulsed by my open casket. (There’s only so much a mortuary cosmetologist can do.)
Getting ripped apart by gators is definitely not how I would’ve chosen to go. If it were up to me, I would’ve perished in Steve’s arms, my (ex, by death, I guess) high school sweetheart.
But Suze had other plans. Well, so did I.
Weeks of haunting her only gave me so much satisfaction. I relished every jump, every sharp inhale, every peek around the corner. Like she knew it was me.
Tonight I needed more. Thursdays were always half-off at Joe’s Diner, so after “getting ready” with Suze, telling her every outfit she tried on made her butt look big, that’s where we went.
It was out by the swamp, or as I liked to call it, the place I was murdered.
Suze pushed through the diner doors with unearned authority, sitting down at the red laminate booth, populated by the popular. All the seniors from my class (’84, baby!) were there, including my old group—Mike, Kelly, and Steve, looking svelte in the sweater I knit him back when I was alive. We weren’t Suze popular—you know, not assholes—but we got by.
Her seat shook as the jukebox reverberated with the sounds she shoved in there—all New Kids on the Block and no substance.
Conversation and laughter buzzed through the booths as people sipped milkshakes and split fries.
I floated over to the jukebox as Suze went to change the song, fitting my plasma perfectly within the confines of the machine to manipulate it just as Modern English’s “I Melt With You” reached its crescendo.
Eyes widening, she watched the phantom sheets of music turn without her lifting a finger. The machine, possessed by yours truly, lit up and whirred, emitting an electric spark before going dark. She struck its side and jumped back when the bass blared through the speakers.
“The Ghost in You” by The Psychedelic Furs. The song that played as she killed me. Prophetic, I’ll give her that. But it did make me sad. No high schooler’s ever ready for death, per se.
Did I mention she’s a bitch?
People craned their heads toward the thumping bass, concerned. Suze met their stares with a nervous laugh, sweat beads sprouting from her forehead.
I had her. She’d spill her guts like I spilled mine.
“Damn machine must be broken,” she said.
I wiggled my way out of the jukebox, peering into the sea of skeptics to lock eyes with Steve. He stared straight into my soul. Quite literally. The only one to see me. He winked, flashing a boyish grin, despite protesting the plan earlier.
Still my Steve. The same Steve Suze thought she could “steal” right before tossing me into alligator-infested waters. Would’ve pissed me off more, but my mind was preoccupied with other things at the time.
Steve approached Suze at the machine, “The Ghost in You” playing in an endless loop as her fingers twitched in time.
“Need a hand with that?”
She looked up at him, glimpsing at the swamp out the window. The cypress trees swayed with the secrets they carried.
“Yeah, that’d be great,” she said. He tinkered with the wires.
“Y’know, that was Nora’s favorite song.” She gulped at my name. I ratcheted the sound up to 11, just for her.
“Oh, really? I didn’t know that. Never really knew her.”
“Huh, that’s weird ‘cause she said you and her hung out? The night you admitted your feelings for me?” He arched an eyebrow.
“Who told you that?” she said.
“She did.”
“But she’s dead,” Suze said.
On cue, Steve sent electricity through the speakers as Suze’s hand caressed them, connecting her to communication with the afterlife (me).
“I am!” I said to the only two people who could hear me.
She screamed. Everyone turned to see Suze, Steve and the sparking jukebox. He waved casually.
“Nothing to see here, people. We got it under control,” he said, before turning to her. “Let’s take this outside.”
She nodded and they pushed the doors open, walking into swampy air. Her hair frizzed in the humidity. Mine didn’t—ghostly perk.
“Ho-how are you here?” Suze said, stumbling over the dock floating above the marsh, lily pads lining the way.
“Beats me. Kinda like you did, remember?” I replied.
Holding her hands up, Suzanne started retreating toward the edge. “Please, don’t hurt me.”
I could hear my nocturnal audience waking up in the waters below. I was going to have fun feeding her to them. One of her legs dangled over the edge. I lunged forward to push her in when—
“Wait!”
I stopped, turned. Steve. I knew he had his doubts.
“What?!”
“Just… maybe there’s a better way,” Steve said.
“Am I about to get a ‘killing her won’t make your life any better’ spiel?”
He shrugged.
“Well. First: I don’t have a life. Dead, remember?” I gestured to my ghostly form. “And second, she killed me!”
He was silent, staring through me. I looked at the moon mirrored in his eyes, biting back tears, and saw the answer I’d been running from. It was time to move on.
I tried to cup his face, but my fingers ran like water, failing to resurrect a love lost to death.
“I don’t want to leave you,” I said.
“And I don’t want you to leave, but… The peace you need isn’t here.”
The moon in his eyes grew larger and larger, now just a blinding light, erasing the swamp and Suze and Steve until there was just—
Samantha Dunne is a digital journalist for a local news station in Orlando, Florida, who also writes scripts and short stories. When not getting into arguments with her co-workers over the necessity of the Oxford comma, she loves performing improv comedy and traveling around the world. She can be reached at samanthadunne229@gmail.com or found on Twitter @SamanthaDunne9.