Lazy summer days in a small town are the times when the place is most lively. School was out, and children ran through the park, parents trying to keep up. The sun was bright, and the breeze was pleasant. An ideal day.

Evan stared wistfully out the window, sure that the zoning board had deliberately placed the playground within view. He watched the kids with envy until a shrill voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Can I get some serrrrrvice?"

Evan bit back a groan and forced a smile. "Sorry. Welcome to the Asterville Inn."

The woman sneered up at him over a beak-like nose. "I have a reservation for this evening. Marion Franz."

He found the key quickly, as he wanted her to leave and take her voice with her. "Here you are, ma'am." When she didn't leave, he asked, "Is there anything else?"

"I require assistance with my luggage," she snapped.

Realizing he was the only one on duty, Evan sighed and walked around the counter. "Follow me," he said, picking up her single and easily lifted suitcase.

As he walked along, another voice whispered in his ear, "Must be quite the life, eh?"

"Go to hell," he snapped to the ghost.

The fusillade of footsteps fills the street as twelve men, wrapped from head to toe in heavy-duty RIOT gear, storm towards a building, their shields lifted as the odd bullet flies through the window, bouncing off the flexible plexiglass like rubber. As they finally reach the sidewalk, they stop and kneel down, tilting their shields to form a phalanx.

"DROP THE WEAPON AND COME OUT QUIETLY!" One of the masked men shouts into an intercom. The response from the assailant above is another shot, bouncing off the shield right where the officer's face was.

You son of a bitch.

That was a bad choice. Sergeant Jessep had a problem with people who didn't listen to him.

"YOU HAVE 30 SECONDS TO COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP OR WE'RE FILLING THE ENTIRE DAMN BUILDING WITH GAS!" He threatens.

10 seconds pass. Three more shots are fire, aiming as best as the marksman can between the shields to try and hit something.

20 seconds. The sound of a bolt-action rifle is heard vaguely as he reloads.

25 seconds. Jessep turns to his men and nods. They ready their arms.

30 seconds. Without missing a beat, The shiels split into two different directions as a lone man levels a large gun towards the window and fires. A smoky tail follows the projectile inside, crashing through the upper portion of the window. There is a stunted yelp as the room explodes into a noxious, green gas.

"GO! GO! GO!" Jessep shouts, spearheading the charge into the building. Up three flights of stairs, down two hallways, through a door (forcibly opened with his boot, of course.) and they find the would-be sniper, writhing on the ground, gagging for air.

"Alright, this is our guy. Get him out of here and give him some oxygen." Jessep says. Two of his men comply quickly, cuffing the man and dragging him away by the armpits.

The sergeant looks around the room through his yellow-tinted mask goggles, taking everything in. Pictures of the man with a woman, presumably his wife, and two children are hung up everywhere. A note for a check from the government for $2,000 lays opened on his counter. A loyal dog scratches and barks, trapped in the other room, wondering what has happened to his owner.

Why would a guy like this snap? He seemed to have a nice enough life. Why would he suddenly pull out a rifle and start shooting at anonymous people from his apartment window?

He sighs and leaves the room, shaking his head.

"Ehehehehehehe..."

A skeletal-like figure with shock-blonde hair walks into the room.

"He didn't last long...A pity. He was a good shot."

A wicked grin spreads across the figure's face before he disappears into the ether.

"Must be quite the life, eh?" The fifteen-year-old ghost said as she floated along next to Evan completely invisible to most of the patrons of the inn. To those that could see her Amy possessed straight copper red hair that extended to her feet and blue-gray eyes that were perpetually unfocused. Amy had freckles visible on her face and arms.

Her face was rounded and she had childlike facial features but her build and height suggested that she was not a little kid. Her complexion was deathly pale. A long-sleeved midnight blue shirt clothed her upper body while her lower body was covered with dark red cargo pants. Black sneakers with white bottoms and white shoelaces covered her feet while underneath the sneakers she wore cute little pink socks.

His response was less than friendly and she watched him carry the luggage toward the room. Her facial expression turned to one of devilish amusement. This was how her interactions with living people usually went and she loved it.

"This just in: Local boy tells well-meaning ghost to go to a bad place. She may already be there considering the level of boredom in her current residence! More details at eleven." Her voice was a mixture of a television newscaster and a mysterious seer, more or less playing with Evan, around whom she had used her vastly enhanced telepathy to read a good many minds with such accuracy that she could be thought to see the future.

In truth she could accurately predict the future or retell the past. Dying had made her mind permanently open even to the thoughts of ghosts and extended her scope to reading things that had already happened or would happen because of the nature of the afterlife (It was linked heavily with the passage of time, harboring ghosts from all across history). She could control it but unlike if she were still alive she doubted the control would ever make it completely silent in her head. She would always be privy to some thoughts, conversations or events that she really didn't want or care to know.

"It's not easy being a ghost you know. Sometimes I can see..." She gulped as if she were about to reveal something horrible that no living person should ever know. Amy made sure to continue following Evan wherever he walked in the small town's inn.

"I can see when people go to the bathroom. It's horrible!" The ghost broke down into mock-anguished ghastly wailing.

Sure it was fun to tease Evan but she usually didn't stay inside all day. Sometimes she would get a flash of something more interesting happening elsewhere. When it came she would drift out as silently as she had come. Until then she had to get her jollies somehow because being dead and omniscient (Not really, but it was fun to think of it that way) was so incredibly boring.

Picadilly's was just a little hole in the wall bar. It was, however on Asterville's main street, and so it tended to get a lot of fresh faces every night. Tonight however, an old familiar face leaned up against a beer, surrounded by friends and woman (one particularly attractive woman, in fact) The well-wishers cared not so much that he was a great guy (he wasn't) and a lot more about the fact that every time he entered the bar, free drinks were almost a guarantee.

"Another round for me and my friends" the man said, gesturing to the people around him. He liked to be generous... especially when the money wasn't his. It was always fun when his "friends" gave him a little something extra. and speaking of extra.... the man's eyes wandered over to the young little thing that he'd been entertaining. She was almost ready, now. Tenor had no idea what the way to a girl's heart was, but he'd long since known the way into their pants... and that was to go straight to the liver.

He was going to have to ditch this bar, and soon. He knew just the way to get her to come along. He quietly placed his drink over a sum of bills (he hadn't bothered counting, but he was sure it would cover it.) and slid down next to her. "Have you... ever run out on a tab before?" he whispered in her ear. She was too wasted by now to know he'd actually paid, and the excitement would just make her want him more. Without wasting any time, he grabbed onto her hand. "Run" he whispered with a shy smirk (or his best imitation, anyway). Tenor glanced nervously at his watch as they both ran out into the night.

Some cheesy pop song played on Star89--"Asterville's favorite top-40 station"--turned down low. One could hear the music with some effort, but everyone in the gym was more focused on their exercise routines. In it all, a young redhead, wearing tennis shoes, gym shorts, and a white tank top, was spotting a frail-looking blue hair struggling with five-pound dumbbells.

"... thirteen... come on, Gertie, you can do it... fourteen... great, one more... fifteen!"

Jen took the weights from the old lady, who was breathing hard from strength training. After replacing the weights, Jen wrote something down on the clipboard sitting nearby and gave the lady an encouraging smile. "Gertie, you've really come a long way. Your strength has improved a lot since your surgery."

Gertie muttered, "I don't know I want'ta keep this up. I'm tired... ready ta become a ghost." Jen frowned at the statement, principles from long ago stirring.

"Gertie, please don't say that. You still have a family that loves you. Wouldn't it be better to keep making memories with them?"

The octogenarian shook her head. "You young people don't know what it's like ta be old, and ta be ready ta go. When the afterlife's as certain as the sun, and I can still be with my family as a ghost, it makes me wonder why staying through all this pain is worth it."

The statement gave Jen pause. "Well, anyway, how about a cool-down on the treadmill, and you'll be done for the day." Gertie's response was lost as Jen considered what the lady had said.

In her teen years, Jen's experiences caused her to pull away from the religion of her childhood. She became a staunch atheist, asserting that there was only the "now." Nothing came before this life, nothing came after. She also denied the supernatural, claiming that it was all superstition. But moving to the haunted town had changed her. She felt a crisis of faith, or rather, a crisis of lack of faith. These ghosts, and later her discovery that she could manipulate electricity, were proof enough that there was more to the world than she thought. The problem was that Jen didn't know how to react. Should she expand her atheistic views to allow for the supernatural that she once rejected? Should she return to the faith she had shunned? A new faith, perhaps? Regardless of what she considered, it felt wrong, somehow.

Though she continued her work, Jen was going through the motions. Gertie's comment about continuing on as a ghost bugged her for some reason she couldn't quite articulate.

It was like being the cream in a Satanic Oreo. On one side, he had the chatterbox ghost. On the other was the most obnoxious customer he'd ever dealt with. And the sounds kept coming. The migraine would soon follow.

After about another minute, he gave up. Without saying a single word, he sprinted down the hall, unlocked the room with the staff skeleton key, and hurled the suitcase inside.

Evan walked to the end of the hall. "ENJOY YOUR STAY!" he yelled, climbing into the dumbwaiter and lowering himself down, memorizing the look of confused shock on the woman's face.

This would soon prove to be a very bad idea. While he wasn't overweight - in very good shape, in fact - he was rather big for the shaft.

---

Ashlyn faced the window with a stony expression. On the street outside, teenagers passed, chatting to each other and comparing plans for the day. She frowned, missing the days that she could be out there with them.

She wheeled herself back to her desk and opened her datebook. Nothing until two. Nothing to distract herself. Life had become stagnant. There was nothing new, and she envied the ghosts their freedom. Probably not the best attitude for a therapist.

"You seem bored, little lady..."

With a sound like wind whistling against a sheet of metal, Eddie slowly comes into existence near Ashlyn, but just enough so that his own defined features is his humanoid form and his hair. Can't have his face scaring away potential 'customers', after all.

"Perhaps I can help with that..."

"Is that so?" Ashlyn didn't look up. "I'm sure whatever you have in mind is intriguing. but I have work to do." It was a lie, but what she did when her office was locked was-

Wait.

"How did you get in here?" She slowly raised her head, hand inching toward the top desk drawer.

"Life is simple when you're free as the wind." Eddie says, waxing poetic. "Don't you want to be free?"

Ashlyn arched an eyebrow. "I have a life and responsibilities. I can't abandon that." She reached into the drawer, pressing the button for security.

Eddie bends over, suddenly seated in a chair that didn't seem to be there a second ago.

"Responsibilities, life, ah, all those are transient. Ephemeral. Sooner or later, they'll be gone. And then what will you have? Nothing. Boredom. Those kings will rule your land, miss. Why don't you want to break free?"

"It's not my time," Ashlyn replied tersely. She paused a moment, waiting until she heard security approaching. "It is, however, yours." The door slammed open.

In any other city, there might have been a problem with an armed guard attacking a ghost. Asterville, however, had learned over the years. The weapons were capable. The question lay with the guard.

Eddie feels a grin creep up onto his face.

"Death has no part in your play, miss. You can be as free as a ghost and still hold onto your humanity, if you so desire. All you have to do is know who to ask."

He stands, his fear for any type of uniformed official having been diminished into nothing long before he was killed.

The ghost remained hovering a few inches off of the floor at a distance from Evan and the snooty woman. She watched him rush ahead making no move to catch up and then allowed him to walk right through her toward the dumbwaiter. Amy doubted he even noticed the obstacle. After giving him a good few minutes to get stuck the kid followed him invisibly and soundlessly.

Because the dead redhead was of the insubstantial variety she simply poked her freckled face through one unoccupied side of the dumbwaiter and looked partially at Evan. Wherever the other portion of her gaze had gone was a mystery. She couldn't even properly focus on the waterfall of psychic phenomena flowing into her brain a majority of the time.

"You know this probably wasn't the best idea. All you had to do was ask and I'd be gone, poof, just like that!" The insincerity dripped off of her exclamation like syrup. If he asked her to leave she would most likely continue torturing him for at least another ten minutes before leaving.

"But since you're here and, um, you look a bit stuck... you having trouble moving around in there?" The impish girl giggled like a madwoman.

"I guess I could tune into the old world outside and give you the latest news." This was a clear threat. She could ramble for hours about every single thing that happened in Asterville--From the famous dog Woofer's lunch from the garbage can to things that might actually be interesting like burglaries or social drama, Amy was fully prepared to let it loose on the trapped Evan. Wasn't he just lucky?

Ashlyn opened her mouth to reply but was interrupted by a crackle. Her head jerked to see the guard charging his gun. Something seemed amiss, but she couldn't say what.

"You are annoying me."

Eddie lifts his hand towards the guard palm-first. A strange feeling rushes over him, almost like waves of cool water splashing against him. It's almost calming until...

The wall behind the guard cracks and warps slowly before finally busting inwards, a swirling, black vortex left in its wake. The cacophony of hundreds of screams mesh into one another to form an almost symphonic sound. Long, black, spidery arms rush out and grab at him, latching on, ripping, tearing away. The officer's legs are thrown out from under him as he is forcefully pulled back towards the vortex, clawing at the ground for something to hold onto.

"Goodbye now." Eddie waves as the man is sucked into the vortex, his own shrieks joining the ones emitting from inside it. After all is said and done, the hole dissipates into a black smoke, leaving the wall unscathed behind it.

Ashlyn felt her jaw drop in shock. It was several moments before she was able to compose herself.

She pressed the button on the intercom. "Haley? Cancel my appointments this afternoon. Something's come up."

---

Evan sighed. It had been five minutes, and Amy was now chattering happily about some stray kittens. He normally didn't mind, but this was an exceptionally bad day.

"Well, it's been nice chatting with you, but I've got to go!" He squeezed into as small an area as he could and rocked the dumbwaiter until the rope snapped - which didn't take long. It wasn't till he was about halfway to the bottom of the shaft that he remembered this would hurt. In a panic, he flooded the shaft with a rush air - overdoing it from lack of experience. The dumbwaiter shot back up before landing on the draft and hitting the ground at a slow pace.

He climbed dizzily out into the kitchen, where his first sight was an irate blonde.

"What. The. Hell?" asked Viv, the Inn's chef.

Eddie feels his grin creep up his face again.

"So, little lady, what's your name? And why are you feeling unfulfilled?" He asks, turning back to Ashlyn.

"Your place?" the girl asked, holding onto his arm for dear life. That made him scowl a little. She wouldn't like his place... not at all. And time was running short. Quickly, he passed a few lame excuses through his head before he thought up a good one. "I'm from out of town" he half-lied. "I've got a room at the Inn though."

She was already drunk and enamored, so she went along with it easily enough. Tenor didn't specifically like the inn, but it was right there across the street and a man makes do where he has to. He was hoping to hide some of the extra money so he could use it again later, but a sweet woman was worth the price.

He burst through the door, half dragging his prize, and rang the bell at the desk with a sharp ding. He hadn't been here in years, he hoped he wouldn't be recognized.

"I thought you had a room" the girl complained. "Almost." Tenor laughed.

Evan grinned sheepishly. "Hello, Viv! How's life?"

"What were you doing?" She offered a hand and helped him stand. "You're supposed to be at the desk!"

"Problem with a guest." He dusted himself off. "Well, later!" Before Viv could say another word, he dashed to the stairs.

---

Ashlyn wheeled out from behind the desk to face the apparition. "My name is Ashlyn O'Brian. Before I say any more, I want a full explanation of why that man had to die."