236 ~ What does Respect mean to you?

Respect? Why am I getting flashes of Aretha Franklin?

Guess it means being listened to and having people look you in the eye instead of shying away fearful of what you might see because I can do that, you know? Look at somebody and figure that they're hiding something. Call it my sixth sense or whatever you want to call it but hey, it works.

I don't always listen to it though.

Respect means being valued and being treated like a human being instead of a freak, actually being accepted and having people want you around. Being respected is like an all season pass to nice days enriched by the company you keep, it makes life easier and it definitely makes you feel like a part of society instead of some sort of social outcast.

I try to treat everybody with some kind of respect because it’s all about how you want to be treated, give what you get, that sort of thing. Could certainly explain some of my nastier tendencies seeing as I’ve never really been met with a lot of respect and simple human courtesy.

Respect isn’t easy to come by and I certainly won’t give it to anyone who won’t show the same to me, it’s that simple.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 211

232 ~ Is there a situation where it's appropriate to be unkind?

Sure there is.

Like, when people are being idiots and not listening to sense. Like when they think their dead loveds ones are telling them to jump to their deaths or something equally ridiculous. You would think that common sense would dictate that your loved one would want only the best for you, not to join them in the afterlife or purgatory, wherever the hell they are.

I think - no, wait - I know that the only way to get through to people like that is by speaking the blunt honest truth. Yeah, it hurts, and they look at you like a kicked puppy, but at the end of the day, they're alive and not swallowing a couple handfuls of pills.

Surely a little cruelty goes a long way with something like a person's life at stake? But, let's face it, I'm not the nicest person you could meet. Guess you could say that when you spend too much time in the company of dead people you forget how to relate to the living.

More often than not it's the dead that you need to be the most direct with, they cling to old memories and have a hard time letting go and moving on. Honesty hurts but the kind you need to get them to move on is the sort that reaches in deep and just tears a hole, big enough for their soul to slip through.

It's a hard job, but somebody has got to do it. I'm just the sorry sonofabitch that has that God given gift.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 261

230 ~ Black and White

Depending on the severity of Dennis’ headaches his vision either blacks out all together or the entire world turns white up until the point his head starts to spin and there’s a good chance he may or may not pass out or heave.

It’s when he’s in that dark wasteland of a junkyard that it feels like he could do both, depending on how far the ghost pushes him. This one is a nasty one, full of anger and rage. He’s that bloodthirsty that Dennis is sure he can taste it on the edge of his tongue, it’s enough to make his stomach turn.

Not that he can retreat to the security of his subscribed medication, not when Cyrus wants him on the ball tonight. This one is special or so he says, just what he needs for some twisted collection he seems to be putting together. Dennis doesn’t actually know what Cyrus is up to and frankly he doesn’t care, just as long as he gets paid.

Maybe that’s a little narrow-minded, but with a gift like his, you learn to take what you can get and forget about everything else that might get in the way of securing ways to obliterate any and all physic otherworldly bullshit.

There’s a moment where his vision shakes and the darkness creeps in at the corners before a startling display of light from a nearby floodlight all but blinds Dennis, leaving him with nothing but his visions to guide him. A hand in a muddy ground points him in the right direction, he tells Cyrus as much.

Everything goes to shit after that.

They get the ghost, sure, but people die and Cyrus meets an untimely end. Bastard hadn’t even paid Dennis what he was owed; all he has to show for his work is a hell of a headache and an even dirtier conscience.

He’s pretty sure the world is about to black out, just because it’s easier to be unconscious than deal with reality right now and a headache is as good an excuse as anything else.

Oh, wait, no… he’s whiting out instead. Typical.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 355

228 ~ 3 am

The truth about Dennis Rafkin is that he doesn’t sleep, not that much anyways. He steals medicated minutes in endless stretches of hours, during which the red digits taunt him as he tosses and turns. The reason he can’t sleep is quite simple: the voices never stop and the dead don’t rest, not the way they should.

It’s one of the reasons he’s wound as tight as he is.

Dennis turns for the tenth time in the space of a minute and he glowers darkly at the clock as its digits display 03:00 and it seems to takes an eternity for the digits to tick over to 03:01. “Jesus Christ,” he mumbles gruffly as he tosses aside covers and gets to his feet.

There’s a woman, torn and bloody, standing in the corner of his room and she’s reaching out to him. “Sorry, lady. I don’t open for business till at least gone eight in the morning.” Right after he had coffee and pills in him. The woman blinks and disappears, replaced by a voice that whispers in his ear and looks set on driving Dennis mad.

He closes the bathroom door, shutting it out and breathes.

It takes him about a minute before he can finally think straight enough to do what he calls his 3 am scramble for medication. The pills always wear off at this time and he should really talk to his shrink about that, maybe get something stronger so he doesn’t have to do this dance night after night.

Dennis downs two and then four more pills, knowing it’s too much but anything’s preferable to hearing the dead’s secrets at this ungodly time in the morning. He clasps the sink and drops his head, willing the voices away, trying to find some sort of peace. Dennis knows it’s a fruitless endeavour but he can hope, can’t he?

It’s gone 03:32 by the time he crawls back into bed and pulls the covers over his head. Dennis closes his eyes and ignores the dead face staring back at him and merely sinks a hand into his hair, curling his fingers into a fist until he can’t think past the pain.

It’s 03:45 am when Dennis finally slips into a heavily medicated sleep.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 376

227 ~ A friend asks you to recommend a book: which book would you choose and why?

You know what, I’d totally recommend: ‘How not to go into places you know are haunted for dummies’ to anybody who asked me. It doesn’t actually exist but I’d pay good money to see it published.

Seriously.

I really don’t understand people’s desire to venture into the weird and the wacky, especially the whole sadistic killer got twelve then shot himself in the head kind of freaky. How is that fun? Do people think that ghosts aren’t real and that they’re just something people make up? Take it from a guy who has seen one too many up close and personal, they exist and they aren’t a nice bunch of people.

So this book would totally have the do’s and don’ts of ghost hunting, basic hints and tips of how to stay alive and of course suggest in big giant bold letters that you stay away from anywhere you think is haunted. The likelihood is somebody’s already gone there before you and they’ve just added to the numbers of people who just mysteriously vanish into thin air.

Newsflash, people, they’re dead.

Also, it would need pictures that clearly illustrate what happens to people stupid enough to mess with things they don’t understand. Real colourful, maybe even have a couple pop-ups in there, just to keep the kids entertained.

Why would I recommend this book if it was out on the shelves for people to purchase and read? Quite simply put: to convince people that ghosts aren’t something cool and they should leave well enough alone, unless they know what they’re doing and they have all the right protection in place.

I totally need a publisher.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 275

226 ~ Name three things that you're looking forward to in the near future and why.

I look forward to getting paid, especially for the services I provide. Bad enough my last client upped and died on me. Told him he shouldn't be messing with the spirits that he was, but did he listen to me? Oh no, god forbid anybody listen to the psychic. Bitter? Heaven no.

Yay sarcasm.

Secondly, I'm looking forward to getting some new medication. This old stuff isn't doing what it should be doing, I can still feel shit after taking like... five of them. I ought to be dead to the world, no pun intended. I think my shrink is beginning to realise just how serious my need for medication really is.

Last but not at all least I'm really looking forward to getting some peace and quiet. I don't often get that, even when I'm asleep. The dead don't sleep so neither do I. They really have no respect for the living.

So there we have it, my not so exciting list of things I am looking forward to and why.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 172

224 ~ Mad

Everybody thought my uncle was mad, what with his hearing voices and all. He wasn’t, but everybody thought he was. The funny thing about ‘sane’ people is that they’re more often than not the ones you need to watch out for. At least with mad people you know they’re unstable and they could swing any which way but with sane folks you never know what they’re going to do.

Some people argue that madness is genetic, passes from one generation to another, but none of that is scientifically proven. However, the existence of ghosts or the walking dead as I like to refer to them as hasn’t really been proven by the scholars either. Honestly? You don’t really need a stamp of approval from people who have probably spent too many long hours indoors on things like this anyways.

How the hell are they going to know stuff like this if they’ve never had it in their face loud and in colour?

Ghosts exist and call me mad or unstable, whatever the hell you want, but I hear them and as much as I don’t want to I know their every little dirty secret. I probably know a little too much about most of you, the joys of being a walking talking advertisement for psychics-r-us, and sometimes I wonder about my own sanity.

I mean… you gotta be a little unstable if you’re busy talking to the dead, if you think about it.

Thoughts? None? Good. Moving on.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 248

221 ~ "Never pray for justice, because you mightget some." - Margaret Atwood

There’s plenty of justice for the living but not that much for the dead.

You die and it doesn’t matter what happened to you while you were alive you’re stuck, trapped in the endless nightmare and what happens next? You turn ugly and you take out your frustration on the living. That’s how haunting comes about.

And that’s where I come in.

Not that I can do much about getting the deceased the kind of justice they should have in life and I’m not about to pretend that I’m self sacrificing and noble enough to go out of my way to get it done. I get paid to exorcise and clear out places of corporeal essences, who cares if they happen to be a three year old who died at the hands of their mother?

They didn’t get the justice they should have had in life and they certainly won’t be getting it in their final moments, not with the way that this world of ours works.

It's fucked up but it’s the truth, can’t ask for more than that.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 180

219 ~ Headlines.

Local Boy Saves Three from a Fire


Everything had been a blur that not even Dennis had been aware of what he was doing, he’d felt something then the world had shifted and eventually the pieces to the puzzle had fallen into place.

It had started in the form of a cold sweat, followed by the stench of burnt flesh and lastly but not at all least he felt… death; from the trickles of ice cold down the back of his spine to the overwhelming sense of dread that had clutched at his stomach.

His parents hadn’t thought anything of it, putting it down to his overactive imagination. The same way they had everything else that was related to psychic ability. The Rafkin family was of the mind that things like this was better swept under the carpet and ignored. It was truly amazing what fear could do to intelligent people.

Dennis, on the other hand, didn’t share his mother and father’s feelings. They weren’t the ones assaulted by images and they definitely weren’t the ones seeing the dead. Dennis was. He couldn’t ignore this. He wished that he could, wished for normal, but he wasn’t normal and he couldn’t pretend that he was.

So when he got a flash and felt the flames on his arms, licking their way over vulnerable and exposed flesh, he focused. Even as it hurt and his head started to split open, he sought the vision for something – anything – that would help him stop this from happening. He got a family name, painted in nauseating pink across an equally nauseating post-box.

Robinson.

He might have only been nine at the time, but he found a way, made enough noise to wake up the entire neighbourhood and so what he sounded crazed and out of his mind? It got the family out of the house and they were confused and angry for an all of sixty seconds before there was suddenly a noise and the entire house was consumed from the inside and out by the fire Dennis had fallen victim to in his vision.

Dennis was hailed as a hero, but he was not a hero. Not in the eyes of his family and in the small minded kids at school. No: to them he was nothing more than a freak - a freak that needed dealing with, one way or another.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 392

218 ~ Write about a lie your parents told you.

Imagine this if you will...

I'm five years old and I get this flash: a teenage girl at the end of my bed with her throat slit reaching out to me, but as soon as I blink she's gone.

Weird, right?

I made the stupid mistake of telling my mom, thinking she'd be sympathetic or at the very least compassionate because her son's very visibly upset.

Hah, my mistake.

Instead she freaks out and tells me it's nothing and I should never mention it. I ask why and she just gives me this look, like she might have been down this road before and she doesn't want to go down it again.

They thought I didn't hear them, downstairs, but I did. So did my teenage girl. Talking about possible brain damage and mental disorder, all the kind of stuff you don't want to be hearing if you're the kid in question. Next thing I know I'm seeing a shrink and he's telling me it's all in my head, I need to stop talking about it and I most definitely need to stop talking to things that aren't there.

For God only knows how many years I thought I had some kind of defect, but turns out I just got a little something extra when I came into this world. Runs in the family, or something. It's why my mom was as freaked out as she was, her brother already got his ass committed because of what these special talents did to him.

It was only one of the many lies my parents told me, but it was definitely the biggest.

Also? It turns out that the teenage girl was the victim of a jealous boyfriend, cut her throat and left her to bleed out in the bathtub. Guy got the death penalty. Kinda wonder why he isn't haunting my ass.

Some questions are better left unanswered.

Muse: Dennis Rafkin
Fandom: Thir13en Ghosts
Word Count: 317