These events take place before the begining of the Dead Body Girl story.

70% of humans have no magic at all, of the third of the population that does, not many can see spirits. And a far fewer can hear, talk, or touch them. These few are known as necromancers. They are the link to the spirits, and other dead things.

The energetic yellow glowing ball of my mom’s spirit bounced and fluttered just over my shoulder. She was humming a heavy metal song, and kept weaving over my left eye.

It was suuuuuuper annoying.

Dad’s pale blue spirit orb was floating up in front of us. He used to be a tall guy and in death he still had his tall person lope, leaving us shorties behind, even though Mom didn’t have legs to be short anymore.

“Ladies, if we don’t hurry, we’ll be standing in line for a while.”

Says the guy that literally floats.

I snorted, and didn’t speed up one bit.

“Psh, it’s Monday morning. There ain’t nobody getting up early today.”

We rounded a corner and . . .

Crap, there’s a line!

I grumbled and stomped my way to the single file huddle of people tracing their way out the front door of my go to cafe, they kept going and down the sidewalk and across a little alley.

Damn it! What are all these people doing here?

I narrowed my eyes at them and scowled as hard as my scowly little face could scowl, hoping that some of the people would be scared away.

It didn’t work.

Alright, time for plan B.

I turned to the shining blue sphere of my dad, pouted out my lower lip and tried to look as sad as I could. Considering that both my parents are featureless balls of light, it wasn’t always easy to tell if they were looking my way or just gazing out into space or some shit, but I was hoping to get his attention.

“Dad, I’m so hungry. Can’t you do anything to make these people go away?”

I could almost feel my mom cross her non-existent arms over her spectral chest, like zero sympathy for her poor starving child.

“Kari, you ate breakfast like ten minutes ago.”

Totally ignoring Mom and her useless facts, I turned to Dad and blinked dry eyes that I hoped looked teary and sad. I sobbed and whimpered in a poor little strangled voice.

“I’m so hungry!”

Sniffling tears that weren’t there and flashing Dad’s ghost the saddest little face I could muster.

Of course, Mom was still cutting in with more unneeded truths like –

“I watched you eat, four slices of cheese toast, a quarter of a frittata, three sausages, a heap of saute’d mushrooms, two cups of coffee, and a huge bowl of melon this morning. How could you still be hungry?”

Breaking my pitiful routine for a sec, I turned to my mom’s spirit to snap.

“Yeah, but no pastries. How can I have breakfast with no pastries? . . . and mocha. I need a mocha too.”

Mom heaved a sigh, and I turned up my pitiful sadness beams to maximum and pointed them at my dad’s dinky blue sun.

“Please, Dad. Can’t you help?”

Dad broke. I knew he would.

“Of course I can Lil Bug! I’ll shoo all these bad people away, just you wait here.”

Mwa ha ha! Yeeeessss!

As my dad zipped off to terrorize the people waiting in line outside the coffee shop, I couldn’t help but let an evil smile ooze over my face.

Most people couldn’t see or hear spirits. While I had been prodding my dad into action, there had been plenty of people waiting in line that had looked over their shoulder at me, and nervously creeped away from the crazy girl.

But just about everyone could feel a ghost when it zipped through them.

Me and my mom watched as one after another, the customers in the crowd gasped, jumped, or squeaked in shock as my dad blazed through them, and they felt the frozen hand of death run up their spine. With each shock, and shutter, I stepped up as the masses fled.

Nice!

My mom hovered near my shoulder and sighed.

“You know, I feel like as your parent I should be saying something about using your powers for good rather than evil . . . but I didn’t want to wait in line either.”