Looking into the barrel of a pistol gives you a whole new perspective. It is cathartic, in a way, but with corruption rather than cleansing. It’s like staring into some dark, cancerous other world. All anxieties and fears and guilts and shames come rushing and swirling around your head, twisting and reshaping and demonstrating a whole reality of evil that you created. You are Pandora, and not only did you open the box, you carved it with your bare hands and filled it. Luckily, divine retribution has finally come to punish you for your myriad sins, and it stands before you now, leering maniacally, holding gunmetal just far enough away from your face to wonder if you’ll be able to see into the chamber and catch a split-second of spark before everything you know ceases to be.

Oh, wait. Not you. Me.

With my back pressed against the brick wall of the balcony, I could get a somewhat punctuated view of the frozen festivities. The full moon hung in the sky, fat and lethargic, creeping through an ocean of pinpricks in oblivion. Time had stopped halfway through a firework display, crystallizing a red fireburst at the apex of its explosion. It illuminated the beaten streets and cracked walls, painting legions of enthralled Mexicans a deep crimson. I could even make out the inexplicable nautical star in the middle of the opposing building.

The nightmare shifted the gun slightly. Tendrils of charred flesh had begun growing into the chamber, entwining through each other and into the grooves in the metal like black ivy.

“Nicky.” His voice, once a near-operatic caliber baritone, was now little more than a thick crackhead rasp.

“Mike,” I murmured. “Déjà vu.”

“I’ve got some unfinished business here, Nicky,” he hissed. He pushed the tail of his suit coat out and drifted gently from the air, settling on the balcony railing.

“It’s been too long,” I said.

“You’ve been expecting me?” I thought I could recognize a glint of surprise on his amalgamate hamburger face.

“I’m not a sappy, melodramatic troubadour, so I figured you would come back and restate your point. That should definitely make a difference.”

“I’m not here to prove a point.”

I nodded. “I guess that explains the gun.”

“Let’s take a quick stroll,” the ghost said, leaning back to an angle that should have guaranteed his plummeting three stories onto a phalanx of enraptured Hispanic mannequins, but didn’t. “Let’s see… any chance you recall a girl by the name of Ursula? Ursula Rose Knickerbocker?”

“Rings a bell,” I said.

“She made me promise something, once. I want you to guess what.” The eyes in the charcoal mask shone with giddy, maniac anticipation. “Guess.”

“I don’t know.”

“Find out quick.”

The barrel of the gun felt cool against my forehead. I heard the hammer cock back. I stared up at it, cross-eyed and undoubtedly ridiculous, then shrugged.

“Quicker.”

“Something about loving her forever, probably?” It seemed as good a try as any.

“Very close. No, no, we were laying in bed in the apartment in Grouseview, high as shit, curtains drawn, incense wafting around the room, my arm draped around her stomach, fingers creeping under her shirt to fiddle with her belly button ring.” He laughed a little. “Pot leaf with a green jewel in the center. I can still see it. Clear as the day. And I can hear the smile on her face as she says, ‘Are you sure you’re ready for tomorrow’? And I say ‘Yeah, as ready as I’m getting. It shouldn’t be too bad. One of us might die a little.’ And do you know what she said to me, Nicky?”

“I can safely say I have no idea.”

“She rolls over so she’s facing me… her eyes are red-rimmed and endless and stunning as ever, drilling into my brain, that little crisscross in her teeth just hinted at through slightly parted lips, and she stares at me hard for what feels like a long time. It could have been forever. Then she says, ‘Promise me you won’t die.’

‘Nobody can promise that,’ I tell her.

‘You can. Promise me, Johnny,’ she says to me, those eyes only getting brighter, sharper. ‘Please.’

And for a second, Nick, I thought I saw tears.

‘All right,’ I say. ‘I promise.’

‘You can’t die,’ she says, rolling back over and melting into my arms, ‘I’d miss you too much.’

It was the most beautiful moment of my life.”

“Fascinating.”

“You made me break my word.”

The words hung cold and stale in the suspended red light of the fireworks. I stared at him for a moment, then surveyed the hundreds of red lights half-trailing through the sky. I nodded, looking back to him.

“All right. Then fucking kill me.”

The specter shook its head, emitting an accidental snarl. “No. It’s your turn.”

“What?”

“Show and tell, Nicky. Like the old days. There’s my sonnet. You’re up.”

“Sonnet? What are you talking-”

“You are not without soul,” he hissed, face suddenly inches from mine. “None of us are. You weren’t then, and you aren’t now. The time has come for repentance.”

“All right, that’s enough!” I stood up jerkily, suddenly all thunder and fury. Johnny Styles kept the gun trained on my head. “Put the god damned gun away. Look at you. You show up on fucking holidays yelling about how I sold out, how I’m not writing goddamn adolescent love poems to girls I barely know anymore, and you drop all that sappy bullshit because you’re fixated, Mike! The same reason you went after that girl! The same thing that got you killed!”

“I told that bitch as soon as I met her-”

“You told her you were going to fucking kill her?!”

“I TOLD HER!” he roared, his left hand jerking out. I stumbled back against the wall again, my fists flying up to either side of my face. How I was going to out-box a pistol is beyond me at this point, but it seemed like the best idea then.

“She knew what she was getting into,” he said, his torn voice thickening. “I told her I was not stability. I told her I was crime and passion and spontaneity-”

“And then you tried to torture her to death with a fucking ratchet!”

“She sold me out!”

“Listen to yourself,” I said, rising back to my feet. “Like that makes it better. You’re talking about love, then your dramatic speech about how you’re good times incarnate, then to her selling you out. She was worried about you. Jesus Christ, Mike.”

“I deserve better than to-”

“THERE it is,” I said. “You deserve. That’s what you’re so fucking afraid of. You know you didn’t deserve her, so you come here howling about the sanctity of love and waving guns around playing moral soldier and accusing ME of fucking up.”

The silence was heavy. Palpable. Johnny Styles stared at his melted leather shoes contemplatively. He drew in a deep sigh, released it, and then looked up.

“Nick.”

“Yes.”

“There’s no such thing as ghosts.”

My knees buckled.

“Fuck you.”

“I’ve been dead for four years, Nick.”

“FUCK YOU!”

“Why do you think you’re seeing me?”

“No. You're real. I’m not crazy. I'm NOT!”

“Funny. They always told us the crazies always think they’re the sanest. Remember? Back at the asylum?” He dragged the last word out, a smile slowly overtaking his ruined face like blood pooling around a body. He drew this smile sickeningly close to me. I could smell the earth on him.

“Unfinished business.”

“FUCK you!” I swung a right hook from the hip, teeth clenched. It was a sloppy haymaker, and had he been corporeal, he probably could have slipped it anyway. He wasn’t. Momentum caught up with me and I overswung, tripping across the balcony, regaining my composure right before hitting the edge and eating asphalt.

“I can hear it in my head,” he almost sang, eyelids fluttering. “‘There were two unforgettable girls,’ he murmured quietly, almost to himself… ‘The only two I’d ever l-’”

“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” My screaming didn’t even sound like me any more. It was like some wounded animal.

“-was sort of a campfire, burning slowly and deeply, but controlled-”

“I swear to God-”

“You’ll what?” his grin widened, exposing teeth that were no longer teeth, but exaggerated acid-trip needle fangs. “Kill me? ‘The years passed slowly, a contented rhythm-’”

The heels of his shoes suddenly dug into my shoulders, forcing me back down into the corner. He hunched over me like a wolf.

“And then you got your wish,” he said, spitting on the ground. “You lost her. It was over. Just like that.”

“Not the end of the world,” I growled. My voice cracked on the last word.

“That’s what I don’t get about you, Nicky. You always expect more time. Like it’s limitless. Like you’ll never die.”

I said nothing.

“Every moment is the end of the world,” he said, his exhalation almost acidic. “For someone. What was the other girl like, Nicky?”

"Go to Hell."

"We both know this isn't for me. What was she?"

“Wildfire,”  I murmured, the words rolling off my tongue of their own volition.  The word surprised me. I was trying for something more profane, hateful, accusatory, and unrelated. More words followed, tumbling from my mouth like some hidden clown-handkerchief. Johnny Styles mouthed them along with me. “Uncontrollable and frenzied and brief and… and then gone. Swift and unapologetic. Sacred and unholy and all-decimating. Forever changing the landscape. It was like staring into a supernova. It was like…”

The mangled monstrosity that had once been my best friend folded his arms, motioning his head to the preserved blast still hanging in the sky.

“Like… fireworks.”

“Happy 4th, buddy.”

He whipped the pistol up and slammed the barrel into my face. I fell, head caught between the wall and the gun. I felt the wobble in it as he slowly squeezed the trigger, inserting .357 millimeters of molten lead into my skull directly above the left eye. I heard my brain splatter like wet noodles against the wall.

The world ended and began again, running from where it had paused, as it always does and always will. I sat alone in the darkness, whole and startled. The red firework burst with an echoing boom, trailing beautiful streamers in every direction before fading to a morbid black emptiness.

The hole it left ate the sky.