Serena had a nose ring, which indicated she was probably an attention-seeking slut and uninterested in nice guys like me, but to my surprise, she sent the first message.
Final-fucking-ly. I’d been on Tinder for eight years and hadn’t had a single match. For some reason, Western women REALLY had it out for me.
I took Serena to a film. As I stood by the concession with my jumbo popcorn and extra-large Sprite, waiting for her to buy her own ticket, the cashier looked at us then screwed up his face.
Afterward, I took her home, where I flexed my Vortex Tab90M keyboard. The flashing LEDs really made her eyes sparkle. In the bedroom, I undid my tie and unbuttoned my shirt, before finally stepping out of my cargo shorts.
Serena slid out of her gown, exposing an excessive amount of thigh hair and tattoos across her lower back. I made a mental note to mention these flaws on our second date.
“Are those Norse symbols?” I asked, recognizing the pattern from God of war.
“They are.”
“What possessed you to get them?”
“I’m a witch.”
I chuckled. Of course she was into Harry Potter. Serena was lucky we’d met—now I could introduce her to more sophisticated entertainment like Dune or Ricky and Morty.
“You should—”
With a snap of her fingers, Serena made me fly across the room as if yanked by a bungee. I was suddenly pinned against the wall.
“What’s going on?” I cried.
She strolled across the room and placed a hand on my chest. “I’m taking your soul.”
“M-my soul? You can’t!”
“Pipe down. This will be over soon.”
“NO! TELL ME WHY!”
“Souls have great power. I need them to produce spells. So I wander around harvesting fat neckbeards nobody will miss.”
“But why take mine?”
Serenas hand turned cold as if she’d just had it submerged in snow, and I felt a great draining sensation. All color seemed to seep from the world.
“Will I die?”
“You’ll become a ghost,” she said, clearly annoyed by my questions.
“A ghost?! Explain!”
“Uhhhh. Without a soul, you’ll just be meat. People will only notice you when looking directly at you. The second they glance away you’ll disappear from their memory.” A silver whisp floated out of my chest into Serena’s hand, where she ushered it into a vial, in a gesture resembling vape tricks I’d learned from YouTube.
“You can’t take my soul. Please. I have too much to live for.”
She rolled her eyes. “How’s this: tell me one thing you did in the past two months that doesn’t involve video games, masturbating, or calling women whores, and you can keep your crummy soul.”
And that’s the story of how I became a ghost. Now I wander around, dead to the world.
Fortunately, I discovered when playing games online my teammates still notice and react to my avatar, and people online can still see my Reddit posts.
So really, not much has changed.
