A ghost.

It's been a long morning. Evident in large part by the massive wave of relief I felt when there was a dead girl in my back seat. Well, not relief that it was a dead girl exactly. More that it was the rather plain looking girl who had been dead for as long as I'd known her and not Ashley. "Sorry, you just startled me a bit. I thought you might have still been in there, er her. You know what I mean. I'm still new to all this."

"No problem. Think of her like the town bike. I hop on top just sitting on the emotional seat. I push the pedals, or desires in this case, to get things moving and then steer her how I want to go. A blow to the head is then like someone trying to knock over the bike. I could try to keep it up and under control or I could just bail. Which I did because getting tossed off moving vehicles is kinda my thing." She casually picks some twigs out of her hair and dust herself off a bit.

I tuck myself back in and zip back up while she's talking but can't help but ask. "Is that what all the sticks and leaves and stuff in your hair is about?" I feel like the worlds largest asshole as soon as I say it remembering how sad she got about being dead before but the curiosity got the better of me.

Remarkably she seems rather pleased flipping an errant strand out of her face with a smirk and leaning back against the rear seat. "Well Mark, talking about that kind of... history is like asking a girl how many guys she's fucked. It's a very personal and private thing. You haven't even asked me what my name is, it's Jennifer by the way, and you're already trying to drill me for all my dirtiest most sordid little secrets. Though I guess since we have, technically, fucked and you are a nice enough guy I can go ahead and fill you in while we drive on over to the cemetery. Just hop on the interstate and take exit 38b. You can't miss it. Mostly because if you do I'll scream aw fuck that was our exit you missed it shit."

I start the car up and pull out. "Okay then when I get to the interstate I'll be going north or south..."

"North. Now as I was saying me and some people I met at a party decided to head up to one of the guys uncles cabins." She cocks her head to one side looking lost for a moment. "Or we had just trashed the cabin and were heading to the beach. Anyhoo I was in the jeep with some of the other girls and we were climbing up on the back to tease the guys in the car behind us for shits and giggles. I was flashing my tits and frigging myself. Sucking on my fingers and the tits on the girl next to me. We would do anything to get a rise out of those meatheads. Then some fucking deer ran across the god damn road." She slumps back across the seats. "Doofus at the wheel swerves. The retard behind us just plows into us at full speed and bang zing zoom we get rolled into the ditch. Or rather 'They' got rolled into the ditch. I got sent flying face first through the underbrush and that was it. One second I'm surrounded by green and the sound of things snapping and the next I'm picking myself off the cabin floor completely unharmed. And before you ask no I don't have the sticks in my hair yet so you don't have to worry about how untidily a ghost became a ghost." She drops her hands off the back of the seat onto her knees and sits forward. "See, I was new to being dead at the time and the cabin just felt wrong. Chunks of time would just disappear, things would move around when I wasn't looking, and everyone who was there before was just gone. I just knew the place was haunted. So I did what any young woman trapped in a haunted house would do. I took off down the road screaming for help."

Jenifer takes a minute before continuing. "Now while you might not need to care about how a ghost became a ghost you better damn well care about how old that ghost is and if it's been keeping in contact with normal living breathing folk. Because as I ran down that road I caught the attention of one that hadn't. Thing was Lovecraftian levels of not right. Just like... it walked on two legs but never the same two if you can understand that at all. And it wasn't just some random assortment like a deer leg coming out it's face or stupid shit like that. It had limbs where limbs should be. Er, not like where they belonged but like when it moved it made sense why that would be there. Like if you saw a mermaid doing a handstand walk. It makes sense because she obviously couldn't walk on her tail but then her breast turn out to be empty skin flaps filled up with her nipple tentacles that she uses to push the crosswalk button. It still makes some weird sense but it's not even close to being right. I naturally ran for my life. Of course that thing followed me and was right behind me closing fast. I ran harder than I'd ever run before but it kept gaining on me. Right as it was on top of me I threw myself into the shrubbery along the road and prayed it wouldn't find me. I didn't even notice the Thing leave I was just so dumbstruck by this sensory overload. I could feel my roots in the soil, the wind rustling my leaves. The fact that I had roots and leaves. I wasn't in that bush I was the bush. I was trapped in it for almost a full year before winter came and it died." She relaxes back into the rear seat. "Which is when I noticed the sticks and leaves and stuff as you put it kept popping up in my hair. At the time that was super freaky even though I'm fine with it now. That was Exit 40a we're up next exit. Two lanes will split off and you want to stay in the far left lane."