To whom it may concern

"Ghost fleas?" asked Sheila, wrinkling the memory of her nose in an expression of disgust. "Seriously?"

Simon nodded, one thermal-gloved hand holding a squirming ghost cat in place against the warded metal table, the other dangling a pipette of yarrow powder and grave dirt suspended in blessed saline over the base of it's neck.

"Seems unfair, doesn't it," he said. "But then, why should the afterlife only exist for humans and a select few pets we decided warranted it?"

"But aren't you about to kill them?" asked Sheila. "Or re-kill them, or something?"

Simon thought about it.

"I guess so."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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She spotted him down by the old well, now just a circle of stone topped with a heavy concrete plug. The council hadn't wanted this place disturbed by the silver-dollar wishes of unwitting townsfolk, and for good reason. There was an ugly history here, one best left sealed away and forgotten by those that could.

He leaned against the crumbling curve of old brick and waterlogged mortar, and the pale blue ghosts of new-born kittens and unwanted puppies milled about his feet. As Sheila watched, he produced a handful of catnip mice from one pocket, scattering them amongst the crowd.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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The rain drummed on the rusting tin roof of the old deer blind, the sound muffling any other noises which the outside world might care to make and providing a pleasant counterpoint to the steady scratch of biro against cheap notepaper.

Technically, Simon was there to mark the patterns of jackalope migration for comparison against last year's figures. In reality, he was hiding from the judging eyes of his ghostly assistant, who had started making pointed comments about exactly how many of Eerie's furred and feathered and man-eating residents he planned on adopting before his roommates objected.

Dang it, Sheila.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Sheila was already at her desk when Simon arrived, blue-white semi-translucent fingers flying over the keyboard.

"Boss!" she greeted him, then, spotting the familiar silhouette of Bert and/or Ernie in the doorway behind him, "Double boss!"

"Morning Sheila," said Simon, taking off his heavy winter jacket and exchanging it for a crisp white lab coat.

"Morning Sheila!" echoed the Wilson twins, removing matching sunshine-yellow rain-slickers to reveal identical (and, to Sheila's undead eyes, unbearably hideous) knitted sweater vests over paisley-patterned dress shirts.

"What brings you two down here?" Sheila asked, handing Simon a clipboard with the day's schedule neatly pinned to it. "I thought you were busy getting the frozen yoghurt business off the ground."

Bert - at least, Sheila assumed it was Bert, although she was basing this on her pre-death memories of Bert Reynolds and the fact that this twin had a slightly more luxuriant moustache than the other - beamed.

"Happy Brothers Yoghurt is already up and running," he said. "We hired a very capable young lady named Radford-"

"Presumably some sort of niece," his brother added. "Apparently, Radford's run in the family."

"And she's got everything under control," Bert finished.

"So we thought we'd stop by here."

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: The Powers That Be

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Sheila had been right about the chupacabra. Not that Marshall was surprised - aside from a single persistent blind spot regarding which things could or could not be phased through one another, Simon's assistant was right about most things.

"I can explain," said Simon, standing in front of two red-eyed, hump-spine'd dog-lizard monsters like a Jackalope Queen defending a burrow of newly-hatched kittens.

"No he can't," said Dash, not looking up from the water-stained pages of a closely written notebook he'd liberated from one of the Loyal Order of Corn's sub-sub-basement.

Marshall took the bottled goat's blood out of his bag.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Simon knelt in the sticky black mud, grimacing as he felt the seeping cold soak through his trousers. Beside him, Sheila rocked back and forth on spectral tippy-toes that never touched the sodden ground.

"So, what'd you think happened?" she said, plunging one faintly-glowing arm through the twisted metal of the wreck and pulling out a wriggling adolescent mudsnake.

It hissed at her, and she hissed back before dropping it into the bucket that lay between them.

"Off-roading, maybe?" said Simon, trying to coax another snake out of the still-warm engine block before it dried out completely.

"In mudsnake territory?"

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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The sound of scolding broke through his concentration, and Simon set down his pen with a sigh. He'd been working on "Jackalopes and the Federal Deficit" since he was nine and he was still no closer to a unifying theory of government debt and and rabbits with horns.

The door didn't open, but Sheila still poked her head around it via the doorframe rather than through it. She looked worried.

"You'd better come outside, bossman," she said. "There's a situation developing with the ravens."

Simon closed the yellowed composition notebook and pushed back his chair. As usual when he needed to follow his spectral assistant somewhere, he almost bumped into the still-closed door before remembering corporeality was a thing.

In the small paved area at the back of their office, one of the chupacabra huddled in a miserable ball of fur and scales. Simon hurried over, looking for wounds or bruising and finding none. On the half-rotted fence that separated their lot from the next-door neighbours, the ravens continued to squawk.

"Corvid's a little rusty, boss," said Sheila, "But I think they're picking on it."

Simon looked up at the huge black birds, one hand frozen beneath the 'cabra as he prepared to turn it over.

"Seriously?" he asked.

One of the ravens cawed, the tone mocking and cruel. Sheila nodded.

Simon straightened, locking eyes with the nearest of the unkindness.

"I am so disappointed in all of you," he said. "Really, truly disgusted. I'd like you all to fly home, and spend some time thinking about what you've done."

He waited. A couple of the flock shifted uncomfortably, but none of them moved.

Simon picked up the goatsucker, careful not to gouge himself on the spiny ridges that ran along it's back.

"You heard me," he said. "Get lost."

Ongoing Verse: Trusted Associates Inc

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Someone had turned the Cloud Sheep out to graze in the lowest field. Tethered to small cold iron weights that kept them from floating away, they drifted back and forth, pausing to nibble at the flowering helium deposits that sprouted here and there amongst the long grass.

Farmer Chambers was waiting by the back gate when Simon arrived. His sheepdog, a black and white border collie named, as all such dogs are named, Jessie, bounded over to Sparky and began an excitable monologue conducted half in Canid, and half in Latin. Simon listened just long enough to make sure she wasn't trying to recruit his pet Hellhound for the Canine Liberation Front, then left them to it.

"Morning, Ephraim," he said, giving a little wave. "I'm here to do the six-month check up for the herd. You set up the appointment with my assistant, Sheila?"

The old man nodded, thumbs hooked into the straps of his faded blue overalls.

"Aye," he said, opening the gate and gesturing for Simon to go ahead. "They're looking well. Should be a good balloon harvest this year."

Simon started down the muddy path worn through the rich green.

"No vulcanisation issues with the rubber?" he asked. "I brought Sparky along, just in case we needed a little Hellfire and sulphur."

He patted his breast pocket, where a flute carved from a hanged man's rib jutted at an odd angle. There were faster ways to bring a Hellhound to heel, but the music of the dead almost always meant they came willingly.

Ephraim shook his head.

"Lambs are coagulating nicely," he said. "Helium blossom keeps the ewes plump, which keeps clown predation down. I figure a round sheep don't make such a good basis for a balloon animal."

"Also they can fly off," agreed Simon.

Ongoing Verse: Microwave

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Ongoing Verse: Holmes Brothers

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