The Editor does not reappear for quite some time and I lug her books aimlessly into the south, where autumn is warm and dry. She has left her journal behind, the book she uses to keep track of the differences between Shitholes editions. The first hundred pages are beautiful, looping scrawls- as clear as the night sky. The writing degrades, though, her form as well as her words. By the end she’s writing in a shorthand so frantic it might as well be code. She has predicted I would read this all, someday, and she rails against me when she remembers to. The Editor insists that I tell her once I have and is so sure that I won’t.
She’s right, of course.
I wonder what she thinks of me, sitting as she does on the bike.
There is a picture of us on a rollercoaster- a place ‘Autumn by the Wayside’ said was haunted by spirits from all over the country.
‘What?’ it asked, ‘You don’t think ghosts can have fun? Free from mortal concerns, the previously-fearful departed have no reason not to try these things. Though, spirit photographers have captured increasingly long lines…’
The Editor has no interest in the places we visit, only the order in which we visit them. Had she asked why I bought the picture (priced steeply at $29.99 for the smallest option) I would show her that my family’s dog sits just behind me, its semi-transparent tongue dripping ectoplasm into the wind. The dog, I would explain, was alive when I left. But she was old, so…
So it’s not a surprise.
I have not pressed the issue, though, because behind the dog and behind the Editor, as far back as the camera has captured, the ride seats are busy with her own spirits, each stern-faced in turn. I look at the picture, and I wonder if the new Editor is the one I should tell. She doesn’t seem to think these little deaths matter in any iteration, and truthfully, each Editor is identical to the last. I would not have guessed there was a tally and, faced with it, I’m not sure what it means.
-traveler
