Your Own Ghost

 

When you start to get a name for yourself, your ghost starts to hunt you. You see it splattered across walls, on clothes, in tattoos on your friends and lovers. It shines in bright primary colours, iconic, its every movement invested with potent meaning. Sooner or later you realize it's feeding on you. People don't quite look directly at you when they talk anymore. Look behind you - they're talking to it. It's waiting, building strength until it can kill you and stride out to meet them in your skin.

Anyone who's famous is killed by their own ghost. Che Guevara throttled Ernesto Lynch to death, one hot night in the jungle. James Dean's ghost put its hand on the steering wheel and its foot on the accelerator, just as the car started to turn. It knew what was going to happen. It knew what you need to sacrifice to become immortal.

I am writing a choose-your-own adventure game based on 1950's american hobo mythology, using the structure of Tales of the Arabian Nights. The above is based on a passage I wrote for that game. I hope I'll be able to finish it and show it to you all.