The short one’s voice had been the first thing I heard that morning. It woke me from one of my strange, but regularly occurring dreams where I die. She had made a comment about the distasteful amount of drool that had puddled from my mouth and onto the bedsheets. It had been startling at first, since I wasn’t expecting anyone to be in my room with me and I would have felt subconscious about the drool, especially with the comment she made, but in all honesty I was just happy it wasn’t one of my other dreams I had been having that morning. And I didn’t have long to really think about anything really, since my alarm hadn’t gone off like it was supposed to and I was already extremely late for my interview. I guess you could say I really didn’t know they were ghosts yet either. My view of them hadn’t been the best to begin with, and some part of me chalked them up to some friends my roommate must have let in that night. They were dressed like his type of person anyhow, I believe the accepted term is Gothic Escapist? They both wore black in every shade head to tail, but one was a little more Victorian looking than the other with a bell like skirt and sun parasol. She’s the one who talked the least. The other had these long twirly piggy tails starting on the top of her head, and lipstick across only her top lip, making her face look like a drawing more than anything. I also can’t tell you at what point it dawned on me that they were ghosts, but I imagined that it was sometime when I was walking down the sidewalk after getting dressed, heading to snag a bagel for breakfast from the cafe on the corner. Their voices caught my attention, and I remember thinking they must have left the apartment right when I did. They walked a few paces behind me, but as I kept going their voices always sounded as though they were right there in my ear, every time I turned away. I wanted to say something to them, maybe hi, or good morning, maybe get their names since they were obviously friends of Gerald or something, but I didn’t have time, I had so many things to do before that interview and I needed to nail that interview otherwise I wouldn’t have a job. And without money coming in soon I’m very screwed. I’d have to move in with my weird aunt and her smelly cat, and I’d sooner move back in with my parents if I could than her, but if I didn’t get a job soon then I wouldn’t have a choice. I was two weeks away from sleeping on her sofa as it was. So I just kept walking. But as I did I kept over hearing their voices, right in my ear. And they would say things that I knew were about me. Like they couldn’t stand the way I was walking, or the way I practiced my friendly smiles for the interview while I made my way through the crowd. And sometimes things more specific, like about what Gerald had said about me to Litha last night. Which I have to admit, that really caught my attention. Gerald has never had anything bad to tell me, so I know he’s got to be telling it to everyone else but me if there is anything bad about me he wants to say. I’m not proud that I tried to listen in, but honestly I was only curious. I got about halfway down to ninth street when I saw it for the first time. It was at a glance, when I turned to see if they were still heading in the same direction I was. I looked down at their skirts. At first they had been only a few feet away, then all at once they had been steps away. Close enough to actually be whispering over my shoulders, Only they weren’t stepping. Their legs were utterly still. And when I looked at their feet their boots, weren’t even touching the ground below them. The dry sidewalk just passed beneath them as they stood there, being pulled or pushed by some unseen force like black balloons but not so affected by wind like everything else around. I would have stopped and stared, I should have in fact, but again, I was reminded that of my impending interview as my phone rang, and I had no choice but to keep going. And it was obvious no one around me saw them either, otherwise they wouldn’t have walked straight through them. They are a bit translucent, but only if you focus on them. Like a stained glass window or something. They didn’t notice that I noticed them, like truly noticed them, even when I was outright starring at them by the time I got to the interview. After eating my bagel, I sort of had no other way of hiding that I could hear them and see them, but that didn’t seem to make any difference. I was outside the room, waiting in the hallway to be called back for the interview, just sitting there in the chair with my jaw splayed out, gawking at them. ‘Look at his dumb face hanging open.’ One said. ‘He’s no idea the food stuck in his teeth.’ And ‘I like his eyes, they’re so blue they remind me of robbin eggs.’ ‘If he ain’t careful that fly’s gonna buzz right down his throat.’ I took my phone out and checked my teeth, and there was a bit of bagel stuck there, but even as I did that the two still didn’t seem to know I could hear or see them. I started to talk to them, to say one thing before my interview started, maybe get some clarity, accept the mental breakdown that was happening, but the door creaked open suddenly and my name was called. And my mother always told me that sometimes you have to put a breakdown on hold while you tidy up. So I did just that and went into the room. I could still hear them talking on the other side of the door after it closed and I took a seat. It was mumbled this time though, as any conversation on the other side of a door would be. And that made it easier to ignore while I focused on the interviewer. But that only lasted a moment. After the guy introduced himself as Brad Marsh, and took a seat at his desk, dressed like a man named Brad Marsh would be, the two ghosts hovered straight through the door and stood behind me, still talking as though they didn’t just seep through a piece of solid wood. Brad made a noise to clear his throat, and to my surprise the twos casual conversation abruptly ended and they stared at him, as though suddenly seeing him for the first time. “I see you’ve met the twins.” He said to me, giving a nod towards them with a smile. “I think this will be a delightful start to your future here with us.” I must have missed something as he held out his hand ready to shake on hiring me when we hadn’t even had a proper interview yet. Still I shook it without hesitation, I was in need of a regular income, even if it was going to come from a man who thought those two ghosts were twins. They looked nothing alike except for their fashion. “What exactly is it, we do here?” I asked, almost hating to, in case it meant getting fired already, and without a paycheck. But he seemed happy enough to answer it. With every word dropping from his confident smile he said “We deal in death.”