Yes.  I want to reveal the existence of ghosts to the world and make it so all the living and dead can communicate with each other.

"Yeah, that sounds good to me too. Just ghosts existing, not the rest of the magic? Where'd this book come from?"

People will probably need to know some magic to be able to communicate with ghosts.  A yard sale.

"So there are presumably plenty of people who know things about ghosts, do you have any speculations why they didn't blow the lid off the whole thing?"

I think the people who had enough information either didn't want to or went about presenting it in a way that wasn't smart enough, and that many many more people than that have had only enough information to wreck their credibility.

"I guess I can see that happening. And you -" did not make progress on this while alive because you were resolving the probable abusive parent situation and then fell out of a tree, right. "- hm. Well, if you're interested in performing scheduled stupid ghost tricks I can work the breathing end of the problem, assuming we can come up with a working relationship where I am allowed to read books."

I can perform scheduled stupid ghost tricks.  Or non-stupid ones, for that matter.  You're welcome to read any of my other books.

I'm sorry about keeping it from you.  It's just that I've promised myself to never make a decision to do something that might be obviously stupid and evil in retrospect without really thinking about it first.

I mean, I really thought about my parents, for over a month, and that still ended up being those things.

 

To be honest you're kind of worringly chill about that.  But maybe you're just pretending.

"I mean, I haven't been wanting to directly ask about this so early in our acquaintance, but you were in the hospital before that and Charlie said he tried a couple times to get you to say you had help falling down the stairs before he had to give up, one makes a guess."

The thing is that it's still pretty bad to murder your parents with an axe.  Even under those circumstances.

"It is not what I would personally choose to do!"

Would he really have helped if I'd told him, do you think?

"I mean, I could imagine him having his hands tied by the social workers or something, I haven't looked into applicable regulations extensively, but that would be why he was asking, yes, so he could help you."

fuck

"I am sorry you had to find out this way? But yeah I'm the child of those mythical creatures a good cop and a good teacher."

There are plenty of good teachers.

"There are plenty of good cops too, I'm repeating somebody else's joke."

I still don't know that he would have stayed wanting to be helpful if he knew why they were beating me up at the top of the stairs.

"Well, if you want me to venture a speculation I would need to know why they might do that."

The handwriting's been getting steadily steadier; now it's faster and still relatively smooth, but messier.

I guess I just have to hope that in light of Christianity not being real you're not the sort to think it's okay to axe murder your parents but not to be gay.

"I wasn't a Christian even before a ghost told me not to be, I think I would have had more of a reaction to that if I were. Charlie was fine with me coming out to him four years ago but I admit he doesn't give off the ally vibe very emphatically, I was sorta nervous."

OK

It's really weird as a ghost to get stressed enough to feel like you can't breathe.  It's like, no shit, I already knew that...

"Oh no, I'm sorry but that's also kind of funny?"

ha ha ha

"It's really hard to determine tone from handwriting."

Well, if you were making fun of the fact that I can have strong emotions while dead then I'm being sarcastic but if you were good-naturedly trying to lighten the mood then I'm laughing with you, natch.

Sorry.
I really feel like I'm blowing this whole interaction, my one chance, or even if I'm not then I'm wasting the one day when communicating is by far the easiest, and

The pen taps a few times in place, as if that'll help the right words come out of it.  Eventually it scratches out the 'and'.