“Welcome to G. Host Residential and Commercial Real Estate Agency, I’m Mandy. How can I help you?”
A scent spray materialised in the blonde’s hand then a small mirror as ‘Mandy’ set about checking her eyes. The scent of dried rose petals drifted gently through the musty air.
Harry, who was still recovering from the shock of floating through a solid wood door, stood and waited patiently, as recommended in the Instruction Manual for Tax Inspectors paragraph 34 (b) under ‘Making the Client Nervous and Ready to Spill All’.
But the blond with the fluffy cotton-wool hair didn’t seem at all nervous and simply carried on checking her face.
“Er, em,” said Harry, trying to sound official.
“Nasty throat you’ve got there,” Mandy giggled. Her voice was tiny but piercing. It was the sort of high pitched shrill voice that grated, especially when the owner looked like a bimbo and wasn’t providing appropriate customer care.
“This isn’t a joke is it. This is a proper real estate agency for ghosts,” Harry was still trying to sound official.
“Rest in peace,” said Mandy. “I mean, be completely assured, sir. We’ve been finding happy haunts for ghosts and paranormal entities for thousands and thoooooousands of years.”
A tiny brown brush materialised and she waved it generally around her head, still not looking in Harry’s direction.
“May I ask where you heard about us? I just need to know for our statistics sir?”
“PC sixty nine and a half recommended you.”
“Oh yes, George. He loves his alley. You want to watch out for those trash bins. They are going to fall and kill somebody one day.”
Harry’s carefully ironed shirt collar was starting to itch – a sure sign he was getting mad.”
“Look! I know I’m new to this matter of being dead but your customer skills are – just appalling. Don’t you ever look at your customers?”
Mandy pouted.
“Not when they look as gruesome as you do sir. We are not required to serve customers who enter the shop with eyeballs hanging out of their sockets and smelling of fish bits. It says so in my Customers Charter. Especially since I was thinking of having a nice doughnut soon in my coffee break.”
Harry’s face was now almost as red as Mandy’s well rouged lips.
“You would look revolting if you’d just been buried under a pile of trash! What am I supposed to do; magic myself clean and tidy?” Sarcasm was Harry’s favorite form of wit, honed to perfection on cowering tax defaulters over many years.
“OK! I hereby imagine my eye back in it’s socket and a new suit of clothes! Happy?”
Mandy swivelled around in her black leather executive chair and smiled five thousand volts.
“That’s soooo much better.”
“Oh, it’s as easy as that! I had no idea.” Harry gazed down at his new suit of clothes and clean black shoes.
“Now, would you consider taking possession of a nice haunt on another planet or do you require a haunting on earth. What about a haunt in another time. You don’t have to stick with the 21st century, you know. Medieval is very popular these days.”
Mandy leaned forward and gave Harry another high voltage smile.
“Tell me what you want… I’m here just for you!”
(Rob Hopcott – online author – fiction – news)
Note from the author. I hope you are enjoying this series of free serialized short ghost stories by Rob Hopcott. Check back soon to read the ongoing ghostly story as it unfolds in regular free ghostly episodes.
Copyright Rob Hopcott 2007, all rights reserved. All characters in this humorous serialized ghost short story flash fiction and other free on-line humor, short stories, flash fictions, micro-fictions, sudden fictions, post card fictions or very short stories on this site are fictitious and no reference is intended to any person living or otherwise.
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