the ghost president decides to write a novel

by Mary Grimm

The ghost president has some spare time and decides to write a bestselling novel. It will, he tells the aide who brings him his Sausage McMuffin accompanied by two Hash Browns, each in their paper envelope, be based on a dream he had last week. The dream was about reincarnation. He had recounted it in its entirety at a staff meeting and everyone had loved it. It started, he says, when he went into this tree, which was hollow but still alive, and there were some steps and when he came out at the other end, he was a different person. An important person, a general or maybe a king. He asks the aide what he thinks and the aide says he loves it.

There will have to be a little more than that, the aide thinks as he takes the waste papers and grease stained napkins away. There would have to be a plot. There would have to be a main character, and will it work if the main character is partially or occasionally invisible? He recounts his misgivings to one of the secretaries, who has given her notice but is still working for another ten days.

Maybe it could be a fantasy, she says, with, you know, magic. They look at each other, each thinking that this is not a book they would read, unless they could write the ending themselves. The aide goes to look for some busy work, and the secretary resumes playing Minecraft on her tablet.

Meanwhile the ghost president is dreaming of the novel he will write. Not just yet, but after he has replaced the gold-based currency with bitcoin, and then there’s that thing he always wanted to do with Florida which would be the best place ever if it was walled off at the panhandle and if there were several dozen more golf courses.

He is looking out of the window at the lawn in front of the White House, trying to remember the details of the dream, because there was so much more that happened after that thing with the tree. Was there a monkey? His hands are sinking into the surface of the desk, which feels odd but is not painful. The part of his brain that remembers dreams is liquefying slowly, but that is fine, really, because he understands that writing a book isn’t that hard.  He thinks that maybe now that he has the idea, he can get someone to write it up, make it fancier. And then maybe someone else to put in some characters and some philosophical dialogue. If he can get them all to work together he’s pretty sure he can win one of those big prizes. The Pulitzer, right?

The morning sun is shining through him so that his organs glow. The bones of his body and his skull are hard and fast, but even they are leaking away into the air. They always come back, he thinks, but since it’s a fantasy, who’s to say if that will hold true this time or the next.

Photo of Mary Grimm

BIO: Mary Grimm has had three books published, Left to Themselves, Transubstantiation, and Stealing Time. Her stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Antioch Review, and the Mississippi Review, as well as in a number of journals that publish flash fiction, including Helen, The Citron Review, and Tiferet. Currently, she is working on a series of climate change novellas set in past and future Cleveland.