This week’s words: Irreplaceable Tusk Scapula (shoulder blade) Scarlet Ingenue (The part of an artless, innocent, unworldly girl or young woman, especially as represented on the stage.) Constitute Fetish Mistress Dose Maze Vandal Necroscope (Someone who can communicate with the dead.)

Barney Tusk discovered at the age of fifteen that he was a necroscope. It was not long after his sister Scarlet passed away playing Ophelia in the local Repertory Theatre’s production of Hamlet. Conveniently it was during the scene when she was reclined in Hamlet’s lap and he was referring to ‘country matters’ that she took her final breath.

The night after Barney was awoken by the ghost of his sister sitting on the end of his bed. She was older than Barney by ten years and was not happy that her life had ended in the midst of what she thought was her finest acting moment. That the critics had described her performance as that of an ingénue, pedestrian to he point of discomfort, was never revealed to her while he lived but Barney had since discovered that ghosts read the papers in particular the Theatre reviews and Scarlet was not at all impressed by what she had read. Her view that she was irreplaceable within the cast was not born out by what she had read and constituted a real problem for her in the next world. An eternity knowing she wasn’t as good as she thought was not a memory she wanted to entertain. So she sat night after night whinging to Barney wanting him to write letters of complaint to the papers pleading for his sister’s memory to be changed from pedestrian to at least competent.

Barney told his sister to go away as he had by now attracted a mistress, the beautiful Ivory whom he expected to marry and make Ivory Tusk. It had a certain ring to it he thought.

As he aged the visits by the dead increased. Word had spread among the deceased that if you wanted a dose of the real life Barney was the guy to go to.

Where the maze of life had befuddled many, death was no maze and the opportunity to create a fetish or two they never enjoyed when alive was often too overwhelming to ignore. Barney learned a lot about the dead from their fetishes. It seemed death created its own bizarre range of sexual attractions and many a ghost found unbelievable gratification from scaring the wits out of anyone they could influence.

The proliferation of ghostly orgasm in orgies Barney witnessed was greatly disturbing and troubled him very much to the point where he began to question the purpose of death if all it did was take one to another level of moral vandalism.

Barney decided to put an end to his necroscopic abilities and one night hearing two ghosts discussing the sensuousness they experienced when one rubbed the others scapula was the last straw as his scapula was always behind him and that is where he wanted to put every ghost he encountered.

Barney Tusk was found later that night, dead at the hands of his mistress, the less than desirous Ivory, his scapula broken, his stomach poisoned from an over dose and across his chest was written ‘irreplaceable’.

Written for: https://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2016/11/07/wordle-128-november-7th-2016/