I drank until I started to puke blood.

Then I drank some more.

My hands perspired in the latex gloves Ms. Springfield had provided. The alley behind her house was deserted, except for a rat scurrying into an old Pepsi box.

I walked up to her gate - it was the only one that was unlocked - and let myself into her modest backyard.

Dark ,silent, porch light off. Her back door opened with a whisper.

"Ms. Springfield?"

The door led into her kitchen. Drawers had been pulled out and silverware scattered along the floor. I avoided stepping on anything sharp, and made my way through the kitchen and into a hallway.

"Ms. Springfield? It's me."

Silence.

I took a pull from my flask, to calm my nerves. Then another, for luck.

"Ms. Springfield?"

She said to meet her in the bedroom. There were stairs to the right.

I ascended slowly, cautiously. The higher I climbed, the more this seemed like a very bad idea. Even if I could bring myself to murder her - and get away with it - who was to say she wouldn't haunt me too? One ghost was bad enough. Having two...

"Mr. Arkin?"

Her voice came as such a shock that I almost lost my balance on the steps.

"Ms. Springfield?"

"Second door on the right."

Her voice was terribly relaxed.

I took a deep breath, blew it out. Reflexively, my hand went to my hip holster, and I haven't worn a hip holster in years.

"I'll be right there," I said, more for myself than for her.

She was sitting on her bed, dressed in a white night gown. Her blonde hair hung over her shoulders. In her hand was a .38 police special.

I had a momentary flash of panic, but she turned the revolver around and handed it to me, b.u.t.t first.

"I was worried you wouldn't come."

"Money makes a man do strange things."

I looked on the nightstand, next to the bed. Stacked in a neat pile, so many twenties I'd need a bag to carry them out.

So much money.

"It's almost midnight." Ms. Springfield's voice had a pleasant, almost cheerful lilt. "I want you to shoot me in the heart."

I shuffled from one foot to the other, uncomfortable.

"The head would be better."

"I don't intend joining my husband without a head to kiss him with."

Good point.

"The heart it is."

I moved closer, my gaze flickering between her and the money. Part of me wanted to just take the cash and run. I could make it to Mexico before the cops got on me.

"It's almost midnight, Mr. Arkin."

Her face - calm, so sure.

"This is what you really want, isn't it?"

For the first time since I'd met her, she smiled. "This is all I want."

She tilted her chin upward, thrust out her chest.

I extended the gun.

"This might hurt."

"Just keep firing until it's done. I want messy, remember?"

I chewed my lower lip. The gun shook in my grasp.

A drink. I needed a drink.

My free hand reached back for my flask, and Ms. Springfield's features erupted in pure anger.

"Shoot me, you worthless drunk!"

I fired.

The bullet took her in the center of the left breast, her white nightgown exploding in red fireworks. She pitched to the side, gasping like a landed fish.

I shot her in the back.

Twice.

Three times.

Still twitching. And a high-pitched, whistling wheeze from the sucking wounds in her chest.

"Aw, screw it."

I put the last two slugs in the back of her head.

She stopped moving.

Shoving the gun deep in my jacket, I went for the money. I took a b.l.o.o.d.y pillow case and began stuffing it full of stacks. The diamonds lay there too, and the papers. I grabbed them and turned to get the h.e.l.l out of there, but the bedroom suddenly transformed into a highway, and for the second time today I ran myself over.

I tried to brace for the impact, but you can never brace for that kind of thing.

Even knowing it wasn't real, I screamed at the very real feeling of the impact sluicing through every nerve and fiber of my being. Spectral or not, it hurt like h.e.l.l.

When I was able to move again, the pumpkin head ghost floated above my head, staring down with her one good eye.

But this time she had company.

"I believe you've met my daughter," said the ghost of Ms. Springfield. Her nightgown glowed white, peppered with ugly red starbursts. Bits of brain and bone floated above her hair like a halo.

She held a glowing .38.

The ghostly gun fired, and I felt the bullets rip into my body, gasping in pain and shock.

"It's not real," I told myself.

I lay there, listening to the slurping, keening sound of my lungs leaking air through the holes in my chest. Even though I wanted to move, I couldn't.

Even when I heard the approaching sirens.

Killing me? It would have been too easy.

Ms. Springfield knew I was the one who ran down her daughter. Her daughter told her.

The only thing stronger than the woman's grief had been her l.u.s.t for revenge.

She truly did want to die, so she could join her child on the other side.

So they could be together.

So they could haunt me together.

I sat on the cold floor of my cell, hugging my knees.

I've been dry for over a month now, and it's been as bad as I thought. Shaking, vomiting, delirium tremens, pure h.e.l.l.

But none of it's as bad as the ghosts.

Every day I am treated to an agonizing smearing across the highway, or having large holes blown out of my chest and head.

On some days, I get both.

And without the booze to deaden the pain...

In hindsight, I should have turned myself in after I hit that little girl.

I try to explain that to them. Try to get them to understand that I was just a scared drunk.

They show no mercy.

"And this is just a taste," Ms. Springfield repeatedly tells me. "When you die, your soul belongs to us. We have plans for you, Mr. Arkin."

They have shown me their plans.

Sometimes I cry so hard the prison doctor has to medicate me.

Life now centers on diet and exercise. I watch what I eat. I work out three times a day.

I'm in the best shape of my life.

Which is a good thing.

Because as horrifying as my life is, I want to live as long as I can.

The ghosts can run me over and gun me down a thousand times a day, and that is nothing compared to what they have in store for me after I die.

I don't want to die.

Please, G.o.d, don't let me ever die.

I wrote this for the zombie anthology Cold Flesh. It began as a writing exercise, where someone hands your protagonist a paper bag and says don't open it until midnight. I tried to think of the absolute worst thing a paper bag could contain...

"No thanks."

The b.u.m thrust the bag at me again. Brown paper, bearing the name of a local grocery store, crumpled and filthy and dripping something brown.

"Take it."

I tried to shove him away using my elbows; he was even dirtier than the bag. Strange how these people are invisible until one is in your face, reeking of garbage and body odor and p.i.s.s. This is what I get for forgoing a cab and deciding to get a little exercise on the way home from work.

"Take the bag, Jimmy."

I'd pushed him an arm's-length away, but his use of my first name was like a slap.

"How did you...?"

"The answer is in the bag. Take it."

I grinned. Someone I knew must have put this poor sap up to this. Maybe Marky, from Accounting, or my cousin Ernie, who was the only forty-year-old in all of Chicago who still thought joy buzzers were funny.