Izzy's Assignment

“Oh my god,” Izzy scolded the hot glue gun. “Why isn’t this working?” She threw down the gun onto the thinning carpet of her ancient dormitory. As the glue remained solid, she sobbed into her hands. Gasps and sniffles were the only sounds filling the space, all her roommates having already left for their own Halloween festivities. Here was Izzy: puffy face crying over not-yet-constructed cat ears. 

“And, like, no one’s here to help me!” She whimpered to whichever god would pity her, and some spiritual being must’ve been attentive because, next, Izzy’s eyes lifted to look at the empty outlet. Her hand grabbed the glue gun’s plug as if coached by puppet strings. With plug in grapes, her tear-soaked hand hovered to the outlet as if magnetized. Upon contact, an electric shock as exciting as “The Bachelor” finale ripped through her, from right hand through heart and to left foot. It was obvious now that the spirit looking down on her was none other than the Grim Reaper.

***

She opened her eyes with another whimper. “Where am I?”

“Izzy, you’re in your dorm room,” said the strange woman sitting on her twin extra-long bed. She was pretty, like detective-pretty.

“Oh my god. What did I do last night? Did we…,” Izzy stopped herself, taking pause to wrack her memory. “Oh my god! Did we? Blake’s gonna kill me!” She started crying again.

“Izzy, I’m Deputy Quinn,” the strange woman said, as unshaken as a concrete pillar. “It is still Halloween night. We did not do whatever you think we might’ve done, and Blake cannot kill you.”

“Thank god,” Izzy replied. “But I’m so late. I have no costume. I haven’t even started my make-up. And my hair! My hair!”

“Izzy, you’re dead,” Quinn cut off her monologue. 

“What?”

“You died earlier tonight.”

“Hm. What?”

“You died trying to plug in your glue gun into that faulty outlet.”

“You must be kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, I’m serious.”

“Seriously though?”

“Yes, seriously though.”

“Oh my god.” The deputy’s news finally sunk in like when her favorite doctor on “Grey’s Anatomy” died. “I can’t be dead.”

“You are,” the deputy confirmed. “I’m Deputy Quinn, a representative for the Grim Reaper, here to -- “

“Oh my god, the Grim Reaper’s a real thing?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god! So I, like, know the Grim Reaper now!” She smiled at Quinn, looking for a bit of a social boost that Courtney never had. Suck it, Courtney.

“No, you don’t,” Quinn cut off her dream. Izzy pouted. Focused on her mission like the laser of a pistol, Quinn continued, “I’m here to tell you your assignment.”

“Oh my god. I’m dead and I still have homework?”

Ignoring her questions, Quinn continued, “You must haunt your boyfriend Blake until he stops sleeping with Courtney.”

“What?” Izzy questioned the plot twist of the century she was just thrown. 

“Your boyfriend Blake is sleeping with your roommate Courtney.”

“You must be kidding me.” 

“I’m not kidding you. He’s been cheating on you for 32 days now.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. Now, you have to haunt him well enough to make him stop.”

Izzy had no reply. 

“Once you complete this assignment,” Quinn continued. “You’ll be free to leave this earth.”

Izzy’s eyes fixed on the outlet that screwed her over. She still had no reply. This news seemed to shake her more than her own death.

“Let’s go,” Quinn said, still too narrow-minded to realize the very human thing happening before her. She turned around from her place at the dorm room’s entrance and looked down on the poor human. “Izzy.”

She blinked. “Sorry.”

“Let’s go.”

***

She blinked again, and they were standing in the middle of one of her campus’s many Halloween parties for that night. This one wasn’t as intricately decorated and costumed as the theatre department’s, but it wasn’t as poorly attended as the event organized by the actual university. It was beige. Not one paper pumpkin on the walls. Not one costume that required more creativity than searching through one’s closet for something that resembled any basic idea. But they had lots of booze, and it was where Izzy was assigned to be.

“Izzy,” Quinn started. “Find Blake, and get mad.”

“Well, I’m already mad, so all we gotta do is, like, find him.” Izzy looked out at her acquaintances surrounding her. As they were poorly disguised as cowboys and tourists and cats, she was properly cloaked and made invisible as one of the dead. Even though they all had their lives to live, she at least had a purpose. “Can you find him for me?”

“Really?”

“Yeah, there are a lot of people here, and it’s, like, really hard to focus.”

“Fine,” Quinn gave in. “Follow me.” Quinn walked through the table used for the beer pong tournament.

“Oh my god, you can walk through stuff?” Izzy gawked.

“Yes, you can too.”

“No! Seriously?”

“Seriously. Try it.”

“Oh my god, this is so exciting!” Izzy jumped up and down as if possessed by a bogo stick and then walked through to the middle of the same table. She looked at Chad and Brad at one end and Sara and Tara at the other. As the ball passed through her, she gasped. “No way!”

“Yes way,” Quinn confirmed, cheering her on like a monotonous sorority sister. As Izzy danced in the middle of the furniture, Quinn continued, “Come on.” They walked through body after body and hovered above the floor to avoid any spilled drinks.

Quinn halted at the kitchen’s entrance. Izzy stopped beside her and looked out to see Blake with his arm around Courtney’s waist. 

“Deputy Quinn,” Izzy started. “How do I know you’re not lying to me?”

“I work for a spirit that knows all.”

“Right.” Izzy shook her body from head to toe, to let go of all her nerves and to focus solely on getting mad. Once set, she pursed her lips, balled her fists, furrowed her brows, and grunted in Blake’s general direction.

“What are you doing?”

“Getting mad.”

“Stop,” Quinn faced Izzy. She forgot her cartoon act and looked normal again. “Don’t try to get mad. Instead, wait until he does something that gets you mad.”

“Okay.” Izzy breathed in, breathed out, and waited on her target. The group to her right shared a round of shots. The group to her left tapped the new keg. The group behind her finished the beer pong semifinals, and all of this happened before her purpose could be fulfilled. This dumb man cheated on her for 32 days, yet he didn’t do anything when she needed him to.

Just then, Courtney directed Blake’s face toward her own and kissed him.

“Oh my god.”

Blake kissed her back.

“Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!” The tub of jungle juice erupted like a geyser and crashed to its side to flood the kitchen like a tsunami. The handles of liquor exploded, glass shards scattering throughout the unkempt house. The kitchen cabinet doors clapped and pounded, as if driving the rhythm of the dead’s everlasting heartbeats. The rap music once booming through the overblown speakers was now conquered by a symphony of horror movie screams, nails dragged on chalkboards, and hissing snakes. Spiders crawled down from the ceiling. Rats crawled up from the floor. Windows shattered. The stove burst into flames, the heat pushing people out of the house. The party-goers screamed and scrammed.

Izzy followed Blake and Courtney out of the house. Once outside, she saw them holding hands. “Oh. My. God!” The ground beneath them split to reveal a pool of fire erupting from the Earth’s core. To avoid dying, they ran their separate ways, letting go of the other.

“Blake!” Courtney shouted across the way. She tried to shout again, but Izzy took her voice. Courtney continued her muted babbling like a fish out of water.

“Courtney! What happened?” Blake shouted back. After this, he could never speak again without a worm crawling up his throat and shooting out of his mouth. Within thirty seconds, he had enough to take his dad and his three closest friends fishing for the weekend.

Izzy breathed in, breathed out, and lowered her shoulders. “Did I complete my assignment?” she asked Quinn.

“Yes,” she confirmed. “Good work. Now, you can move on from this life. I’ll clean up here.” Izzy started to walk away.

“Deputy Quinn?”

“Yes,” she answered as she mended the Earth’s floor.

“Do I have to go right now? Like, go go?”

“No, you go whenever you want.”

“So I can go to, like, Tahiti?”

“Yes.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously though,” Quinn confirmed in Izzy’s native tongue.

“This is gonna be fun.” Izzy smiled, leaving behind her plagued past.