Prime

I’m no stranger to chilling episodes. When I was younger, it was adventures on the road, stops not entirely on the maps, or friends who led me astray. In short, it was interesting, but I came to feel the need for the less adventurous.

I looked forward to a splendorous retirement of relating my doings without getting involved again. Besides, every year the remaining witnesses seemed to become fewer as mortality and terrible life choices took old companions. One by one they shuffled, or dramatically dropped off the mortal coil.
It’s that mortal coil routine that’s been the rub in recent years. My friends were getting bored with celestial choirs ( if they were genuinely repentant). Or maybe, they decided to visit my peaceful life, if not finding any peace in the other place. In any case, periodically, but especially around this time of the year, they come visiting.
I’ll notice the cat following a dust mote around the room. Then a palpable chill in the air. Then an almost transparent image forms.
The conversations are limited. Lot’s happened over the years, and from one visit to the next, they don’t seem to remember much of what I told them.
A bunch came to visit the other day while I was watching Amazon Prime on my computer. It was a documentary on the sixties, and they got hung up on looking for themselves and their friends in the documentary. Eventually, they forgot all about me.
Being I had a ton of work to do, I just programmed a batch of movies and documentaries for them to watch.
It worked great until they got hold of whatever passes for beer wherever they are. So now my friends are installed in my office as a sort of ongoing ghostly party.
I can’t figure out how to get rid of them.
The Verizon tech couldn’t fix it, and Amazon has no humans you can speak with.
My wife is threatening to move out.
The cat is having a great time standing in front of the screen and “Zoom bombing” the party.
And the local churches say they’ve never done an exorcism on a computer.
Got any ideas?