Chapter Text
Being dead wasn’t going to stop Louise Belcher for doing any-fucking-thing. Sure, watching her family cry constantly wasn’t ideal, but being stuck at the Wharf was worse–surrounded by noise she couldn’t yell quiet, food she couldn’t eat, rides she couldn’t enjoy ever again.
So she just–left. So much for being tied to your place of death. Louise smirked as she floated up the stairs of the apartment after a nice jaunt invisibly taunting Chloe Barbash in her goopy makeup and ugly shoes. At some point Louise would figure out who fucking killed her and then she’d really have a good time.
Tina sat on the couch in hiccupping misery. Louise felt bad enough but no matter how she tried to reach her family (or anyone, really), she never could quite get them to hear her. Gene occasionally turned his head, eyes red and wet, as if he heard Louise screaming his name. But he always turned back to his keyboard, plinking out a sad little tune with no farts at all.
No one else ever even flinched. At the funeral Louise had tried calling every name of every attendee. Well, Ollie, for a moment, might have heard her. Andy distracted him long enough with a suffocating hug that Ollie turned away and then never looked her direction again. That was it. Gene, Ollie, and Aunt Gayle’s cats who hissed at her as she misted her way to visit the aunt that she never saw in life. Louise always hissed back on principle.
Now, Louise went to pat Tina’s shoulder. It sucked, over and over, how she kept forgetting that she was dead until her hand passed through Tina’s arm. The sensation was bizarre; Louise could still feel her arm until she just–couldn’t. It wasn’t pain so much as a cessation of existence. Which Louise had expected for all of her until a week or so ago when she opened her eyes, the last day of her life a blank and her floating several feet off of the ground.
Tina shivered and then reached out to take up her cellphone as it rang out with the Equestranauts theme song. Tina had had the same ringtone since her first phone over twenty years ago. Louise used to groan and roll her eyes whenever she heard it; now the repetitive 80s-esque theme was comforting as a reminder of how things were before.
“He–hello?” Tina wiped her nose with the back of her hand, her glasses blurry. Louise grimaced and turned away. Thankfully the general idea of being stuck forever in the state of one’s death was also incorrect, as it turned out. Louise wore the same pink beanie, One-Eyed Snakes tee, ripped jeans, and combat boots that she’d had on when someone had got the drop on her. The clothes were pristine, even cleaner than they had been that fateful day. Unfortunately, because there was no blood or wounds, Louise had no idea how she died. And, for some bizarre reason, even when the family spoke of her death, Louise could never quite understand them.
But she’d find out the truth eventually and then? Then she’d return the favor with interest.
“Logan!” Louise whipped her head around fast enough that it would have hurt if she were alive. “Thank you so much for the flowers. Mom loved them.”
Logan Bush. Her arch-nemesis all through elementary school and into middle school before he graduated. The only person who could match her energy and didn’t hold back because she was a girl or a kid. But then he was gone, off to business school and then fucking China as some company’s token white guy. Which was apparently a thing.
They hadn’t spoken in person in years; only banter and snippy arguments on Facebook. And Snapchat. And maybe Instagram once Louise found Logan’s dedicated to his dogs and bad Hallmark movies. And sure, calls and texts. But that was it. Logan almost never came home and he avoided the restaurant–and Louise–whenever he deigned to set foot on American soil.
Louise wasn’t hurt; of course not! She didn’t want him stinking up her place anyway. She’d moved on with her life, only occasionally stalking his socials as she grew up. Years later he’d messaged her right around when she’d turned 21 (and could start posting her drinking pics openly). At first she’d ignored him. Except he kept needling her and asking her if she was still troll-height. If she ever washed her ears--either set. And that she should have just let him keep the fabric ones, all of those years ago. They obviously weren’t doing her any favors in the romance department.
Louise had to bite back eventually. What started as arguing turned into occasional posts about work or whatever. Which turned into regular PMs about their terrible dating lives. Which turned into consistent texts about everything else.
In fact, the last thing that Louise even remembered was texting Logan, deliberating trying to wake him up well before his alarm halfway across the world. For funsies. And then waking up herself, around a day later, no clue how but definitely dead.
“Of course you can visit!” Tina’s voice broke Louise from her memories. “We’d love to have you. No, I know you couldn’t get off of work that quickly.”
Logan was coming back to the States? He was coming to the restaurant–after Louise was dead and couldn’t slap him or trip him or hug–slap him? What the fuck?
“She would have loved to see you,” Tina’s voice was wet but Louise barely noticed. She was livid. Almost twenty years he’d stayed gone, nothing but words on a screen or a disembodied voice on a line. And now, when she was entirely disembodied, suddenly he could find the time to visit? It was infuriating.
Louise floated away, her fists balled uselessly at her sides. She was going to figure out how to properly haunt someone and soon. She had her first fucking target.