There he is, Franz fucking Kafka, floating around, eating my birthday cake, and scaring all the guests. Way to go Franz. You had to choose today to haunt me, didn't you?
I march on up to him.
"Franz? Franz! What do you think you are doing?"
Franz Kafka's ghost gives me this big smile. "Hey man," he says "Great party you're having. I was just telling some of these people some lawyer jokes I know. Did you know I was a lawyer?"
"Yes Franz", I say. "Yes, I know you were a lawyer."
"Hey, hey want to hear one?
The ghost raises his spectral eyebrow at me, then drinks some of my Miller Light. I don't even like the stuff though, so it doesn't bother me as much as it probably should.
"Not really," I say, "But I don't suppose that's going to stop you."
"Okay," he says, "Here it goes."
He pauses to make sure I'm really listening. Despite Lady Gaga playing in the background, I reluctantly give him my full attention.
"Okay. So there's these two lawyers who just got done working with a difficult client, and they are standing talking in private in one of the lawyer's offices. It's a real nice office. There's a black leather swivel chair, and one of those dunking wooden bird thingies that pretend to drink a glass of water. There's also these amazingly fabulous curtains that make the lawyers look big and powerful, and..."
"Franz, Franz. You are telling me a joke, right? Not giving me a lecture on interior decorating?"
"Oh, yes yes, right." he says. "So anyway, one lawyer looks at the other, and says 'how's life treating you?' And the other lawyer, he says, "Life is irrational and horrifying, and I want to kill myself.'"
I wipe my hand across my face. "Is that the punchline?" I ask.
"No," he says. "It gets better. So the first lawyer says, 'Do you have life insurance?' and the second lawyer, the suicidal one says, 'Where I'm going, I won't need it.' Then he jumps out a twenty story window and plunges to his death. The first lawyer walks away and life actually becomes better without the second lawyer. GET IT?"
I look around me. Everyone has left the party now. Kafka's ghost nudges me a little in the ribs.
"I mean, that guy really underwent some trials, amiright?"
Really Kafka. A pun...
I turn to the spectral author of brilliant dark art. Slowly, anger begins to seep into my brain like the smell of boiled cabbage seeps into a busdriver. When I can control myself no longer I turn to the ghost.
"Kafka, I'm afraid you lost your touch. Not only that, I know about your porn collection, you sick sick man. Did you honestly come back from the dead just to ruin my birthday and tell lawyer jokes, or are you still hung up because you think your old man neglected you?"
Kafka withdraws from me a little. He hides back into the twisted catacombs of his ghostly little mind.
"You're pathetic," I add. It seems like the appropriate thing to say. As if I pushed a little button inside of his brain, the modernist writer's apparition begins to cry.
"Oh, man, c'mon. Don't do that." I say. The crying does little for putting life back into my party, although come to think of it, it's long dead.
"Hey," I say. "What I said was a little harsh. I didn't mean it, at least fully. You aren't pathetic. You were a great writer. I used to look up to you."
"I...I know." Says the spirit between sobs (good alliteration, right?) "That's why I came. I was going to wish you a happy birthday. I thought you'd like it, since you liked my writing so much and all."
Great, now I feel guilty. I hate when that happens. I crack open a Miller Light and down it quickly. (Screw it at this point, right?)
"Hey, I didn't know." I say. "Hey listen Franz. You really did inspire me. I didn't know you came here to celebrate."
"Why else would I come here?"
"Well, you know, to haunt people and stuff. But Kafka...thank you."
I reach over to pat him on the back, forgetting that he's immaterial. I fall through him into a big tub full of ice and alcoholic beverages. The ghost laughs, wipes away an immaterial ghostly tear, and then notices I'm not laughing.
"I better go now," he says.
"That would be a good idea."
I cut the cake and celebrate the rest of my birthday alone, and everyone else is better off without me.
Now you know.
