Status: complete

People sometimes say things that are true and sometimes say things that untrue, and this is interesting to me. I wondered if the untrue things they say are true in a way I cannot see, or if the person says them knowing that they are untrue, or if, by saying it, they make it true.

Tavi has five rooms and I have been looking at them. She has one room that she sleeps in and one room that she takes off her clothes in and one room that she eats in and one room that she sits in for a long time every day, and one room very far from these where she drinks coffee and looks at things. That room is very interesting because many other people have it also and come to it every day. Other people do not come to Tavi's other rooms. I wonder why, and if she would like them to?

Tavi has many small paper sticks that she holds to her face, specifically the part that she uses to speak. This part is interesting to me. She holds it there and then clouds appear, like in the sky, except right here in her own room.

"I was interested in how she made the clouds appear."

"The clouds?"

"Yes. I watched very carefully, from the outside and the inside, until I understood. She made the inside of herself empty, and the clouds chose to move inside. Then she made the empty space inside himself very small, and the clouds choose to leave."

I paused, thinking hard. "Are you describing smoking?"

"Yes, I learned how to do it. Right now there are clouds inside me. I can ask lots of things to go inside me."

I frowned and almost told them that smoking is bad for you, but then I realized that they had no lungs to damage. "What happens if you... ask them to leave?"

The vaporous humanoid shape in front of me began to lose opacity, and the air suddenly smelled heavily of cigarette smoke. In a moment it had completely vanished. I looked around the small office but I couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. I was already starting to question if the past ten minutes had been real, but I spoke into the empty room anyway, "Um, if you're still here, Tavi would appreciate it if you went somewhere else. I probably should have said this before you vanished, sorry." I looked around some more and turned to leave when I was satisfied that they were gone.

I was still alone in Tavi's apartment so I took a minute to snoop. I hadn't seen her since college and I thought it was pretty weird that she had called me. She must have remembered that I used to like ghost hunting shows a lot. Unfortunately, I also remembered that she used to be a pretentious idiot.

Her living room looked exactly like I expected a tech bro's living room to look. Really big TV, really big couch, Apple TV, two amazon echos, socks under the coffee table, a whole bunch of game consoles and a wall of video games. There was even a retro GameCube with three Call of Duty games. I frowned, remembering that there were only two Call of Duty games for GameCube. I opened the case for the third and smirked. Tavi secretly loves Animal Crossing. I intentionally put it back on the shelf in-between the other two games instead of at the left, where I'd found it. I didn't mind if she knew that I knew.

I left the apartment and found Tavi standing in the stairwell where I'd left her. "Congrats, your apartment is officially ghost free. Here are your keys back."

She took them quickly and started fidgeting with the keyring instead of her shirt hem, which was very wrinkled. "Listen, don't tell anyone about this, ok? It was just some weird shit. Ghosts aren't even real. I don't even know why I called you."

I wasn't doing a great job of holding in my laughter. "Dude, chill, we don't know any of the same people anymore. I don't even know why you still have my number, and honestly I don't care. Go take a nap."

I turned to go but I guess she was still sweating. "Wait! Are you sure it's gone?"

"Yeah, it's gone. We talked and it didn't seem too interested in devouring you whole." I hoped so, anyway. Thinking back, the ghost-or-whatever-it-was might have actually mentioned devouring things whole as an interesting pass-time. I decided not to mention it. I tried to leave again, but as an after thought threw in, "You should quit smoking."