The rain splashed against Mortimer's pale skin as he lay, stretched out on the sun lounger on top of a disused flat block on the outskirts of Cardiff. The cold should have tinted his skin a sharp pink, but against all known laws of nature it remained the same dull, translucent grey that it always was. He cut an almost comical figure, holding a sun reflector towards his face as the rain soaked the dirty pair of jeans that he always wore.
The floating figure of scruff, his ghostly companion, hung in the air, the harsh wind seeming to have no effect on the excessive layers of his baggy coat.
"Do you ever feel cold sir?" He asked, his rough voice reverberating as if he was in an invisible warehouse somewhere.
"Technically I don't feel anything" Mortimer answer, looking over the top of his pointless sunglasses "but there is a certain mood that comes from lying half naked in the rain"
Scruff made a choking sound which Mortimer knew was the equivalent of a ghost laughing. "I thought I asked you not to do that?"
"I'm sorry sir" Scruff chuckled sheepishly. "You're just so funny that I can't help it"
"I'm not funny Scuff. Well, not that funny. You're just perpetually high"
Scruff stared off into space. It was a disconcerting sight for most people to see rain passing right through a person, not least of all because the smokey substance that made up a ghosts form always rushed away from where the rain fell. It made their misty flesh seem to ripple grotesquely, and usually produced vomiting from a casual onlooker.
Fortunately for the population at large, it was pretty rare to actually see a ghost. The few people that did were either sectioned at a young age or hung around in Wicca circles, talking about spells and auras. For people who actually understood how the world worked the first group just came off as tragic, but the second group were deeply annoying. That sense of belonging to something which most people didn't understand had a tendency to turn them into arrogant bastards at best, and shrieking indignant idiots at worst.
Mortimer was fortunately rarely involved with the second category of 'sighted' people, and mainly just killed the first category, finding it usually did them a favour. At the very least meeting him when they died has a tendency to vindicate them in their own eyes.
"Scruff. What did it feel like to do Heroin?"
Scruff's face twisted into a look of deep thought and confusion. It had been a while since it was necessary for him to think so much about anything.
"Well...Honestly it just makes everything feel so great. The first time I did it I actually wondered what all the fuss was about"
Mortimer put down his sun reflector and pulled his soaked hoodie on. The rain was starting to let off as he strolled casually over towards his ghostly friend.
"If it was no big deal why did you keep doing it then?"
"Ahh, well it only felt like no big deal at first. See when I first did it I could get high all weekend for a fiver. Unfortunately it didn't take long for that price to go up. See it's not like alcohol or MDMA, it just feels really good and there's almost no hangover. I was getting high on the way to work to make the commute more fun, I was getting high at the lab to improve my output. At one point I was even getting high just to manage a kids birthday party I had to go to"
"So what changed?"
"Well actually it was everything all at once really. I needed more and more just to make myself feel normal. Even a high paying job like the one I used to have wasn't enough to keep me going. After destroying my career I ended up out on the streets, doing what I could to get my fix. Obviously you know the next bit sir"
Now it was Mortimer's turn to become all thoughtful and pensive. It had been about 30 years ago that he had come across the almost dead form of Scruff, lying face down behind an off-license. As per his usual routine Mortimer had separated his soul and body, and was ready to bottle it for transport back to Malice. Unfortunately at that moment Mortimer had been distracted by a loud bang from somewhere near by and had dropped the soul, letting it drift off over the rooftops of the city.
It had only taken the soul a short 5 years to regain a human form, 200 years short of the average 'ghost gestation period'. Mortimer had come across him again on his rounds through the city, floating around a crack den trying to haunt the people inside. Of course this hadn't worked out too well for him because being high on crack had a tendency to make people too freaked out to realise that they were even being haunted in the first place. Being one of the few people who could actually interact with ghosts Mortimer had struck up a fast friendship with Scruff, and the two had been nearly inseparable ever since.
"Yes. It's a strange old life isn't it Scruff?"
"What is sir? Death?"
"Exactly Scruff. Exactly"
A very short entry into the Drake and Mortimer series which details how he met Scruff, his hobo friend. Scruff also makes an appearance in the comic book version of the story but is still very much alive. Obviously Drake isn't present for this story but that will be rectified in the next chapter when Mortimer actually responds to Drake's invitation.
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