Kay was expeg it to be chilly outside. And behold: te October, moon in the sky– it was chilly!

  Night had fallen upon the fair city of Toronto and the cold breeze stung Kay’s hands. It was times like those that Kay wondered if it was too early to pag around some winter gloves– would it seem wimpy?– but he stuck his hands in his pockets and got marg home.

  Maybe I get some biker gloves and add them to my cssic rock look, thought Kay. He drew up some frustration, and pondered how formidable to cold temperatures his water form was.

  It was a quiet night, with all the mutterings of the city far off in the distant, eg over rooftops so that Kay never kheir words. Cars drove by, briefly illuminating Kay in their headlights– a stray soul walking the sidewalks in his lonesome. Light caught his eyes so whenever he passed by the window of a house– inside previewing for passersby– Kay had to look in. Discretely now, he peer at a family watg a movie on TV. It might have been Shrek or something; Kay didn’t know.

  Heading back the way he came in, Kay passed by Harris Pce, though, and he wasn’t sure if it was shouting he heard ing up to pce but once he reached the er of the building and had a view into the parking lot, he looked into the parking lot to see a few people– maybe young adults or older. They were shouting at each other with Barry, a brash-looking young man, holding something in his hand that Kay could not identify.

  But that something in Barry’s hand looked like trouble, anyway.

  There was a veranda around the site of the building, aed porch over looking the lot. Worried that something was about to go down, Kay crept up the stairs and shifted slowly towards the excitement, hiding behind ns and using the darko hide his face. The people in the parking lot didn’t hear him or see him. As he got close– the on? Kay saw that the on was a knife.

  “Oh god,” said Kay, quiet enough to be unheard by the party.

  Brit, a woman with shoulder length red hair and wearing a dress, took the front of Richie, a haggard young man with his suit flustered. Richie stared daggers at Barry, and Barry returned a nasty look himself.

  “You don’t disrespect me like that!” shouted the brash man, taking a step closer and knife gripped tight.

  “Barry, fet about it,” said the woman. “Just go home!”

  “You deserve nothing but disrespect,” said Richie. “It’s been that way since you were a kid.”

  Barry took a step forward. Brit and Richie retreated backward.

  Brit looked over her shoulder at Richie. “ you shut your mouth, Rich? You’re not helping anything!”

  The bde shone in the moonlight. Barry’s pantomime of a stab didn’t e off as a warning when he was holding an actual knife. He was getting into arm’s length of the two others. Tension ed the parking lot.

  Kay’s heart raced, likely as fast as the trio in the midst of the teuation about to see some bloodshed. Would he have to interfere? He switched forms, taking his liquid shape. A water elemental could take a stab a lot better than human flesh and with Ghost Thing’s tricks, he could disarm Barry effortlessly. Or at least he expected so.

  The liquid d put his hands on the handrail, ready to pounce over and interve the very least, the shock of seeing a water mo night could have startled Barry into dropping the on.

  Brit turo Barry. “What’s everyone going to say if you hurt someone, Barry?”

  Barry chuckled in a twisted sort of way. “That he had it ing!”

  Brit g the knife and her voice squealed, “Look at yourself! Yoing to stab someoside of a restaurant!”

  Barry went still. He g the knife. Suddenly he felt very insecure, and his face sunk. He backed away a few steps. “It’s... it’s not even a real knife,” he said sheepishly. He took a palm to the end of the bde and the bde receded with a strained squeal. It bounced bato pce when Barry took away his hand. He put on a smug smile, saying louder, “It’s not even a real knife!”

  “Get out of here!” the woman ordered.

  Barry went to a earby, a boxy red one. He opehe door and got iarting the vehicle. Maybe Barry gave the others a dirty look; Kay couldn’t see into the car very well when its light turned off. Richie and Brit walked away. When Richie tried shouting something at Barry’s car as it left the lot, the woman smacked the haggard man iomach, cutting off his jest.

  Ghost Thing rexed. The situation was resolved. It was barely a situation, in the end. A stage knife? Ghost Thing found it insulting but was gd that there was no injuries after all. Without notig the liquid cryptid spying from the veranda, the couple went baside the building. Barry’s car echoed off into the distance, and the parking lot went quiet. Ghost Thing was left aloh his simmering nerves.

  He looked at himself. That’s how quick it was. One sign of danger and Kay went from human to water d. A shouting matd Kay transformed. It had been some time since Ghost Thing had brought out his watery form, at least in the public. Were any gang members around to attack Ghost Thing?

  Ghost Thing took his hand up into the air a moonlight strike through his translut shape. Light glowed on the surface of his hand and dahrough the tiny bubbles that floated through his mass, like stars in the sky. In a way, his hand was like a gaxy. A shimmer passed through him and oher side light danced on the surfa the n, greeting it with ethereal purple light.

  And Ghost Thing had to stop and revere in what a marvellous creature he was. It had been some time since he was in that form, and being rexed he could take a good look at himself and ponder. He wiggled his fingers and ked his thumb. He let the tips of his finger ride down the n. He could feel the coarseness of the wood underh the veneer of paint. It was an arm of living water. What sent feeling back to his brain? How did he trol such a thing?

  It gave him ay for a sed, w about his true nature, but theuro him, a out a quiet but fortable chuckle. This was him. He was this living water creature and how beautiful and wonderful it was to be it.

  He took a careful look around, then Kay returo his human form. He walked back out to the sidewalk where he remembered that he had his wallet on him wheransformed. Taking another look around to make sure nobody was watg, he got out his wallet and looked inside. His cards were still there; his money was still there. The transformation didn’t send his items into the void, which was a worry he carried since his powers first awakened? Perhaps his pockets were safe wheransformed, although he wasn’t totally fident that was the case.

  Kay went home, reassuring himself he was fine every block of the way. He had fshed his water form out in the open and– what do you know!– a thousand ninjas didn’t spawn in to attack him! Whatever gang was out there, they did not have an Orwellian brand of surveilnce across the city. Obvious to most but Kay’s fear had gotteter of him that st week.

  Maybe Kay could still be Ghost Thing after all.

  It was te, though, paratively anyway. That was not the night he would test out how free could still be. His night would end with him in his bedroom, rexing.

  So Kay returned home, and when he popped into his apartment, he decred “Back before o the living room in which his mom responded with “Oh” and Urban offered, “Well done, Kay”, irely sure what the text was. Kay, disced that no one was impressed with how quickly he went out to see a movie, went to his room quietly to spend the rest of the night posting on forums oer.