How to Be A Ghost and Stay Alive

[Rue Wydown 0]

"He wants to steal ship?"

"Sounds like it."

"Why that ship?"

"Luv, I work for people with fangs, I don't ask why, I just do what I'm told. I find it's healthier that way."

Those who had, through romantic idealism, assumed that maintaining an assumed identity would be easy needed to have their brains surgically removed from their collective rears ends.

 

It was hard grueling work that required vigilant attention and a staunch deference of one's privacy. One in this sort of ghostly lifestyle had to appear as an benign apparition, something you see in the corner of your eye, but you dismiss for a flutter in the breeze. Likeable but unworthy of remembrance. Friendly, but not one you're interested in befriending. The waitress that, when it comes down to paying the bill, you can't remember what she looked like or what her name was. As Ruth explained to a former (now truly dead) compatriot:

 

"No one notices the help, luv. Trust me. I just pretend I'm the bloody butler."

 

 

Ruth almost gave up within the first few months of her phantomasm lifestyle. Had another not another old timer taken her under his wing, she would have returned to her previous life. He'd shown her the ropes, tutored her in fine art of blending in and getting away with it. As he'd explained to her, she had several things working in her favor.

 

• No military history - so no one would be looking for a deserter. Nor where there any detailed records to worry about.
  
• No previous criminal history. Again, same reasons as above.
  
• No family to come looking for her. Except for a husband who seemed to have moved on with his life....
  
• An employer with lousy personnel records for physical evidence (DNA, fingerprints and whatnot) and lack of empathy towards its employees.
  
• And a bureaucratic government that wouldn't come looking for one little insignificant cog in a corporate wheel.
  

Of course, he taught her, these same assets could be a determent to her new keepers. She had better find a way to accentuate the positive, diminish the negative and diversify her skill set as quickly as humanly possible so that she'd be seen as an asset instead of a liability.

 

Two years later, she'd mourned his passing as she had the others before and after, with a fervent prayer and a swig of whisky.

 

Diversify she did. Ruth was a keen student in criminal activity. It was not that she wished harm against her fellow beings, or had a vendetta against any one establishment. It was more of Ruth want to know what her limitations were. What she could get away with and where those lines were crossed. And diversification would keep her alive! Poisons, torture, theft, intimidation, larceny, espionage, burglary, forgery. If it was against social morals, Ruth studied them the way a scholar studies a rare and priceless artifact. She'd then looked to apply it against her legally obtained education. By the end of her first three years as a ghost, she knew how to incapacitate, torment or kill many beings she came into contact.

 

Of course, being a ghost caused a bit of an identify crisis for Ruth. Forged identification documents could be obtained for the right price. A few in the hierarchy of the pirate crew (and yes, there was a definite hierarch with a Captain in charge) knew Ruth's true name, and she meant to keep it that way. But what was the rest of the group of scalawags to call her?

 

She'd chosen the name Rue (Roo) for two reasons. One – an adopted nickname from early crew members who remarked that, when Rue was excited, her accent sounded like a severely mangled dialect from the Earth's southern hemisphere island Australia (or England, they never could decide). Two – it was a nod towards her former French surname. The spelling meant "Street" in French, an ambitious notion on Ruth's part to become street-smart.

 

She used no discernable surname and no one asked.

 

There was only one other philosophy that Ruth/Rue had adopted that had managed to keep her alive and in the good graces of the criminal element she'd become attached to – that was never question the "why's" of what they were doing. She didn't question, she just did as she was told, when she was told, and how she was told to do it. If the Captain ordered 'no kill', then she did everything in power to prevent deaths. If he ordered anyone or everyone dies, then so be it. She may be a "ghost" now, but that didn't mean she couldn't die for keeps if it suited the whim of the pirates. Best to keep on their good side.

 

Besides, they paid her well enough – who was she to complain?