I'm in trouble. You can tell. There are 99 names for God in my back pocket and half of them are what I called you in bed. Oh sublime, oh manifest, oh ever-relenting beautiful restrainer… can't pronounce the rest of them, but I know you're still there. Look: I'm a third-rate exorcist with more scores than ghosts left unsettled, and tonight I'm down beatifically bad.

The game plan is simple: I lure them into the conveniently abandoned light-industrial building, I blow them up with ghost explosives. I can see the wards I'm placing burning through the walls. I slap more sticky notes as I go and write a little bit more of your name on it: merciful, vast, absolute dominant. It staves off the hungrier ghosts for a while. They bay and bark at the building and tear at the masonwork with their fingers. In approximately four minutes the ground floor will be overrun. Mitigation is the order of the day. I can save the day but first I need to get out.

Breaking up wasn't easy on you. You read the message and you never said a word. I never got my soul jars out from your parents' flat. You threw them out of the window from the ninth floor and they broke on the pavement and summoned all of these ghosts. They're after me now in this conveniently abandoned light-industrial building. I never asked why you liked to stage your fights in abandoned light-industrial buildings. Turns out here's the answer: the corridors are long and lined with rubber and that makes them good for running away from things. I'm sure your life brims with these tactics. Everyone needs a place where they can run away from things. On the advice of your therapist it seems you've supplemented it with actual running and immortal combat. I have to give you credit because this is doing wonders for my heart.

A window breaks somewhere and I slap a ward down but the sound is coming from in front of me and I'm knocked down by a ghostly punch. They're climbing on each other's bodies, breaching in through the facade. Twenty fingers are on me, now thirty or forty. My jacket heats up as the fibres sing of you-- oh almighty multiplier of rewards!--and I throw the fingers off before anything spooky happens. There is a smell like burnt wires because all the wards on the inner pockets have blown through with tiny holes. This was your idea back then. Literally tricks up your sleeves. I miss the way you'd pack them. You were always more prepared for disaster. I pick myself up and keep running. You would always keep on running.

This is why it wouldn't have worked out. You want too much, and you're steeled up for all the wanting. I punch a ghost in the stairwell with another name wrapped in my fist. Oh initiator. The ectoplasm folds like crepe paper. Maybe I'm too set in my ways but I didn't think my heart would survive you in the long run. That's the real difference I think. Your heart's probably wrapped in a billion countermeasures and you probably did the surgery yourself. For me I can only wonder if it feels good to be on top. That was not a metaphor. Something reaches in from the wall and I skip a few steps. Oh expediter. I punch another ghost at the bottom of the stairs.

Really it'd be easier to just call you oh friend, oh the single, but I ran out of those on the way in. Come to think of it we never really started like that. We were just kind of strangers and then we suddenly were. Every surface screams to the touch as the wards I set five minutes ago burn down to their last reserves. Two minutes left now. And behind and above me they're multiplying. Coming down with a billion commissions and bills and late-night texts you'd recite to me: "Then it is an even fight." I'm not sure I can live up to that. You taught me anyway to try. So I did, and I took the metaphorical bull by the horns and now I'm here with your vengeance. About a hundred heading down the stairs now. Not enough names in my pocket. I drag a trail of chalk behind me and I gun it to the exit. Back door, turn right. We worked out explosively. You never really said that you loved me but you were fiercely attached to the idea of it. I would have been mad about it if you didn't also make it look cool.

So let's face it: this is also cool. I'm not mad at your vengeance. It's self-excusing in a way. I draw the chalk in a path that ends in a cursed squiggle which functions as fuse and primer and detonator. I spend the last of you on it: oh last, oh endless, oh he who puts well far away. I put myself well far away. The last door's in front. I've lost count of the threats so let's say there's roughly a bajillion. I wonder if you're laughing now? You're probably astral projecting so you can gloat. But I'm sure you know by now that again and again I enjoy cleaning up your mess. Twelve ghosts intercede before I can kick open the emergency exit. I feint and they flinch and I run. Your goal was always to spend me out. I'm not falling for the bait. I barrel through the door into the waiting fingers tongues and teeth of the bajillion-minus-twelve ghosts and I remember what you said about giving emotional energy. It's not a reciprocation or a sacrifice but when it is then it happens to be a little bit in between. My jacket combusts into ectoplasmic flame which burns through the trail of chalk dust leading to the squiggly fuse. This could be one of those bad movies where the jilted lover loses a limb to learn a lesson but I'm done with your lessons at this point. In my heart, I think we're cool. Behind me, the building explodes.